TAP: Near the joker refugee camps, Toad Man’s tongue lashed out, grabbing creatures and pulling them into the maw of his mouth. As Barbara watched, the ace spat out his tongue once more, this time to a four-armed creature with a face like a squid and waving a Russian-made Kalashnikov. The tongue wrapped around its neck, and the great toad reeled it back quickly. The Kalashnikov went flying; the creature went flailing into Toad Man’s mouth. She saw the bulge moving down the Toad Man’s throat.

TAP: Wilma Mankiller’s black braids flew as she reached for the snarling bear-headed joker from the mob around her. Its claws slashed at her, but too late; she lifted the creature as if it weighed nothing and threw it back into the crowd of attackers.

TAP: Snow Blind’s magenta hair nearly glowed in the camera. Barbara’s camera caught her standing in the doorway of the Space Museum, confronting a wave of attackers led by a humans lizard whose skin was aflame and whose breath pulsed out gouts of blue fire. Where it walked, its footprints left behind puddles of fire. But Snow Blind’s power was already active, and as it approached the museum, the lizard and its followers went suddenly blind. They staggered, confused and lost, and the lizard’s flame-breath wheeled around, setting some of its own people afire. Snow Blind lifted an AK-47; she pressed the trigger …

TAP: Glassteel’s liquid form lurked by the gantries for the Saturn measurement post, with a squadron of NATO soldiers around him. On the screen, Barbara could see the gantries alive with dark movement, as if a swarm of red and black ants were overrunning the area. Glassteel looked impossibly small against the thousands, but Barbara saw the gantry suddenly melt under Glassteel’s ace, sending the swarm plummeting to the ground amid the steel girders. The NATO troops opened fire on the stunned creatures.

For a moment, Barbara felt a fleeting hope. Surely the Highwayman must have reached Talas by now; surely they must have snatched Tolenka—surely, or there was no hope at all. Surely between the aces and the troops guarding the Cosmodrome, they could hold off the assault: if not forever, at least long enough.

There was movement in the screen that drew Barbara’s eyes back: the Midnight Angel, swooping down from above, her sword aflame. “No!” Barbara screamed, fumbling with the toggles for her mic. “Glassteel! Above you!” In the screen, she saw Glassteel raise his head, but it was already too late. The Midnight Angel’s sword moved.

Headless, she saw him fall.

Marcus cursed himself for ever having left Olena and the villagers alone. He should’ve been there with them, locked away and protecting them. What mattered more than that? He refused to let anything stop him from getting back to the hangar. He squirmed past creatures devouring people. He kept moving around and over bodies. He ignored anything that ignored him. Each passing second seemed too many, and the distance back to the hangar—and route to it—was longer and more confusing than he remembered.