by Stan Lee
Maxwell’s eyes narrowed. He glared at Mince. “I said ignore it.”
Mince looked up from the phone, as if snapping out of a trance. She shrugged and tossed it back onto the table.
When the ringing stopped, Steven exhaled in relief. He slumped back down on the table.
Then he stiffened as the two metal objects clamped to his forehead lit up. For a moment, he’d almost forgotten about them. They started to hum, pulsing with energy.
Steven thrashed, suddenly frantic. They’ll go after Kim soon anyway, he thought. And Roxanne and Liam and Duane…
My whole team. The team that’s falling apart…that I can’t manage to keep together.
Maxwell held up the bronze sphere. It seemed to wobble in his hands like a water balloon—as if its surface were shifting, turning to liquid.
“The jiānyù,” Maxwell said. “It’s ready.”
Jiānyù, Steven thought, struggling to remember the bits of Chinese his grandfather had taught him. That means prison—
Then the power drain began. It wasn’t like back at Dragon’s Gate, when Maxwell had tried to steal the Tiger power from Steven. That had felt like needles, like pinpricks all through his body. Like searing heat and burning cold, ripping him apart.
This was different. This was surgical, precise. A hand seemed to reach straight into Steven’s mind, feeling around for something—for the Tiger, crouched in its hidden lair.
The Tiger hissed. It growled. And then, to Steven’s horror, it whimpered.
It knows it’s helpless.
Steven closed his eyes. He marshaled his mental defenses, the meditation techniques Jasmine had taught him. But it was no use. The invader, the seeking energy-hand, seemed to know everything about him. As soon as he twitched one way, it mirrored his movements.
In one shockingly quick moment, it grabbed the Tiger and pulled it out of him.
“NO!” Steven cried.
“Oh,” Maxwell said.
Steven opened his eyes—and blinked in shock. He strained his neck against his confinement, unable to believe his eyes.
The sphere in Maxwell’s hands—the jiānyù—was morphing, changing shape. One by one it sprouted four legs, a tail, a thick bronze head, sharp staring eyes, and even sharper fangs.
A tiger, Steven thought. It’s a tiger now.
Without a word, Maxwell turned and held out the jiānyù tiger to Malosi. Malosi hesitated for a moment, eyeing the artifact.
“Take it,” Maxwell said.
Malosi reached out a hand and touched the tiger.
The jiānyù seemed to surge with energy. It flashed and shifted, changing form rapidly. Steven wasn’t sure, later, but he thought he saw it transform briefly into the shape of a bronze horse, then a dog—
—and then Steven felt something stab through his mind, as if he’d been slapped. Stars flashed before his eyes. He clattered back against the table.
When he looked up again, Malosi stood before the table. He looked taller, more powerful than before. Maxwell held the jiānyù loosely at his side. The artifact looked just as it had at first: an ordinary bronze sphere, tarnished and dented with age.
Mince pulled out a small analyzer device and started running it up and down Malosi’s body. The analyzer, like the room itself, looked horribly familiar.
As Steven watched, a glowing cat shimmered into existence in the air above Malosi. But it was a different tiger form than Steven’s. It was thicker, fiercer, with snow-white fur and rage-filled red eyes.
It turned to him and growled.
Steven looked away. He felt utterly defeated. He wanted to cry.
Maxwell paced slowly around Malosi.
“The Tiger is unique,” Maxwell said. “That’s why we’re taking no chances with it. That’s why I lured young Steven here. And it’s why Malosi is so crucial to my plans.”
Malosi clenched both fists. The white tiger swept its head through the air, roaring with power.
“I can feel it,” Malosi said. “The power…” He stared up at the swirling energy. “It feels right.”
“Power,” Maxwell repeated. “It justifies many things.”
Footsteps echoed on the metal floor—a steady tapping, growing closer.
“Ah! The Operator,” Maxwell said. “The man who taught me the secrets of the Tiger.”
Steven didn’t want to look. He knew what he’d see. He’d figured it out: how Maxwell had solved the problem of the Zodiac power and where all the new equipment had come from. Only one person in the world could have accomplished that.
A delicate masculine hand grasped Steven by the chin, wrenching his head around. Despite his best efforts to resist, Steven found himself staring into the face of the Operator.
The face of Carlos.
Carlos turned Steven’s head one way, then the other. He touched the two metal devices on Steven’s forehead, peering at them through thick glasses. His movements were careful, unhurried, and his expression one of pure scientific detachment.
Maxwell walked up behind Carlos, looking over his shoulder at Steven. Mince and Malosi followed, keeping a respectful distance from their boss.
“Is it done?” Maxwell asked.
Carlos turned slowly toward Maxwell. A cruel smile spread across the scientist’s face, making Steven’s blood run cold.
“Perfect,” Carlos said.
STEVEN’S UNDERGROUND CELL was small and dark. Thin glowing energy rods stretched from floor to ceiling, forming bars around three walls of the cell. Only the back wall was solid, with a half-screened area leading to a toilet and sink.
Steven paced back and forth, his mind whirling. He walked to the sink and splashed water on his forehead. It was still sore, with small red marks where the energy drainers had been.
But that wasn’t what bothered him. For the first time in more than a year, the Tiger was completely silent. Steven hadn’t realized it, but he’d grown accustomed to its low roar, the constant fire in his blood. Without it he felt weak, hollow.
And something else was bothering him. Something awful, an image he couldn’t banish from his mind:
Carlos.
Jasmine and Carlos had founded the Zodiac team together. By the time Steven joined up, the two of them were inseparable. They planned and executed operations as a unit, with Carlos planning the technical details and Jasmine leading the strike team.
But before that—before there even was a Zodiac team—Carlos had worked for Maxwell. It was Carlos who’d perfected the Convergence technology that had allowed Maxwell to loose the Zodiac powers on the world.
And then Carlos had turned against Maxwell, sabotaging the Convergence. Steven had been there—had seen it with his own eyes. That was when he’d received his own powers, through whatever accident of fate had taken him to that strange chamber deep beneath Hong Kong.
But what if…
Steven closed his eyes. He didn’t want to think it.
What if Carlos had never really turned against Maxwell? What if he’d been working for Maxwell all along, spying on Jasmine and Steven and the others? Maybe Carlos had just been biding his time, waiting to return to Vanguard and continue his work. Maybe he’d played them all, deceived them, for more than a year.
Jasmine was back in Greenland right then, depriving herself of sleep and human contact, devoting all her energies to her obsessive search. Meanwhile, the object of that search was there—doing Maxwell’s dirty work.
Carlos’s smile, Steven thought. The way he looked at me…
He wandered to the side of his cell and studied the energy bars. Hesitantly, he reached out and touched one. A painful electric shock ran through him. Where his finger was making contact with the bar, images pulsed in the energy, flickering like a sped-up film. They were all Zodiac images: a ram, a snake, a rooster. Rat, tiger, dragon.
Outside the cell, two guards sat at a small central command post. They studied screens showing various camera angles of the Vanguard headquarters: an access road, a guard tower, an aeria
l view of the eerie white domes.
They’re not even paying attention to me, Steven realized. Without my power, I’m nothing to them.
He was still touching the bar. The pain grew stronger, spreading like daggers up his hand and into his arm. He yanked his finger away.
“Kinda hypnotic, huh?” someone said.
Steven squinted past the bars, into the darkness. He could see, for the first time, a man standing in the next cell. He was tall and blond, and as he approached he pointed toward the spot where Steven’s finger had been.
“Hurts like crazy. But when they first put me in here, I still stared at it for a long time. Ten minutes, maybe. Almost fried my pinky finger.”
Without the pressure of Steven’s finger, the energy appeared solid again. The Zodiac images were gone.
Steven looked up. Now that the man stood directly on the other side of the bars, Steven recognized him. He was another Zodiac wielder, the only one whose body changed significantly when he used his powers. Steven had seen him only briefly in human form—but the mangled ear and missing eye were a dead giveaway.
“Dog,” Steven said.
“Not anymore,” came a deep female voice. “Now he’s just Nicky.”
Steven whirled around. In the cell on the opposite side of his, a muscular woman stood watching. Even before he saw her clearly, Steven knew who she was: Horse.
Horse pointed at the energy grid. “These bars,” she said. “They’re some particular combination of qi/ley-line energy. I don’t understand it. Long story short: they’ll give a normal person a nasty shock, but they’re specifically designed to stop Zodiac power users.”
Steven frowned. “But I don’t have my powers anymore.”
“Maxwell ain’t takin’ any chances,” Nicky replied. “That’s why we’re here.”
Steven looked from Nicky to Horse. Nicky’s body showed no trace of his Dog fur, and Horse—Josie, that was her name—seemed slightly smaller and weaker. They didn’t look like the same people who’d teamed up with him to move that truck in Dubai, mere days before.
“He took your powers, too,” Steven said.
A quick flash of memory came to Steven: the jiānyù sphere shifting briefly into the shape of a horse, then a dog. So he had seen that, after all.
“That’s right,” Josie said. “But he wants to make sure we don’t have any trace of Zodiac energy left. So he’s holding us here till…I don’t know how long, actually.”
“He’s gonna lock us all up eventually,” Nicky said, a gloomy expression on his face. “Your loser friends and guys like Ox who ran out on him. Even the Vanguard agents like Monkey and Snake.”
“Why are they still working for him, then?” Steven asked.
“They don’t know.” Josie shook her head in despair. “They don’t know what’s gonna happen to them.”
Steven moved closer to her. “Did he trap you, too?”
“Ha!” Nicky laughed, shaking his head. “He didn’t have to. We crawled right back to him after Dubai, looking for work.”
“Stupid. Stupid,” Josie said. She turned away, clenching her fists. “Last year, I swore I’d never work for him again.”
“It’s their fault,” Nicky said, pointing at Steven. “The kid here and his friends. They made us look like idiots—”
“No,” Josie said. “It’s not their fault. If we looked like idiots in Dubai, we did it to ourselves.” She paused. “Guess I got what I deserved.”
Steven looked at her, then back over at Nicky. He remembered working with them in Dubai, the three of them sharing Zodiac energy to do something none of them could accomplish individually. That had been just a few days before, but it seemed like an eternity had passed.
Since we all had powers.
He felt a wave of despair. They seem so weak, he thought, so defeated. And me…
…I’m a hero. Remember?
“No,” he said. “We’re getting out of here.”
Dog laughed. “How exactly are we doing that? With no powers?”
“I have powers,” Steven said.
He closed his eyes and concentrated. The world outside faded away: the cells, the guards, the Zodiac-proof bars. All that remained was Steven…
…and his grandfather.
Steven remembered Jasmine’s coaching, the meditation techniques she’d taught him. Find a spirit guide, she’d said, some person or animal that can help you dig deep. Someone who knows you and can lead you to the hidden parts of yourself.
Steven’s late grandfather had raised him, taken care of him while his parents were busy building their corporate empire. Grandfather had always been his guide, as well as his link to his Chinese heritage. The old man had been an easy choice.
Steven looked inward. His grandfather’s wrinkled face smiled at him. Grandfather pointed a withered finger downward, then took Steven’s hand and leaped.
Together, they dove deep into Steven’s mind. They passed faces and buildings, sounds and smells. Steven caught a glimpse of Jasmine and Carlos, smiling as they assembled the Zodiac team for the first time. Then he saw his high school class, milling about the New China Heritage Museum, unaware of the Convergence energies bubbling under their feet.
A sound was rising—a faint growl. Still smiling, Steven’s grandfather turned toward the sound. In the darkness below, Steven could see an animal, coiled into a tight ball to protect itself.
The Tiger.
As Steven approached, the beast turned its head toward him. Its eyes seemed to flare, its courage returning at the sight of its host. It opened its mouth, but instead of the usual deafening roar, only a low snarl came out.
Steven staggered, suddenly exhausted. He opened his eyes. Nicky and Josie were staring at him from either side of his cell, through the bars.
“Well?” Steven asked.
“The Tiger appeared above you,” Josie admitted. “But only for a second.”
“The Zodiac power is still inside us,” Steven said. “We all had it, even before the Convergence. The hard part is using it.”
She shook her head, keeping her voice low. “I’ve fought the Tiger—fought you—before. It looked like a shadow of itself, just now.”
“I can do this,” he insisted. “I can get us out of here.”
“You’ll never keep it up,” Nicky said. “Not long enough to take out those guards.”
Steven turned toward the guard station. One man was snoring, and the other one laughed at a cartoon in his magazine. They hadn’t noticed the prisoners talking.
“I don’t have to take out the guards,” Steven said. “All I have to do is get through these bars, and then I can let you two out.”
Josie frowned, considering.
“But I need a distraction,” Steven continued. “If the guards see me doing this, they’ll stop me.”
“Two guards,” Josie said. “We’ll need to distract both of ’em.”
She hesitated.
“What?” Steven asked.
Josie turned to face him directly. “How do you know you can trust us?”
Steven shrugged. “I don’t, I guess. But you have to start trusting sometime.”
He thought he saw doubt on her face.
She was quiet for a long moment, then nodded. “I can take one guard. Nicky?”
Nicky gave her a nasty smile. For the first time, he seemed almost like his old self. “Just watch me,” he said.
The three of them stood at the front of their respective cells, each facing the bars leading to the guard station.
“Ready?” Steven whispered.
Josie nodded sharply, looking straight at the guards. Nicky shifted back and forth like a boxer getting ready for a match. Then he gave Steven a crooked smile.
“Go,” Steven said.
“Hey!” Josie called.
The sleeping man opened one eye. The other guard looked up from his magazine, shrugged, then went back to reading.
“Hey!” she yelled.
The guard sighed and th
rew the magazine down on the monitor console. He crossed over to Josie’s cell. “What is it?”
“I’m not supposed to be in here,” she said.
The guard shrugged again. “That’s not my call.”
“You don’t understand,” Josie insisted. “I work for Maxwell. I was trying to save him when these two maniacs attacked!”
“It’s true,” Steven said, keeping his distance from the bars leading to Josie’s cell. “She’s not on my team!”
The guard shook his head. “I don’t get involved in Zodiac business,” he said. “That’s up to Maxwell.”
Just then, Nicky let out a howl of pain. He dropped to the floor and clutched his stomach.
“My gut,” Nicky cried. “It’s on fire!”
The guard at Josie’s cell started to move past Steven, toward Nicky’s cell. But Josie snapped at him, stopping him in his tracks. “Hey. I’m talking to you!”
The guard turned to her. “Lady, there’s something wrong with your boyfriend.”
“‘Boyfriend’? Listen, buddy. When Maxwell hears about this, he’ll hang you in his garden and use you for target practice!”
The second guard reluctantly roused himself. He crossed over to Nicky and crouched down to peer through the energy bars. The now-furless Dog was writhing around on the floor, moaning.
“What’s wrong with you?” the guard asked.
“I dunno,” Nicky gasped. “But it hurts!”
Steven cast quick glances from side to side. The first guard was still arguing with Josie. The second one dropped to his hands and knees, trying to examine Nicky through the barrier. Neither of them was looking at Steven.
He sucked in a breath, gritted his teeth, and walked into the bars.
The electric charge lanced through him at every point of contact: his arms, his legs, his torso and face. The pain was sharp and biting, and it seemed to come from everywhere at once. He ground his teeth together, muffled a cry, and marched forward.
“Lady,” the first guard was saying, “I cannot let you out of here.”
“Do you need a Milk Bone?” the second guard asked Nicky.