His mouth tasted like vomit. There was blood on his hands and knees, where the surface of the parking lot had scraped the skin away, and he ached all over.
His elbow ached too, where he'd fired the gun. He hadn't anticipated the recoil and it had jarred back along the bone, pain shooting up his arm even as the weapon spat powder back into his mouth and Glottus's blood soaked his shirt, a heart's beat away from being his own.
I shot you, he thought numbly. I did that.
When Glottus rose again, Fry didn't have time to stop himself – his arm screamed in protest but it was already half-raised, and when it rammed into his friend's temple, he couldn't soften the blow. It was like something else was controlling his body, like he was watching it all happen from a long way away. Someone else had fired that gun, and someone else had knocked out Captain Glottus, and his only link to it all was the taste in his mouth and the pain that screeched out when he moved.
Glottus was still lying where he'd fallen. There was blood seeping through his flak jacket, but not as much as Fry had expected, and he was breathing. He was alive.
Shock and relief hit Fry like a hammer blow and he doubled over, heaving.
When he stood up, his hands were shaking. He lifted the rifle to his shoulder, let his finger fall back on the trigger. The metal was warm and willing, like a hand that fit in his and tugged him on. It wanted him to fire, and the muscle memory was too strong to fight.
The Brainspawn. They had forced Glottus to attack him. They had forced him to defend himself, made it so he had to shoot back, and they were killing people – right across the universe, because they couldn't get to him.
Rage flared inside him.
"I know you're there," he shouted. "You want me? I'm right here!"
He pumped the trigger again and bullets burst into the sky, the recoil slamming into his shoulder as pain shot through him again. He gasped and tasted salt on his lips – sweat or tears, and the bitter taste of his own bile. He coughed and spat some up, feeling like some kind of animal, frothing at the mouth.
It was fitting. He felt crazy, after all.
"Come and get me!" he screamed, and the rifle seemed to sing out in agreement, whining as the mechanism cooled under his hand.
He felt the Brainspawn before he saw it. It was a feeling like a wet sponge on the surface of his brain. Not painful, but wrong.
"Nice try," he gasped. "But that doesn't work on me. Hah!"
And then it was hovering in front of him, tilted to one side as though considering him.
"What are you doing, stupid creature?"
The voice didn't come from a throat. It was a droning hum that seemed to materialize out of the air around him, but it had to be coming from the brain, and it sounded .. . bored. If Fry was a threat, this brain hadn't got the memo.
"Well?" it probed. "Tell me who you're talking to, you stunted ape. Who else is here, hmm?"
That feeling washed over him again, like his brain had been dunked in a vat of pickles. Fry shook his head violently to clear it.
"I'm talking to you," he snapped. "The flying spaghetti monster. Hell-ooo." He waved, glaring at the brain. "Your stupid rays don't work on me, remember?"
There was a sudden silence. The Brainspawn hung unmoving in mid-air.
At last the voice sounded again.
"Who are you?"
Fry ground his teeth.
"You know who I am. I'm Philip J Fry and you're here to kill me! Get it over with! I'm right here!"
The Brainspawn reeled as though struck.
"Philip J Fry? The Mighty One?"
This was new.
"Mighty Wha'?"
"The Mighty One!" The Brainspawn sounded impatient now. "Philip J Fry of Earth, the only creature ever spawned with the ability to deflect our stupefaction ray! The greatest enemy the Brainspawn have ever faced! And I have you at my mercy!"
It gave a gloating laugh, but Fry wasn't listening.
"Only?" he echoed. "You mean . . . I'm the only one who can fight you?" He paled. "Ever?"
"Not for much longer." The brain sounded offhand. "When Captain Glottus regains consciousness, I shall have him kill you, and then kill himself. The attendant of this gas station is already incapacitated. The three of you will die and all witnesses to the ascent of the Brainspawn will be eradicated! Our master plan will progress unimpeded by your interference."
Fry tightened his hold on the gun. Glottus was still lying immobile in a pool of his own blood. Unless the Brainspawn knew something he didn't, Glottus wasn't getting up any time soon.
And then something Fry had missed up to now filtered through.
"Wait," he said slowly. "You weren't here for me? Then why . . . why did you make Glottus try and kill me? Why -"
He stopped. The Brainspawn had flinched, quivering like a bowl of smacked jello.
"Stop!" it cried. "Ahh! Stop!"
"Stop what?"
"Thinking! Ahh! It's unbearable!"
Thinking hurts them, Fry remembered in a flash. Think harder, dammit!
"Why did you control Captain Glottus?"he demanded. "Why did you make him hurt me? If you didn't know I was the Maxi One, why did you even care? Tell me the truth!"
The Brainspawn cringed.
"Mighty One!" it gasped. "Mighty One, not Maxi One! How could something so ignorant – ah! Ooh! Fine, fine, I'll tell you! Just make it stop, dear – ahh!"
"Then start talking."
Fry leveled the gun at it. Lost in a world of agony, the Brainspawn hardly seemed to notice.
"I'm a clean-up operative!" it gasped. "I was sent to remove loose ends. Earth Captain Glottus was one such loose end. He had files on his person that could lead to our discovery, if they fell into Nibblonian hands."
Fry frowned.
"Nibblonian? Like Nibbler?"
"Yes, yes! The Nibblonians are our most ancient foe. They can't resist us, naturally" - a trace of smugness crept back into the voice - "but they recognize the signs of our presence, and they have groomed the Mighty One – you - to become their weapon."
"The only one who grooms me is me before a date," Fry said distractedly.
The pieces were starting to come together in his head. The gold nugget Glottus wore around his neck – the holo-flash drive with all the DOOP's unexplained murders on it – that was the proof the Brainspawn wanted to destroy. The loose ends.
The brain had come here to kill Glottus, and Fry was just another loose end, until he told it who he was. Now he was some kind of Brainspawn bounty prize.
And Nibbler had something to do with this. Somehow.
Another question arose.
"Why did you wipe my memory?"
"We didn't." The brain was shrinking in on itself like a clump of wet noodles. "We don't know what happened to you after you banished us. We hoped you had died."
"Banished you?" Fry's forehead crinkled in bafflement.
The confusion wiped his thoughts blank, and seemed to give the brain a chance to recover.
"You don't remember?" it sneered. "You infiltrated our Infosphere and blasted us into an alternate universe."
"I did?" Infosphere. The word stirred something in Fry. In his mind's eye he saw a dull gray sphere, planet-sized, and a blue light that swallowed everything, that sucked at his skin like the vacuum of space. His head ached. "If that's true," he managed, "if that's true, then how'd you get out?"
The brain went quiet.
"We don't know."
"You're giant brains," Fry retorted. "You know everything."
"We did nothing," the brain insisted. "We found ourselves here."
It sounded uncomfortable. It must be a kick in the teeth for a brain not to know something, Fry supposed. He decided to take advantage of its discomfort and press for more answers.
"What's an Infosphere?"
The aura around the Brainspawn pulsed proudly.
"The Infosphere is our life's work," it said haughtily. "A catalog of all knowledge in the universe. When it is complete we will detonate a weapon of our own and wipe out all life, so that no new data will arise."
Fry considered this.
"That's nuts," he said at last.
The Brainspawn made a kind of spluttering sound. If it had had a throat, Fry would have thought it was choking.
"It's our life's work," it repeated, scandalized.
"It's still nuts."
The Brainspawn pulsed again, in anger this time, and Fry felt the familiar touch of the stupefaction ray on the surface of his brain. He swatted it away, annoyed.
"Enough!" the brain cried. "The Infosphere will be completed! We will discover the means by which we returned to this universe! We will unravel the mystery of the Mighty One! Our plans will come to fruition!"
As the brain worked itself into an agitated fit, Fry began to edge toward Captain Glottus. His heart was hammering in his throat. From what he remembered of the Brainspawn, they were all highly-strung and a lot smarter than he was. It was only a matter of time before this one made good on its promise and found a way to murder him.
And from there . . . the whole universe.
Leela. Bender. Amy.
He was the only one who could save them.
Get to Glottus, he thought. Get out of here.
The captain was still out cold, but breathing raggedly. He was too heavy to drag one-handed, and Fry was reluctant to let go of the gun. But he needed to get Glottus to the hovervan. He needed to incapacitate the brain long enough to make an escape. He needed to think of something . . .
"Ahh! Ahhhh!"
The brain spasmed violently.
Think of something! That was it! That was the solution! He needed to think of something so confusing it would cripple the brain.
He swallowed.
It had to be her. It had to be that. It was the only thing that would work – the only thing he knew for sure had no solution.
Steeling himself, Fry swung the rifle over his shoulder and conjured up the memory of Leela.
It wasn't hard – the memories assailed him a hundred times a day, after all – but this time he didn't try to push them away. Everything that was raw and contradictory, everything that broke his heart and made him feel whole at the same time. It surged to the surface and he let it, dragged up more and more until he was drowning in it.
The way Leela looked on the day of her wedding to Lars – her wedding to a version of him – smiling like all her dreams had just come true.
The way she used to look at Fry in the years after, that slow-growing guilty yearning, and the way she kissed him - like the feeling was choking her and his touch was the only thing that let her breathe.
The way he ached for her all the time, a gnawing deep-down pain in his gut - and the more he felt it the more he tried to run, because it hurt her more to give into it, and he couldn't be around her anymore without giving into it.
His own voice, broken, urging "I love you, I love you, I love you! Tell me you don't love me too!" And she couldn't. She couldn't.
The feel of her mouth on his, hot and urgent, and her fingers digging into his shoulder blades, drawing blood as she pulled him tighter, closer, hers, hers, hers. And he didn't care.
She loved him but she loved Lars too, and Lars was him. She was his in all the ways a person could be – his blood in her mouth when she kissed him, his heart hammering under her hand, his body sinking into her like coming home ; like that thing they said in weddings, "one flesh, one heart, one soul" - but she wasn't his, and she never would be.
Vaguely, he was aware of himself seizing Glottus under the arms and dragging him. Fry couldn't see it or feel it. His head was a storm and it hurt, but it was working.
The Brainspawn was screaming, convulsing in agony.
He was in the front seat of the hovervan. Glottus was slumped in shotgun and the brain was still screaming like it was being flayed alive.
Fry turned the key in the ignition and the hovervan jumped to life. He pulled out and swung in a wide drunken arc, steering one-handed as he fumbled for the gun behind his back.
The Brainspawn twitched and throbbed below him. The fumes from spilled fuel seared his nostrils, but they didn't register – Fry's brain was still swimming with Leela and Lars and his own mistakes, and when he raised the gun it was instinct at work again, muscle memory doing all the lifting.
He aimed at the Brainspawn and fired without thinking – and then a spark caught and with a superheated whomp the dome became a fireball and spat him into space.
The stars streaked past, too fast for focus. A scream stuck in his throat.
And then his head shot forward and smashed into the dashboard. There was a prism of sudden blinding pain, and the world went black.