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floor. Clyde flails his way through lightning strikes behind her. Shaw grabs me off Aiko’s lap. Claims me.
    “You’re alive?” Shaw says. She runs a hand over my forehead.
    I’m blinking a lot and twitching so that seems to confirm it for her. She does the thoughtful thing, turning away and emptying a magazine in the direction of the lightning-slinger. It’s rather sweet.Another lightning bolt blasts past. Clyde yells. Shaw curses, tugs another magazine from an inside pocket. I struggle to bring my limbs online, managing to use my right elbow to get upright.
    The Asian woman, Aiko, leans forward, puts a hand on my shoulder.
    “You should probably—” she starts.
    “Get off him,” Shaw snaps. “And get out of here. We don’t need casualties.”
    Aiko bristles visibly. She removes the hand from my shoulder. That’s good—bearing the extra weight was a little much for me right now. “Where were you while we staved off the body count?”
    Shaw fires in the direction of the lightning-slinger without taking her eyes off Aiko. “I am more than happy to arrest you for illegal weapon possession.” She wears a tight smile.
    Another different decision from the one I’d have gone with. And I’m going to have to call on one of these, but right now I’m playing the twitching injured guy, so I let her have it.
    The T-Rex interrupts the nascent feud. Its tail sweeps overhead. Display cases detonate. Glass shards and mineral missiles fill the air.
    “Will somebody make that fucking dinosaur extinct already?” Shaw yells. She looks distinctly less cool than when we arrived here. For people who saved the world yesterday, we’re looking spectacularly outclassed.
    “Clyde,” I manage, “what have you got? Anything that can evict an animating force?” The words are strained.
    Clyde touches his earpiece “Tabby,” he says. “Trying to think of a way to remove an animating force. Anti-magic doo-dad. Wondering, if you have a moment that is, if you could check the database.”
    If she has a moment? What the hell does he think she’s doing out there? Crocheting mittens for any reanimated triceratops she happens across?
    Kayla still bats at the T-Rex’s head as if disciplining a troublesome dog. Shaw mutters her name along with some select curse words.
    “Animating force,” Tabitha’s voice comes back. “Invested in skeleton.” Though the T-Rex is hardly a skeleton now. Skin covers most of it, exposed muscle and gristle the rest. “Rather than removing force, remove skeleton. Nothing for force to cling to.”
    Filet a T-Rex. Well that should be easy.
    “Explosive kinetic force, located centrally?” Clyde says.
    I like the bit where he uses the word “explosive.”
    Tabitha grunts.
    Clyde nods. Then he looks to Shaw. “Excuse me,” he says. “Don’t mean to interrupt—”
    “Spit it out.”
    “I don’t suppose you happen to have a grenade on you, do you?”
    Which is a slightly more mundane solution than I was thinking we’d go for. I could have thought of blowing it up with a grenade.
    Shaw reaches into another inner suit pocket and removes a thin steel canister. I am beginning to think I should never go through Shaw’s pocket book.
    “Excellent,” Clyde says lightly as more of the room disintegrates around us. “Just need to get it inside the T-Rex now.”
    And, I admit, I would not have thought of that bit.
    Shaw blinks. “Alright then,” she says, and goes to stand up.
    I’m not entirely sure if it’s because I have tender feelings for Shaw, or because of a sense of duty, or because of the blows to the head, but I reach out a hand to stop her.
    “No,” I say. “You’re still a better shot than me.” I manage to get my face muscles to stop spasming long enough to smile. “Primary objective and all that. You stay here, shoot the evil cow with the lightning, protect Clyde. I’ll go.”
    “Arthur—” she starts.
    “Oh,” I smile, “I can’t have been that good in bed.”
    That line