“Get me out of here!” Rook’s helmet moved sideways as if he were trying to figure out the best direction to run.

  Assuming his wings had been damaged, it didn’t look good for him. To the left stood the lake and aside from the trees there wasn’t anywhere to run to and trees were occupied.

  If that weren’t enough, Victor appeared to be having a hard time concentrating under Jaclyn’s assault because he wasn’t even teleporting himself out, much less Rook.

  His purple beams flew randomly around, never hitting Jaclyn, but one hit me, heating my armor and knocking me sideways.

  Rook screeched, a long sharp piece of metal extending from above his hand, the edges showing the same blurriness as Cassie’s sword.

  He brought the blade down toward the side of my head, where it hit with a thunk instead of carving in. It was nice to know that my current anti-monomolecular blade protections worked.

  I reached up, grabbed his arm, and rolled onto my back with all the strength I could manage.

  It was enough to pull him over and hit the ground to my side, rolling onto his back—which made two of us for a second. I pushed myself up to my feet, showering him with sonic blasts as I aimed a punch at his left shoulder.

  I connected.

  Had he been unarmored, I’d have killed him, but in armor, I only bent the frame a little and damaged the joint at the top of the arm. That was what I’d been going for.

  He had no way to move that arm, much less aim the weapon hanging under it.

  He tried. The joint screeched and a whiff of smoke floated upward from it.

  It wasn’t the only spot that smoked. Knowing that Rook studied Grandpa’s and my tech, I hadn’t tried the sonics at first, but having seen the damage from peppering Rook with boombots, I’d given it a shot. Whatever insulation against sound he created couldn’t be where it was supposed to be after that.

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  It wasn’t. The forearm that the boombot had destroyed smoked from the cracks and the hole where Rook’s prosthetic claw should have been.

  Screaming at Victor, Rook tried to move his left side up enough to point the gun at something, probably me. I missed Rook’s exact words as I tried to respond.

  As I bent over to flip him on his front, he disappeared in a blast of purple. Victor must have gotten himself together enough to teleport Rook out at least.

  I did a quick once-over of the area to get a sense of the situation. Cassie had taken out at least five of the 17 henchrooks I’d seen in the air. It might have been more. Her gun had an impressive range. So she might have hit a few before they’d even left the trees.

  More to the point, they’d retreated into the trees or at least they were trying to. A few had gotten far enough across the lake that the best they could do was fly low toward the direction they’d come from.

  Also, of course, the guy Marcus had stripped of his armor, hadn’t stopped at the group of trees the (now visible) henchrooks had decided to hide behind. He was still running toward the far side of the lake.

  That left our nearest opponent.

  I turned toward where Jaclyn had been battering Victor against the ground. The ground looked worse than he did. Don’t get me wrong, he didn’t look good, but the ground had been beaten down more than a foot deep.

  By contrast, while dirt covered every part of Victor’s body, he didn’t look hurt. He wasn’t smiling, and he cursed and spat out dirt every time Jaclyn smashed his body against the ground, but from the way he tried to protect his face with his arms and kick out of Jaclyn’s grasp with his legs, it was clear he had full movement.

  If he could stand up to that, I wasn’t sure how I’d be able to help short of sending a killbot up his nose, mouth, or possibly butt. Marcus had the right idea when he went in through Victor’s nose, mouth, and eyes.

  As I turned, Victor did the inevitable, teleporting away, reappearing close to the lake putting Marcus and Cassie between him and Jaclyn. Despite the dirt, I could see that he was beginning to glow a brighter shade of purple.

  Marcus faced him, “I don’t know what you’re doing, but I’ve already killed you once today. I’ll do it again if I have to.”

  Victor’s brow furrowed and he asked a reasonable question, “What?”

  Nodding, Marcus said, “Yeah. That’s right. You’re going to be ordered to go to the moon in the past. I don’t know how far, but you were still there this morning when we got there. We freed you, but then you tried to kill us. Here’s the funny thing though. You asked us to kill you—probably because you’re controlled by the Dominators and couldn’t face going back and being controlled forever.”

  The purple glow faded and Victor’s jaw dropped, and he said, “No…”

  “Wait,” Marcus said, “did you already get that order? Because if you did, it doesn’t go well. You can go to the moon and see your body if you want.”

  In a flash of purple, Victor disappeared.

  Marcus glanced at me, “I hope I didn’t just destroy the space-time continuum.”