“I will owe you nothing but a quicker death than the rest of your species,” Vilgax snarled. “Agreed.”

He slammed the dial.

Vilgax fell to his knees, shrinking, his final form peeling away like burnt paper. In the end, he was just a battered, broken alien on a cracked highway, rain—real rain, breaking through the Highbreed’s machines—washing over him.