For several moments, I caught nothing else from Blaise. Then there was another brief flash… make you fucking fly this thing, asshole

… And then the image of one of the grounded troopships and its terrified pilot, his mind snared in Blaise's. Kelly was with them, stumbling along in Dung's grasp, half blind with fear.

Out of here. I'm out of here now, Blaise thought. The last image I caught from any of them was the sound of rotors screaming…

Kafka's voice brought me back. "You're the only one who can tell us what's going on, Governor!" he was screaming. "Where do we need to go? What do you want us to do?"

Kafka was gesticulating furiously in front of the Temptation, his carapace rattling like a bunch of tin cans. He was scared, and thinking that this was too much like the Cloisters when everyone ganged up on the Astronomer. Jokers crowded around him, armed with everything from baseball bats to Uzis.

Kafka kept shouting. "Bloat, come onl It sounds like the fighting's heading our way."

Kafka was right. I could feel it, like a dull scarlet tide rolling toward the building. " I didn't want to know them," I said. No, let's be fair-I was babbling. " I shouldn't have to know them."

"Bloat, man, jokers are dying out there!"

"They're just people. All of us." I was trying to blot out all the voices of the Rox. I couldn't. Behind Kafka, St. Anthony wrestled with demons and other fantastic creatures. They swarmed over him, biting and clawing.

"Bloat!"

I sighed. "There are three squads in the west wing already, coming up the side stairs. There's another group approaching fast from the east, near the water. In a few seconds, they'll be stuck in open ground. Forget the jumper side of the island; marines are everywhere over there. All the squads have orders to make for the Administration Building after they've secured their first objective. They'll all be coming soon."

Kafka was snapping orders as I relayed positions. Jokers scattered, howling like mad things. Guards fanned out to protect the lobby and the rooms behind where my body lay helpless.

I heard the gunfire rise and swell in volume. I felt the deaths continue.

I was staring, immobile, as my mind roamed my poor Rox, my embattled island. No one had ever told me it was like this. Nobody could have, I guess. I just wanted it to stop.

Chickenhawk half fell, half glided through an open window in the balcony. Blood splattered his feathers, and one wing was crumpled and torn. "Bloat-" he began.

" I know," I said as one of the jokers ran to tend to him. "You'll be all right, man. It'll be okay." One of those cliches that tumble out when you're not thinking. Frankly, I wasn't sure anyone was going to be "all right." I wasn't sure any of us were really going to live through this.

"It's hell, ain't it?" someone said, and I looked down to see the penguin. It looked worried.

Then hell came to pay a small personal visit.

There were screams from behind the doors leading into the lobby. Gunfire stuttered its lethal percussive speech. I felt Vomitus and Mothmouth die just outside. The doors kicked open, glass scattering across the tiles. Soldiers in riot helmets, fatigues, and Kevlar armor were spilling out: from the doors, from the balcony.

Theirs were not nice thoughts. Not at all. These people had seen their companions hurt or killed already in the fighting. They were only thinking of staying alive.

Well, that isn't quite accurate. Let me qualify the statement. The way they intended to stay alive was to make sure that The Enemy was dead.

"Move and you've had it!" one of them shouted, waving an assault rifle. I thought people only talked like that in the movies. It was almost enough to make me giggle… almost. He had a lieutenant's bar on his shoulder and a badge on his Kevlar chest that proclaimed him to be I. SHER.

The penguin moved. It looked at me. "Sometimes ya just gotta do something, Gov'nor," it told me.

The creature made a mocking sound halfway between razzberry and caw, and launched itself at the lieutenant. The officer-a boy really, not much older than me-didn't even hesitate.

The stream of bullets nearly ripped the penguin in half. Bright arterial blood splattered everywhere-over me, over Kafka and the other jokers, over the Bosch painting. Bits of feathered flesh stuck to the glass walls, trailing rivulets of scarlet. The carcass, most of it, lay half on, half off my dais, and the kid was still firing wildly; I know that some of the bullets hit me, though I didn't feel much besides a distant dull ache. Ricocheting slugs tore more glass from the huge panes. I couldn't even hear the sound of the glass hitting the floor over the gun. The noise was deafening, the smell of cordite and oil and blood overpowering.

The silence when the burst had finished was long.

The kid laughed-like I might. His eyes were wild and strange. He'd enjoyed that; it made him feel powerful. When he looked around the lobby, he was looking for a new target. Just let one of them twitch, even a little bit…

The hatred in the room was damn near thick enough to touch, like a red-tinged fog in my mind. I felt helpless. There was nothing I could do, and these SOBs were waiting for an excuse to let loose.

Sher barked "You Bloat?"

A couple dozen sarcastic answers came to mind; none of them seemed particularly smart. "Yes."

"Call off your goddamn dogs. Do it now."

I listened to the continuing carnage outside the building. I looked at the jokers nearest me: Kaflca, video, Shroud, Chickenhawk, maybe a dozen others. They were all watching, like they expected me to do something, and I'll be damned if I could see anything to do. I'd failed, all around. My incompetence had killed them as surely as if I'd pulled the fucking triggers myself. Penguin blood dripped from my sides like an accusation.

"We're not dogs," I told Sher. "We're people."

"Fuck that shit. it's all over, asshole."

"I-I" I stuttered. They were all still looking at me, jokers and soldiers both. "I can't call them off "

"I thought you were in charge," Sher spat.

I laughed, bitterly. "Yeah. That's right. Of course I'm in charge. I'm the governor." I lashed myself with the word. The kid snarled. He whipped his rifle around.

He fired.

St. Anthony flew apart in a spray of paint-flecked chips. The surreal landscape of Bosch's dreams ripped into long splinters, gouged and broken. A menagerie of deformities expired as the kid's weapon bucked and roared and shredded the triptych. The entire frame of the Temptation canted and slammed to the floor in pieces.

Ruined.

"Not" I screamed, loud in the silence after the gunfire. "Now you listen, Governor," Sher was saying, thou the din of the gun had made us all half deaf. "Make them stop. Or this time it's the roach here."

The muzzle pointed at Kafka.

"I can't, damn youl Listen to me="

He didn't give me a chance to finish. "Bye, roach." I heard Sher's resolve. I watched the finger slowly tighten, and I knew he'd do it.

I knew.

"Not" I screeched again.

Bloatblack was falling like thick lava from my sides. I was sick-sick of death, sick of destruction, sick of my own inability to do anything. The rage and hatred had built up in me past endurance. With that… well, with that was the same feeling I'd had once before, when the caves had been created. Only this time the surging power was a darker and deeper sensation. Bigger than last time, but more a part of me, if you know what I mean. It was like… I don't know, like imagining something in my head and then "thinking" it outside.

And there it was. Abracadabra. Poof.

Everything happened in that instant I shouted "No!". It happened when I knew that if I didn't do something now, I was going to watch Kafka die as Peanut had, as the penguin had, as I'd heard and seen jokers die throughout the Rox tonight.