Marvel's Avengers: The Extinction Key, page 10
“Cap?” Tony said. “How do you want to handle this?”
“I’ll go,” Cap said. “Who else?”
“I will also accompany you,” Thor replied.
“Nat?” Cap said.
“The three of you can take care of yourselves,” she said. “I’d like to pursue the Taiwan angle. Tony, I could use your help on that.”
“That’s fine,” Tony said. “You guys have all the fun.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” Nat said. “I’m pretty sure we’ll have fun, too.”
“I don’t wish to hurry you,” Strange said, “but I believe there is very little time.”
“I stand ready,” Thor said.
“Any time,” Cap said.
“Very well,” Strange said. He lifted his hands, and a circle of light appeared around Cap, Thor, and the Sorcerer Supreme. Then they were gone.
“Neat trick,” Tony said. “I’m gonna have to figure that one out. JARVIS, remind me to invent teleportation.”
“Yes, sir,” his phone said.
* * *
STEVE felt a flash of dizziness as the light changed from outdoor to indoor. They were in a house—strike that, a mansion—with wooden floors laid out in weird, angular patterns, stairs and bannisters filling a space that rose up several stories to a dome above, a big round window, weirdly partitioned…
That was all the time he had to take in the grand scheme of his stationary surroundings, because there was way too much happening on the kinetic front. Strange had abracadabrad them straight into the middle of a brawl.
Steve had always been pretty good at managing more than one thing at a time, even when he was just a scrawny kid from Brooklyn, but since the Super-Soldier Serum first entered his bloodstream, he’d become really good at it. It was as if time slowed down to let him absorb everything going on around him, and allowed him to react. So what was happening didn’t overwhelm him—but it did tax him a bit.
There were five people in the room besides those he had arrived with. A cloaked man with white markings and mostly exposed musculature was locked in battle with four others, three of whom he recognized immediately as the Zodiac members Virgo, Taurus, and Libra. The last—a massive man with a mane of yellow hair—had to be Leo.
Spectral energies emanated from the dark-skinned man and formed a sort of cloud. Things moved there, forms with dark, hollow eyes and inhuman shapes. Virgo’s whip slashed into the murk and stuck fast, and the ephemeral Libra seemed paralyzed on the edge of it, a phantasm grappling with spirits. But the wizard—or whatever he was—was against the wall, bleeding and having difficulty standing. As a result his summoning—it seemed like the right word—was faltering, the dark vapors attenuating and shrinking.
“Strange!” the man gasped raggedly.
“Hold fast, Drumm!” Strange shouted.
Leo was quick. It took him only an instant to understand the changed situation, pick Steve from the crowd, and launch himself across the room, his claws flickering with actinic light like ten finger-mounted arc welders.
Cap’s shield stopped the slashing claws, but the impact was still considerable. Instead of meeting Leo’s bulk straight on, he deflected the huge figure to the side. Yet for all of his mass, the fellow was nimble. He tumbled in the direction of his fall, turning quickly when he came back to his feet. As his own fight narrowed, Steve remained aware of the others.
Virgo’s whip—free again—lashed out at Strange. Taurus stamped the floor, splintering floorboards, so that the god of thunder was thrown from his feet. That made him feel marginally better about his own encounter with her—if she could knock an Asgardian down, maybe he hadn’t done so badly.
Libra phased up through the floor behind Strange. Did the sorcerer know?
Then Leo demanded most of his attention.
* * *
THOR reeled back in surprise as Taurus followed up her first unseen blow with another.
“Well met!” he bellowed. “There are few who can—” He was cut off as the ceiling suddenly became the floor, and his body quadrupled in weight. He grunted as plaster and wood splintered from the force of his upward “fall.” It slowed him for an instant, but then he crashed through another ceiling, and finally the very shingles of the house itself.
Twisting around, he watched in astonishment as the roof of the mansion dwindled below him and the familiar skyline of New York became his distant horizon. Gritting his teeth, he whirled Mjolnir and hurled it back down, holding onto the strap as it pulled him against the strange reversal of gravity.
An instant later, down was suddenly toward the earth again, and Mjolnir carried him back through the building, shattering tiles and roof beams. He had a brief glimpse of the others as he knocked a hole in the floor of the room where they’d appeared, and then he and Mjolnir rammed into the basement and dug a crater into the bedrock beneath.
“By Odin,” he growled, looking up through the hole he’d created. “That will not go unanswered.”
He leapt back up into the fray.
Captain America was squared off against the lion-like one. Strange was down on one knee, caged in magical bands, fighting off the ghostly Libra and whip-wielding Virgo.
“Work together, everyone,” Captain America shouted. “Keep them contained.”
Then Thor was struck from behind. Searing pain shot through him, as if he’d been stabbed by burning daggers. He bent his knees and dug his heels into the floor, then turned violently and swung Mjolnir with all of his might. The blow struck Taurus as it might a mountain. She shuddered under the blow, but did not move even an inch. It was as if her feet were planted in the planet’s very core.
“Ouch,” she said. He thought she sounded sarcastic.
Enraged, he swung again, but this time she dodged, turned and ran, head down, roaring. A section of the mansion’s wall suddenly exploded. Taurus charged through, out into the street. There she turned and taunted him with the one-finger sign humans seemed to love so much.
With a war-bellow, Thor went after her.
“Thor!” Captain America shouted after him. But it was too much. He could not allow his horned foe to escape, much less insult him in such a manner. Once he was done with her, he would return to help the others with the rest.
He flew at Taurus with the force of a storm, but she did her trick with gravity again, bending it so he flew astray of his intended path and struck a building across the street. He didn’t hit it hard—really just enough to dent it and dislodge a few stones—but it abruptly came apart around him.
Suddenly it was as if he was the center of the universe, the still place to which everything else was attracted. The building seemed to share the same opinion—it fell at him from every direction, and an instant later he was cased in a prison of rock and twisted steel. He strained, but it continued to contract, crushing him in its center.
* * *
CAP leapt high and slammed his shield down on Leo, then spun and sent the disk arcing toward Virgo, whose whip had cut through Strange’s defenses. She noticed, but not in time, and the metal disk clipped her off of her feet. The glowing lash vanished in a spray of sparks, dropping the half-conscious Sorcerer Supreme to the floor.
In the same instant, Leo bounced back into the fray. Steve braced for the impact, but the maned man set his feet—and howled.
As Steve dove from his path, aiming to retrieve his shield, a blast of light and heat singed where he’d just been. Using the hardware on his arm, he summoned the disk and clipped it magnetically into place. He caught a motion from the corner of his eye and turned, bringing his shield up defensively.
A face appeared, coming through the shield. He tried to scramble back, but it was too late—he saw stars as energy jolted through his entire body. It hurt, a lot, and his muscles threatened to disobey him, but he managed to hang on, hurling the shield again. This time he had the satisfaction of seeing it strike Leo directly between the eyes.
But Libra was still there, like smoke—there was nothing to hit. He tried anyway, dodging her next jab at him and throwing a roundhouse at her head. There was a little resistance, but it wasn’t worth the new shock that numbed his arm and set his lungs on fire. Whatever he needed to fight this one, he didn’t have it.
He backpedaled, trying to think.
Suddenly eldritch light flared, encasing his opponent. He looked up and saw Strange, appearing a little punch-drunk, but still in the fight.
“I’ve got this one,” the sorcerer said. “Outside…”
Steve followed his gaze through the hole in the wall. Beyond it, a building had collapsed in on itself, forming a swirling cloud in the air.
“Thor!” he shouted.
Leo seemed to be down, and Virgo, too, although the latter was struggling to rise. Doctor Strange had Libra gummed up in some sort of force field. Still shaking off the effects of Libra’s shock-blast, Cap dashed out into the rubble-strewn streets.
The wreckage of the building contracted into a sphere about thirty feet above the ground and then suddenly exploded, sending debris in every direction. That was bad—not just for him, but for two dozen onlookers gawking from the sidelines.
It took him less than a millisecond to set his course of action. He threw his shield to deflect a chunk of stone and mortar flying toward a young boy, while he sprinted forward to carry a young woman and her child from harm. Flying debris banged into his back, hard, and sent him sprawling, but he scrambled up, trying to reach the next two in harm’s way, a young man walking with an older one, just now seeing the doom descending on them.
A yard short of his goal, the falling stone blotted them from his vision. In that last instant, he saw the older man’s face: dark-eyed, a beard shot with gray, and a look of determined resignation as he folded his body over the younger man. Then a stone struck him in the side of the head, and the pavement came up to meet him.
* * *
THOR managed to twist his hammer through the debris compacted around him, straining his muscles to their limits. He accomplished one full rotation, then another, picking up speed, until the interior of the stony sphere was whirling like a centrifuge.
All in a moment, the stony prison came apart and he burst free. He saw Taurus in the distance and hurled his hammer, but never saw if Mjolnir connected. The threads of Virgo’s effulgent whip wrapped around him, searing him through his flesh to his very bones. He grabbed the burning cable with his bare hands and—unmindful of the pain—yanked as hard as he could.
The shining lash vanished.
So did Virgo, as Thor fell heavily to the street, landing in a crouch just as Mjolnir came whirring back to his grip.
Virgo was gone, and he didn’t see Taurus, either—or any of the Zodiac for that matter. What he did notice was a steadily growing crowd of humans. The police and emergency crews had arrived and were trying to keep the crowd away from the zone of combat. Captain America was at the pile of rubble, heaving chunks of it aside. Thor hurried over to help.
Cap had uncovered two men, one on top of the other. The one beneath stirred, slightly.
“Medic!” Cap shouted. “Some help here!”
He gently rolled the man on top over. Used to the vagaries of the battlefield, Thor recognized by his empty gaze that the man had drawn his last breath.
“Who was he?” Thor asked.
“I don’t know,” Cap said, his voice sounding strained. “A brave man.” The Avenger had a tear trickling from the corner of his eye. He looked tired beyond measure.
“This shouldn’t have happened,” Steve said.
It wasn’t a direct rebuke, but Thor felt it nonetheless. If he had followed the Captain’s instructions—refused to let the fight spill into the street—this man would still be alive.
“In war—” he began.
“This isn’t war,” Captain America said, “and this isn’t a war zone. People live here. These are their streets, their homes. Can you explain to his loved ones why he died? What we were fighting for?”
The greater good, Thor thought. If the Zodiac was truly the threat Strange made it out to be, wasn’t it better for a few to die than for the entire world to suffer?
But he held his tongue. He had seen innocent casualties before. He believed he had felt their loss, but it had never been personal to him. Just a tally against an enemy to be reckoned with.
For Captain America it was personal. It might have been his own father lying there in the street. And Thor had done this. He’d let Taurus taunt him, as if he were a callow youth with less than a century of experience to his credit.
He had been haughty, and proud, and overconfident in the past. Odin had humbled him for that, and in swearing himself to protect the mortals of Earth, Thor had believed himself redeemed.
But he wasn’t. Not until he could feel what the Captain felt. Not until he could truly put the needs of these fragile humans ahead of his own arrogance. He wasn’t there yet.
“I am sorry, Captain,” he said. “I did not think—”
“Stand aside, please.”
The EMTs arrived, and he did as they asked. Thor watched as the all-too-mortal men and women attended to their own.
Captain America backed away, too. The younger man stirred again as an oxygen mask was placed over his nose and mouth. His eyes opened, and he saw his dead companion. He began to weep.
“Come on,” Cap told him. “They’ve got this.”
* * *
BACK inside the building, Strange was tending to his friend.
“Is he alright?” Steve asked.
“I’ll live,” the fallen man said. “Jericho Drumm, at your service.” He had an accent. Steve thought it was some variety of Caribbean, possibly Haitian.
“A trusted ally known in supernatural circles as Doctor Voodoo,” Strange said.
The man shrugged weakly. “I’m sorry I was of so little help. I knew they were coming but underestimated their power. Their connection to the Key is growing stronger.”
“Hey, you held on against all four of them,” Steve said. “That’s pretty impressive. We should have done as well.”
“You saved my life,” Drumm said. “For that, I am grateful. I will not forget this.”
“He needs rest,” Strange said. He glanced at the gaping hole in his mansion and the curious crowd gathered outside. “And solitude.” He gestured, and shards of wood and stone lifted from the rubble—swirling, settling, solidifying, patching the wall as if it had never been broken.
“We need to talk before I rest,” Drumm insisted. “I failed my trust—they took what I brought to show you. They meant to end me before I could tell you what I know. It still might happen. There are eight more of them. We could be beset again in moments.”
“If they do, they will find the defenses of this house are far greater when I am here,” Strange said. “You are safe for the moment, Jericho. You have my word.”
“Nevertheless,” Drumm said, but then he coughed, violently, and his eyes drooped closed. He had blood on his lips. Steve started forward, but Strange wove a pattern with his hands.
Drumm lifted gently into the air.
“I’ll take care of him,” Strange said. He looked pale, and seemed a little unsteady on his feet, as if levitating Drumm took nearly everything he had left. “Then I’ll be back.”
“You don’t look so good yourself, Doctor,” Steve said.
“I’ll mend.”
Then the two sorcerers were gone.
Thor glanced at Cap.
“I acted rashly,” he said. “You warned me against it, and I disregarded your order.”
But Cap shook his head.
“I was upset a minute ago,” he said. “You did what you thought was best. That’s all any of us can do.”
* * *
THE house wasn’t quiet while Strange was away; it continued to heal itself. Steve never quite saw it happen; he would notice something from the corner of his eye, and when he turned he would find a stairway or door where none had been before. How much of the place was real and how much illusion, he couldn’t say.
This was the fourth time the Avengers had come up against the Zodiac, and the fourth time they had been found wanting. If these guys were really getting more powerful with each passing moment, what chance would the Avengers have when they reached full power? When they had to deal with all twelve of them at once? Strange and Drumm lived in this supernatural world, and yet both of them had been battered in the last fight. He was a soldier—not a sorcerer, not a god. This wasn’t his kind of battle.
Whoa there, Steve, he thought. No matter what he thought of it, no matter that he didn’t completely understand what he was dealing with, he had a fight in front of him. If he failed to win it, more than one civilian would die.
He realized then someone was standing nearby, someone he didn’t know. How had they crept up on him? He turned, slowly, every muscle tensed for a fight.
The man who stood there bowed slightly.
“Captain America,” he said. “My name is Wong. I am a colleague of Doctor Stephen Strange. Regrettably, I was away when the Sanctum was attacked, but I’ve returned and enhanced our wards.”
“So if the Zodiac attacks again?” Steve said.
“They already have,” Wong said. “Twice. Unsuccessfully. May I offer you refreshment?”
“I… I do have a thirst,” Thor said.
* * *
STRANGE summoned them to Drumm’s bedside less than an hour later. Drumm looked weak, but his voice was firm, and his eyes clear.
“Some years ago,” he said, “I came into possession of a scroll. It had been copied from an earlier scroll, and from a tablet before that. The script was a form of Demotic Egyptian, but the language was obscure. I did not know what it was or what it said, but I kept it as a curiosity. In my profession, you never know what will prove useful. It didn’t occur to me, however, that it was of any real value until someone tried to steal it from me a few weeks ago.”
“The Zodiac?” Thor asked.
“I believe so,” he replied, “but not one of these we just fought. Another. I surprised the would-be thief and drove him away. Then it made me wonder what I had, so I bent my mind toward deciphering it. I consulted with some others, more expert than I, who were able to elucidate parts of it. What I learned concerned me, so I contacted Doctor Strange. He thought it fit into a pattern of similar thefts of which he had become aware—and that led us to this moment.”
