"But first," Rook said, "some reintroductions are in order."

I looked around the room, checking my feeds and my HUD. Rook didn't show up looking through the stone, which was extremely good news. The last thing I wanted was for him to have a connection to Lee's device.

Rook's voice continued, "You knew him as Blur or as 'Jody,' but we have a new name for him now. We call him Rapid-Fire. It took a little talking to persuade my boss to let his toy go, but since he couldn't access his memories of Magnus and all the training he did, the boy was useless to us as a member of Magnus' squad. I'm sure there's a way to get it back, but we needed help fast, and what do you know?"

"Uh-oh," Dayton said over the comm. "Sean, this is bait. Get out of sight, man. They're going to send Jody after us, and you won't be able to fight back."

"Or after me," I said, "because then you won't know who to help."

"Yeah, that," Dayton said. "Smart."

"What?" Sean said, and then the picture from his camera feed changed from the ceiling of the room to a dive toward where the rest of us hid—the equipment shelves that occupied the back third of the room.

He barely made it.

As Rook talked, I'd noticed a little movement in the metal piles, but wasn't sure if it was real or my mind playing tricks.

When Rook stopped talking and Dayton, Sean, and I had our little interchange of ideas about Jody, it became obvious I wasn't deluding myself. The piles moved and shifted as Rook's minions pulled their way out. Well, pulled except when they burned their way out, the metal piles around them turning red and melting into puddles.

In the background of my mind, I couldn't help but note that molten metal would still be uncomfortable even with powered armor, assuming they were still human.

They weren't. Amy confirmed it, telling us, "There's no life force in range of my senses except that way. I'm not getting any power-ups."

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She pointed toward the spot where I'd detected the portal, forward and off to our left.

My spybots' cameras showed the minions who'd pushed their way out. Some had changed their arms to shovels. Others had turned themselves into cylinders, extended upward through the piles, and reformed above.

Marcus could do that, but if the minions didn't register as alive to Amy, Rook had essentially killed them, creating machines that remembered what it had been like to be human.

The minions stepped out of the piles, standing motionless in a loose formation that blocked that half of the room. My armor detected that the creatures were scanning the room with various forms of electromagnetic radiation.

I could probably assume they'd located us or would soon. We needed a plan. Our priorities? Get Jody, if that was still possible, and get to the portal so that I could free Lee and Nataw from Lee's device.

Rook, meanwhile, had started talking again, "Before I bring out Rapid-Fire, I do have a couple of things to say. First, it annoys me that you destroyed my crows, but it's still impressive. It's good to see that the Power isn't as much of a fool as I thought."

Standing next to Dayton between two rows of green metal shelving, Sean clenched his fists.

"Bait," Dayton repeated. "He's baiting you."

Sean's fist stayed clenched, but he didn't fly back into the fight.

Amy glanced over at me, creating a private implant channel between us, "Dayton's wasted on that team."

"Or essential," I thought back.

"Or both," she replied.

Rook continued, "Second, as much as I love what my followers have become, Magnus wouldn't let me take Rapid-Fire quite so far. Much to my disappointment, he's been allowed to remain human. Still, I think he's improved. Show yourself, boy."

"Life force," Amy said over the public channel.

With that, Jody appeared. He hadn't been anywhere, and then he stood in the room, becoming visible behind the line of minions. He hadn't been invisible, of course, but merely exceptionally fast.

Initially, I didn't notice a difference. He even wore a costume reminiscent of his old one, silver with black and white accents. The "Justice Fist" on his chest had been replaced with a human figure with speed lines, though.

In the next instant, I noticed more. For lack of a better way to put it, he'd been assimilated. His eyes glowed in the spybot's sensors, meaning that they were emitting electromagnetic radiation.

Despite the name Rapid-Fire, I didn't see any guns, but I knew better. I might not see them now, but any second now they'd extend out of some part of his body.

A less mature part of my brain offered up suggestions that I hoped wouldn't turn out to be true.

Jody looked around the room, "Guys? What's going on? Why am I here?"

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