by Stan Lee
“Oh, yes.”
Above, the shipan ground to a halt. Its light was steady again, shining down on yet another pool. The pool seemed to glow in response.
Taking advantage of Maxwell’s momentary distraction, Jasmine jumped behind Maxwell and climbed on to his back, grappling with him like a wrestler. She shifted her weight, and the hover-vehicle lurched through the air. She seemed to be steering Maxwell, forcing their combined flight in a particular direction.
“Why are you doing this, Jasmine?” Maxwell asked. “You’re like me: a Dragon. We’re stronger than all of them.”
Then Steven realized where Jasmine was leading Maxwell: toward the glowing pool beneath the shining light of the shipan.
“We answer to no one,” Maxwell added.
“I answer to my conscience,” Jasmine replied. “Ever heard of that?”
Jasmine climbed higher up Maxwell’s back. She placed a foot on Maxwell’s shoulder, bracing herself. She’s going to leap, Steven realized. She’s going to jump into the pool. Or into the light.
But Maxwell grabbed her leg in a firm grip. “Oh, no,” he said, his expression deadly. “Never, little girl. Never.”
Then Maxwell stopped and glanced upward. He turned in alarm, looking first down at Steven, then over toward Carlos—
—just as the brightest, widest beam of all stabbed down, engulfing both Jasmine and Maxwell in a thick cylinder of light. A matching surge of liquid splashed upward from the pool. The hover-vehicle sparked, shorted out, and fell to the ground with a clatter.
Even without the vehicle, Jasmine and Maxwell hung suspended in the air. They cried out together and rose up higher, held in a cocoon of sparkling, eldritch power.
Steven shielded his eyes, struggling to see. Maxwell and Jasmine were barely visible as silhouettes, jerking back and forth like puppets, suspended halfway between the shipan and the ground. As the energy beam held them, an animal figure began to form above their bodies…just as it had with Maxwell, before.
But this figure was different. It was blurry, a double image, as if two different forms were fighting to occupy the same space. One figure was lean and sinewy, like a snake, but with sharp, searching claws and a strange mustache-like growth above its gaping jaws. The other was also reptilian, but with sharply angled bat wings that stretched out wide.
The creature flickered and shifted, morphing rapidly from one form to the other. It opened its jaws and screamed, a piercing sound like nothing Steven had ever heard before.
The energy beam held both Jasmine and Maxwell for a long moment, filling both their bodies with its unknown mystic power. Then, all at once, it blinked off.
Maxwell glowed bright now. The energy beast resolved itself into the second, winged form. Maxwell spread his arms, and above, the creature’s bat wings flared out along with them.
Jasmine dropped like a rock. She landed hard at Steven’s feet, and grunted softly.
Maxwell was still hovering. When he spoke, his voice seemed to echo off the metal walls. He didn’t sound human anymore.
“Young Tiger,” he repeated. Power glowed from his eyes, his mouth.
Steven stared upward. His throat was dry. The dark-winged phantasm had wrapped itself tightly around its host. Maxwell shone like a fully charged battery, smiling as if he’d just won every lottery in the world.
“Meet the Dragon,” Maxwell said.
TIME SEEMED TO stop for a moment in that strange room beneath the world.
Maxwell stared down at Steven, glowing bright. Whatever the Zodiac was, it was clearly powerful. Maxwell’s fists were clenched tight, energy flaring out from them in waves, and he clearly no longer needed a vehicle in order to fly. The Dragon figure hissed and spat, rising proudly above its master.
Steven glanced down at Jasmine. She lay on the ground between the pools, dazed, struggling to rise. The bodies of the two technicians lay still, nearby.
Jasmine and Maxwell, Steven thought. They can both do such amazing things. And I’m just a kid. I’m helpless—I’m a—
—a Tiger.
He didn’t know what that meant. He didn’t really know what was going on in this room, or what was at stake. But as he cast another glance at Jasmine, somehow he knew: I have to help her.
He clenched his fists and glared up at Maxwell. If I jump, he thought, I can tackle him. Tackle a big glowing man with crazy mystical powers? Oh, man, this is gonna hurt—
Then the grinding sound rose up again, louder and harsher than before. It seemed to drill into Steven’s ears, filling the room with noise. He and Maxwell glanced up together—just as every light on the shipan flared to life at once, bathing the room in blinding radiance.
Steven shrank back, blinking and covering his ears. But Maxwell was already moving, swooping through the air toward the center of the room.
“CARLOS!” Maxwell screamed.
Steven peered through the light. On the stage, Carlos moved quickly around, yanking out cords and smashing keyboards. He jabbed his elbow into a glass screen, shattering it. Sparks flew, igniting a low fire that blazed across the array of machinery.
Then Carlos saw Maxwell coming. His eyes widened with fear. He tossed a broken computer display up at Maxwell, and took off at a run.
Maxwell held up a glowing hand. The display sparked as it struck the Dragon energy, then shattered into a thousand pieces.
Above, the shipan began to spin. The grinding noise grew even louder; the blinding lights began to whirl, flashing wildly around the room.
“Kid!”
Steven turned in surprise. Jasmine had raised herself to a crouch and was staring at him.
“Throw it!” she said.
He stared at her, baffled.
She held out both hands in a gesture of exasperation. “The grenade!”
He looked down. To his surprise, he was still holding the second metal sphere. And the light on its surface had turned green.
Steven reared back and threw the sphere up as hard as he could. It smashed into one of the shipan’s lights, triggering a shower of sparks. The light flashed and shorted out.
Then the shipan exploded with a deafening crack. Smoke billowed out, thick and black. Shards of glass, pieces of metal and plastic, began to rain down.
Steven raised a hand to shield his face from the debris. “Grenade,” Steven said.
Jasmine smiled. “Yeah.”
Maxwell swooped up high, his figure barely visible through the smoke. “No,” he cried. “The Convergence!”
Steven looked up, past Maxwell. A large crack ran straight through the center of the shipan; smoke billowed out of it in thick clouds. Its lights blinked on and off, madly, as the disk continued to spin.
Down below, the pools began to glow brighter.
“Hang on,” Jasmine said. “Things are about to get crazy.”
Steven stared at her. “Crazier than this?”
She laughed.
A light stabbed down. Maxwell swooped through the air, intercepting the beam as it met a matching flare shooting up from one of the pools. Again he screamed, his body glowing bright as he soaked up the power.
In the aura above Maxwell, Steven thought he saw a sinister, long-tailed Rat.
Carlos ran up, waving away smoke. He crouched down to help Jasmine.
“I’m all right,” she said.
“Good. Here.” Carlos reached into a bag and pulled out three more grenades. All their lights were green.
Above, another light flared bright. Maxwell flew toward it, his scream a constant blare now. When the beam struck him, a smiling, capering Monkey appeared in the energy glow above his head.
Steven gasped.
A look of suspicion crossed Carlos’s face. He gestured at Steven. “You trust this kid?” he asked Jasmine.
“I don’t trust anybody,” Jasmine replied, wincing as she tried to stand. “He’s got a good arm, though.”
Carlos stared at Steven blankly for a moment. Then he handed Steven a grenade.
&n
bsp; Jasmine threw two grenades upward simultaneously. Steven watched as the two spheres whizzed past Maxwell, passing harmlessly through the Monkey apparition.
When the grenades struck the shipan, the world seemed to explode. The shipan cracked and split in half. One half stayed mounted in place, while the other hung loose from the ceiling like a hinge. Beams flared bright in all directions. Some of them shot downward toward the pools, but they missed their marks, scorching energy marks into the ground. Others blasted sideways, gouging holes in the metal walls.
And above the chaos, just barely visible through the billowing smoke, the shipan had cracked free to reveal a sliver of open sky. A few of the disk’s beams flared up through the opening, arcing like lightning into the humid Hong Kong night.
Maxwell hovered in midair, staring in alarm at the wreckage. Maxwell’s Dragon had manifested again, Steven noticed; it stared along with him, like a pet crouched on his back.
Then Maxwell turned to look down. He fixed green-glowing, murderous eyes on Carlos, and pointed a thick, crackling finger.
“You,” he said.
Maxwell swooped down just as Jasmine leaped in front of Carlos, shielding him. Above Maxwell, the Dragon hissed in anticipation. There was a loud crunch from above.
Half of the shipan—a massive chunk of bone and metal—crashed down on top of Maxwell. He grunted in pain, flaring bright. Then he fell.
“See? Things got crazy.” Jasmine grimaced. “Don’t answer, just run!”
Steven followed her and Carlos, dodging around the pools. Maxwell plummeted toward them, the half shipan forcing him down with its weight. When they struck the ground, the whole chamber shook.
Up above, the other half of the shipan still hung loose from the open ceiling. Beams flashed and flared, stabbing out from it in all directions. Pools erupted across the floor. Some of them intercepted the beams from the broken shipan, others splashed harmlessly into the air.
Steven looked over at Maxwell. He lay grimacing in pain, trapped beneath the heavy bulk of the shipan. It was lodged in the ground, one sharp end buried deep. Only one light still glowed on its surface, jutting up several feet above Maxwell’s figure.
Jasmine gestured at a radiance rising up from the pool behind them. “Uh-oh,” she said.
Carlos consulted a handheld analyzer device. “Uh-oh squared,” he said.
Steven barely heard them. He found himself staring at the single light on the grounded half of the shipan. It seemed to pulse, transfixing him with some strange lure.
“Kid,” Jasmine said. “We gotta go.”
Steven shrugged her off. The shipan’s light seemed to expand, to fill his world. He had the strange feeling that it was speaking to him.
Maxwell struggled, craning his neck to look upward at the blazing light. His eyes seemed normal now; the energy had faded from him. Slowly he turned toward Steven.
“No,” Maxwell said.
Carlos looked up sharply from his analyzer. “Kid,” he said. “What did Maxwell call you before?”
As Steven watched, the shipan’s light burst forth. It lashed out, arcing up over Maxwell’s trapped figure, heading straight toward Steven himself.
Again, time seemed to stop. The energy hung in the air, billowing outward as it drew closer. Steven saw shapes inside it: circles, triangles. Stars and moons and galaxies; sharp fanged teeth and sharper, slashing claws. A long line of people stretching back through the ages, rich landowners and poor Chinese peasants, farmers who worked the soil and kings who ruled other men from gleaming palaces in the sky. The beam seemed to contain all these people, all of them turning to greet Steven as the light reached down to scoop him up inside its depths.
Then the energy struck. Steven felt a cold pain, like a thousand icy needles plunging into his body at once. The light seemed to reach inside him, penetrating his arms and legs, passing through into his brain and heart. Filling him up, transforming him into something new, something different. Something he couldn’t quite imagine.
The last thing he saw was his grandfather. The old man’s kindly face smiled wide, his voice cutting through the pain. It’s all right, Grandfather said. Something is ending here, but something new is beginning. Just remember me, remember who and what you are. Where you came from, and what you may become.
My little Tiger.
Then the energy passed, ebbing away like a receding wave. Grandfather vanished along with all the others, the people and the stars and the fangs and claws.
Steven shook his head. The air was thick around him; scorch marks smoked from the floor and walls. He seemed to see everything through a thick green haze.
Jasmine was shakily getting up. It seemed something had knocked her down. She looked at him, her eyes wide. Carlos stood just a few feet away, also staring at him. He started to ask them why, but then a deafening roar rose up, echoing all around. It filled the inside of his head, the room—his whole world.
Jasmine raised a finger and pointed up.
Steven followed her gaze. Above and around his body, haloed in a thick green energy aura, a strange apparition whipped its head from side to side. A fierce, raging Tiger, its sharp fangs and piercing eyes announcing its presence to the world.
“HUH,” Jasmine said, gesturing at the Tiger form rising up from Steven. “That wasn’t in the plan.”
Carlos aimed his analyzer at Steven. “Almost ninety-seven percent qi suffusion,” he said. “Ley-line energy steady…stem-branch alignment is—”
The Tiger roared again.
“—he’s a Tiger, all right,” Carlos finished.
Jasmine rolled her eyes. “Way ahead of you, Doctor Science.”
Steven barely heard them. He looked around, trying to clear his head. One of the pools had spilled open, its eldritch liquid flowing out to sink into the ground. The control stage was a wreck, smashed flat by a fallen beam. On the far wall, curving above, a smoking shard of metal hung loose, threatening to fall.
And on the ceiling, the remaining half of the shipan disk still flickered—but its beams were fading. Smoke filled the room, but it was starting to clear, dissipating up into the open air.
Maxwell lay still, his eyes closed, legs still buried under the other half of the shipan. Bits of green energy puffed out of his mouth with each shallow breath. How can he be alive? Steven wondered. That thing would have crushed a normal person.
“He won’t be out for long,” Jasmine said, following Steven’s gaze to Maxwell. “We better move.”
Carlos cast a long, dour look around at the wreckage. Then he turned, frowning, to gesture at Steven. “What about him?”
Steven clenched his fists. “Hold on. Rewind, restart, respawn. STOP!”
Jasmine raised an eyebrow.
“What’s going on here?” Steven continued. “Who are you guys? What is the Zodiac, who is that guy buried under the king-size sundial, and why do I have a freaking Tiger inside me now?”
Jasmine and Carlos exchanged surprised looks.
“How do we even start?” Carlos asked.
Steven could only stare at them. He could see and feel the Tiger start to fade away as his energy died down.
“With a question of my own, I think—” Jasmine said. She stopped to gather her thoughts. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I followed you! You were leading a tour with my class and I saw you go through the door and I heard screams and then there was the creepy staircase and your empty uniform and then all this!”
Jasmine stared at him for a moment. Then, unexpectedly, she laughed.
“I never liked that uniform,” she said.
Steven stared back. “Are you gonna answer my—”
Before he realized it, Steven was on his feet and leaping. The Tiger roared, stretching its paws upward. Steven soared through the air, landing gracefully several feet away—just as an enormous metal beam tore loose from the wall and slammed down to the ground, exactly where he’d been standing.
Steven stared in shock at t
he jagged metal beam. Dust rose up around it, settling down in the nearby pools and on the ground. Its far end still hung shakily from the scarred, smoking wall.
I should be dead, he thought. That thing could have killed me. The Tiger—whatever it is, it just saved my life.
Jasmine stepped forward and grabbed his arm. “Focus, kid,” she said. “What’s your name, anyway?”
“St-Steven.”
“Steven. I’m just gonna run through this real quick because, as you can see, this isn’t a very healthy place to be right now. Okay?”
As if to punctuate her words, the half shipan on the ceiling gave out a loud groan. One of its lights cracked loose and fell, shattering on the ground next to the wrecked control stage.
Steven nodded quickly.
Jasmine gestured around. “This chamber here is an ancient site at the center of a bunch of—crap, I can never remember what they’re—”
“Ley lines,” Carlos said.
“Right,” she continued. “Ley lines, qi energy, and a whole bunch of other scientific stuff that I can’t understand. Nobody understands it except Carlos here.”
“I only understand about half of it.” Carlos smiled shyly. “Maybe two-thirds.”
“The Zodiac influences all our lives,” Jasmine said. “And for some reason lost to the ages, its power is concentrated in these pools. Now, every once in a while, a little bit of that energy drifts out into the world. It floats through the air until it reaches someone born in the right year, under the corresponding sign. Then the energy seeps inside that person, enters his or her body.”
Steven stared at her. “And that person gets…what? Superpowers?”
“The energy is usually present in very small amounts. Somebody contacted by it might wind up being a little bit stronger, faster, or smarter than average. But not enough to make anyone suspect an outside influence.”
“However,” Carlos explained, “once every twelve Zodiac cycles—every one hundred and forty-four years—the stars line up in a particular configuration. And the power, the energy of the mystic pools, is magnified to more than a thousand times its normal strength. That time is today.”