“Tim did.” Da Vinci sighed. “I was off training Rigan at the time.”
She looked at Tim with genuine surprise and respect in her expression. Tim did little but grimace in return.
“You were more demanding than I was.” She spoke peacefully and walked smoothly. She was thinking of work. Da Vinci could see it in the calmness in her face. She was far from the humid, dense forest that surrounded them. The breeze gently brushed through the trees, the sounds of birds filled in the silence, but eventually it ended—as all things must.
“Quiet…” Tim hushed the group and placed his arm out in front of Da Vinci. Diana had already stopped. “I can hear someone.”
Diana and Tim stood still, listening in on the muffled voices coming closer.
Suddenly, they came into view, traversing the rugged terrain of the woods. It was a pair of Soviet agents looking more bored than brute. There was Gulliver, tall and lanky, with a head of light brown hair combed and swept to the side. He was the one who’d shot Da Vinci the night he was kidnapped. And Kal, even taller and significantly bulkier, with black hair that reached his shoulders. He was the one who’d kidnapped Da Vinci. Both wore maroon combat garb.
“About time.” Da Vinci began looking for the third member of their team. When he turned around he found himself face to face with an intimidating and familiar woman.
“Retreat is not an option.” Nikola broke the silence first.
They were cornered. Da Vinci was ready to run when Diana placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Nikola, sweetheart.” Her nails dug into Da Vinci’s shoulder, but she stayed in control.
Nikola smirked, her finger pressing against the trigger guard. “Funny that we’d meet again and it’d be like this.”
Nikola began to release the safety on her weapon when Da Vinci started screaming.
“Wait! Wait! Wait,” he shouted. “Christ! Eaaaasy! Let’s see if we can talk this out first. Unbelievable. I’d put money on you not having kill-on-sight orders. They want us alive, don’t they?” Da Vinci huffed and pulled his shoulder out from under Diana’s hand, then turned a full circle to lock gazes with Gulliver. “We gonna talk?”
Looking between Kal and Nikola, Gulliver stepped between the USA spies and his teammates. “Of course, Niccolò. Do you remember me?”
“Hard to forget the man who shot me,” Da Vinci said.
“You’re looking a little rough these days. Third eye treating you well?” Gulliver asked.
“Better than you’ve treated us,” Da Vinci snapped back.
Gulliver shifted his weight onto his right hip and buried his glare into Da Vinci. “So, you three will be coming home to us today then?”
“Conditions.” Da Vinci had a cold tone.
“Let bygones be bygones, comrades. Come home with us now, or we’ll force you.” Gulliver extended his arms outward and stepped closer to Da Vinci, as though welcoming him in with a hug. “We are offering you a mulligan. Come willingly and any previous betrayal will go unpunished. As an added incentive, we will also promise the survival of your protégé.”
“On what conditions?” Da Vinci repeated flatly. He’d never been the overzealous showboating type.
“Complete surrender.” Gulliver rolled his eyes. “You’re not really in a negotiating position. Judging by the unruly beard, dirty bandages, and scant frame, I’d say your teammates can’t take care of you, and you certainly can’t survive on your own.” Gulliver was right in that way. “Come home, comrade. We are the backbone of the working class, the proletariat. Save your protégé, save your partner, and save the girl.” Gulliver’s gaze flicked to Diana before returning to Da Vinci. “Convince them to come back because you three will starve out here before we let you escape.”
Gulliver had some of the iciest eyes Da Vinci had ever seen, but he did not waver.
Leaning his face in close, Da Vinci whispered to Gulliver, their partners out of earshot, “Have you considered that I have seen more of your future than you have, Gulliver?” Da Vinci lowered his voice and his devious tone intensified. “I know you and him are shagging, but I’m more interested in how he and Nikola would take it if they knew you were a double agent.” Da Vinci took in a sharp inhale. “I know a bad negotiator when I see one, and I know a good negotiator when I see one. You are neither. You’re fucking faking.” Gulliver’s entire body tensed and Da Vinci knew he had him. “If I were to guess, and I need not guess because I know, you’re a low-level British Intelligence agent.”
“It wasn’t supposed to get this far.” Gulliver’s eyes were wide, and there were clearly restrained words trapped in his throat. “I don’t know how to get out.”
“Well…” Da Vinci sighed, tired of the exchange. “You’ve made your bed, now lie in it.” Da Vinci swung and swung hard, knocking Gulliver back.
Gulliver’s face bled from Da Vinci’s sucker punch. “Bloody hell!” Gulliver stumbled, covering his jaw with his hand. “You sleazy git!”
Da Vinci didn’t respond, instead he swung for another punch, but he was too slow. Gulliver easily deflected him.
Kal was coming up from behind fast, heading for Da Vinci. Diana wasted no time. She pounced on Kal. They hit the ground and rolled. Kal reached for his gun, but Diana instantly snatched it from him and threw it away from their fight. She was powerful in her human form. Now, she was a monster.
“Are you certain you want this fight?” Diana spoke confidently, then leaned in close and cooed out of habit.
“Your beauty is gone, Goddess.” Kal spoke with a thick Russian accent and not a hint of genuine emotion. She threw a blind punch and sent him crashing to the ground.
“Gulliver, go!” In the fray of things, Kal found his partner.
Da Vinci had no intention of letting Gulliver go. His field training was kicking in, and he was ready to tear the Englishman down, but in the background of the madness, Nikola’s gun went off and Da Vinci spun around just in time to see Tim get shot. Even though Da Vinci knew it was coming, the shock of watching his partner get shot and then stagger back as though nothing had happened hit hard. He was winded without even being hit.
In that moment of weakness, Gulliver took off.
“Dammit.” Da Vinci paused, waiting for Tim to charge at Nikola before chasing after Gulliver.
DIANA’S ENTIRE BODY was on fire with adrenaline, her mind raging. Kal had taken part in tearing her down, and she was hungry for retribution. He fought fruitlessly. He swung, hit, and her skin would crack, but she hardly faltered. Then she struck back with unmatched force. In the background, she barely made out the shapes of Nikola and Tim going toe to toe. She was holding her own, not through punches but avoidance. She’d always been able to keep a fight going.
“You should come back with us.” Kal narrowed his gaze, giving Diana a cold glare. “Don’t you think letting her kill you is more satisfying than forcing her to work with you again?”
“Go fuck yourself.” Diana swung her leg up, and despite Kal initially blocking her, the swing had such strength it still landed against his side and cracked his ribs. He doubled over. She swung up again, and her fist landed in his face, knocking him backward.
Kal smacked the ground. She didn’t wait to grab a handful of his hair and yank his face up. “Get up,” Diana growled. “Fight me.” The past week was boiling in the back of her mind. “You’ll be dead by the time I’m through with you.”
Diana found immense pleasure in the blood inching down his face. Nevertheless, he stumbled back to his feet and extended his fists. Resilient. She could respect that.
She swung from her right. He dodged down. She threw up her leg, but he quickly grabbed behind her calf and threw her off balance, flipping her backward. Preemptive, she extended her arms and fell into the flip, moving swiftly and landing effortlessly.
As a human, Diana was unreachable, unyielding, adaptable. As a monster, she was undefeatable.
If he was panicking, Diana couldn’t tell. He seemed controlled, aloof. Inju
red as he was, he kept fighting. She charged at him. But, as fate would have it, he was prepared and he got the one clean hit he needed. As she ran at him, he swung, his fist cutting deep into her stomach. She recoiled backward.
Diana’s body twisted from the punch. She hurtled toward the ground, hundreds of pieces of skin and shell flying through the air around her. Her muscles peeked out from behind her chest and arms. That said, it really didn’t hurt.
Once on the ground, she reacted fast enough to roll away from Kal’s follow-up kick and pull herself back to her feet. Her face was already healing, a new shell growing in over the exposed muscle. She tauntingly shook her head before striking Kal. He was too stunned to dodge.
Within seconds of her hit landing, Diana had him straddled on the ground. Her fists drew back with sharp jerks as she kept throwing punches, not keeping track or caring about what would be left of Kal when she was done.
She would have killed him, too, had Nikola not come up behind her and pulled her off with one clean yank. “Get out of here, Kal.” Nikola’s face was scratched up, the sleeve of her garb torn clean off, and her arm swollen and bruising. She offered her good arm to him and quickly pulled him up. Kal’s face was bloody and swollen. He propped himself under Nikola’s arm. Diana was still down after being thrown.
Kal huffed and heaved, only sharp wheezes coming out of him.
“We’ll be all right,” Nikola assured him. “We need to book it. You’ll bleed out otherwise. I’ve got Dresden off our backs for now, but we’ve got to be fast.” Nikola hesitated for a moment, staring at Diana. She should’ve been up by then. She should have gotten up and taken them both down, but she stayed still. This was intentional, both she and likely Nikola knew it.
“Let’s go.” Nikola propped Kal’s arm against her good shoulder and guided the two of them out of the woods as quickly as possible.
Dusk was just settling in. Diana turned her gaze to the sky, the sound of Nikola and Kal limping off just a few feet from her. She’d let them escape. Rather than fight, she wanted to lie there and take in the pain of her insides breaking. It was the first pain she’d felt in weeks. The skin on her fists was worn down to nothing but semisolid membrane. She’d done more than bust Kal’s face. She destroyed it. If he didn’t bleed to death during their escape, she’d be surprised. Tim came into the clearing perhaps ten or fifteen minutes after silence had finally rested in the valley.
“Diana, are you okay?” Tim came over to her with about as much urgency as he could muster on any occasion.
“You got shot and you’re still standing. Impressive.” She came alive again and cracked her neck as she stood. The majority of her had already healed over. “And good, thank you. Better than in a long time.”
“Catharsis does wonders,” Tim said. “Where’s Da Vinci?”
DESPITE THE SCREAMS of battle, the shattering of bones and noses, cries, shrieks, and blood-gurgling gasps, nothing could penetrate all the static that ran through Da Vinci’s mind as he stared down at the face of Rigan Hevel. Things were not as they had seemed.
In the blur of his visions, Rigan looked fine. Rigan looked alive. Rigan looked well, but upon closer inspection, Da Vinci realized he hadn’t saved him. He’d damned him. Rigan was grossly beaten, scratches and scabs covered his face and throat, but what was truly unsettling about the boy was the scales forming on Rigan’s chest and his face. Three deep slits protruded from his neck, and from them, he breathed. His ears were deformed, fin-like and segmented. His hair was gone and his skin produced a damp, oozy slime. Between his toes and fingers was webbing. Where a smile once resided, now a mouth of crooked shark-like teeth could be found. In a few days, he’d be fully deformed like Tim and Diana. Rigan was too early on in the transformation process for Da Vinci to see it in the blur of his future-seeing visions.
Tim found Da Vinci first. He spoke, but the words were muffled to Da Vinci.
“How is—” Diana’s voice dropped off as she came into the clearing. “Da Vinci.” She was visibly shaken for a moment but quickly regained composure. “Is he alive?”
He hadn’t moved since he’d found the boy. Da Vinci sat, slumped over Rigan’s body, still wondering how he could have missed this. Something as big as death and as minor as deformity. Da Vinci had always been blind to what he didn’t want to see. “We need to get to shelter.” Da Vinci cleared his throat and then said callously, “He’s going to need time to heal once this process is done.”
Neuroses
SEPTEMBER 19, 1963
“So, scale of one to ten, how accurate is the movie? Honey Ryder, Felix, Dr. No, real or just Hollywood glitz?” Kal and Gulliver sat at the dimly lit corner table in their hotel room. It was covered in playing cards and cigarettes. The radio chimed in the background. The evening telecast was always their white noise of choice. The sky outside had just started to darken.
“Kal, I’m honored you think they based James Bond off me, but that doesn’t change the fact that you have the last two, and you need to give it to me.” Gulliver looked up at Kal’s face, still surprised by its lack of puffiness. Even though Kal suffered serious injury in their scrape with the goddess, he had healed miraculously fast after the introduction of the newly enhanced steroid, all of the invincibility, none of the physical deformities. Once the KGB realized they weren’t getting the CIA agents out of the mountains without equal strength, they expedited the improvement process on drugs. Kal was alive because of it.
“I do not have the last two.” Kal kept his gaze on his cards and his face stiff. “It is irrational that you think I do.”
Gulliver looked from his own hand to Kal, and then back again, scrunching and unscrunching his face as he reexamined his logic. Finally, he said, “Yes, yes you do.”
“I do not,” Kal replied.
“Let me see your hand.” Gulliver leaned across the table, fighting Kal for his cards. Kal kept jumping his hands around, a suggestion of a smile on his face. Gulliver scrambled out of his seat in an attempt grab the cards.
“I do not know why you are doing this. I do not have the two.” Kal quickly stood and raised his hands above his head. Given how incredibly tall Kal was to begin with, Gulliver was struggling.
“You are lying!” Gulliver tiptoed, jumped, and then knocked the cards right out of Kal’s hand. Kings, queens, and aces fluttered down to the ground, as did the two of spades. Gulliver spotted it in an instant. “Oh, my god, I knew you were lying!” He wheezed, laughter bubbling in his throat.
“English is not my first language,” Kal replied.
“My god, Kal,” Gulliver guffawed. Kal was finally losing it. His cool and stoic façade melted away in favor of laughter. “It’s numerical,” Gulliver finished.
“You are so upset.” Kal wrapped an arm around Gulliver’s waist, pulling him closer.
“I always get so upset!” Gulliver groaned. “You are bloody ridiculous. The next time you pretend not to speak English, I’ll just switch to Russian.”
“Numerically, I do not think it would matter.” Kal threw his head back, still laughing. He took the moment to pull his hair down from its bun and give Gulliver a quick kiss on the forehead.
Their mirth was just dying down when Gulliver stiffened. The sound of clicking heels struck him to the core. “We’re the only ones on this floor. That’s got to be her.”
“Oh.” Kal looked around the trashed room, wine and rum bottles occupying the corners and clothes draped all over the beds. “That is no good. It must have been bad news.”
“You don’t think the commander—”
Kal cut Gulliver off, “We cannot worry about it now. We need the room to look good before she comes.”
Like a switch had been flipped, the two sped off to hide their copious amounts of booze and dirty clothes. Gulliver shoved his stuff into his paisley suitcase. Kal threw most of his in the tub. By the time Nikola’s fist rapped on the door, the room looked semi-decent.
“Just a second,” Gulliver called out. When Nikol
a didn’t reply with a snide remark or order them to hurry, Gulliver swallowed hard. “This is bad.” His heart rate picked up as he worried what could have possibly zapped Nikola’s attitude.
“Calm down. We are good,” Kal assured him before opening the door on a disenchanted Nikola.
She stood in the hallway for a while before uttering a hello. When she walked in, she patted Kal on the shoulder. “You’re going to want to sit, big guy.” She grabbed a chair from the end table where a mess of cards and water stains sat. She was going to comment on the mess. Gulliver knew it before she said it.
“If you two are gonna gamble and drink, use a goddamn coaster like the good lord intended.” Even though her voice was aggressively neutral, this was a joke. It’d taken Gulliver a while to warm up to her curt witticisms.
She wiped the condensation from the table and then sat, the bottom hem of her pantsuit pulling up just enough to show the tight ankle straps of her pumps.
“Is the commander reassigning us?” Kal asked.
Gulliver was always relieved when Kal asked the questions on his mind for him. They joined her at the table, sitting an “appropriate” space away from each other.
“We’re not getting reassigned,” she replied.
The anxiety in Kal’s eyes left just in time to be replaced.
“We’re to return to the Carolina Facility. Expect to be gone for a few weeks.”
“Why?” Gulliver had kept his calm for all of a minute. His temper was rarely seen but impossible to ignore when it came.
“Unspecified purposes.” Even though Nikola’s words had a defeated tone to them, Gulliver could easily see that she was sugarcoating.
There was a long pause while everyone came to the same conclusion.
“Unspecified purposes,” Gulliver replied. “We’re getting the steroid.”
“You two won’t get a say in it?” Kal snuck a glance at Gulliver. He’d been getting sloppier over the past few months. If Nikola wasn’t on to them already, she would be soon.
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