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daughter, and my taking the law into my own hands spared the city from further destruction. Second, Endo is the only other person I’ve ever heard call the monster by the name Maigo .
    His grin returns. “We want the same thing: to protect the world from further destruction. We’re just going about it differently.”
    “How’s that?” I ask, stepping forward again, closing to within striking distance.
    “You think brute force will stop her,” he says, and he’s wrong about that. I’m not sure anything short of a nuke could stop her, and I’m entirely against that option, though some in Washington disagree. “I believe in a more subtle approach,” he says.
    Going for the unsubtle approach, I take a swing, hoping to catch him off guard. No matter how experienced a fighter he is, one good clock to the head will drop him. If only the man didn’t have the reflexes of a mantis shrimp, it might have worked.
    Ducking my punch, which overextends my body and leaves me open for a painful counter-attack, Endo simply leaps up and slaps me across the side of my head, striking my temple with his open palm.
    He jumps back out of reach, standing casually once again, a smile on his face.
    I groan, exasperated by his cocky attitude and the realization that he’s just screwing around. “Seriously?”
    “Like I said, you’re going about it all wrong,” he says. “It’s not about brute force. It’s about intelligence. Knowledge. Technology.”
    “Shut up, Steve Jobs,” I grumble, clenching my fists. “Sometimes a little brute force goes a long way.” I take a step toward him, trying to visualize my attack. My fist is about half the size of his head. Just one punch. One punch.
    He takes a step away, and I think I’ve got him. He sees how pissed I am.
    Nope.
    He just wants to get in the last word.
    “It’s about control,” he says, before tapping what looks like a small Bluetooth phone attached to his right ear. “Stop.”
    The world goes wonky. I’m still aiming for his head, but my mind is telling me he’s floating away, hovering smoothly over the ground, a fixed distance from me. But that’s not the case. The truth is worse. He’s not gliding away, I’m no longer moving.
    “Sit,” he says. “Don’t talk.”
    I plop down onto the damp concrete, sitting in a rainbow swirled oily puddle.
    I can move my eyes, but otherwise, I have no control over my own body.
    He steps up in front of me, my life in his hands. With a broad smile he taps my head with his finger. “Control the beast. Save the world.” He steps back. “I hope the next time we meet, it will be under different circumstances. Our goals are aligned. Maigo is important. To both of us.”
    I want to hurl four letter words at him, but I’m a statue.
    He glances to the side, like he’s just heard something. He steps between a pair of containers and slips away. Ten seconds later, Collins appears. She looks unharmed, but pissed.
    “What are you doing?” she asks, clearly annoyed.
    When I don’t respond in any way except to stare at her, her mood shifts from anger to concern. She slows her approach. “Are you booby trapped or something?”
    I move my eyes back and forth, doing my best to communicate a ‘no,’ and I turn my eyes toward my left temple, where Endo slapped me.
    She looks at the side of my head and squints. “The hell?” Leaning in close, she reaches out, takes hold of something and tugs. A stinging pain lances through my head and I shout, “Oww!” Then I’m immediately relieved, because I can talk again.
    I rub the side of my head, and my hand comes away with just a little bit of blood. Collins holds out a dime-sized device. Its surface is smooth black, but three golden prongs, tinged with my blood, extend from its side.
    I’m about to ask what it is, when the thing starts to smoke. Collins flinches in pain and yanks her hand away. A jet of flame shoots from the side of it, but extinguishes as the device lands in a puddle. I