Abaddon the Destroyer—Vincent Vu—was sort of excited to see the column of tanks charging straight at him down the freeway like single-file cavalry.

  The disease he bore in his morph, the starfish densovirus, had already caused two of his limbs to break free, trailing viscera and goo. Now he sent them tube-crawling forward, his own slow-moving cavalry as his limbs grew to replace them.

  “Da da da da!” Vincent sang a trumpet fanfare. “Da! Dada da dada da daaaa!”

  There were two explosions. The smaller explosion—more a sound like a tornado’s rushing wind—the round being fired; and a split second later . . .

  BAM!

  The first tank round hit one of Vincent’s mini-me’s and turned it into sushi confetti.

 “Wow!” Vincent exclaimed. It was exciting! Much louder than he’d expected. He had two layers of voices in his head now, the silent ones urging him on, and his own schizophrenic hallucinations surprisingly urging a cautious retreat.

  Well, he knew better than to trust those voices.

  “I am Abaddon the Destroyer!” he cried in his thin voice.

  At which a second round was fired, and this one hit one of his legs, exploded, and showered him with bloody bits of shredded starfish. He wiped the goo from his face.

  The starfish would regenerate.

Villain, Chapter 23