Cosmic Traveler's final fading plaint still echoed in his skull.

I never promised you an hour, man. That's just the max. He was pleased to have thought of filling a vial with a sixth of a normal dose for just this kind of emergency, and by chance his timing had been perfect. Maybe he could do something right. By accident at least.

"Sprout," he breathed. He fumbled at the door, got it open, got his feet tangled, and fell on his knees in the front of his daughter.

Without a word, she lunged forward and wrapped her arms around his neck.

At the foot of the stairs he found Durg. The Morakh had his Colt jammed up in the notch formed by Lt. Norwalk's jaw and his ear, and was winding duct tape around the officer's head to hold it in place. Mark looked past him and yelped. "K. C.!" She was lying against the wall. The front of her T-shirt was scarlet. She was breathing with difficulty. Her eyes were half closed and looked at nothing.

He knelt beside her. "Baby," he said.

"Don't touch her," Durg said. "She's badly hurt." There was a band of duct tape diagonally across her chest, holding down a gauze compress, now dripping red. Durg believed in being prepared.

Mark touched her cheek. She moaned. Blood bubbled from her lips.

Durg finished taping the dazed policeman. "We must move. The groundlings in front will eventually compose themselves enough to act."

Mark looked a wordless appeal at him.

"I can bear her," the Morahk said. "You take the young mistress and go."

"Come on, honey." Mark grabbed Sprout's hand, and they raced back up the stairs.

At the top, Mark turned to his daughter. "Stand back," he said. He reached into the inside pocket of his cord jacket, brought out a tiny vial full of orange powder, raised it to his lips.

From the far end of the corridor, a voice screamed, "Meadows!"

From thirty feet away, he could see Meadows's mouth fall open. "Blaise?"

Blaise laughed.

What he was about to do was fantastically risky. He was beyond caring. Besides, he was young, and he was Blaise, and he was immortal.

He seized Meadows's eyes with his, coiled his soul like a panther, and sprang.

Sprout looked from the strangely familiar man dressed like a policeman to her daddy. Her father was wrapped in flames. The expression of calm happiness and love on her perfect features never flickered. Sprout took it for granted that everybody's daddy periodically caught fire and turned into somebody else.

Roiling red and black surrounded Blaise, suffused him. For a moment, he saw his own now-vacant body through a roaring curtain of flame. And then his soul exploded outward, went spinning into an endless treacherous dark where shadows went to die.

JJ Flash rocked on his feet. It was as if he were whirling around and around inside his own head, surrounded by a maelstrom of shrieking blackness.

The whirlpool effect subsided like water gurgling down a drain, carrying with it a dying shrill keening like nothing Flash had ever heard. "Wow," he said. Bloat must've gotten burned with some impure shit. JJ would like to hunt up his supplier someday and return the favor just a bit, teach him better business practices. Guys like that gave the free market a bad name.

He opened his eyes to see a SWAT cop collapsing like a marionette with its strings snipped at the far end of the hall. "What the fuck?"

"Hi, JJ," Sprout said shyly.

"Babe. What's happening?" He gave her a quick hug and hung his head over the stairwell.

"Durg. Go for it."

Durg kicked the back door. He put a bit too much IEnglish on it. The heavy meshed-glass-and-steel door popped right off its hinges and went spinning out into the small blacktopped yard to bounce off the eight-foot wall that separated the institute grounds from the street.

He stopped, slung K.C. over his shoulder as gently as he could. Then he thrust Norwalk out into the cloud-filtered light, holding the Colt with his left hand.

"Everybody get back," he commanded. "I'm holding the hammer back with my thumb. If I release it, the lieutenant dies."

He gave them a few beats to mull that over, then stepped outside. He could see four squaddies hunkered in pairs, covering the door from either side. He walked deliberately to the back wall. Then he looked up at the second-floor window of the annex.

JJ Flash kissed Sprout on the forehead. "Stick tight, honey. Back in half a tick."

He rolled his hand onto its back. Flame leapt forth, played against the window. Glass and steel wire shimmered, puffed away. Flash followed.

"You can't use tear gas," the therapist said. She was a redheaded woman with saddlebag thighs and thick horn-rim glasses. "That kind of brutality would devastate our developmental strategies-"

"Screw your strategies," Dixon said. "I'm talkin' lives here="

"Yo!" a voice said. "Down there. Pay attention."

The babble of voices in the courtyard stopped. Everybody looked at one another, then up.

There was a small red-haired man in an orange jogging suit hovering just above the peak of the roof. "You might want to stand back away from the LeBaron, there."

"Nail the bastard!" Dixon roared.

Guns came up. Flash let his hand loll out. A jet of fire flashed to the top of the car Mark and company had arrived in. Just enough to melt through the roof and start the vinyl inside burning nicely.

"The gas tank!" somebody screamed. "Get back!"

Cops and institute staffers scattered. Now that somebody'd had an idea, JJ Flash turned up the heat. The LeBaron exploded with a very satisfactory whoomp and a ball of yellow flame.

Explosion! A quarter mile ahead, Turtle saw a fireball blossom into the sky.

"Here we fucking go again." He tipped his shell into a shallow dive and accelerated.

The four cops in back turned to stare at the big black ball of smoke rising from the far side of the building. Leaving K.C. balanced on his broad shoulder, Durg rammed his right fist into the wall.

Brick gave. Powdered mortar drooled away. He punched the wall again. It bowed outward.

JJ Flash shot out the second-story window, holding Sprout in his arms.

Durg spun a back-kick into the wall. A man-size section exploded outward as though struck by a cannon shell. Nodding politely to the SWAT men, he backed through, dragging Norwalk with him.

Fire has a wonderful effect on people. The fear of burning is immediate and deeply ingrained. Flash enjoyed burning things but not people, so the psychological effect of his fireballs was very convenient.

The Brooklyn cops hadn't forgotten all about the back wall. They thought it unlikely the fugitives could make it out that way, so they'd just stuck a patrol car and a couple of uniforms there on general principles.

By a remarkable coincidence, both uniformed patrolmen remembered urgent appointments when JJ Flash burned through the roof of the car's backseat. Took off down the street in opposite directions.

"It smells icky in here," Sprout complained as she slid in back.

"Be better once the car gets moving," Flash said.

He helped Durg ease K. C. in beside her, then fired a blast back through the hole in the wall to keep the SWAT boys on the other side from getting too curious. Durg broke pistol and gun hand free of Norwalk's head, shoved the still-stunned detective lieutenant in the passenger seat, then ran around to slide in behind the wheel.

"I'll catch up with you later," Flash said. "Want to make sure our friends on the other side have their minds right -whoa!"

He was snatched straight up into the sky. A voice boomed down,