There was nothing Coop or any of the others could do. Pinned against the walls like they were by whoever the hell these people were, he and his crew slid side by side down the lobby, heading for the stairs. That’s when the asshole in charge, a redneck Robin Hood to this band of Merry Morons, shouted for his people to search the place. Good boy. This is our chance to get out, he thought. Only it wasn’t, because all of the dwarves charged directly at the office they were pinned against. Coop, Morty, and Sally got out of the way in time, but Tintin was caught in the crush. And was pushed right through the office’s glass wall.

“Tintin!” Sally shouted.

That’s when Coop noticed something even more distressing. All of a sudden, he and the others were visible.

The two groups stared at each other. Sally grabbed Tintin and pulled him to his feet. Before they got three steps Snow White shouted, “Get them!” And the dwarfs charged.

Morty grabbed Sally, and Sally hauled Tintin, who was bleeding. Coop looked around. There was nothing else he could do.

He threw the jar of Jiminys as hard as he could at the floor in front of the dwarfs.

One of them laughed. “Look—he threw grasshoppers at us!”

Fast Eddie was living up to his name. When the alarm had gone off and the elevator doors had shut tight, it cut off the possibility of climbing back to the roof. When he, Harrison, and Racer X found the stairs, they shot down two at a time, Eddie in the lead.

They made it down as far as the fifth floor when he heard the sound of pounding feet headed up in their direction.

“Security,” he said to the others. “Back upstairs.” And they started running again. This time, as they climbed, something was different. Eddie saw that the door to the ninth floor was propped open slightly. Knowing that security was headed for 12, where the alarm had gone off, he ran for 9, with the others right behind him.

The alarm was still screaming, but no one could hear it on 9 because of all the other screaming. The Jiminys had spread out like a mini–biblical plague and scattered the Caleximus worshippers toward the reception area. All except for Jerry and Lloyd, who stood by the fire exit. Coop got on the other side of Tintin and he and Sally fast-walked him in their direction, with Morty in the rear.

It was too much for Jerry and Lloyd. The noise, the bugs, and now these four hard, scary-looking people—one of them bloody—heading straight for them. Lloyd pushed the stairway door open the rest of the way. And was knocked on his ass by three men running into the lobby, one of them roughly the size and disposition of a bear.