by Stan Lee
I should keep pressing, Liam thought. I should intimidate him, pepper him with questions, poke holes in every story he tells me. Not let up the pressure till I know everything he knows.
But that’s not me, is it?
Liam leaned back in his chair. When he spoke again, his voice was gentle. “Why did you do it? Work for Maxwell?”
Ox shrugged. “Money was good.”
“Nah. That’s an excuse, a reason you tell yerself.”
Ox sighed and turned away.
“We used to talk about this,” he said. “Me and the others, Josie and Nicky in particular. Back when we were ordinary soldiers, it was easy to go along. Easy to obey orders.”
Liam reached into his pocket and fingered his dog tags. Not so easy for some of us, he thought.
“But once we got the Zodiac powers,” Ox continued, “everything changed. It was like we had some greater responsibility. Like we had to look at ourselves and ask, ‘What am I doing? How am I using this power to change the world, myself, my friends?’”
Liam frowned. “Go on.”
“Josie and me, we talked about it the most. We knew Maxwell was off the rails, that this power was more than he should be trusted with. One time, we even talked about doing something about it.”
“But you were afraid.”
“I was afraid. Josie…with her, it was something different.” Ox turned away, as if remembering something painful. “She’s a good person. And she’s a great fighter—there’s nobody better to have at your side. But inside, she’s weak. I knew whatever happened, whatever we decided, sooner or later she’d go crawling back to Maxwell.”
He turned, then, and stared earnestly at Liam. “Not me. Mate.”
Liam stared back. There wasn’t a trace of deception, of guile on Ox’s face. And yet…
“I believe you, man.” Liam grimaced. “But you’ve still got a bloody transmitter in your head!”
Liam’s eyes flickered to the spot on the wall where the camera was hidden. Ox followed his gaze and stared at the wall for a long moment.
Then Ox reared back in his chair, whipped his head back, and slammed his forehead onto the table.
The table cracked under the impact. Liam shot to his feet, alarmed, and started to move forward.
But Ox held out a hand. He looked up through a haze of energy, through the fierce ox avatar flashing into being all around him. He glared at Liam through the blood starting to drip down his forehead. “Don’t,” he said.
Then he smashed his head down again.
Liam stepped back, forcing himself to watch as Ox bashed his own forehead against the surface of the table two, three more times. Ox was one of the most powerful people on the planet; each impact shook the room. The table’s surface cracked again, then split in half. The ox form above his head snorted and howled in pain.
With the sixth impact, the table’s legs gave way. It crumbled to the ground.
Ox staggered to his feet. Liam jumped up and circled the ruins of the table. He grabbed Ox by the arm to steady him.
Ox shook his head, dazed. Above his eyes, in a pool of dripping blood, Liam could see mangled wires and tiny circuits protruding from the skin.
“‘S’all right, mate,” Liam said. “I got you.”
The door burst open. Duane stopped dead in the doorway, his eyes darting from Ox to Liam to the small analyzer device in his hand. “Transmission ended,” he said.
Roxanne ran in, with her mother just behind. Mrs. LaFleur gasped at the sight of Ox’s bloody forehead, then clutched her daughter’s arm tight. Roxanne patted her mother’s hand, disengaged, and moved forward to stand with Duane and Liam.
“Plane’s fueled and ready,” she said.
Ox tried to speak. He coughed and stumbled. Liam caught him again. Ox nodded and pulled away. He stood upright, as if coming to attention, and turned to face the group.
“When do we leave?” he asked.
ALL DURING THE FLIGHT to Sydney, Steven peppered Rat with questions. But the little man just smiled and refused to answer them. “You’ll have a nice long mother-son chat,” he said, “while I catch up on my TV.”
Rat’s helpers, the small shadow men, accompanied them on the private plane. The men bustled around, checking equipment and bringing Rat food and drinks. When Steven asked who they were, Rat paused before answering.
“I call ’em my Ratlings,” he said. “They’re like me, all born in the Year of the Rat.”
“But they’re not like you,” Steven said. “You have the Zodiac power.”
“So do they. A little of it, anyway.”
Steven wondered how that was possible. He asked a few more questions, but Rat changed the subject every time.
After they landed, the little men hustled them into a van. Steven caught only the briefest glimpse of Sydney through the van’s window: clean streets, modern buildings, and a big bridge that looked like a stretched-out Slinky toy.
The hotel was old but neat. Rat asked the little men to wait outside. Then he ushered Steven into a large open suite. The living room area had a couch and a TV, and a small kitchen was furnished with a table and two chairs.
His mother sat at the kitchen table, elegant as ever in a business suit and low heels. She was drinking from a set of old Chinese teacups, but the table was dominated by an elaborate modern coffee maker. She looked up and nodded at Steven, as if he were an employee who’d been summoned to her office.
Steven shifted back and forth on his feet, nervous. He hadn’t spoken to his mother in person for more than a year.
Rat went straight to the sitting room and plopped himself down on the couch. He turned on the TV, which showed only static. He frowned at it and leaned forward, watching the screen closely. He didn’t change the channel.
“Steven,” Mrs. Lee said. “You look a bit ragged.”
Her voice was completely level, every word modulated. Does she even know I’ve been away? he thought. Does she have any idea where I’ve been, what I’ve gone through?
He approached her, feeling awkward. The liquid in her teacup, he noticed, was dark brown. “Still don’t like tea, huh, Mom?”
“I had endless arguments with Father—your grandfather—about that. Rest his soul.”
At the mention of his grandfather, Steven’s anxiety turned to sadness. He’d spent months trying not to think about that loss. Grandfather had basically raised him while his parents were occupied making business deals for LeeCo, their company. His mother had barely paid any attention to him the whole time he was growing up.
And now here she is.
“Why?” he asked.
Mrs. Lee looked up, and for a moment he thought she was going to ask him to explain the question. But instead she gestured at the second chair. “Sit,” she said. “You’re old enough for coffee, aren’t you?”
“I’m old enough,” he replied. “But I don’t like it.”
A humorless smile spread across her face. “Your father’s child.”
She took a sip of coffee and waited.
Steven looked around. Rat lay sprawled on the couch, staring at the muted TV. Its screen still showed raw static.
Steven walked over and sat down across from his mother. He felt six years old again.
“I have a lot of things to tell you,” Mrs. Lee said, “and not much time. So I need you to listen and, if you can manage it, hold your questions until the end.”
“I can manage it,” he said. He felt his temper rising. “Do you think I’m still a kid?”
“Is that a question?”
He sat back in his chair, fuming.
“We’ve been watching Jasmine’s operation,” Mrs. Lee said. “To be blunt, it’s falling apart.”
“You know about Jasmine?” Steven asked.
She shot him a look. But he couldn’t stop himself. “You haven’t called me for months,” he continued. “I never even told you where I was.”
“We knew. We know all about Jasmine, and about Maxwell, too.” She pau
sed and took a deep breath. “Do you know why we’ve spent so much time building LeeCo? Why we dedicated ourselves to it to the exclusion of all else, including our son?”
Was that a quaver in her voice when she said son?
“LeeCo started small,” she continued. “Your father had connections back in China, and we manufactured high-end meditation devices: crystals, white-noise machines, that sort of thing. What they used to call ‘New Age.’ When you were born, we were making a modest but steady living.
“Then we discovered qi energy.”
Steven looked up sharply. He’d heard that term several times—most recently when Maxwell and his minions had extracted the Tiger power from him.
“I see you’re familiar with qi. It runs through the Earth, through all living things. We discovered it could be harnessed, used to focus thoughts and enhance meditation. We started incorporating low-powered qi amplifiers into several of our products.
“This attracted the attention of a man called Maxwell. He offered to fund our research, in exchange for access to the results. As part of the deal, he also agreed to fund our expansion into a multinational corporation.”
“Maxwell,” Steven repeated.
“Yes. He was quite generous—and extremely charming. We knew of his reputation; we’d heard rumors of his destructive tendencies. But the opportunity was too great to resist.” She exhaled and took a deep draft of coffee. “In western terms, you could say we sold our souls to the devil.”
Steven nodded. The missing pieces of his childhood were beginning to fall into place.
“That was eleven years ago,” Mrs. Lee continued, “when you were still very small. We expanded our research, and we diversified our operations. Maxwell didn’t care what other business we pursued, as long as the qi-energy research continued. And whenever we needed money, he was there.”
Steven grimaced. “He’s reliable, all right.”
“We didn’t know that he was already planning what came to be known as Project Zodiac. Maxwell had researched the history of the Zodiac wielders, and he knew the time of the Convergence was coming. He was planning to use this to build an army of superpowered warriors.”
“And…” Steven paused and looked his mother in the eye. “And you helped him.”
“Unwittingly.” She returned his gaze without flinching. “But we had many late-night discussions about this, your father and I. And we decided that Maxwell is too unstable, too dangerous to be trusted with the Zodiac power.”
“Good decision,” Steven replied. “But a little late. Are you still in business with him?”
“Again, if you could hold your questions…” She shrugged. “Yes. Or so he thinks, at any rate. Maxwell has many unreliable allies.”
Rat spoke up without turning around. “My ears are burning.”
“We also developed the technology that allows Rat to share a small part of his power,” Mrs. Lee said. “His little army has been very useful to us.”
Steven glanced over at Rat. For just a moment he thought he saw, on the blurry TV screen, an image of Liam—Ram. Liam’s face was contorted with rage. Then the image faded and the screen returned to static.
“As the Convergence approached,” Mrs. Lee continued, “we determined that we had to act. We couldn’t defy Maxwell openly—he would simply crush us and take our company away. So, after much discussion, we chose another path.”
She turned away from him, toward the samovar. As she poured another cup of coffee, he saw that her hands were trembling.
“Mom?” he asked.
“This is difficult,” she said.
Something in her voice sent shivers through him.
“In that chamber, beneath the surface of Hong Kong,” she said, “Maxwell hoped to concentrate all the power of the Zodiac into himself.”
“I know,” Steven said. “I was there.”
“Do you know why you were there?”
He opened his mouth to reply, then stopped dead. His mother was still turned away, not looking at him.
A recent memory flashed into his mind: Jasmine in the Infosphere, staring at him suspiciously. I always thought it was odd, she’d said, the way you happened to stumble into the Convergence chamber, just in time to get charged up with Zodiac power.
And suddenly he knew.
“You,” he whispered, barely able to look at his mother. “You sent me there.”
Mrs. Lee nodded. “We arranged it all. The class trip to Hong Kong, the tour of the museum. Everything was timed to coincide with the Convergence.” She turned, finally, to look at him with eyes that seemed older than her years. “Something—someone—had to stop Maxwell from absorbing all the power. We knew the only thing that could do that was a Tiger.”
“You used me.” He stared at her, struggling to comprehend. “I was your tool.”
“You are our son.” Her gaze burned into him now. “And I know—both your father and I have known, since you were very small, that you were destined for greatness. But our life back home was too comfortable…too American. You needed a push.”
He shook his head. “Most parents force their kids to play Little League or something.”
“We are not most parents,” she replied, “and you are no ordinary boy. You are a Tiger—perhaps the fiercest, most powerful Zodiac the world has ever known.”
“So…wait. Hold up a minute.” He turned away. “You arranged for me to be present at the Convergence, and then…what? Did you tell Jasmine and Carlos to scoop me up and take me with them, too?”
“No. We were aware of Jasmine, but we didn’t know about her plans. When she sabotaged the Convergence, that caught us by surprise.” She frowned. “But when you decided to go back to Greenland with her, we decided that was best. Where better to learn about your new power than with others of your kind?”
“Yeah,” he said. “At least there I had a family.”
Mrs. Lee’s composure broke for just a moment as a look of pain passed across her face. Steven thought: So I can hurt her, after all.
He felt a surge of self-satisfaction. Then, immediately, he hated himself for it.
“You left me alone for a year,” he said. “Why step in now?”
“Because, as I said, things are falling apart.” She grimaced. “The Rabbit has left your team. The Rooster may depart soon. Jasmine has lost all perspective. Maxwell managed to capture you, and he might well have killed you after he was sure your power was gone.”
Steven shook his head. He wanted to listen, wanted to give his mother the benefit of the doubt. But this news, this revelation—it was too much. All he wanted right then was to hurt her.
“So you do care about me,” he said, his voice brittle and shaky. “A little anyway.”
“There’s nothing we care about more,” she said. “And you must believe me: we would not have placed you in this situation if we didn’t think you could handle it.”
He frowned.
“Even now, your father believes we should see how events play out.” She turned away. “He doesn’t know I’m here.”
Rat turned toward them, grinning. “AWWWK-ward,” he said.
Mrs. Lee ignored him. “You must act soon,” she said to Steven. “Maxwell gained an almost unbeatable advantage when Carlos returned to him.”
“Carlos,” Steven said. “Is he really working with Maxwell again?”
“Oh, yes.” Mrs. Lee shook her head sadly. “Back at Dragon’s Gate, Carlos and Jasmine managed to drain the Dragon power from Maxwell. But the power never completely leaves a Zodiac wielder. I think you learned that today, when you escaped from Maxwell’s cell.”
Was that a note of pride in her voice? Despite himself, Steven felt his heart swell.
“Maxwell arranged to have Carlos kidnapped,” his mother continued, “and then, with his last shred of Dragon power, he altered Carlos’s mind. He’s done this before, when his own operative Monkey defied him.”
“So Carlos is working for Maxwell,” Steven said, “but not becaus
e he wants to. He’s been brainwashed?”
“That’s right. But it’s not good news. The Dragon’s mind-wipe power is ruthless, absolute, and permanent. Carlos is now Maxwell’s unquestioning ally.” She looked him in the eye. “The process is irreversible.”
“Poor Carlos,” Steven said. He turned away. “Poor Jasmine.”
“Poor human race,” his mother said.
Steven shook his head. His mind was reeling. He’d need a week just to come to terms with everything his mother had told him.
But he didn’t have a week. “Jasmine’s planning an assault on Maxwell’s headquarters,” he said. “It’s set for tomorrow.”
“Actually, she’s already on her way,” Rat said. “She changed the plan after you got snatched up in Berlin.”
Steven shot him a questioning look.
Rat grinned. “I planted a camera inside Ox,” he said. “He had no idea. But it gave me live breaking-news type info to hand off to your mom here.” He gestured at the static-filled TV screen. “They found it and blocked the signal a couple hours ago. Now it seems to have stopped transmitting entirely.”
Steven nodded. So that’s why he’s been staring at that blank screen.
“Maxwell will know that Jasmine is coming,” Mrs. Lee said. “We don’t have much time.”
“Malosi,” Steven said. The pieces were falling together in his mind, almost faster than he could process them. “He’s the key. The Tiger power links the other Zodiacs together. When I use it, it helps the team, strengthens all of our powers. Maxwell’s going to use it the opposite way—to defeat Jasmine and the others!”
Mrs. Lee nodded. “Plans within plans.” She turned away and started rummaging in a bag on the floor.
“I’ve got to go,” Steven said. “I’ve gotta help them.”
“Of course you do,” she replied. “You’re our Tiger.”
“You don’t tell me what to do!”
She stopped and stared at him. For just a moment, everything that had ever passed between them seemed to hang in the air: all the arguments, the neglect, the deceit. Everything that kept a mother and son apart, no matter how much they might love each other.