Stu's first instinct was to point the Researcher's remote control at the Lab Rat -- it had worked before; it should work again. All he had to do was press the button and order the monster to back off...

  Before he could even aim the remote at him, however, the Lab Rat raised one of his cybernetic arms, and a beam of incredibly intense laser-light shot out of it, blinding him. He grunted in surprise and tried to shield his eyes, and that was all the time the Lab Rat needed; he jumped off the roof of the minivan, sprinted towards him, and batted the remote out of his hand. Despite his size, the Lab Rat was fast.

  The Frankenstein-like monster had used its left hand to knock the remote away, but now its right hand -- an huge, cybernetic appendage, made out of some kind of brilliantly lustrous metal -- came smashing in as well, hitting Stu in the chest with such force that the blow actually picked him up off his feet and sent him flying into the makeshift barricades that had been erected at the hospital's rear entrance. Stu gasped. He had never taken a hit like that in his life; even the Living Hell hadn't hurt him that badly. Something had cracked in his chest. He couldn't breathe.

  Lucky and Luna, meanwhile, who had been on either side of him, scattered. Luna took a shot at the Lab Rat, but he deflected it with its arm. Lucky couldn't even manage that; he had stumbled too close to a pair of grub-zombies, who were now menacing him. He grit his teeth and opened fire on them, on the run.

  Stu couldn't see much of what was happening, however; his eyes were still burning from that blinding light. He steadied himself as best he could and tried to suck in a breath, but it felt like he was breathing in knives and needles. Touching his chest, he realized that the punch had totally shattered his sternum, cracking it like an egg. Holy shit. Was he going to die?

  But then the Regeneration skill kicked in, and his body started repairing itself. He drew in another breath, a deep breath, which seemed to reinflate his chest, causing the broken, splintered bones of his sternum to pop back into place and back into position, mending themselves back together. This was a relief; he had had no idea whether the Regeneration skill would go so far as to repair broken bones. But it was doing it, and it was doing it quickly.

  It still hurt like hell, though, and the Lab Rat wasn't done with him yet, in any case. The monster made a tremendous leap, landing right in front of him, causing the ground to shake; then he snatched Stu by the wrist, lifted him up, and slammed him into the ground like a rag doll.

  This hurt worse than the punch; in fact it was the greatest pain Stu had ever experienced in his life. His arm was pulled out of its socket by the strength of the swing, and when he hit the ground, he felt more of his bones break. The blow also left him teetering on the edge of consciousness -- his head was swimming; everything seemed to be happening in a slow-motion slog. He barely felt it when the Lab Rat swung him around again, throwing him into another pile of rubble.

  Distantly, he heard Lucky shout his name in alarm. He heard gunshots, too, but he was too dazed to wonder where they might be coming from. Blood was pouring into his face -- the Lab Rat might have cracked his head open -- and his left arm, the arm the Rat had used to slam him into the ground, hung limply at his side. He tried to move, but couldn't.

  How much more of this could he take? If the Lab Rat continued pulverizing him like this, faster than Regeneration could heal him, he couldn't possibly survive.

  Fortunately, the Lab Rat seemed to be under the impression that he had killed Stu, or at least battered him into submission, because he did not press his attack. Instead he turned his attention to Lucky and Luna -- Luna had retreated back to the minivan and was firing at him from there, while Lucky, having dispatched the two zombies with his own rifle, was shooting at him from another angle. One of the bullets actually struck the giant in the head, but his skull must have been made of some kind of ultra-durable metal, like the zombie Stu had fought down in the morgue, because it merely ricocheted off his head.

  Stu coughed up blood. The world slowly began to come into focus again, and though it took a few seconds, the Regeneration skill slowly began to work its magic on him -- he felt his humerus bone wiggle its way back into his shoulder and reattach itself to the joint, and he heard some strange popping sounds coming out of his cracked and dented skull. He was Humpty Dumpty, except the king's horses and the king's men were actually succeeding in putting him back together again.

  He struggled to his feet. Could he defeat the Lab Rat in a physical contest? He doubted it. He was a Level 41, stronger and faster than Stu by an order of magnitude, and he had his own healing ability -- that healing ability that all zombies shared, of being able to rapidly repair their internal organs. Worse, he seemed to be practically bulletproof.

  The remote. Where was the remote? That was his trump card; he could stop the Rat in his tracks if he could find it. He started looking around for it, but he wasn't sure where it had gone, after the Rat had knocked it out of his hand.

  He did find Excalibur, though, which he had also dropped when the Lab Rat had attacked him. He picked it up.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  And suddenly the Rat was standing in front of him. Damn, he was fast! How could something so huge move so quickly?

  Instead of striking him again, however, he merely glared down at him, with his baleful red eyes. "You're a hard one to kill, aren't you?"

  Stu responded to that by swinging Excalibur at him. But he was still weak, and there wasn't much force behind the blow. The Lab Rat knocked the bat aside with his armored arm, as though it were nothing more than a pesky fly, and grabbed Stu, wrapping his huge robot-fingers around his neck and lifting him off the ground. "I don't know what's gotten into Miss Valois, but I'm not letting it go any further." And Stu felt the giant's cold fingers begin to tighten around his throat.

  "Stop!" a voice cried out.

  It was Natasha Valois, the Researcher, running out of the hospital in her lab coat. "Don't hurt him!" she shouted.

  The Lab Rat's grip on his throat relaxed somewhat, but he did not release Stu. "He's dangerous," he growled. "He's done something to you. You're not yourself, Mistress."

  "Put him down. That's an order!"

  "He turned on you. He forced me to take you prisoner."

  "He was just frightened," she insisted. "You startled him when you came running into the room."

  That wasn't even close to what had happened, but the Researcher, blinded by love or lust or whatever the Don Juan skill had done to her, was apparently determined to put the best possible spin on Stu's actions, even if it meant totally misremembering and misinterpreting them.

  "He's dangerous," the Rat repeated.

  "I love him."

  The giant looked at her incredulously. "Impossible. You just met him tonight."

  "I know what love is," she insisted. "Now let him go, or I'll--"

  She stopped there, in mid-sentence, her eyes widening, her lips just slightly parted.

  A long knife had suddenly burst out of her chest.

  "Mistress!" the Lab Rat shouted. He dropped Stu and started running towards her. Stu, falling to his hands and knees, looked up just in time to see Millie step out from behind the stunned Researcher, her single red eye leaving a vaporous, flaming trail in the air.

  As he watched, the little cyborg-girl ripped the long knife out of the Researcher's body, whirled it around, and sliced her head off with a single blow. The head lolled off the woman's shoulders and rolled off into the dirt, while the body remained standing for a second or two before buckling forward. The "Level 3 Brainy" designation, along with the little heart that indicated she had become a target of Stu's Don Juan skill, faded into nothing.

  And just like that, Natasha Valois, the Researcher, was dead.

  Outraged, the Lab Rat howled and threw himself at Millie, but the girl raised an arm and pointed something at him. "Stop right there," she said. "Don't move."

  The Lab Rat screeched to a halt, shaking with rage. The remote! Millie must have recovered the remote.

  Her grim work done, Millie shook the blood off her little sword and walked right past the Lab Rat, who started swearing at her. "Shut up," she told him carelessly. He shut up.

  She knelt down by Stu. "You all right?"

  "I don't know yet."

  Lucky and Luna, lowering their weapons, approached the two of them cautiously. "This is Millie," Stu explained to the siblings. "She's the one I was telling you about."

  "Nice to meet you," Lucky said, obviously a little unnerved by Millie's glowing red eye.

  Luna, meanwhile, was watching the Lab Rat warily. "Why isn't he attacking us?"

  Millie held up the remote. "He can't. He has to do what I say."

  Stu frowned. The absolutely ruthless way in which Millie had dispatched the Researcher was a little troubling, but then again, the girl had been held prisoner by the Researcher for several months, and her body mutilated; she had probably been looking forward to killing her tormenter for a very long time. And Stu himself probably would have done the same, if given the opportunity -- Natasha Valois was, after all, a zombie, a brainy, and she had committed all kinds of heinous acts in Heart's Glow.

  Still, her abrupt death left him feeling strangely conflicted. The fact that he had used the Don Juan skill to take advantage of her, had even managed to convince her that she was in love with him, probably had something to do with that. No matter how wicked she might have been, manipulating her feelings like that felt wrong. It was hard to forget that desperate look on her face, as she had pleaded with the Lab Rat to spare his life.

  "I guess he's not as invincible as you said he was," Stu remarked.

  "He would have killed you, if I hadn't showed up," she reminded him. She looked around. "We can't stay here. Her robots won't stop hunting us, just because she's dead. And there's more zombies out there, too."

  That was obvious enough to Stu; his Zombie Radar had been humming a tune in his head for the last couple of hours. "Let's go, then." He got to his feet, but slowly; the Regeneration skill was still working to repair him, and he still felt a little dizzy.

  "Not yet," Millie said. "We have to kill the Lab Rat, too."

  Stu glanced at the giant, who was glowering at them. With his long hair hanging in front of his ruined face, and his red eyes glistening like a vampire's, he looked like a creature out of a nightmare. "We do?"

  "He'll come after us," she warned.

  She was right, he realized. They couldn't just leave him standing here outside the hospital -- eventually the grub system would break down and eventually he would be free to act again. And then he would come hunting for them, to avenge the Researcher.

  "Who's going to do it?" Lucky asked uncertainly.

  "I will," Stu said. He didn't particularly like the idea of killing the giant in cold blood, as he stood there before him, unable to move, but what choice did they have? He took the long knife from Millie and staggered over to the Lab Rat, who narrowed his eyes at him.

  "Did she force you into this?" Stu asked, his gaze falling upon the Researcher's severed head. "Have you been working for her of your own free will?"

  "She was searching for a cure," he snarled. "Do you have any idea what you've done? Natasha Valois was humanity's last chance."

  "She was killing and torturing people."

  He scoffed at that. "A small price to pay."

  "Millie's right, isn't she? You'll kill us if you get free."

  "I'll crush you with my bare hands," he affirmed, baring his teeth.

  That told him pretty much everything he needed to know. Suddenly feeling very weary -- he was sick of killing -- Stu raised the knife and got on with it.