"You and me are going to get along fine," PJ told me. "We'll work together hand in glove. That sound good?"

"Sure." I nodded. "Yes. Yeah."

"I’ll be the hand," he said, with a crooked grin. "You be the glove."

"Okay."

He started toward a ladder. "C'mon. Let’s move."

"Oh, yeah." A vague concern tugged at me." Um. Dewitt?"

"Man, you’re tenacious. We’ll drop in on him, then get to business." PJ cocked a grin. "You're supposed to ask, 'what business?'"

I asked, "What business."

His grin turned predatory. "The business of power. There's what you want, and there's how you'll get it. That's all there is."

"Okay."

"And what I'm doing is, I'm turning myself into something to behold. That's what I want."

That sounded okay to me. I was all for it. PJ was my new best friend.

But still--without my conscious control--one of the orbs glided through the air.

At the time, of course, I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I didn’t think anything was wrong. That’s part of PJ’s power: he makes you feel that obeying him is the most natural thing in the world.

For a few minutes, as he’d spouted nonsense, I’d balanced on the verge of losing myself--then I’d topped over the edge. That’s why’d he’d spouted the nonsense in the first place, to buy himself time. Because back then, he needed a minute or two to burrow into your mind like a parasitic worm.

When he'd caught my scent, his body started manufacturing a psychoactive exhalant designed to overwhelm my mind. Like a pheromone, a substance born and bred in the Petri dish of his lungs, customized and aerosolized and deployed in the rancid stench of his breath. That’s what I’d been smelling.

And he’d enthralled me. In minutes, I’d stepped into the open and given him my weapon. I’d agreed to work with him, to work for him. Not that I wanted to. What I wanted didn't matter, though. Not anymore. The strength of my beliefs and my mind didn't matter. Willpower wasn't a defense against PJ, any more than a sense of humor was a defense against a bullet.

Still, there’s resilience in decentralization, in redundant systems. I'd lost most of myself to PJ--all except one corner of my mind, where resistance was crumbling fast. Normally, that wouldn’t matter, but with me? With me, that particular corner of my mind was housed off-site, in a remote location.

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In a floating orb.

So without my conscious control, one small, blood-black orb glided through the air. Slow and unsteady, reeling from PJ’s onslaught.

Even that last orb couldn’t attack PJ directly. Even it couldn't ignore the effects of his breath. Instead, it wobbled toward one of the unlit lightbulbs hanging from an extension cord inside a plastic cage.

PJ continued, "Mark my words, kid. I'll be something to behold."

The orb slipped into the lightbulb cage, then lashed furiously outward. In a blur, the extension cord whipped across the room, moving to clothesline PJ and wrap around him like a cocoon.

Instead, PJ moved without hesitation--without wondering how a lightbulb basket suddenly flew across the room. He ducked and pivoted and punched me in the face.

Pain burst in my cheek and I staggered backward. Still lost in a fog, I didn’t call the orbs to defend me. I didn’t raise my hands to protect myself.

"You little pigsniffer," PJ said, and punched me in the stomach.

I bent over and gasped for air.

"I’ll teach you to raise your hand to me."

He slammed me into the spool of wire. A sharp edge of metal pierced my arm and sunk two inches into my flesh. I jerked away with a cry of pain but PJ grabbed my neck and spun me to face him.

The wire scraped bone. Agony flared. Endorphins and adrenaline mixed with blind terrified panic: enough to clear my mind a little.

And when PJ drew his arm back to punch me again, three orbs shot at him from around the room.

Two missed. In my drugged daze, through pain-blurred eyes, I saw four of PJ. Four ropy scars, four pairs of cruel eyes, four fists cocked to break my nose. But the third orb grazed his temple and sent him reeling backward, and I launched myself at him.

I’m not much of a fighter. In phys ed class, Bernard had taught us a little self-defense, but I’d never taken the lessons seriously. Anger didn’t come naturally to me, and I’d rather learn a new recipe than how to break someone’s neck with my elbow.

So the fury I felt surprised me, the shotgun ratchet of brutality; I wanted to hurt PJ, I wanted to destroy him. I launched myself forward--my arm blazing with agony and my mind sluggish and enraged--and swung wildly.

PJ stepped aside and punched me again, a short sharp blow to my ribs. I gasped and hunched and almost fell … and two orbs hammered the small of his back.

He grunted and barked, "Spandle!"

Through unfocused eyes, I glanced at Mrs. Spandle and saw her standing there, bird-skinny and unthreatening and somehow blurry--her jacket flapping in a sourceless wind. Even in the middle of getting my ass kicked, something about her scared me. Just standing there, just watching.

A sudden tug of fear spun me back toward PJ, and I saw him raising the AK toward me. Every muscle in my body clenched, waiting for the bullets to rip through me, then an orb smacked the weapon across the floor. Much better.

I focused, sending another orb forward with the force of a sledgehammer, and--

PJ yelled at me to stop.

The orb hesitated, wavering in the air.

"That’s right," PJ said. "We’re all friends here."

Half-closing my eyes, I tried summoning my willpower, harnessing my anger.

"Don't worry, kid," PJ murmured. "I forgive you."

The orb dipped and dithered, and I felt my rage draining away as he spoke: We’re all friends, am I right? Don’t worry, take a deep breath, settle down now …

Then a flicker of alarm cut through his babble. From an orb behind me, something about Mrs. Spandle.

I glanced over my shoulder, and my breath caught.

The woman's face simmered and popped.

The skin of her neck and arms sloughed from her body.

Bubbles of her flesh inflated and burst wetly. Her skin came to a rapid boil, rolling and swelling, then overflowing the breakwater of her clothing.

I watched in dumb horror until a gout of her flesh erupted at me like a geyser.