“I stopped it!” Bouman shouted back, his TV host handsome face showing more emotion than I’d ever seen on it.

I used my implant to think through to the League channel, “Portal, you should be able to get through now.”

“I know,” Brooke said, her voice a little louder than I’d expected. “I’ve been watching you. Give me a second.”

That made sense. In her position, I’d have been watching my camera stream too.

I waited for her, noticing that Prime, though still unable to walk, had begun to experimentally lift the Honda Civic he’d ripped the wheel off, probably with the intention of throwing the rest of the car.

I gave him a double barrel (both arms) blast of paralysis ray, hoping that I’d be able disable his arms next.

It worked—with the right arm, causing the car to drop as the paralyzed arm flopped sideways, pulling his body with it, left side up.

“Hey,” I shouted at him, “I get that you’re pissed at me, but right now we need to survive. My choices are either work with you or burn you to death rather than let you become a mushroom zombie again. Can we make a deal? I’m willing to help you get your people back from the Nine. Are you willing to let me?”

I wasn’t sure if I could kill him in cold blood, but after Travis’ death, I couldn’t deny the risk of letting him lie there until the fungus reclaimed him.

Prime didn’t say anything at first, allowing him time to think on it while watching Jaclyn, Izzy, and Sean mow down tendril monsters.

Over the League channel, Brooke said, “It’s still blocked.”

“What?” I shouted at Bouman, “We still can’t teleport. Mystic, is he telling the truth?”

Bouman glanced over at Daniel, who’d just used telekinesis to turn a tendril monster inside out, throwing monster bits in all directions.

At the same time, Daniel said, “Yes,” and Bouman said, “I am!”

Crap. Was there someone else in town capable of doing that? Not Daniel’s family. They’d been teleported out of town and anyway, that was outside their power set. Of course, Grand Lake population surpassed a million people when you included the suburbs. It was always possible that someone else was out there.

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Another possibility struck me. The Xosk had been telepathic even if it only worked by touch, absorbing people’s minds and ingesting their bodies to make more of itself. If Hunter’s creations included any Xosk, it might have the rudiments of what was necessary and might even be able to adapt enough to copy his power.

Of course, that was pure speculation. I’d studied biology, but only for fun and I’d never studied the biological basis of psychic abilities. Still, the multiple consciousness element of a Xosk might even make for a kind of defense against Daniel’s psychic nuke.

No, Daniel thought at me, it’s not just speculation. You had a good idea. The consciousness feels decentralized. We need to destroy as many of the big, blocky masses as we can—assuming we survive the next bit. I think you’re right that they’re about to try to wipe us out.

“Hey everybody,” I said on the League channel, “the Mystic thinks they’re about to make a big push against us. I think we might want to get into a closer formation so that we can push closer to the center of the thing’s consciousness. Destroying more of the masses is probably the only way to break the teleportation block.”

“Good idea,” Sean said as the group moved in my direction. I’m getting tired.”

That was not something I wanted to hear.

“Phalanx?” Jaclyn splattered the front line of tendril monsters before dropping back toward me with Izzy.

She wasn’t really proposing that we march forward like Greek soldiers, but Lee had taught us about the phalanx. For him, it was more an attitude than a strict formation. The idea was the same—we needed to position ourselves to both protect each other and enable each other’s offensive abilities.

“That’s what I was thinking. Um… Someone’s going to have bring Prime along or we’ll have to come up with another idea,” I glanced over at him.

Still unable to move, Prime continued to stare up from the floor at me.

Izzy’s lip curled as she landed next to me, “You’re not really going to kill him?”

I met her gaze, “I don’t want to, but the alternatives aren’t great either. Leaving him for the fungus zombies puts someone really dangerous on their side and I don’t like that, but I also don’t like the idea of bringing him along if he’s going to murder me when he can move again.”

She frowned and glanced over at Prime, “I could carry him and keep him controlled.”

“Which takes one of our best fighters out of the fight and we’ll need you,” I said.

Daniel nodded, “We will.”

It struck me that if I cut off his arms and legs, we might be able to rig him up as a backpack. He regenerated. Technically, there’d be no permanent harm done. It worked logically, but I didn’t love the idea and I doubted that Izzy would either.

Daniel raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t argue with me.

Prime said, “I promise not to kill you. I’ll work with you and my unit to win the fight. Do you promise to free my people from the Nine?”

“We’re going to destroy the Nine,” I said, knowing as I said it that we’d never decided as a group that that was the plan, but if we were going up against Magnus who seemed to be basically leading them, what else could our plan be in the end?

“Good enough,” Prime said, “I can get behind that.”

And with the scraping of thousands of tendrils across concrete, that’s when the mushroom zombies made their attack.