by Stan Lee
“Carlos calls it the Convergence,” Jasmine said, smirking slightly. “He’s not so good with names.”
Carlos looked hurt. “I’m good with a lot of other things.”
“Yes, you are. Of course you are.”
Steven blinked. “So…you mean…”
“It’s a lot to take in, I know,” Jasmine said.
“I’ve got the Tiger power. That’s one sign of the Zodiac.” Steven paused. “You’ve got…something…and the rest of the powers are—”
“—with me.”
They all turned. Maxwell lay glaring at them, his teeth gritted, power flaring from his eyes. But his legs were still trapped beneath the broken shipan.
Carlos held up his analyzer. “I don’t think so, chief. Far as I can see, you only absorbed four of the Zodiac signs. Maybe five.”
Maxwell’s eyes flared green.
“Not only that,” Jasmine said, “but you can’t hold them very long, can you? Only a person born in the year of the Rat can wield the Rat’s power. You might be a Dragon—or half a Dragon, anyway. But you’ll have to pass along the other powers soon, or they’ll eat you alive.”
“You,” Maxwell seethed, staring at Jasmine. “Ungrateful girl. You turned my best scientist against me.”
“She didn’t turn me against anything,” Carlos said, a new edge creeping into his voice. “I made my decision when I learned about Lystria.”
Maxwell squeezed his eyes closed. A snarl escaped his lips. The bat-winged Dragon flared up briefly above him, then faded quickly away.
“Oh!” Jasmine smirked. “I think you hit a nerve, Carlos.”
“What’s Lystria?” Steven asked.
“I’ve fought in seven wars,” Maxwell said. “I’ve seen things, made decisions you can’t even imagine. This is a hard world, little girl. You’re not ready for it.”
“I’m not a little girl. Not anymore.”
Jasmine reached out her arms, her brow furrowing in concentration. A flurry of energy particles rose up from Maxwell’s trapped figure, wafting over to surround Jasmine. As Steven watched, the energy resolved itself into the form of a Dragon…but not the winged Dragon he’d seen projected from Maxwell. This was the other Dragon—the lean one, with sharp talons and deadly jaw.
Jasmine’s Dragon.
She smiled, glowing bright. As she rose up into the air, the Dragon opened its mouth wide and screeched.
Then Jasmine coughed. The Dragon made a shrill noise and faded away. The glow receded, and Jasmine dropped down, shakily, to the ground.
“Oh, Jasmine,” Maxwell said. “You think you can steal my power? My birthright, the mantle of the Dragon?”
“We’re both Dragons.”
“Your mother would be so disappointed,” Maxwell said, a cruel smile crossing his face.
Jasmine clenched her fists in anger. Dragon energy rose up from her again. But it was fainter, this time, a ghost of its former self.
“Well,” Maxwell continued. “I guess I’ve stalled you long enough.”
Up on the catwalk, the stairwell door slammed open. Four large men in military uniforms marched in, followed by four more. Then another six.
“Crap,” Jasmine said. “Vanguard is here.”
“You always did talk too much, Jasmine.” Maxwell smiled. “Who knew that smart mouth would be your downfall?”
Steven eyed the soldiers, a sinking feeling in his gut. They carried big, high-tech energy weapons and bulky equipment packs. “Who’s Vanguard?” he asked.
Jasmine grimaced. “Maxwell’s private army.”
“Best there is,” Maxwell said.
Up on the catwalk, the soldiers stood for a moment, waving away smoke. They haven’t seen us yet, Steven realized.
Jasmine glared at Maxwell again—and again, the Dragon energy began to swell up around her. But this time, Maxwell raised his head, and a feral expression came over his face. The bat-winged Dragon lunged forth from him, snapping its jaws at Jasmine.
As Jasmine watched, startled, the energy around her started to shimmer, rising up like fireflies in the air. Maxwell’s Dragon opened its mouth again, devouring it, breathing it in.
Jasmine collapsed. Carlos ran forward and caught her before she could hit the ground.
Steven heard the Tiger roar inside him again. He turned to Maxwell and snarled.
Then he felt a hand on his shoulder. He whirled, baring his teeth. It was Carlos, with Jasmine standing weakly behind him.
“No!” Carlos said. “You can’t fight him.”
Steven looked back at the grinning Maxwell. “He’s trapped under that thing,” Steven said.
“You have no idea how powerful he is. The Dragon is the strongest of all the Zodiac signs. Even half that power could stomp a Tiger like a bug.”
“Come over here, boy,” Maxwell said, baring his teeth like an animal. “Give it a try.”
“Besides,” Jasmine said, waving her arm upward.
Steven looked. The soldiers had spotted them and were running along the catwalk toward the ladder leading down to the floor.
Steven glanced quickly from Jasmine to Carlos. Can I trust them? he wondered. I don’t even know who these people are.
The clattering of the soldiers’ footsteps grew louder. Steven took one last look at Maxwell. The leader was still glowing bright, and grinning from ear to ear.
Jasmine slapped Steven on the shoulder, hard, and ducked under the half-fallen wall beam. Without looking back, she motioned for Steven and Carlos to follow. Carlos took off, and Steven hurried after them.
Jasmine led them across the room, around the pools, past several chunks of debris, to the central stage. It was still smoking, and it smelled like burning metal. Carlos motioned them to duck down behind it.
“We can’t hide here for long,” Jasmine said, keeping her voice low. She pointed toward the stairwell entrance, up on the catwalk. “And that’s the only exit, right?”
Grimly, Carlos nodded. “Jaz, how powerful are you now? Can you…I don’t know…fly us out of here?”
“Not right now. You saw what happened back there…Maxwell and I share the Dragon power. It’s different, more powerful than the others. And right now, he’s got the upper hand.”
All three of them looked up at once. Steven frowned, studying the inward-sloping walls of the chamber. They were pocked with jagged metal now, burned and broken.
Eight feet above, the half-fallen ceiling beam slanted over their heads. And past that, above the broken shipan, the night sky showed through a semicircle in the roof.
Suddenly Steven noticed that Jasmine was staring at him.
“It’s up to you,” she said.
“Me?” he asked.
She gestured blithely at Carlos. “He doesn’t have any powers.”
“But…but…” Steven paused. “I don’t even know you people! Why should I go with you?”
“Are you kidding?” Jasmine asked.
She gestured back toward Maxwell. Steven could see the soldiers clustering around Maxwell, beginning to dig him free.
Steven gritted his teeth. Guess this is it, he thought. Do you really want to be a hero?
Swallowing in fear, he nodded. He clenched his teeth, willing the Tiger energy to rise up inside him. He tensed himself to leap—
—and then Carlos stepped forward, holding up a hand.
“No,” Carlos said.
Jasmine’s head whipped around. “What?”
“We can’t.” Carlos shook his head, gesturing decisively at Steven. “We can’t take him with us.”
JASMINE SCUTTLED over to Carlos, keeping low to stay behind the stage. She stared him in the face as if she’d never seen him before.
“What,” she whispered again, “are you talking about?”
A loud mechanical hammering noise rose up. Steven glanced around the damaged stage. On the side of the room, the soldiers were using digging tools to break up the big half shipan on top of Maxwell.
“Kid,” Carlos sa
id. “Steven. How old are you?”
“I’m fourteen,” Steven said.
“Fourteen! Yes! That’s my point.” Carlos turned back to Jasmine. “He’s just a kid. This whole thing we’re doing, it’s dangerous. We should keep him safe.”
Jasmine looked back, astonished. “That’s exactly what I intend to do, Carlos. That man is a menace. We tried to stop his plan and it didn’t work, but we can’t give up. This power I have…we have…it’s something we need to figure out,” she said. “Besides, what else can we do? You want to leave him here? Leave him with his little friends, so Maxwell can track him down and take him out.”
“There’s a bigger problem,” Carlos pointed at Jasmine. “You took this power. Whatever happens, that was your choice. Maxwell too, for that matter. But the kid didn’t.”
“That’s exactly why we’ev got to take him,” Jasmine replied. “He’s one of us know—a Zodiac. And he needs protection.”
“Stop talking about me like I’m not here!” Steven cried.
Jasmine turned to him, surprised.
“He’s at least got to know what he’s getting into,” Carlos said. He didn’t look happy. “It’s got to be his choice.”
“Steven,” Jasmine said, her voice low and intense. “Here’s what’s at stake. Maxwell is determined to grab all the Zodiac power for himself. If he gets hold of you, there are two possible outcomes. First he’ll try to enlist you in his private army. If you refuse, he’ll experiment on you until he figures out how to get the power out of you and into a Tiger of his choosing. Someone he can control.”
“That…doesn’t sound good,” Steven admitted. “But…but I keep wondering…” He hesitated.
Jasmine threw up her arms. “Spit it out!”
“…what would he say about you?”
She seemed taken aback. “Nothing good,” she admitted.
“Maxwell is a monster,” Carlos said. There was a dark, hard anger in his eyes now. “He thinks he’s the only person who can control the Zodiac power; he thinks he’s making the world a safer place. He thinks he’s seen enough horrors to know that good and evil don’t exist, and that he’s the only one who should be trusted with this power.
“The reality? He’s a vicious war contractor, a general-for-hire with no allegiances, no principles. He got tired of working for governments and corporations, so he started Vanguard. If he gets the Zodiac power, he’ll be unstoppable.”
“We’ve been fighting Maxwell for a long time,” Jasmine said. “He has all the advantages: all the toys, all the manpower, all the money. We can’t promise you any of that.
“But,” she finished, “we can promise you something worth fighting for.”
Suddenly, Steven thought about looking at the empty shipan display case with Harani and Ryan. It couldn’t have been more than an hour earlier, but it seemed like a different life.
He thought about how all the locals in Hong Kong had expected him to speak Cantonese. He thought about the weird looks he’d get from his classmates when he ate the lunches his grandfather had prepared for him. He even thought about the Steel Mongoose, and his endless store of bravery and resourcefulness. The way he seemed to be at ease anywhere.
Now, in this weird subterranean chamber, he realized: Maybe this is my chance. Maybe this is where I belong. Steven glanced up again. The broken ceiling beam arced up at an angle, several feet up. Too far to jump. Too far.
But the Tiger stirred inside, calling to him. Let me out, it seemed to say. I can do this. Let me do this.
He crouched, feeling the Tiger energy rise up around him. With a roar, he leaped straight up, eight feet at least, and grabbed hold of the half-fallen ceiling beam. He swung his body up, grabbing the beam with both legs and letting his arms hang down.
He cast a glance toward the catwalk. From this angle, slightly elevated, he could see the Vanguard soldiers hefting the pieces of the shipan off of Maxwell. He’d be free in a few minutes.
Carlos and Jasmine were staring at Steven. He held out one hand to each of them.
“Come on,” Steven said.
Jasmine clasped one of Steven’s hands. Carlos hesitated, then grabbed the other. “Is this going to hurrrrrrrrrrt—”
Before Carlos could finish, Steven flipped them both up into the air.
Jasmine reached out gracefully and grabbed hold of the metal beam. Carlos fumbled, unable to get a good grip. Jasmine snatched him out of the air by his belt, grunting as his weight yanked her off-balance. Steven reached down and grabbed Carlos’s arm, and together he and Jasmine pulled Carlos up onto the beam.
Steven scrabbled up onto the beam after them. Dimly, he thought: Every single thing I’ve just done is impossible.
“Yes,” Carlos said. “Hurting factor: positive.”
Jasmine pointed down. “I think the hurting’s just begun.”
Steven grimaced. Down below, the soldiers had noticed them and were aiming their guns upward.
“Freeze right there!” a soldier called. His long-barreled stun gun, its tip crackling with energy, was aimed straight at Steven.
“Follow me,” Steven said.
In a feline-like manner, he took off up the slanted beam at a run. Jasmine motioned for Carlos to follow, and headed in Steven’s direction.
Steven heard the weapons firing behind him. With a horrible sinking feeling, he realized: That’s it—we’re dead. I can climb like a cat, but those guys are trained soldiers.
So much for the Tiger’s short career.
But then he looked back. Jasmine was edging backward up the beam, facing down at their attackers. As she held out her arms, a powerful aura fanned out to surround her, and the fierce, snakelike form of the Dragon rose up. Electric bolts leaped out from the soldiers’ weapons, like miniature lightning—enough to fry a person alive, Steven thought. But when the bolts struck Jasmine’s Dragon-glow, they flashed and disappeared.
Down on the ground, another burst of Dragon energy flared up. Maxwell emerged from inside of it, shrugging off the last chunk of the fallen shipan.
Steven climbed higher. The roof was only ten or twelve feet above now. The half shipan still hung loose, dark and quiet, a silent sentry leading to the open air beyond.
A little too far to jump, Steven thought. The Tiger might make it, but Jasmine and Carlos wouldn’t.
“There!” he called, pointing at the wall ahead. A line of bolts protruded from it, some of them scorched from the shipan’s blasts. Steven reached out and leaped off the beam, grabbing hold of a bolt with each hand.
“You are most surely joking,” Carlos said.
But Jasmine laughed. She grabbed Carlos around the waist and jumped. They scrabbled at the wall for a second, then grabbed on to the uneven surface. As Steven climbed upward, they began to follow.
“Don’t look down,” Jasmine said.
“Not a worry,” Carlos replied.
The soldiers seemed to have stopped firing. When Steven looked down, he saw Maxwell yelling at his men, pointing upward. Steven couldn’t make out the words.
“Maxwell doesn’t want us dead,” Jasmine said, still climbing. “He needs the power inside us!”
“Inside you,” Carlos said. “There’s no power in me.”
“Just brainpower,” Jasmine said, smiling.
“Flatterer. You’re just trying to distract me from my imminent demise OH GOD A LITTLE SLOWER PLEASE?”
Steven stopped, breathing hard. The wall ended a few feet above, but the hole, the way out, was just out of reach. The remains of the shipan blocked their way: a semicircular mess of smoking metal and broken glass hung precariously by a few thick cables.
Jasmine climbed up next to Steven. “You can do this,” she said.
He looked into her eyes. Slowly, he nodded.
Later, Steven could barely remember the next few minutes. Somehow he balanced himself on the wall, grabbing Jasmine under one arm and Carlos under the other; but that was impossible. He leaned forward and tossed Jasmine onto the shipan, the
n took hold of it himself with his free hand, swinging forward with the terrified Carlos under his arm; that was really impossible. As the shipan strained and creaked under their weight, he tossed Carlos up through the hole, then reached down to grab Jasmine and fling her up after Carlos. Then, just as the shipan cracked free and fell, he leaped up through the hole to freedom.
Impossible. All of it.
There was one thing he remembered clearly about the whole ordeal. As he knelt on the ground outside, breathing in the thick Hong Kong air, he cast a final glance down into the now-exposed chamber. Maxwell hovered a few feet off the floor, glaring upward, his winged Dragon-form screeching in helpless anger.
Then Jasmine pulled Steven to his feet. “Nice work,” she said.
Steven looked around, dazed. They stood in a cleared, grassy area; trees stretched off to one side, forming a thick forest. On the other side, the brightly colored thatched-roof buildings of the museum rose up in the night. Emergency lights flashed, and local police stood holding back curious spectators, fifteen or twenty feet away.
“Looks like we made a little noise,” Jasmine said. “We better get moving before Maxwell gets his strength back. Carlos, let’s—”
But Carlos stood a little way off, staring at the sky. Steven followed his gaze and felt his breath catch in his throat.
Above, green energy flashed against the clouds like some unnatural fireworks show. It zipped back and forth, up and down, fanning out in one direction, then another.
“The Zodiac power,” Carlos said. He pulled out his analyzer and pointed it toward the sky. “Not all of it flowed into Maxwell, or into you two. When we sabotaged the equipment, some of the power ran wild.”
Steven stared. “And it’s still up there?”
“I think…it was trapped by the warm front blanketing the city. But now that front is moving away.”
As they watched, the green energy seemed to flare even brighter than before. Then it arced away, over the trees, and began to fade.
“Where’s it going?” Jasmine asked.
“I don’t know,” Carlos replied. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. I assumed the other powers would just seep back into the pools if they didn’t find a nearby host.”