The behemoth robot seemed momentarily confused; its four pairs of red camera lenses whirled around inside its bubble-like glass helmet, taking in the situation.

“The Hybrid Man seems conflicted,” said the Phantom Jungle Girl, leveling her stone-tipped jungle javelin at the Bot, just in case. “The mad scientist here has given him a direct order contradicting the moral code Wilton and Audrey programmed into him.”

“Kill the costumed intruders,” Grady barked again, waving the remote in his hand. “And kill these two civilians, while you’re at it.”

Wilton and Audrey, the two civilians in question, tensed for a moment, then relaxed. “He’s not just a killing machine,” said Wilton. “We’ve given him a brain and a conscience. He has the ability to think critically.”

“He’s evaluating the situation,” Audrey explained. “Watch out—he might just decide to turn on you, Grady.”

The grimace of Grady Grinnell, son of Dr. Software, began to waver into an expression of sputtering confusion. “What do you mean?” he shrieked, beads of sweat forming on his forehead beneath his matted, greasy black hair. “I have the controller. I’m the ranking scientist on duty. Uncle Joe left me in charge. What I say, goes.” He drew himself up to his full height and cleared his throat. “Now then, B-50,” he said, addressing the robot. “Kill these humans—all of them!”

Suddenly, the swinging doors to the lab burst open. It was another man in an open lab coat, his thinning hair flailing wildly behind thick-lensed, black-rimmed, collegiate-style eyeglasses. I had expected Dr. Joseph Levitch, Grady’s uncle and Megaton Man’s creator, a more kindly and gentle soul I always thought, who might call off his crazed nephew—and all this nonsense.

But no, it was Mervyn Goldfarb, the man I’d seen explode in an Ann Arbor alley a year ago after injecting himself with bootleg Megasoldier Syrup.

“What the hell’s going on down here, at this hour?” Mervyn snapped. “My beeper went off,” he said, clutching a device on his belt. “I was doing my early morning yoga—you know how important it is for me to maintain a calm, tranquil existence. I dropped everything and raced here as fast as I could.”

“You’re about to witness an execution,” said Grady. “In fact, you’ll be among them—may as well wipe you out while we’re at it. You’ve been nothing but problem since your own unauthorized megaheroic experiment went haywire.”

“So, the true inhumanity of Megatonic University stands revealed at last,” said Mervyn, indignantly. Rather than turning to run, he took several slow steps into the laboratory. He eyed the towering robot, took in the Phantom Jungle Girl, Domina, Rubber Brother, me in my Ms. Megaton Man uniform, and Wilton and Audrey, all at a glance. “You’re just going to eradicate all your mistakes, like you’ve done in the past, eh, Grady?”

“I’m going to eradicate you,” said Grady. “Best to do it now, while you’re in your civilian form…”

“This is the guy I saw explode,” I explained to the others, pointing to Mervyn. “He cooked up illicit Megasoldier Syrup in his bathtub and was peddling it to college jocks as a steroid. Caused a temporary epidemic of over-muscled, megaheroic physiques around campus that was blamed on my binge of promiscuity. When we cornered him, he injected himself, and turned into a big, blue monster—then exploded. But, how can you still be alive?”

“It’s a lie—a cruel joke,” said Mervyn, who seemed genuinely hurt by my account. “I never brewed homemade Megasoldier Syrup, let alone peddled it for profit. Maybe in some other dimension—I only wish I had exploded. I wish this big, blue thing that I’d become could be destroyed. But in this reality, I never had a choice, did I?” He glared at Grady. “An overdosing steroid junky—sounds like the kind of bogus narrative the boys at the Rewrite Desk would cook up to cover up the misdeeds of this entire Godforsaken secret project.”

“What’s the Rewrite Desk?” asked Rubber Brother. “What’s he talking about?”

“They’re just your friendly neighborhood civil servants at the Pentagon,” Mervyn explained, “Office 17a, to be exact, who’ve been spinning misinformation for decades to cover up what the Levitch family and their colleagues have really been doing down in labs like this one beneath college campuses for decades.”

“Don’t say that name with such disdain,” said Grady. “You’re a distant relative, too. Elias Levitch and his colleagues were brilliant scientists—spawning three generations of Megaton Men and the various Contraptoids, not to mention countless other projects…”

“That’s a lovely tribute, coming from the son of the criminally insane Julius Levitch, a.k.a. Dr. Software,” said Mervyn. “And what’s the first thing you do when your beloved uncle, Dr. Joe Levitch, is away? Resort to murder to cover your tracks, to conceal your own off-the-ledger experiments.”

“This is Black Ops territory,” said Dana, pulling a coiled leather whip from the back of her G-string utility belt. “Rogue experiments within rogue experiments.”

“Now hold on,” said Wilton. “Rusty here’s different. Sure, he started as a government military project, but Audrey and I have made him so that he’s got a conscience. B-50’s not going to be just another remote-controlled killing machine, like the Atomic Soldier or even the Contraptoids were intended to be. He’s brilliant—we’ve got half the sum total of all human knowledge fed into his memory banks already. He has the ability to reason and to think through moral problems. But he’s still child-like in terms of his experience with the world. He may not know enough to make the right choices…”

“I’ll give the baby Bot a choice,” said Grady. “Kill or be killed.”

Grady wheeled on Mervyn, leveled the remote control-like device at him; he pressed a button. The device was apparently a weapon, too, as it shot a laser-beam bolt that seared into the other man’s lab coat.

Mervyn screamed in agony as he fell to the floor, clutching his arm. The laser had lacerated his skin, causing intense pain. His glasses clattered across the floor, his eyes bulged; his face began to turn blue.

“We’ll see who emerges in one piece,” cried the son of Dr. Software. “The Hybrid Man or the upstart lab assistant!”

The transformation we all beheld was not unlike the one I had witnessed in the alley the year before, when Mervyn, cornered, had injected himself with homemade Megasoldier Syrup. Then, his muscles began to bulge, his physique blowing up to grotesque proportions. Then, he literally exploded. Blue slime was everywhere which quickly evaporated into blue mist.

This time, the process did not boil over so uncontrollably, but it still appeared painful. Mervyn writhed on the ground, the muscles of his arms and legs swelling, stretching taut the fabric of his garments.

Mervyn’s voice was a hoarse, choked whisper he forced from his grimacing mouth. “I was the last test subject, you see,” he explained, his lips frothing. “The only one to survive, by the way. Some of our associates down here were trying to democratize the Atomic Soldier, devise a Megaton Man process that would work—not only on members of the Phloog family, who seem to possess a rare genetic propensity for the process—but on everyone.”

His clothes in tatters, Mervyn’s blue skin bulged out, muscles rippling. His slender frame had ballooned now to the grotesque, over-muscled proportions I’d seen when Trent Phloog had temporarily reverted to Megaton Man; only Mervyn was stockier, bulkier.

“It was just a simple Megasoldier Syrup,” Mervyn continued. “It also involved massive bombardments of radiation—very painful, to say the least. But all of the trials went awry, one way or another; the lucky ones died—literally exploded, some of them, as you described. The unlucky one—me—was condemned to a life vacillating between civilianhood and a grotesque, misshapen, over-muscled physique—managed by lots of herbal tea and meditation.”

Mervyn, still wearing his black-rimmed spectacles, picked himself up off the floor, his clothing now in tatters—a Big, Blue, Bulky Guy.

“But you want to know what really gets under my skin?” said Bulky Guy, clenching his fists. “It’s when someone calls me an upstart!”

***

B-50, the Hybrid Man, was taking all of this in with his four sets of revolving eyes. Clearly, the towering Bot didn’t quite know what to make of Mervyn Goldfarb’s transformation into Big, Blue, Bulky Guy, and neither did any of us. Wilton and Audrey retreated behind some laboratory equipment, terrified, while Rubber Brother, Domina, the Phantom Jungle Girl and I stood our ground. But what were a bunch of costumed crime fighters going to do to keep apart a killer robot and an uncontrollable mega-monstrosity?

Compartments in B-50’s arms and legs opened up, revealing weapons that now popped out and readied themselves. Around his midsection, a hinged arm uncoiled, wielding what appeared to be a large, phallic-looking laser rifle, forming a fifth appendage.

The expression on Mervyn’s face turned into a hideous grimace.

“I’m going to tear you apart, bolt from bolt,” said Bulky Guy. “Then I’m going to trash all of Megatonic University.

Grady perspired freely now, his own pop-bottle lenses fogging up. “What have I done?” he gulped.

Audrey sought some way to deescalate the situation. “Rusty! No! Problems are never solved with violence,” she called out. “Besides which, there’s like a billion dollars’ worth of irreplaceable equipment in this lab alone!”

Rusty seemed to take the cue, because when Big, Blue Bulky guy roared and thumped his chest, B-50 sprung into action, tackling Mervyn with all his weight. The collision was so violent it sent both figures crashing through the lab doors, across the corridor, and into another lab space—presumably, with less irreplaceable scientific equipment to damage.

Rubber Brother took the opportunity to sock Grady Grinnell in the jaw with an elongated arm, which sent both is pop-bottle lensed glasses and remote control device flying and scuttling across the floor. The Phantom Jungle Girl deftly coiled the stunned scientist with ropes of jungle vine that seem to have appeared from nowhere.

“Damn,” said Domina, cracking her whip. “I wanted to tame the sniveling cur myself.”

“No time for that,” said Jasper. “All bets are off—we’ve got to get out of here!”

Wilton and Audrey quickly grabbed a small piece of equipment about the size of bread box—I took this to be the distorter that had messed with my visor’s readings on my last visit—and threw it into a back-pack. Wilton shouldered this with some effort. “Ready to split,” Audrey announced.

Leaving Grady bound in the lab, we raced across the hall to break up the battle between B-50 and Bulky Guy that was already underway. Loud crashes could be heard as equipment—and punches—were thrown.

“Wait! You can’t go in there,” I said to Wilton and Audrey. “You’ll get killed! C’mon, let’s break out of this place while we still can.”

“No way,” said Wilton. “This is why we’ve been here these past few days—we’ve erased all our records and now we gotta get Rusty away to a safe place, where the government can’t reverse-engineer his mechanics and mass-produce an army of Hybrid Men!”

At the end of the corridor, I saw them coming—an army of the warrior Bots we’d seen in one of the other labs earlier. They were clearly of a more primitive class than B-50—he probably could have wiped them out singlehandedly, were he not preoccupied by Bulky Guy—but they still formed a formidable menace to us humans. Apparently, they had been activated by all the commotion, and were marching toward us, weapons bristling.

“Is there a back way out of this underground labyrinth?” I shouted to Wilton.

“There is,” he replied. “But first we gotta break up this fight.”

We rushed headlong into the lab where B-50 and Bulky Guy were still going at it; they wrangled and wrestled across the floor. This lab didn’t have much in the way of furnishings, but what little it had was already demolished. Bulky Guy had his massive blue arms around B-50, who could not use his weapons effectively because of his close proximity to his target. Instead, artillery shells and laser bolts shot wild, ricocheting around the room.

“Rusty, stand down!” yelled Audrey. “Desist!”

The red-eyed robot was too distracted to heed the command.

“This looks like a job for Ms. Megaton Man,” I said.

But Domina jumped into the fray. Somehow, between the two massive, masculine bodies, her nearly-nude frame slid; with her red leather boots and olive-skinned arms, she pried the massive figures apart, hurtling each one to a different corner of the room.

Wilton tended to Rusty, who seemed a bit stunned. “A few dents and scratches, but otherwise not in bad shape,” Wilton pronounced.

Bulky Guy, in the other corner, was on his hands and knees, searching for something. “Where are my glasses?” he cried. “I can’t see a blessed thing without my glasses!”

“Some megahero misanthrope you turned out to be,” said Dana, disgustedly. “A four-eyed crybaby!” She spotted the glasses on the floor and kicked them with her red boot.

They slid over to Fanny’s bare feet; the Phantom Jungle Girl knelt down, picked them up, and placed them gently on a lab stool. “You can’t deprive a scholar of his glasses,” she said. “He’ll find them eventually.”

“We’re going to be trapped in here,” I said. “Those soldier Bots are bearing down on us, fast.”

Wilton and Audrey had gotten B-50 to his feet. “You know the layout of this place, Rusty,” Wilton said. “You better blast us a way out.”

The robot turned and faced a blank wall. With his large, phallic laser rifle, he let loose a barrage that shattered sheetrock and insulation, exposing another corridor. After the dust cleared, we all ran into it, except for Mervyn, who now appeared less bulky and blue; he was still crawling around, helplessly searching for his glasses.

“Are you going to be all right?” I shouted back to Mervyn.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “The warrior Bots know better than to shoot a Megatonic University lab tech.”

“You’re glasses are on the stool!” I shouted, and disappeared down another rabbit hole.

“Thanks!”

Following the Hybrid Man, we ran down the long corridor, coming to a fork in the road, as it were—a nodal point where corridors ran off in multiple directions. “Here’s where we part company,” announced Wilton. “You Crime Busters, take the next left—it will lead you back to the spiral stairs leading up to Main Street.”

“Where the heck are you going?” I asked.

“We’re taking Rusty somewhere the Pentagon will never find him,” said Audrey. “It’s better if you don’t know, either, Clarissa. And thanks.”

Wilton and Audrey waved goodbye as they ran down a dark corridor along with their cybernetic creation, until finally all three disappeared. An explosion—no doubt caused by B-50, using his armaments—signaled a cave-in that would block any curious pursuers.

Artillery shells and laser bolts sounded behind us.

“I guess that’s our cue,” said Fanny. “Our work here is done—we rescued the girl at least, and didn’t do too much damage to government property. Now, we better take our leave.”

Suddenly, we heard a scream coming from the lab we’d left behind. Running like a stampeding bull, Mervyn—who’d apparently found his glasses—ran past us, taking a right down a different corridor. He was already losing his big, bluish physique and reverting into a normal civilian; in fact, the last remnants of his stretched and shredded clothing had fallen from his nude body as he streaked past.

“Must have seen a ghost,” said Jasper.

“Or an army of overly-protective government Bots,” I said.

***

Fanny, Dana, and Jasper raced ahead of me down the long corridor, coming at last to the spiral stairs leading to the street above. I was holding off a battalion of Bots as best I could, their laser bolts firing wildly. Luckily, these prototypes seemed neither calibrated to fire accurately nor optimized to move with much agility; they flailed clumsily, half the time knocking into one another and tripping themselves up. What might have begun as a legion had now been reduced to only a few dozen, thanks to a high rate of self-induced attrition.

I ripped some of the drop-ceiling down and threw whatever other debris I could to hinder their progress, although this didn’t stop them for long. Satisfied I had accomplished all I could, I finally broke and ran after my fellow Crime Busters, toward the exit. They were still firing wildly; the sound in the confined space of the corridor was quite loud.

Suddenly, above the deafening barrage, I thought I heard a familiar voice cry out.

Unconsciously, I tapped the temple of my visor as I stopped and turned; lying on the floor I saw the crumpled form of my sister.

“Avie!” I shrieked in horror. “You’re not even supposed to be down here! What are you doing?”

I ran back to her; she had been struck in the mid-section and near her shoulder, both serious wounds; she was bleeding badly. I knelt beside her. Lifting her upper body up to a reclining position, she felt eerily weightless in my arms.

“I’m sorry, Sissy,” she said, her voice nearly drowned out by the gunfire. Luckily, I could still read her lips. “I circled back with the van, figuring you’d need a getaway vehicle. When you took so long, I got worried, and finally came down after you…”

My fearless civilian half-sister, rescuing Ms. Megaton Man.

“You fool,” I said, holding her close, tears welling up in my eyes. She closed her eyes; her head lolled to one side. She wasn’t breathing; I couldn’t even feel her heart beating.

The Bots were nearly upon us; I looked up, but in the whirl of bullets and laser bolts, they appeared fuzzy, out of focus. I tapped the temple of my visor; suddenly, they were clear and sharp.

I looked down again; there was nothing in my arms. I was kneeling on the floor holding no one.

“Avie!” I screamed again. I looked around; the corridor was empty except for me the robots who were now nearly on top of me.

I knew Wilton and Audrey and their distorter had to be a thousand yards away from me by now in the underground complex. What could be making me see things?

There was no time to think of that now; rising to my feet, I intercepted the lead robot with a body tackle. Actually, it was more like getting hit by a freight train. His body weight and velocity threw me back several feet until the red soles of my yellow boots gripped the floor again, and I managed to grind us to a stop. Regaining my footing, I whirled him around and flung him back toward the horde.

Within the narrow confines of the corridor, the Bot’s body landed lengthwise—nearly wall-to-wall—against the phalanx of his fellow robots. Metal screamed as the first tier of robot soldiers crashed to the ground; those the followed tripped mindlessly over the fallen. Still firing their weapons wildly, the Bots formed a Bot pile-up, a Bot bottleneck—one big clog of robots—effectively blocking the legion in the corridor behind them from advancing.

I turned and raced toward the spiral stairs, bullets and laser bolts still ricocheting off the walls around me, a few stinging my ample backside. Reaching the safety of the exit, I could hear my companions clambering up the steps far above me; they were nearly to Main Street.

I was halfway up the stairs myself when I heard the Bots below; they had broken through the blockage but were now stymied at the foot of the stairs. Apparently, these cybernetic soldiers weren’t built to navigate steps; they remained below ground as I flew the rest of the way up the stairs.

I emerged from the kiosk on Ann Arbor’s Main Street to a sight I hadn’t expected to see: the Y+Thems white van idling, Soren behind the wheel, with Tempy and Kiddo—her infant strapped to her torso—helping Jasper, Dana, and Fanny into the side door.

Kozmik Kat pulling on my sister Avie’s long, wavy hair, restraining her from running towards me.

“Oww!” Avie was screaming. “Let me go, you darn cat!”

When she saw me, she stopped struggling; Koz relaxed his claws and let her go.

“This crazy girl was about to run down there after you,” Koz explained. “If I hadn’t held onto her, she might have gotten hurt down there. You’re lucky I came back to the Midwest.”

“Oh, my God, Avie!” I shrieked. We ran toward each other; we hugged.

“I brought reinforcements,” said Avie. “We stopped by the church residence and circled back. I figured you’d need a getaway…” She was crying now, and so was I.

“Avie, I saw you down there,” I said, holding her face in my hands. “I watched you d—”

I couldn’t finish the sentence. My visor was getting all steamy.

“C’mon, you guys,” said Tempy, motioning us to get into the van. “Before Bots start climbing out of the sewers.”

The morning light was breaking as the van hit the road. In the backseat, I held my sister tightly, all the way back to Detroit.