by Stan Lee
Is it her? Or this place?
Something buzzed in Steven’s pocket. He pulled out the tracker. The red dot was back, brighter than ever.
“There’s a staircase in back,” the woman said, pointing toward an alcove.
“Thanks,” he said.
He headed for the stairs, pushing through the crowd. The music rose up around him, growing louder.
“Hey!” the woman called.
He stopped and turned back. Past the crowd of dancers, she stood smiling at him. There was something in her eyes—those dark green eyes—that he couldn’t read.
“After you find your friend,” she yelled, “come on back down. We’ll have that drink.”
Inside Steven, the Tiger roared even louder. He felt anxious, jumpy, and nervous for reasons he couldn’t understand.
He nodded quickly, then hurried on his way.
THE STAIRCASE CREAKED under Steven’s feet. The walls were bare wood, stained and discolored. A few patches of peeling paint still clung to them.
How old is this building? he wondered. Steven had grown up in America, where nothing had been built more than two or three hundred years before. In most of the world, there were far older places.
And some of them held very old power within them.
As he climbed, the club music faded to a dull throb. By the time he reached the fourth-floor landing, he had to strain to hear it.
On impulse, he pulled out his phone and hit a speed-dial number. The call went straight to voice mail.
“Hi, this is Kim. I don’t know what I’m doing right now, and neither do you. Leave me a message and we’ll figure it out together.”
Beep.
“Hey,” Steven said. “I, uh, I just wanted to make sure you’re doing okay in America. You wouldn’t believe where I am! Oh, this is Steven. Duh.” He paused, feeling awkward. “I think…I’ve got a weird feeling I’m on the trail of something big, something that might change my life. Crazy, huh? I guess I just wanted to talk to you….Man, that sounds lame. Oh! I hope your dad’s doing better. Stupid, should have said that first….Anyway, I guess I was…thinking about you. Okay, bye.”
He clicked the phone off, shaking his head. “Stupid,” he said again.
Then he heard a high-pitched moaning. It wasn’t loud, but somehow it filled the stairwell. His Tiger senses reached out, locating the source: the door up ahead, at the top of the stairs. It had no buzzer, no nameplate or window. Just a knob.
It wasn’t locked.
He stepped inside, treading lightly as a cat. The door opened directly into a small kitchen with old cast-iron pans hanging from the walls. The ceiling was low, not more than six feet high. The shelves were bare.
The moaning grew quieter.
Steven slipped around a corner and down a short hallway. Sepia-tinted photos lined the walls, some of them in ornate frames. The people in the photos were Chinese, many of them teenagers.
Once again, he sensed he was drawing close to something—as if he were running down a hill, stumbling faster and faster toward his destiny.
He came to a door, partway open. A sickly smell, like mildew, wafted from inside. He pushed open the door and gasped.
Over by the wall, in a rickety bed, an incredibly old Chinese man lay propped up on a stack of pillows. A cable with tubes attached to it led from a medical monitor mounted on a metal stand to a disk-shaped machine clamped to the man’s bare chest.
The old man’s head was turned away, toward the window. Steven couldn’t tell whether or not he was awake.
The man moaned.
“Oh!” Steven said, involuntarily.
Very slowly, the man turned his head. He had tubes in his wrinkled neck, and moving seemed difficult for him.
“Winnow,” the man said.
Steven stepped into the dark room. “What?”
“The window. Shut it,” the man barked, waving an arm. “It’s cold!”
Steven hurried to the window and pulled it closed. The noise from the street vanished, muffled by the glass.
“Curtains,” the man grumbled. Steven pulled the curtains, shutting out the lights of Berlin. Then he turned back to face the old man.
“Who are you?” Steven asked.
“I was gonna ask you that,” the man replied, “since you’re in my house.”
Steven frowned and pulled out his tracker. The red dot glowed bright, almost filling the screen.
“You’re Zodiac,” Steven said.
The old man turned away. “Haven’t heard that word for a long time,” he said quietly.
Steven’s mind was spinning. He didn’t know what he’d expected to find, but the idea of an old Zodiac had never crossed his mind. Still…what had Jasmine said, back in the Infosphere?
There are legends about the Zodiac power…stories about its former wielders. A lot of them didn’t end up very well.
“It’s true,” Steven said.
Then he remembered something else. Steven and his team had gained their Zodiac abilities at the Convergence, a rare time when the power of the mystic pools could be focused and concentrated into human hosts. That point in time—the conditions that made the Convergence possible—came around only once every 144 years.
Steven peered at the old man. His eyes were barely visible under the wrinkled folds of his skin.
“How old are you?” Steven whispered.
The man coughed. Then, slowly, a smile stole over his face. He opened his mouth wide and laughed.
“You—” he began. “You wouldn’t belie—”
He burst into a coughing fit. Steven stepped back, unsure what to do. The man paused, tried to catch his breath, and burst out coughing again.
“Wa’er,” he gasped, pointing at a nearby table.
Steven grabbed a glass of water and held it up to the man’s mouth. The man coughed again, swallowed some, and jerked his head. A small stream ran down his chin.
Eventually he stopped coughing. He turned his head to stare straight at Steven.
“Don’t get old,” he said. “Never get old.”
Steven felt a chill run through him. He was rooted to the spot. He had no idea what to do next, or even why he was there. But the old man might hold the answers to a lot of his questions.
“Where did it come from?” Steven asked. “The Zodiac power?”
The man gestured at the table again. Steven frowned, then pulled open a small drawer. It took him a few moments to recognize the objects inside.
“Oracle bones,” Steven said.
The old man grunted in agreement.
Steven lifted two of the flat disks, holding them up to the light. They were brittle and discolored with age, their surfaces covered with tiny Chinese writing.
Steven had seen oracle bones before—well, sort of. Someone had sent him a modern-day version of one, filled with circuitry, the previous year. When it arrived, its message had been written in Chinese, a language Steven couldn’t read. Before his eyes, the writing had morphed into a cryptic warning in English.
Steven had never found out who sent him the warning.
Those oracle bones, the ancient artifacts he held in his hands, were different. They were the real thing.
“These must be three thousand years old,” he said.
“Give or take a few hundred,” the old man said.
The man took another drink of water. Then he motioned for Steven to pull up a chair and began to speak.
“There was a man,” he said. “His name was Xu, I think. He longed to become king.”
“Of China?” Steven asked.
“Yes, yes. Don’t interrupt….I need to get through this. Xu came up with the idea to harness the lines, draw magic from the stars. He built the pools, combined the power from above and below. It’s all written on those bones.” The man paused, gasped in a breath. “He made the first Zodiacs.”
Steven nodded. He remembered the mystic pools, filled with unknown liquid.
“The Zodiacs were beloved,” the man c
ontinued, “in the time of the first emperor. During the Han dynasty, they helped explore the world. They served the emperor, they guarded the Silk Road. Those were glorious days. But even then…”
The man erupted in another coughing fit. Steven rose to help, but the man waved him away. The fit passed.
“Even then,” the man said, “there were those who didn’t trust people with such power. They created weapons…artifacts designed to contain the Zodiac energies, if any of its hosts should ever run amok.
“Those weapons were used, in the time of the Three Kingdoms. The Zodiacs were distrusted, even hunted. When the Mongols came, the Zodiacs fought them. But the Mongols’ numbers were too great. They slaughtered our people. The last Zodiacs, the few that remained, went underground.
“Nothing was heard of them for a very long time. Some of them left China, following different paths. After the Opium Wars, there was briefly a Zodiac team based in England.”
Steven’s mind was whirling. England? Where else had the Zodiacs spread, over the centuries?
“The Zodiacs trusted no one,” the old man continued, “not after what had been done to their brothers. When Sun Yat-sen founded the republic, some of us—of them—they hoped it would be a new beginning. But that didn’t last, either.
“Then came the Sino-Japanese Wars…the first salvos of the Second World War. We Zodiacs rose up to defend our homeland from the invaders. I tried to warn them…tried to see the big picture. But I didn’t imagine—couldn’t even conceive of how horribly that would…”
The man began to make small gasping noises. For a moment, Steven thought it was another coughing fit.
Then he realized: He’s crying.
“I’m sorry,” the man said. “Oh, Horse, my brother. Rabbit, Snake, brave little Monkey. And Dragon, my love. I am so, so sorry.”
Steven felt paralyzed. He couldn’t follow the whole story, but clearly the man was caught up in some unimaginable grief.
“Dog,” the old man continued. “You turned against me, betrayed us all. But I forgive you. I still love you.”
Did he lose his whole team? Steven wondered. To what?
And then, the inevitable thought: Will the same thing happen to me?
The old man straightened up. He looked around at the bare room.
“After the war,” he said, “I woke up here. Half the city was in ruins. But in Berlin…they’re used to that. Always, they rebuild.” He shrugged. “It seemed a fitting place to stay.”
The man reached out then and grabbed Steven’s arm with surprising strength. The cable attached to his chest stretched taut, rattling the machine at the other end.
“The cycles,” the man said. “The cycles know no mercy. The Convergence is the beginning, but the end is always the same. After the power enters the world, it must eventually be purged. And when it is gone…no trace of its hosts remains.”
Another chill ran through Steven. He wanted to pull his arm back, but he couldn’t look away from the man’s eyes. They seemed filled with sadness, with infinite pain.
A shudder ran through the old man. He closed his eyes, and for a moment Steven was afraid he was dying. But his grip remained firm.
A familiar glow began to radiate outward from the man’s frail body. It rose up, shifting and changing above his head. Slowly it resolved into the shape of a tiger.
A gray tiger with old, tired eyes.
Steven concentrated. His own Zodiac halo blossomed, forming a young, vital tiger. As Steven and the old man sat with their hands clasped, the two tigers exchanged looks of mutual respect.
Then Steven noticed something odd. A tiny machine, like a listening device, sat on top of the heart monitor clamped to the old man’s chest. It looked extremely high-tech, unlike the rest of the medical equipment in the room.
Steven reached out and carefully plucked the device free. Orange lights winked along its length.
He turned to the man. “What…?” He held up the tiny machine. “What is this?”
“It’s a signal booster,” said a woman with a familiar voice.
Steven whirled around—and blinked. It was the woman from the club—the tall one with pink hair who’d told him about the old man. She stood there smiling at him, a knowing look on her face.
For a moment he thought he was hallucinating. Am I dreaming again, like on the plane? Is this another vision?
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
The old man’s Tiger energy was gone, faded away. The woman crossed over to him and placed a hand on his forehead. The man shuddered.
“Poor thing,” she said. “He’s almost gone. Only the barest trace of Zodiac energy left in him. Not enough to lure you here, from thousands of miles away.” She gestured at the device in Steven’s hand. “We needed some help.”
Steven looked up at the woman, tried to speak—and found he couldn’t. That time he really was mesmerized, held in the grip of some ancient power. He couldn’t even look away.
“Use a Tiger to trap a Tiger,” the woman said.
“Sorry,” the old man mumbled. “I’m sorry.”
As Steven watched, unable to move a muscle, the woman reached up and tugged at her pink hair. It’s a wig, he realized. She pulled it off and shook out long dark hair.
Then he recognized her.
“Snake,” he whispered.
The signal booster slipped from his hands, clattering to the floor.
Snake was one of Maxwell’s Black Ops agents—the most treacherous Zodiacs of all. Her power was hypnosis. Back at Dragon’s Gate, she’d turned Duane against the team and nearly killed them all.
Snake smiled with self-satisfaction. “Should have taken the drink, kid.”
Steven felt the Tiger roar inside him. It flared bright, struggling against the hypnotic compulsion that held him still.
I’ve got to break free, he thought. The Tiger is strong inside me. It can do anything!
But Snake’s hold on him was firm. Like most of Maxwell’s operatives, she’d been trained extensively in the use of her power.
Distract her, Steven told himself. Say something. Anything!
“Why?” he asked.
She shrugged. “You’ll have to ask Maxwell about that. The good news is, I think you’re gonna get the chance.”
The Tiger surged and roared. It prowled around the inside of Steven’s mind, searching for a way out.
“No. I mean why wait? Why not just take me down in the club?”
The Tiger growled. It was growing stronger. Just a few more minutes…
“Too many witnesses,” Snake replied. “Besides, I had to wait for my backup.”
A sharp blow knocked Steven forward. His skull exploded in pain. The Tiger howled.
When he looked up, the leering figure of Monkey—another Vanguard agent—was staring down at him. Monkey held up a wooden club, waving it around.
Monkey turned to Snake. “Sorry I’m late.”
“You’re always late.” She didn’t sound pleased. “I had to practically lure this kid up here with a trail of bread crumbs.”
As soon as Snake’s eyes left him, Steven seized his chance. He jumped up, willing the Tiger power to come forth. He leaped through the air, roaring mightily, straight toward Snake—
—then stopped in midair as Monkey grabbed him by the neck from behind. For a moment, Steven flailed in his grip. Then Monkey clubbed him on the head again, hard.
Before he could recover, Monkey grabbed his head and twisted it around. Steven’s face was aimed straight at Snake.
Her eyes were cold: unblinking, unforgiving. She stared at him—and not just at him, but into him. The Tiger fell before her power-stare, along with its host.
“Please don’t move,” Snake said. Her voice was soft and pleasant.
Steven fell to the floor.
The next few minutes passed in a haze. Snake gestured to Monkey, who picked up Steven’s unmoving body and slung it over his shoulder.
Steven knew he was in trouble.
This wasn’t like sparring with Horse and Dog; Monkey and Snake were two of Maxwell’s toughest operatives. They’d beaten him, rendered the Tiger useless.
They were going to deliver him to Maxwell. And whatever Maxwell had planned, it couldn’t be good.
Snake paused. She turned toward the old man, a cold look in her eye. His own eyes were closed; his lips moved rapidly, making unintelligible sounds. He seemed lost in a dream—or a vision, maybe.
A vision of two Tigers? Or three?
Snake wandered over and touched the machine on the man’s chest. “Bad heart,” she said, almost idly. “He should have died years ago.”
No, Steven thought. No, no. Please, no!
“What did he say to you?” Snake said. “‘After the power enters the world…it must eventually be purged.’”
She reached out and switched off the machine.
There was no surge of power, no flash of lightning. The man simply hissed out a final breath and slumped back, dead.
“No,” Steven whispered.
As Monkey carried him out of the room, Steven felt himself starting to lose consciousness. He knew he should keep fighting, should summon the deepest reserves of the Tiger’s ferocity. Maxwell’s forces might defeat him in the end, but he knew what Jasmine would say: Don’t give up. Never give up.
But Jasmine seemed very far away, along with the rest of the team. And when Steven thought about the old man, all he felt was an enormous sense of loss. That man had been the only other Tiger in the world, the only other person who knew what it was like to wield that power. And he was gone.
I never even knew his name, Steven thought.
Then he sank into the blackness.
STEVEN SHOT AWAKE. Fading dream images flickered away: a small blond girl being menaced by a bear; a giant blowtorch blasting away a snowy landscape; an army of powered people, all wearing identical uniforms, spreading like ants to cover the world.
The Tiger, he realized. The Tiger is screaming.
He was lying on a hard, curved surface. He tried to sit up—and discovered he couldn’t move. His arms, his legs, even his head were all held tight. Some strange metallic binding curved around his body like a mold, leaving only his face exposed.