by Stan Lee
“Upper stems look good,” Carlos said. “Lower branches…slight blockage in branch two.”
“On it,” said the female technician. “Flushing the branch now…qi levels returning to normal.”
Steven pressed his back against the wall of the chamber, shaking his head. What are they talking about?
“All systems nominal.” Carlos turned back toward the hovering figure. “Maxwell, we’re ready for Position Three.”
“No,” Maxwell replied, his voice booming through the chamber. “Position Six.”
Carlos grimaced.
“I told you,” Maxwell continued. “I want the strongest powers first.”
When Carlos hesitated, Maxwell swiveled his hover-vehicle to face the stage. Maxwell’s eyes glowed a fierce, angry green, and a spasm of pain seemed to pass through him.
“Carlos,” Maxwell said. “Your knowledge of the Convergence has gotten us this far. I am grateful, and I would prefer that you complete the procedure.” His voice grew cold. “But if necessary, I can bring in someone else.”
Carlos shook his head quickly and returned to his work.
Maxwell turned away without a word and glided across the center of the chamber. He came to a stop just above another pool, a few spaces closer to Steven.
“I’ve got a slight Fire deficit,” said another male technician.
“I see it,” Carlos replied. “Maria, shunt some Wood energy over to branch five.”
“What?” the woman asked. “That’ll overload that whole branch.”
“Right, uh, my mistake,” Carlos said. “I meant branch four. Qi levels compensated; activating shipan now.”
A whirring noise filled the room. Steven looked up at the source: the shipan, the ancient astrological disk mounted on the narrow ceiling. A large bright light flashed on, one of twelve lamps mounted around the shipan’s outer edge. The spotlight stabbed straight onto the ground.
The other eleven lamps ranged around the edge of the shipan were dark.
“Alignment sequence is go,” the female technician said.
With a loud grinding sound, the shipan began to swivel slowly in place. As it moved, the spotlight traveled along the floor between the pools.
Except, Steven saw now, it wasn’t a floor at all. It was dirt, ordinary soil. That meant the pools hadn’t been brought into the museum after it was constructed. The pools were already here, sunken deep in this strange chamber beneath the Earth. The museum had been constructed above them.
Steven drew in another, deep breath. What is this place?
The shipan ground to a halt, directly above Maxwell’s hovering figure. Its light shone straight down and around him, focused directly on the pool beneath his feet. Maxwell floated between the disk above and the pool below, caught between the two sources of unnatural radiance.
Then Steven noticed something else strange. Something—someone—was creeping along the ground, in the darkness at the edge of the room. A slim, lithe figure, darting from one pool to another, moving closer to Maxwell’s position. Steven couldn’t see the figure clearly; it was keeping to the shadows. But something about the shadow’s motion reminded him of the last time he’d seen Jumanne, the tour guide, as she’d crossed the exhibit hall to the door.
That’s her, he thought. I know it.
Maxwell glanced up at the shipan, then down at the luminous pool. His fists clenched open and closed on the handles of his hover-vehicle. He seemed to be bracing himself for something.
“Resume Convergence,” he said. “Position Six.”
On the central stage, Carlos pointed a finger at the female technician. She tapped out a command on her screen.
On the underside of the shipan, the spotlight surged brighter. Energy crackled across the surface of the disk, pulsing and gathering. At the same time, directly below Maxwell, the pool erupted with light. When the energy from above met the blazing liquid shooting up from below—
—Maxwell screamed.
It was a deep, soul-chilling sound. Steven recognized it immediately as the scream he’d heard upstairs in the museum and then again in the stairwell. It sounds, he thought, as if something’s being ripped out of his body.
Then he realized: No. It’s more like something’s being forced into him. Something foreign, alien.
The energy flared, forming a vertical column. Maxwell’s body became a silhouette, a twitching mass still clinging to its high-tech hover-machine. Something else started to form: a second figure, rearing and bucking in the energy-glow above Maxwell. A raging beast, a creature of pure energy, wild and untamed.
As Steven stared into the glow, the beast coalesced into a huge, wild stallion. Its mouth opened wide, and its mane whipped back and forth in a breathtaking display of silent savagery.
Steven glanced over at the control stage. Carlos and the other technicians stood watching Maxwell with clinical, scientific eyes. Carlos flinched slightly, just once, when Maxwell’s scream rose to a deafening pitch.
Steven cast a look down at the corner of the room again, but the “tour guide” had vanished. If she was still here, she must be hiding deep in the shadows.
The energy flared once, then again. Maxwell raised his head to the heavens and howled, even louder, more savagely than before.
Then, all at once, the energy was gone. The shipan went dark; the liquid splashed back down into the pool. The glow flashed and faded around Maxwell, taking the ethereal stallion-vision with it.
On the control stage, the technicians rushed around, manipulating touchscreen controls. The woman began to speak, but Carlos motioned her to silence. All three of them turned to stare at their leader.
Maxwell still hovered in midair, wobbling slightly. He glowed more brightly than before, like a coal that had been heated in a fire. Green energy leaked from his eyes, his mouth, his fingertips. Liquid from the pool dripped off of him, drying rapidly.
Slowly he looked up, staring just past Steven. His head swiveled to face the control stage. Then he smiled and spoke a single word.
“Horse,” he said.
STEVEN STOOD for a long moment, almost paralyzed. He struggled to collect his thoughts, to make sense of what he had just seen.
I could bounce, he thought. The door’s right behind me. I could bolt back up that staircase, get back to the class, and make up some lame excuse about getting lost. It’d be like all this never happened. I bet, after a while, even I’d think I made it all up in my head.
But there was still Jumanne, the tour guide—or whatever she was. And more than that: There was a mystery here. Something very important, something that might even affect the future of the world.
Something a hero would investigate.
Maxwell raised his head slowly as if it weighed a hundred pounds. “Carlos,” he said. “Position Five.”
“Sir,” the female technician said, “are you sure?”
Maxwell glared at her. When he bared his teeth, a bit of green energy leaked out. The woman stepped back, frightened.
“Maxwell,” Carlos said. “The Zodiac power—it’s not meant to be held by a single person. Especially someone who’s not the appropriate sign.”
“You’re not a Horse!” the woman cried.
That, Steven thought, is a strange thing to say.
Carlos swept an arm around to indicate the pools on the ground. “You’ve absorbed three of the twelve Zodiac signs,” he said. “The rest could kill you.”
“They would kill a person like you. They will make me the most powerful man on Earth.”
There was silence for a moment. Carlos’s gaze flicked briefly down to the ground, below the stage.
“Position Five,” Maxwell repeated.
Carlos nodded. He turned back to his work, issuing a series of low commands to the other techs.
Above, the shipan began to grind once again. A second light flared to life on its underside, blazing down toward another pool.
Maxwell sucked in a deep breath. He glided around the room, moving one
space counterclockwise to the newly lit pool. He slipped easily into the spotlight from the shipan—moving, in the process, one position closer to Steven’s hiding place on the dark catwalk at the edge of the room.
Again, Steven saw a movement down below. He leaned over the edge of the catwalk, conscious of the drop to the ground. It was the woman, Jumanne, still hugging the shadows. She moved swiftly, gracefully, and her hair was pulled up now into a ponytail.
Jumanne crept toward Maxwell. Both of them were converging on Steven’s position—but neither of them seemed to have noticed him. Yet.
I should run, Steven thought, once more. But he couldn’t. Something held him rooted to the spot.
I’ve got to see this through to the end. Whatever this is.
Maxwell took up position above the newly illuminated pool, just as he had with the previous one. “Begin,” he said.
Again, the shipan in the ceiling glowed bright. Again the pool surged upward, meeting the blinding light from above in a flare of power. And again, Maxwell screamed.
Steven glanced down at the corner of the room. He could see Jumanne crouched behind another pool, the next one over. She’s using the pool to hide from Maxwell, Steven realized. And she was pulling something out of a pack, casting nervous glances up at the pulsing column of light.
Maxwell’s head whipped back and forth in the air, flinging drops of the strange green fluid all around. This time, his howl of agony sounded more like a hissing sound. The coiled form of a snake surged into being above him, its scaly head and sharp tongue hissing back and forth in time to Maxwell’s own movements.
Steven stared. The motion was mesmerizing, like the rhythmic motions of a hypnotist’s watch. The snake’s head seemed to turn toward him, its deep red eyes boring deep into his mind.
Then, once again, the energy faded away. Steven shook his head, still trapped by the snake’s hypnotic spell. And then, with a sinking feeling, he realized that Maxwell was staring straight at him.
Slowly, Maxwell twisted the handle-controls of his hover-device. He glided across the room, unhurried, keeping his eyes fixed on Steven. Green radiance leaked from his body, emanating from his face, his clothes, his very pores. He stopped just beyond the edge of the catwalk, hovering in midair, his eyes precisely level with Steven’s.
Then he smiled.
“Look what’s wandered in out of the wild,” Maxwell said. “A young Tiger.”
He sounded as if he’d just caught something for dinner.
Suddenly Steven remembered something. Grandfather used to call me that: “My little Tiger.” Is this an astrology thing? Something about the year I was born?
And then he understood. The horse, the snake. The pools—twelve of them. Twelve signs…just like on grandfather’s compass. He glanced up at the heavily marked disk in the ceiling, then found his gaze drawn back irresistibly to Maxwell’s probing eyes.
“The Zodiac,” Steven said. “Those are the signs.”
Maxwell’s smile stayed fixed. He nodded.
Below, Steven could see activity on the control stage. Carlos pointed, and the two other techs climbed down and started off across the floor toward Steven and Maxwell.
“You’re clever,” Maxwell said. “How did you get in here?”
Steven still couldn’t move. “The door,” he said, trying to sound confident.
Maxwell turned back toward the stage. “I ordered the Convergence chamber sealed.”
“It was,” Carlos replied. But his voice trembled.
The two other techs were running toward the catwalk now, swerving around the pools.
“I already have a Tiger,” Maxwell said, turning back toward Steven. “Unless you think you’re a better choice?”
Steven shrugged. He felt like he was watching a foreign film.
Abruptly Maxwell tipped sideways in midair and swooped away. Without looking back, he gestured at the two techs. “Maria, Fedor,” Maxwell said, “remove him. We can’t have him interfering with the Convergence.” Then he stopped a few feet from the stage and tilted his head back toward Steven. “But hold him. I’d like to continue this little chat later.”
The techs were climbing a small ladder now, a few yards down the catwalk from Steven. They’d be on him in a minute.
He looked around frantically. Maxwell had stopped just above the central stage, leaning down to argue with Carlos. Their voices were low; Steven couldn’t make out what they were saying. But Carlos didn’t look happy.
Above, the shipan glowed softly.
The first of the techs—Fedor, the man—climbed up onto the catwalk. He looked a little unsure of himself. Probably not used to doing guard duty, Steven thought. Still, Steven wasn’t sure he could take two of them in a fight.
But he really didn’t want to “chat” with Maxwell anymore.
Another motion caught his eye, just below. The woman from the museum, Jumanne. He couldn’t see her clearly, but it had to be her. He glanced quickly back at the two technicians advancing on him across the catwalk—
—and then he leaped over the edge.
He dropped through the air, into darkness, landing roughly on the bare ground. He dropped to his knees and tumbled onto his back.
When he looked up, the woman from the museum was just a few feet away, barely visible in the diffuse light from the pools. She was staring at a pair of round metal objects in her hand. Each was about the size of a baseball, and each had a blinking red light on its surface.
“Come on,” she whispered, apparently to the metal spheres. “Comeoncomeoncomeon!”
Steven glanced back up at the catwalk. The two technicians leaned over the edge, peering into the darkness. They didn’t seem to be able to see Steven—but then the female tech, Maria, pointed at the winking red lights in Jumanne’s hand.
Steven took a step toward the mysterious woman. “Uh, hi,” he said. “Are you—”
Without looking up, Jumanne swung her empty hand around and clamped it down hard over Steven’s mouth.
“Keep quiet and I can get you out,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Just do everything I say exactly when I say it.” She shook one of the spherical objects, as if it were a broken remote control. “Come ON!”
“What…what…” Steven stared at the glowing figure above them and swallowed in fear. “What is all this?”
A blinding light washed over them. For a moment, Steven thought it was another power-light from the shipan disk in the ceiling. But when he squinted upward, he saw the hovering form of Maxwell, shining a small arc-light mounted on his hover-vehicle.
Maxwell cast an amused glance at Steven. Then he turned to Jumanne, and his expression turned dark.
“Jasmine,” he said.
Steven turned at a sound. The two technicians were climbing down off the ladder again, pointing and heading straight for Steven and Jumanne. Or Jasmine, he thought. Whatever her name is!
Jasmine looked back up at Maxwell, shading her eyes against the glare. “I was hurt, Maxwell,” she said, her mouth curling up into a nasty smile. “I’m not on your guest list anymore?”
“It’s a private party, Jasmine,” Maxwell replied.
“I get it—glass ceiling. Hold this for me, kid?”
Without looking, she tossed one of the metal spheres at Steven. He fumbled, but managed to catch it.
When he looked up, Jasmine was already in motion. She tossed her sphere up high, barely watching as it followed a lazy arc through the air. Then she leaped forward, aiming a fierce kick at Fedor, the male technician. Her foot struck him square in the stomach, doubling him over. The female tech, Maria, waved a Taser at her, electricity arcing at its tip. Jasmine chopped sideways into Maria’s wrist; the tech cried out in pain and the Taser fell, sparking, to the ground.
Jasmine followed up with a brutal elbow to the back of the woman’s head. Maria grunted and went down. Fedor struggled to rise, but Jasmine took him down with two fierce blows to his solar plexus.
Then she held out a hand,
just in time to catch the sphere she’d thrown into the air. Its light, Steven noticed, was still red. He glanced down at the one in his hands: It was blinking red, too.
Then Jasmine marched back toward Steven, taking long strides. “Kid,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re killing me here.”
She’s barely winded, Steven thought. Who is this woman?
But before Jasmine could reach Steven, Maxwell’s spotlight shone back down on her.
“Very impressive, Jasmine.” Green energy radiated once more from Maxwell’s hovering form. “But time is short, and I can’t let you stay here. Carlos, please—”
A loud grinding noise cut him off. Steven looked up, knowing what he’d see. The shipan, the disk in the ceiling, was glowing. A third light blazed to life, and the disk began its loud, slow, circular movement once again.
Maxwell whirled around in midair. “Carlos?” he called. “What are you doing?”
“Jaz,” Carlos yelled, leaning over the edge of the stage. “Now!”
Jasmine looked down—just as the light turned green on the metal sphere in her hand. She smiled and threw the sphere into the air.
“Game on,” she said.
Maxwell wobbled in midair, dodging the sphere. But he wasn’t her target. The sphere sailed past him and struck the shipan, near its center. On impact, the sphere released an electrical charge, sending sparks dancing across the surface of the giant compass. The shipan ground even louder, and its light dimmed momentarily.
Maxwell had turned to stare at Carlos. “So,” Maxwell said. “A traitor at the very heart of my—”
Jasmine leaped up in the air, surprisingly high, and expertly checked Maxwell with the left side of her body. His hover-vehicle whined in protest, tipping perilously to the side. He managed to find his balance and whirled around, lashing out at her. But she ducked, standing her ground.
Then, shockingly, Maxwell laughed.
“Impressive,” he said. “And yet, so disappointing.”
Jasmine’s eyes flashed with anger. “That’s what—my mother used to say,” she said, reaching out to grab Maxwell by the shoulders. “Remember her?”