by Stan Lee
“Are you?” Steven asked. “Really?”
Her eyes flared with anger, mirrored in fire on the Dragon’s face. She dropped back to the ground, letting the energy fade away. Then she grabbed Steven’s shoulder in a grip like steel and dragged him over to the far corner of the room.
“Um, headquarters, probably already under attack?” Carlos said. “Just a little reminder.”
As soon as they were out of earshot, Jasmine leaned in to speak intensely to Steven. “There’s no time to argue. The recruits are not ready. Most of you haven’t had any training time at—”
“I’m not worried about them,” he said. “I’m worried about you.”
Jasmine blinked.
“I know you’re weaker than you were,” he continued. “I can tell.”
“No, I’m not!”
But when she turned away from him, he knew he was right.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
“Maxwell is doing something,” she said, her voice low. “He’s drawing the energy out of me, back into himself. Remember, we share the Dragon power.”
“If you fight them all, you’re gonna get hurt,” Steven said. He could hear his voice breaking. “You can’t stop them by yourself.”
“I have to!”
Then they both turned at the sound of shouting. Dafari, the technician, was yelling at Duane, who leaned over his console, pointing at the screen. “I am working, Mister Pig,” Dafari said. “Leave me alone!”
Duane just shook his head. “But that energy surge. It’s inside the building—”
The far wall exploded, collapsing inward with a thunderous crash. Dust and plaster filled the air. Steven coughed and ducked behind a desk.
When he looked up, a large figure crouched in front of a giant hole in the wall: Horse, the leader of Maxwell’s field team. Steven hadn’t met her yet, but Jasmine had described their faceoff outside the pub in Ireland. Horse surveyed the room, waving dust away from her face.
Then the rest of Horse’s team approached, gathering behind her. A big man with a mustache; that would be Ox. Then Monkey, and the familiar, yellow-furred Dog.
Four of them, Steven thought. Four of the most powerful Zodiac powers, all with the same goal: Capture us and take us back to Maxwell.
He clenched his fists and prepared for the fight of his life.
THE HANGAR BAY was partly visible behind the Vanguard operatives. They’d entered through the bay, Steven realized, and burst in from there. Dust filled the War Room, swirling through the air.
“Steven?” Kim whispered. He turned to see her crouched next to him, behind the desk.
“Don’t be scared,” Steven said.
“I’m not,” she said, keeping her voice low. “But what do we do?”
The Vanguard agents were regrouping, slapping dust off their clothes. They’d catch sight of Steven and the others in a few seconds.
Steven couldn’t see Roxanne. Liam was leading Duane around the edge of the room, toward Steven and Kim. Carlos and Dafari were crouched along a far wall. And Jasmine…
The Vanguard agents turned in alarm as Jasmine sprinted toward them. She took off into the air like a bird, Dragon energy flaring all around her.
“One chance,” she said to the attackers. “Leave this place. Now.”
She looked as bright and terrible as Steven had ever seen her. But he knew it was a bluff.
Horse motioned to her team. Ox, Monkey, and Dog began to fan out, forming a semicircle.
“Jaz!” Carlos yelled. “They’re trying to surround you!”
She turned in alarm, panic on her face. “Carlos! Get out of here—”
Horse jumped straight into the air and grabbed Jasmine by the shoulders, reaching through the roiling Dragon energy. Horse grimaced in pain, but she didn’t let go. She started to pull Jasmine down.
Ox reached up and punched Jasmine, hard, in the stomach. She doubled over and fell to the floor, coughing. Her power began to fade.
Then the other agents were on her. Monkey leapt and capered, punching and kicking Jasmine. Dog howled and roared, swiping at her with sharp claws.
Her power’s failed, Steven thought. She’s helpless.
Kim pointed at Jasmine. “They’re gonna kill her.”
“No,” Steven said. “They want her. They want all of us alive.”
“Well, that’s not an option, right?” Liam asked. “So what do we do?”
Steven turned to look at them. Duane and Liam had sneaked over to join Kim. All three of them stared at him with urgent, scared expressions.
“Steven?” Kim said.
Steven stared back. I don’t know, he thought. I don’t know what to do.
He opened his mouth to say something—anything. But before he could speak, a sharp blow struck him on the back of the head. He cried out and fell to the floor.
Through a haze of dust, he saw the calm, looming figure of Ox pointing a handheld analyzer down at him.
“Got him,” Ox called out.
Monkey capered up, grinning. “It’s fun to hit kids!” he said to Ox. “Isn’t it?”
“No, it isn’t. This is business,” Ox replied. “Do your job—secure the targets.”
Steven followed Ox’s pointing finger to the other members of his team. They stood watching, frozen and terrified.
“Run!” Steven yelled. “Get away from here!”
Duane and Liam took off, sprinting toward the doors. But Kim lingered for a moment, staring at Steven with worried eyes.
Then Dog, the fur-covered Vanguard operative, bounded up to stare Kim right in the face. She froze. Dog growled, a long low sound that slowly resolved itself into a single, familiar word:
“Rrrrrrrraaaaabit?”
With a poof, Kim sprinted away and vanished.
Dog reached out to swipe his paw through the air where Kim had been just a moment before. “Rrraabit!” he said again.
Then he sniffed the air and bounded off, hands over feet, heading for the door.
Horse ran up to join Ox and Monkey. “Get after the last two,” Horse said. “I’ll find the French girl.”
Ox gestured at Steven. “What about this one? And Jasmine?”
Horse glared down at Steven, dismissing him with a look. “They’ll keep,” she said.
Steven tried to say something, but the dust got into his lungs and he coughed. He struggled to rise from the floor. Ox reached out again, barely exerting himself, and cuffed Steven on the back of the head.
“Just business,” Ox said.
As Steven fell, his last thought was: I’ve failed. I’ve failed them all.
Then he struck the floor and was still.
Poof! Kim appeared in midair, flinching as the wind and ice struck her. Then she fell to the ground, landing awkwardly in a snowdrift.
Great, she thought. Maybe teleporting randomly wasn’t the best idea ever!
She spat snow, stood up, and dusted herself off. The storm was passing now. Ice still fell from the sky, but the wind was weaker than before. A thin shaft of sunlight pushed its way down through the clouds.
Kim lurched, dizzy. Steven and Jasmine had promised to train her, teach her to use her powers without getting disoriented, to extend her range. But they hadn’t gotten around to that yet.
Guess all it took was blind panic. She thought of Dog and shivered, both from the memory and the cold.
The fog began to clear, revealing the side of the ice mound concealing Jasmine’s headquarters, about a hundred feet away. A couple of guards lay unconscious near the hidden door. At least, Kim hoped they were unconscious, not dead. She crept over to check on them—
—and then the hidden door in the ice rumbled to life, opening slowly upward. Before it was even halfway open, Dog came loping out, sniffing the air and heading straight toward his prey.
“Rrrrraaaabit!” he growled.
Kim stopped short. Her first instinct was to run, or to poof herself out of here. It was the same instinct she’d had back home,
that time when Dad went off his medication and started breaking things. Or every time she saw another old store close down, another park locked up because the town couldn’t afford to keep it open.
Like Steven had said, Kim was good at running. And she was careful, too.
She stood her ground, waiting for Dog to come closer. Finally he leapt through the air, his claws raised to strike. Kim smiled, jumped straight up, and poofed away.
Dog landed face-first on the ice. He shook his head and looked around, dazed.
“Silly doggy,” Kim said, waving to him from a few feet away. “Did you fall on your little pink nose?”
Dog growled and climbed to his feet, shaking snow off his long ears. Kim swallowed hard and glanced backward at the complex. I can’t make it all the way back inside, she knew. I’m too weak from that first big jump.
Maybe I need more training after all.
Dog charged her again.
“You got major self-control issues,” she said. “Have you thought about obedience school?”
As Dog’s claws swiped out, Kim poofed again. This time she reappeared just a few feet behind him. He snarled, turned, and charged again.
Poof.
Poof.
Poof.
Again and again, Dog snarled and swept the air with his sharp claws. And every time, Kim poofed out of his reach. But each jump took her a shorter distance.
I’m getting tired, she thought. If he manages to grab me, I won’t be able to teleport—I can only poof when I’m in motion. Sooner or later he’ll catch me.
And then what? Will he take me to this mysterious Maxwell dude? Or…or will he just eat me?
Dog slavered, frustrated, as his prey poofed away again. “RRRRAAAABIT!” he howled, louder than ever. He whirled around in a circle and charged.
Once again, Kim closed her eyes and went poof.
ROXANNE SCURRIED along the wall of the large hangar bay, moving with a dancer’s grace past ladders, forklifts, and helicopters. She cast a nervous glance back toward the hole in the wall, the one that led to the War Room. She could hear crashing and yelling, but from this angle she couldn’t see what was going on.
She’d fled, hoping to gain time to think. Now she crouched down to hide behind a small copter, her mind racing. She didn’t know what to do. Jasmine and the others clearly needed help—but the Vanguard agents were just too powerful.
Looks like I’m a solo act for now, she thought.
Roxanne had two options: fight or run away. She looked up at the ceiling, where a concealed hatchway allowed aircraft to enter and exit the bay. That hatch was partway ajar now—the Vanguard agents must have forced it open, so they could enter from the roof. Ice and snow swirled down through the opening, chilling the room. But the storm seemed to be dying down.
Directly below the hatch stood a large combat helicopter, surrounded by a six-foot-high temporary metal fence. A sign on the fence read MI-17 HELICOPTER UNDER REPAIR / NO ADMITTANCE.
Roxanne turned to a smaller copter, an MH-6 Little Bird with only two seats. Unlike the MI-17, the Little Bird could fly. But Roxanne didn’t know how to pilot it, and even if she managed to get it in the air, the hatch above was only halfway open. The Little Bird probably wouldn’t fit through.
The only other vehicle in the room was a small vertical-takeoff plane, spread out in pieces along the floor: two giant rotors, a few weird-shaped fins, a thick tubular body split in half. Mags was in the process of assembling it from surplus parts. It wouldn’t be in shape to fly for weeks to come.
Roxanne studied the large MI-17 copter, running her eyes up to the roof hatch. If I can climb over the fence and up on top of the copter, she thought, I could escape through the hatch. And maybe I could go for help.
Then she remembered where she was: way out on the ice shelf of Greenland, hundreds of miles from any settlement. Where could she possibly go?
She heard a clomping noise coming from the direction of the War Room. Someone was coming.
Suddenly, despite her present circumstances, Roxanne realized she was grinning. She felt energized, the way she always did just before a performance. Adrenalized. She ran around to the far side of the big copter, then leapt onto the fence surrounding it. She grabbed at the top of the fence, but lost her grip and fell backward, landing on her butt.
“Rooster Girl? Is that you?”
The voice was deep and female. Roxanne couldn’t see its owner behind the bulk of the copter, but she knew it was Josie, the Horse and the leader of the Vanguard field team.
“You can’t fight us,” Josie continued. “We’re stronger than you, and better trained. We know all about you, too…cherie.”
“I know you, too!” Roxanne yelled back. “Josie, right? You’re not so tough without your crew.”
Roxanne’s voice echoed in the large room, concealing her position. But she knew she sounded scared, and hated herself for it.
“Give up now,” Josie replied, “and you won’t have to find out how tough I am.”
The Horse sounded closer now. She must be edging around the far side of the copter. Roxanne moved along the outside of the fence. Her only chance was to keep the copter’s bulk between her and her attacker.
“Maxwell isn’t evil, you know,” Josie continued. “He has a plan for the Zodiac powers. In fact, he’s the only one who knows how to control them.”
Gritting her teeth, Roxanne leapt up again and grabbed hold of the top of the fence. The metal dug into her fingers, cutting them, but she grunted through the pain, vaulted over the fence, and landed on the helicopter’s sideboard. She leaned against the copter’s hull, gasping for breath.
“What did Jasmine tell you?” Josie asked. “That she and her boy toy Carlos had rebelled against the big bad Maxwell? It’s not as simple as that, kid.”
Rooster remembered her father calling her kid, back before he’d left for good. She hadn’t liked it then, and she didn’t like it now.
Horse was still on the far side of the room—she hadn’t seen Roxanne yet. As quietly as she could, Roxanne began to climb up the body of the copter.
“I think you know I’m right,” Josie continued. “Jasmine can’t be trusted. How much do you really know about these people, anyway?”
Roxanne stopped dead, halfway up the copter’s fuselage. She turned to look down, around the copter, and caught Horse’s eye. The Vanguard operative stood on the far side of the fence, next to the jagged hole in the wall.
“You’re a hypocrite, Josie,” Roxanne said, surprised at the anger in her own voice. “Just like every adult I’ve ever met. How much do you know about your people?”
For just a second, she thought she saw a flicker of doubt cross the woman’s face. Then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone. “And you, Roxanne, are an innocent,” she said, “underneath all that makeup and attitude. I’ll give you one chance: come down peacefully and we’ll discuss this back at Vanguard headquarters.”
Roxanne stood frozen for a long moment. She glanced upward, flinching as a gust of frigid air blew in through the roof hatch. She hated to admit it, but Josie’s words had hit home.
I only agreed to come here for training, she thought, and because Mom…she didn’t want me anymore. I didn’t have anyplace else to go.
I hardly even know Steven and the others. Is it worth risking my life for them?
But then again…
“Maybe I don’t trust Jasmine,” Roxanne said. “But I sure don’t trust you.”
She turned away and resumed climbing. Above her, the roof hatch gaped open. Just a few more feet…
Josie shrugged. “I tried.” She stepped back a few feet, then charged forward, the Zodiac energy forming a horse shape around her. She vaulted over the fence in a single motion, as if she were running a steeplechase.
Roxanne climbed higher. She grabbed hold of the copter’s top rotor—
—just as Horse landed on the helicopter, a few feet below. Horse leaned back and head-butted the copter, very hard. The
whole structure shook.
Roxanne slipped, almost losing her grip.
Horse’s second head-butt knocked her loose. As Roxanne fell through the air, straight toward her attacker, she had time for a single thought:
Showtime.
Roxanne whipped her head around and let out a sharp sonic cry, the Rooster form flaring up around her. Horse ducked and dropped easily to the floor inside the wooden fence. The sonic assault missed her, striking the fence and splintering a hole into it.
Still falling, Roxanne let out a second cry, then a third. The fourth cry struck the copter, shattering a window. Glass fragments flew into Josie’s face, blinding her momentarily.
The next cry hit Horse head-on. She staggered back.
Roxanne twisted around in midair. Got to land on my feet, she thought.
But Josie grabbed her by the arms, swinging her around in the air. Roxanne saw the metallic fuselage of the helicopter rushing toward her in a blur of green and black. Then her whole body exploded in pain.
“You’ve got power, girl,” she heard Josie say. “But you got no idea how to use it. Don’t worry, we’ll make sure it goes to someone who deserves it.”
Roxanne felt a flash of rage. I didn’t ask for this power, she thought. I didn’t want my career, my whole life, smashed like a guitar onstage. And I sure don’t wanna die in Greenland!
And suddenly there was blackness.
When she came to, Horse was dragging her across the floor, back toward the War Room. Roxanne struggled, but her arms and legs had been tied with rope. She tried to clear her throat, to let out a sonic cry, but she coughed and tasted leather. Josie had gagged her as well.
“I meant what I said, Rooster Girl,” Josie said. “You’re an innocent. But even innocents make the wrong choices sometimes.”
This ain’t over, Rooster thought. You don’t know who you just messed with, Josie. When I get out of this, I’ll…I’ll…
Despair washed over her. She was helpless, unable to move.