Then, ahead, he saw one of the taller rock formations. He wasn’t quite going to hit it, but if he could change course just a little, he could manage it. There was only one way he could figure how to do that.

  Every action had an equal and opposite reaction. Newton’s third law, the principle upon which rockets flew. He wasn’t a rocket, but could get the same effect by throwing something in the direction opposite of where he wanted to go.

  Steve had only two things to throw.

  He let his shield loose at Leo; he was closest, and the angle was right. That changed Steve’s course just enough that he would come very close to the rock formation. If he could get hold of that, he could return to the surface, where the gravity was strong enough to actually allow him to fight.

  Leo roared. A column of stellar energy shot from his mouth and struck the shield, deflecting it and sending it off into a higher orbit. That was bad, but there was no use dwelling on it, since Steve was about to miss the rock. It was still just out of reach of his hand.

  But not of the Key. He swung the artifact, so the curved crosspiece scratched and then caught in a crevice in the stone. He yanked hard, and swung around so he was standing on solid rock. From there he dove toward the surface.

  It was a weird fall, because at first he went slowly. Only in the last fifteen feet did he start to pick up speed. He landed almost softly, as if he’d jumped from the roof of a single-story building.

  Using the Key he batted aside several more energy arrows, but all three of the Zodiac thugs were converging on him. The stones they were riding came falling from the sky like slow-motion meteors. He scrambled to outrun them, but one of Leo’s blasts caught the ground near his feet. The eruption sent him tumbling, and before he could get his footing to dodge, Scorpio’s stony mount hit him with the force of a car going at city speed, knocking him up and over. He managed a flip and landed on his feet, but Leo and his asteroid were right there…

  Until the stone was suddenly blasted into bits.

  Leo went tumbling into the sand.

  A hammer came whistling by over Steve’s head.

  Thor had arrived. He hurled Mjolnir again, but Sagittarius leapt from his rock and sent three arrows flashing at the thunder god. The first two missed, but the third hit him squarely in the chest, exploding and sending Thor sprawling on the lichen-covered stone.

  In Steve’s grip the Key began quivering, pulling his hand, pointing toward the fallen god of thunder. Before Thor could get up the stone beneath suddenly became viscous, engulfing him like pudding, and then hardened again, leaving the thunder god with only his head and one of his feet visible.

  “What?” Steve muttered. He hadn’t done that.

  Then his own feet began sinking. He leapt up; it was like jumping from a tub full of taffy, but he made it—or thought he had, until, in mid-flight, the air itself seemed to jerk him forward. Toward Scorpio.

  Strange was right. He might be holding the Key, but Scorpio was its master.

  Steve tumbled in the air as the scorpion’s wicked sting flashed at him. His feet hit ground again and he lashed out with an uppercut that popped Scorpio’s head back. A glimpse from his peripheral vision warned him to turn, just as Leo’s claws slashed through the standing stone behind him. Off-balance, he lashed out with the Key.

  And Scorpio caught it, by the loop end. Steve yanked back, but the Zodiac chief was terribly strong. Leo was turning for another run at him, and Sagittarius was taking aim.

  He planted his feet and swung Scorpio into the line of the oncoming arrow, shielding himself from the flare of light and heat. Scorpio rasped out a rough cry, but still he kept hold of the Key. It pulsed, growing brighter. Scorpio’s grip was fiercer than ever, and the Key felt slippery in Steve’s grasp, as if it were made of wet soap.

  Suddenly, it wasn’t there at all.

  It was as if it had become liquid in his hand, then vapor, then nothing. He felt a deep, powerful vibration, as if a bell the size of the planetoid had been struck, and for a few heartbeats a rainbow’s worth of color obscured his vision. When he could see again, Scorpio stood over him, looking two feet taller, grasping the object of his desire. His toothless smile did not look human at all. He stooped forward, his tail arching over. Then he looked up and beyond Steve.

  Just before Thor crashed into him.

  The Asgardian was like a whirlwind, lashing out everywhere at once, sending Leo hurling back into the weird sky, striking lightning through Sagittarius and landing blow after staggering blow on Scorpio, who fell back. Steve scrambled up, ready to dive in. Clearly, it wasn’t too late. Scorpio had the Key, but Strange had said that wasn’t the end, that the “alignment” had yet to happen.

  Before he could reach the fight, however, Scorpio struck back, hammering Thor on the side of the head, using the Key like a club. As the thunder god stumbled, a pulse of light strobed out from the golden object, engulfing him. His limbs seemed to twist in its light; his cape unraveled, became thread, drifting in the wind.

  Howling, Thor staggered one step toward Scorpio, and then another, even though it looked almost as if he, too, was evaporating.

  The light faded. Scorpio shot up into the air.

  “Not yet, Asgardian,” he said, “but your time will come.” He raised his arms wide, lifting the Key—and then was gone. Leo winked out of existence behind him. A quick look around showed no sign of Sagittarius.

  Gripping his hammer, Thor stared at where Scorpio had vanished.

  Then he looked at Steve.

  “Strange!” he said. “We must find him!”

  They found the sorcerer where they had left him, floating a foot or so off the ground with his legs crossed, that weird third eye of his blinking curiously from his forehead. When they drew near, his other two eyes opened.

  “They have the Key,” he said.

  Steve nodded. “I had it. I had it in my hands.”

  “I underestimated them.” Strange sighed. “Even knowing what I knew.”

  “We shouldn’t have split up,” Steve said. “If we’d had Tony and Natasha—”

  “And Banner,” Thor said.

  “Yeah,” Steve nodded, “but that’s all hindsight now. We fix that mistake. We get the others, figure out where they’re going to do this thing of theirs, and put an end to all of this.”

  “Yes,” Thor agreed. “They are stronger than they were, but no match for all of the Avengers. Of that I am certain.”

  “It’s an excellent plan,” Strange said, “but there is one modest problem.”

  “What’s that?” Steve asked.

  “I’m afraid we’re trapped here.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  NATASHA knew exactly what was happening to Tony Stark, and she didn’t envy him at all. Cancer’s claws dug deep, and when she wanted to know something, it was impossible not to speak. She knew that firsthand.

  The only upside was that if Cancer didn’t know exactly which questions to ask, she couldn’t get the answers—not if you had been conditioned like Natasha, anyway.

  Tony’s training hadn’t been quite so extensive. He answered every question Cancer posed, and then some. Oddly, only a few of those questions were about the Zodiac, the AIM labs, what the other Avengers were up to, or Tarleton’s power source.

  They were nearly all about Bruce Banner.

  When they were done, Tony was in the same near comatose state from which Natasha was still emerging.

  Cancer nodded toward her.

  “Shall I question her again?” she asked. “Now that we know more?”

  Capricorn leveled his gaze at her. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Ms. Romanoff, do you have anything to add?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “Check back with me later.”

  “Of course,” he replied.

  “But I do have a question,” she said.

  “Ask it, by all means.”

  “I don’t understand your curiosity about the Hulk,” she said. “A couple of your guys tangled with him, I know, but he’s out of this. He’s no danger to you.”

  “No, we’re aware of that,” Capricorn said. “This has to do with things which are, I’m afraid, far over your head. Ancient prophecies and all that.”

  “Horoscopes, you mean?”

  “Your interrogation skills are legendary, Ms. Romanoff. You seek to provoke me into revealing something you could use, should you escape this place. Now I must tell you, I have every confidence you will not escape, but I am not so foolish as to believe it impossible, especially knowing what I do of you. So I leave you with your curiosity on the subject.”

  “Yet you’ve already told me something,” she said. “You guys screwed up last time. Back in the Bronze Age, wasn’t it? Screwed it up so bad you’re three thousand years overdue for a second try. I wonder what happened? As I understand it, the woman who was Sorcerer Supreme stopped you from carrying out your by-the-stars plan. Last time I checked, we still have a Sorcerer Supreme—so even if you get this Key thing, you’re still playing a game you’ve already lost once, and there’s a better-than-even chance you’ll lose again.

  “So you’ve been checking the stars for a few thousand years,” she continued, “tossing your knucklebones, opening fortune cookies, all of that. And from all that, you figured you needed something different this time—an ace in the hole, yes? But you didn’t know what it was. You weren’t expecting the Hulk to be at the AIM labs, but when you ran into him, all of your stargazing made sense.

  “You need him to make this work.”

  Cancer stepped closer, her claws stretching out.

  “How did she—”

  “Quiet!” Capricorn thundered. “She’s playing you.”

  Natasha made a point of looking crestfallen. In fact she was, a bit. She had hoped to get a little more out of them—but now she knew her guess was right.

  * * *

  AROUND two in the morning, Emil checked all of the cameras, and brought up the video feed from Rappaccini’s lab. He cut the live feed and set up a loop with a false time stamp. Then he got up from his station and made his way into Monica’s lab. Everything was quiet. The day had been a noisy one, full of workmen he didn’t know, the growling of machines, the screech of saws cutting wood and pipe.

  The major repairs were done, including the walls the Hulk had smashed. They had only been primed, not painted, so there remained a huge white blotch signifying Emil’s failure. The surveillance system still had some bugs in it, as well. One of the nexus boxes had been damaged, and a power surge they hadn’t noticed before had led, over the course of two days, to a cascade of failures that resulted in a partial collapse of their computing systems.

  In other words, security was in a shambles. A new computer system had already arrived from Stark Industries, one with five times the computing power of the old one, but it was still in boxes. Until it was up and running they were stuck with security roughly equivalent to that of a shopping mall in the 1980s.

  Monica was in the lab, waiting for him.

  “None of this will be recorded,” he said. “I’ve scrubbed the record of our last conversation, too.”

  “Good,” she replied. “I’m glad you understand. Have a seat,” she said, motioning.

  He sat down in the chair. Banner’s chair.

  “I should warn you that the process will likely be painful,” she said, gently. “You will experience disorientation, nausea, vomiting. It’s not going to be fun.”

  “I understand that. Just so long as it works.”

  “As we discussed earlier, I can’t promise that either,” Rappaccini warned. “This is an experiment. You must see it in that light. It might not work out at all. I need to know you understand that.”

  “I do. How will it—what will happen?”

  “We’ll start with eight injections,” she said. “The most painful will be in your spinal column. I have some local anesthetic, but nothing to put you under.”

  “That’s okay,” he said. “Pain and I are old friends. Do you perhaps have a mouthguard? I do not care to bite off my tongue.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I have one.”

  “And will I be like him? Green?”

  “I can’t say for certain,” she said. “This first round of injections should improve you—make you stronger, more durable, that sort of thing. But I do not believe it will alter your appearance. Later treatments might, but we can discuss that again when we reach that point.”

  He nodded.

  “You still want to try this?” she said.

  “I do,” Emil replied.

  TWENTY-TWO

  UNDERSTANDING gradually came back to Tony. He’d not really been unconscious—Cancer’s depredations weren’t that merciful. She had literally picked his mind to pieces, making his throat and voice box produce noises without his permission.

  He remembered the questions—about Strange, what he’d told them, what he knew about the Zodiac, what the Avengers’ plans were. But there had been more, hadn’t there? Something about Bruce, and Tarleton’s energy source?

  Tony tried not to answer at first, but as it went on it was as if he had ten different brains, all detached from one another. As if each question created a new Tony Stark, a smaller one, with just the knowledge of the particular thing he was being asked. Ten voices talking at once, not listening to one another, all of them him.

  And none of them him.

  Eventually he lost all understanding of—everything. Nothing remained but lights, shapes, textures, pain…

  Now it was coming back. As if his operating system had been wiped and was now reloading itself. He was still in the conference room, and Natasha was still with him. Capricorn and Cancer were nowhere to be seen, although there were abundant guards. He located his tongue and tried to use it, but it was like an alien organism had camped out in his throat.

  “Just wait,” Natasha said. “It’ll get easier. It’ll wear off. You’ll be yourself again.”

  That was hard to believe, he thought—but Nat should know, shouldn’t she?

  Okay, he tried to say, although it came out more like “Awghhh.”

  “Heads up,” Natasha murmured.

  His neck was shaking but he managed to follow her gaze.

  Capricorn and Cancer returned.

  “Mr. Stark, Ms. Romanoff,” Capricorn said. “I’m happy to inform you that no further conversation is needed between us. Between what you told us and the good news we’ve just received, I’m certain anything you might have managed to hold back will be superfluous. Our business is therefore concluded.”

  “So nice of you to say goodbye,” Natasha said.

  “I wouldn’t think of leaving without seeing you off first,” Capricorn said. “It would be irresponsible of me. Mr. Shen and Mr. Wells will now shoot each of you in the head several times. I’m sorry if that seems blunt, but I’ve learned over the years it’s best to be honest when possible.”

  Two of his men started toward them. Tony heaved in a breath, struggling against vocal cords that didn’t want to work.

  “In wone worg,” he grunted. “Key is uzlez.”

  Capricorn signed to his men.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Stark?”

  “The… Key…” he said, speaking slowly, trying to get each syllable out. “I found… frequency. Rig… rigged phase interrupter. On satellite. When you try… to use it for your big number… kablooie. Overload. Like before.”

  “He’s lying,” Cancer said. “There was nothing like that in his mind.”

  “You… asked the wrong questions,” Tony said.

  Capricorn cocked his head, and looked from Tony to Natasha.

  “I’m sure he is lying,” Capricorn said. “I would too, if I were him. To extend my life. But let’s consider the situation. The other Avengers aren’t coming to their rescue. Scorpio is in possession of the Key. The conjunction has not yet begun.” He paused, then added, “We can afford to keep them here for a bit longer. I will inform Scorpio of this new intelligence, and he can look into it. If there is indeed some sort of device designed to affect the Key, he can probably detect it, and you can go back into Mr. Stark with much more specific questions. Yes?”

  “I could do it now,” Cancer said.

  “He might die before we learn enough,” Capricorn said. “Better to let his mind recover a bit. In the meantime, I will report to Scorpio.”

  Cancer stared at him for a few heartbeats.

  “He hid something from me,” she said. “Nothing important, I’m sure, but there was something to which I couldn’t quite turn his mind.” She leaned forward, staring at her prisoner. “Next time it will be easier,” she told Tony. “You will not survive, but I will get what I need. And it is a very unpleasant way to die. I’ve been there, firsthand, feeling what you will feel.”

  “I have to tell you,” Tony said, “you’re an excellent conversationalist. Really.”

  Capricorn shrugged and left the room. Cancer hung back, eying him, and then took a seat.

  A few minutes passed, and Tony began to feel better. Not in great shape, by any means—but better. He turned to look at Natasha.

  “Do you know what time it is?” he asked.

  “You keep asking that,” she said. “No.”

  “Right,” he said. “But if I’ve called this right, it’s probably about time.”

  “For what?”

  He looked up at the ceiling.

  “Well, maybe not,” he said. “I might be off—wait, hang on—”

  The ceiling exploded.

  Imploded?

  Something blew a hole in it. It came down right in the middle of the conference table, blasting wooden shrapnel in every direction. For the first few seconds there was so much dust Tony couldn’t make much out, but he didn’t have to.

  “Get down,” he told Natasha. Then he kicked back so his chair flipped over.

  One of the gunmen yelled something in Mandarin. That was followed by gunfire, deafeningly loud in the enclosed space.

 

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