The world narrowed to thrashing arms, the stench of fear. Tachyon's shields reeled under the onslaught of fifteen-thousand people reacting in either terror or confusion.

A burly man, the buttons that covered his chest chattering like castanets, caromed into the tiny alien. Tach screamed, a shrill tearing sound as the bandages covering his amputation caught on the man's belt buckle, and he was yanked after him. He lost his footing and went down, the bandage tearing free.

Feet pounded across Tachyon's back driving the breath from his chest. He felt his cracked ribs give. A red-hot poker had been driven into his chest. Driving deeper with every breath he took.

But it was nothing compared to the agony of his arm as terrified humans ran over him, their heels grinding the stump into the floor of the Omni.

I am going to die. Terror lay thick and choking on the back of his tongue. A tiny thread of fury shot through him. No! I am damned if I will die in this humiliating fashion. Trampled by hysterical groundlings.

It took all his concentration to think through the suffocating blanket of pain. Braun's mind was a familiar glow in the midst of madness. His power lashed out, nestled close like a homing bird returning to a place of safety. He read the confusion and hesitation in the big ace's mind.

Jack, save me! Tach?

Help me! Help me!

He couldn't hold the contact any longer. With a sigh he dropped away.

But Jack was coming.

A freight-train weight smashed into Mackie from behind. It drove his right hand, held like a spearhead at the end of his stiffened arm, right into the chest of a man with a pink shirt and beige tie. Irresistible, the mass forced him onward, down. His hand exploded out of the man's ribcage in a welter of blood. He hit the floor. His head rebounded off hardwood, and he felt something snap in his chest.

Squealing with rage and pain, he put a buzz all over his body. His attacker yowled and rolled away. He jumped to his feet.

" You fucker, you fucker, I'll cut your dick off and make you eat it!" He was screaming in German now, but it didn't matter; his hands would do all the talking that mattered.

Through a screen of tears he saw a fist swelling toward his face. Something tugged his mind, an eyeblink of doubt, of distraction. Belatedly he started to phase.

The blow caught him on the chin, snapping his head back…

And then passed harmlessly through.

Gregg had stopped speaking, though with the cheering and chanting, no one seemed to have noticed as yet. Looking down, he saw Carnifex bull his way toward Mackie, making a visible wake in the crowd. Mackie, with some second sense, noticed the ace at the same time and turned, snarling. The hands were buzzing now. Someone next to Mackie screamed and pointed, and then everyone was trying to make space around the hunchback as Carnifex shouted and charged.

Puppetman shouted with him, exultant. Good. The boy's no use anymore. Let Carnifex kill him.

Mackie will carve him up, Gregg told the power. They're both puppets. We can control this game.

It was a strange blend of ecstasy and fear. It tasted so good.

Yes, get rid of Mackie. That wasn't going to be easy. Mackie swung, and a line of blood followed, ruining the front of Carnifex's spotless uniform even as the ace swung a fist and knocked Mackie backward off his feet. Already the blinding, pulsing red of pain and terror was swelling in Carnifex's mind. The ace in white was backing up a step, watching Mackie's hands as the kid levered himself off the floor, grinning despite his smashed, ruined mouth.

Puppetman reached out. He found the fear in Carnifex and clamped down on it brutally. Then he reached for Mackie, looking for the switch in that crazed mind that would render him vulnerable.

There, Puppetman said in satisfaction. There.

A gunshot sounded loud in Gregg's ear. In that moment, Puppetman startled with him, losing Mackie for a precious instant as the packed auditorium erupted in horrified screams, as panic and terror drifted through the air like a thick fog. "My god, they're killing each other!" someone cried.

"Stop!" Gregg shouted into the microphones, but his voice was lost in the uproar.

Have to do it, she realized, now. Before he gets here. She willed into her arms the strength to straighten, to raise the blunt black pistol.

Bleating in terror, a tall, gangly man with gray hair fringing a narrow promontory of skull came boiling out of his chair like a stork frightened from a canebrake. A flying elbow hit the gun and spun it out of Sara's grasp.

She shrieked in despair as it cartwheeled over the front of the box and into the crowd.

Gunfire crashed from the podium, and Gregg Hartmann vanished under a wave of Secret Service suits.

Spector jumped when something shattered the glass up in the media booth. It froze him for an instant and agents were already swarming over Hartmann and the other big wheels, pushing them into the wings or knocking them to the floor. He ran several steps toward the senator, but two other men had him face down behind the podium.

The screams were deafening. Spector couldn't think with all the racket. Gunshots. He saw several agents firing toward a target in the crowd. Golden Boy was swinging on the girders overhead toward the area where the men were shooting. Spector piled on top of Hartmann. The senator grunted, but didn't turn over to face him. In a moment or two he would look over his shoulder, and Spector would be waiting.

Jack swung from beam to beam like a desperate pendulum. He couldn't tell what was going on up on the platform. He could see Billy Ray's white suit, Secret Service with guns, delegates stampeding-no Hartmann, no hunchback. There was just the unmistakable impression of violence being done. He flung himself to a beam above his own California delegation, then stopped.

Gregg Hartmann was the secret ace, a killer. Why should he care what happened to the man?

While he hesitated, he heard a scream resonate in his mind. Tachyon was down in the stampede, being trampled. He hesitated again. The cry came again. He saw there was no one directly below him, then dropped.

He danced back. His chin felt as if someone had hit him with a hammer and his neck muscles groaned. If he'd taken the full force of the blow, it would have snapped his neck. Who is this?

His vision cleared. He staggered as if he'd been punched again. It was the black-haired man with the spare-parts face. Leering at him with his deaths head grin. The front of his jumpsuit was red-splashed now, as by a spastic eating spaghetti in red sauce. The blood-geyser bad dwindled to a trickle. "S'ow you a thing or two, you little son o' a hnitch!" the big man bellowed. He swung a haymaker at Mackie.

Terror yammered in his brain. I can't beat this monster! Fighting down the fear Mackie phased, just ahead of impact that would have pulped his forebrain. The big man's momentum carried him right through him. He recovered with a tiger's quickness, spinning around with his hands coming up to strike or defend.

Mackie was right after him, anger overwhelming persistent fear. He aimed a stroke at the temple. Let's see how he does with his head cut in half.

The big man snapped up a hand in a knife-edge block. Fingers tumbled like clothespins from a sack as Mackie sliced through it. The black-haired man threw himself backwards into the crowd, just managing to keep from catching the buzz saw hand in his skull.

His breath tore at the right side of his chest like talons. He must have cracked a rib when that big fucker tackled him. He phased through the curtain wall at the foot of the podium, into the hidden moat that separated the delegates from the stand. From the corner where the square-sectioned column of the podium proper met the facing of the elevated dais a muscular young man with a wire trailing from one ear gaped at him and hauled a tiny machine-pistol from inside his dark suit coat. Mackie met his eyes and grinned, unaware that his nose was bleeding and his smile a ghastly clown's.