The door burst open and Dr. Navarre was frog-marched back out of the hallway ahead of the soldiers. He had already been roughly relieved of Little Timmy's Kealans, and had his hands zip-tied behind him. The soldiers paused to take in the destruction of what had once been a lovely and well-appointed atrium.

The squad leader's face hardened as he took in the mess.

"Okay, the frontliners weren't exaggerating for once," he said. "Looks like an entire heavy platoon went through. Let's check this zone for any more hostiles." The squad leader barked out assignments, and his men dispersed.

It only took a few minutes of sweeping through the quiet rubble to get a report back.

"Sir! No hostiles remaining in the atrium."

"They may have penetrated the building already," the squad leader said. Another dozen soldiers filed in from a far door. "Bravo team, good to see you. Secure this zone. Once the rest of the reinforcements arrive, we'll flush the hostiles out. We can sweep the building, floor by floor, bottom to top. Just like the exercises, gentlemen. Let's give our mystery guests a proper welcome."

"Yes, sir!" chorused the men. The squad leader fired off commands, sending his men out to guard the perimeter of the atrium. After some disciplined bustle, the squad leader was left alone with Dr. Navarre.

The squad leader laid Dr. Navarre facedown on the ground. Patting him down, he pulled out his wallet, a pair of .45 caliber Nealy handguns from a holster in the small of his back, two packs of standard PBX plastic explosives, several iffy packs of Little Timmy's custom explosives, and emptied his pockets of sketchy-looking detonators.

With Dr. Navarre thoroughly disarmed, the squad leader examined the Kealan submachine guns. He snorted with disgust.

"These guns are trashed," he said. "These muzzle brakes are just spinning around loose on the end of the barrel. If you lay on the trigger, they'll spin and throw your shot off every which way."

"Ahahahahaha, yes." Dr. Navarre laughed his gentle laugh. "Well, they're not really mine. I'm holding them for a friend."

"Riiiiight," the squad leader said, examining the guns further. "Fifty round stick mags, lots of noise, but you won't hit anything. Somebody's been watching too many war holos."

"I understand he likes them that way. I've heard that he says that aiming is not his strong suit, so he goes for, um, coverage."

"Your friend says," the squad leader said skeptically.

"Well, yes. If I'm being honest, I've never really met him. I have a minor personality disorder, you see. Little Timmy is what you might call my other personality. Through a series of traumatic episodes, my personality was dissociated into two parts. One is my true self, and the other is Little Timmy, my alter ego. He gets me in the most amazing kinds of trouble."

"You have two ID cards", the squad leader noted, thumbing through Dr. Navarre's wallet.

"Well, it wouldn't be proper for Little Timmy or I to use each other's personalities for our own purposes. It's best to keep things separate."

The squad leader glared at Dr. Navarre, his mouth hanging open in revulsion.

"You're nuts," he said.

"While you are technically correct," Dr. Navarre said, "that term is both offensive and ignores that both of my personalities are what you might call high-functioning, within my disorder."

"What kind of low-rent outfit keeps a loose screw like you? You guys are mercenaries?" he asked.

"Oh, yes. We're Riotfish, Inc. We're plucky upstarts! But we've recently fallen on hard times. We're trying to break into the world of high-end corporate gigs."

"What's your Guild number?"

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"We're not with the Guild just yet, but Mr. Fleer assures us that he's working quite hard on getting us in."

The squad leader snorted.

"Working on getting into the Guild? And who's your sponsor? Slappy the Cat?"

"Well, we don't have a sponsor quite yet, I don't think. Mr. Fleer is quite--"

"Okay, well let me give you a nickel's worth of free advice, Doctor Exposition," he began.

"Oh, how did you know I was a doctor? That's quite an astute--"

"This guy Fleer is a huckster. You're not getting the best gigs without being in the Guild, and you won't be getting into the Guild without a sponsor, and no exec or high-roller is going to stake his reputation on a bunch of losers like you.

"Now that's unkind. It looks like we've infiltrated, so clearly we've had some success. This... this definitely looks like Little Timmy's work."

"Look, once you're out of prison, go find yourself a nice safe job somewhere and stay away from guys like this Fleer. I know his type; he's trouble. And he's going to get you guys killed thinking you're real mercenaries." The squad leader pulled a card out of his pocket and showed it to Dr. Navarre. "See that? That's my Guild card. Insurance, work rights, safety regulations, the works. You guys have any of that?"

"As much as I appreciate your advice, I'm afraid you're quite wrong on two points. One, you don't quite understand Mr. Fleer. He has an extensive background in the corporate world, and he's very ardent in his support of us. And secondly, I'm not going to go to prison."

"Oh? You don't strike me as a 'death before dishonor' type."

"Not at all. But you and your men haven't found Roger yet."

"Roger? Is he another one like you?"

"Hahaha oh, no. Roger's crazy. I mean that in the kindest way, of course."

"Crazy. He's crazy. Right. And what makes you think we haven't caught him yet?"

"Because he's about to stab you."

Roger landed on the squad leader's back, hissing and screeching and swinging his knife in wide overhand arcs. Shrieking and stumbling, the squad leader staggered away from Dr. Navarre.

"Roger! Careful please! Roger, the blood..." Spatters of fresh blood sprinkled Dr. Navarre's face and he trailed off.

His hands trembled in their bindings. His pupils shrank to pinpoints, and his face crumpled into a hateful sneer.

"I'm tied!" screamed Little Timmy. "Who tied me up?! Roger!"

Roger left off stabbing, leapt off the still body of the squad leader and stuttered over to Little Timmy, his lizard body twitching disturbingly.

He stared at Little Timmy for a long moment with such a deep intensity that a worm of concern started to worry through Little Timmy's mind. With a sudden, grand, full-armed sweep of his knife, Roger parted the zip tie binding Little Timmy's wrists without so much as nicking his skin.

Little Timmy sat up and grabbed his kit, briefly rubbing his face on his Kealans.

"My babies," he cooed.

"Bangy angers!" Roger hissed, pointing with his knife at the soldiers who came running in after hearing the screams.

"On it." Little Timmy leapt to his feet. With a practiced motion, he ejected the stick mags from his guns and slammed the open mag wells down onto the fresh magazines poking up from his belt. Lifting them free of the webbing, he hooked the knurled handles of his guns into the corners of his pockets and shoved downward to rack them.

"Come get a pain salad!" he shrieked, and opened fire on the two soldiers approaching from the right.

Roger tilted his head quizzically at Little Timmy's outburst, then turned and gripped the wall, sinking his finger-claws into the drywall surface. With surprising speed, he shimmied up the wall and shifted toward the three soldiers approaching from the left.

Little Timmy dashed sideways, keeping his guns burping lead in the general direction of the two soldiers. Given his marksmanship, they were actually quite safe, but they didn't know that and dove for cover.

Little Timmy continued firing and shrieking until both guns ran dry, whereupon he just shrieked as he ran behind a large planter and ducked.

The two well-trained soldiers did not waste any time. The first signaled, and the other popped up, spitting bursts of fire at the planter while the first ran further out, taking cover behind the receptionist's desk.

Like a well-oiled machine, they traded roles, one suppressing, the other advancing, sweeping out around the stone planter.

Little Timmy didn't know what a flanking maneuver was, and couldn't have found the definition on a map (and in fact, would probably not have known that a map is not where you'd find definitions, generally), but he knew he didn't dare poke his head up. The fire was relentless, and his area of safety behind the planter was rapidly shrinking as the soldiers spread out further to fire on him from two sides.

Soon they'd be directly on either side of him. Little Timmy was locked into an inescapable and rapidly shrinking kill zone.

His Kealans were freshly reloaded, but they weren't going to do him much good if he couldn't get his head up. He peeked over the edge of the planter just in time to catch a face full of rock splinters from incoming fire. Swearing viciously, he ducked, falling onto his hands and knees.

Rolling over onto his back forced a grunt out of him. One of his bulky pouches had pushed up into his ribs. Rooting for the offending article, he fished out a block of plastic explosive. The dim flicker of an idea sparked in his brain. Pushing a detonator into explosive, he quickly wired in a timed fuse, thought for a moment and carefully pulled the timing knob out a tiny amount.

Then he keyed his radio.

"Guys? We've got a little trouble down here. You might want to step it up."