Then, as if emerging from his very nightmares, he heard the distant sound of truck engines. Still backing away, he turned to look and nearly stopped dead.

There were two of them, following the path laid out by the armored car, but it wasn’t the military motorcade magically come back to life. This was all Gadsden Liners, a caravan of violent idiots charging blindly to their deaths. He could all but hear the redneck war whoops from nearly a mile away.

Kaveh continued pulling Cora away from the scene in front of them, but she stopped dead, keeping her mute gaze on the pair of headlights careening toward them. Surely, he thought, whatever alien voodoo had knocked out the motorcade and helicopters would envelop these vehicles, too. They were closer now, no more than a couple thousand feet. The light of their headlights had found the armored car, and they could probably see the silvery, iridescent skin of Ampersand and the Similars as well.

“They are going to kill every single one of those idiots,” said Cora.

Kaveh looked back toward the Similars, who still had their attention on Nikola. Only one of them seemed to have taken a disinterested notice in the militia.

Cora wrenched free of his grasp and walked in the direction of the caravan. The trucks were closer still, no more than 1,500 feet. In a fluid movement, she reached into her pocket, and withdrew an object it took him a moment to recognize—the pulse emitter. She didn’t look back at him, didn’t ask for support, didn’t hesitate; she just held the pulse emitter level and fired.

The headlights on both vehicles brightened like a flash of lightning before shorting out, and the trucks rolled to a harmless stop. He was too blinded by the now-shorted headlights to see clearly, the light from the sun by now almost completely gone, but he could make out at least four men. They were close enough now that without the din of the trucks he could hear their voices.

The instant the pulse went off, all six amygdalines in the vicinity either stumbled or collapsed entirely. The only one that seemed relatively unaffected was Obelus, who staggered slightly, and then, seeing an opportunity, tried to make a run for it. Kaveh couldn’t help but admire him; he really did have a survivor’s instinct.

Unfortunately for Obelus, the pulse’s effect on the other Similars was less than what it had done to Ampersand and Nikola, who were both on the ground as they had been at Pershing Square, and Kaveh nearly melted into a panic that their sole defense had been knocked out until Nikola moved, struggling to get back to his feet. The three Similars were likewise struggling, seeming to pool what little telekinetic power they could muster to drag Obelus back to them.