The battlefield of Se’dai was bathed in the eerie, silver light of the gigantic vessel that hovered above like the watchful eye of God; and yet, the landscape seemed unfinished, hollow, as if God had created his garden of Eden but then taken to rest with the job only half complete.
It was time to rectify that.
One by one, the unwitting players of The Grandmaster’s game began to appear, their disassembled atoms reconstituting with a soft hiss: forty-two individuals, scattered randomly throughout the four quadrants to north, south, east and west. And then, when each piece was in place upon the board… so the game began.
In the eastern town district, a sultry, dark-haired woman was one of the first to materialize. Immediately determining that she was standing, exposed and vulnerable, in the middle of a narrow, cobbled street – not ideal, considering that from this moment on she was nothing more than a human target – she sought shelter in a nearby alleyway, her eyes alert to danger and darting in every direction. The shadows closed about her, as if welcoming one of their own.
Which was something not far from the truth…
[Flashback]
The first thing Tanya Sealy noticed when she regained consciousness was the distinction between the three groups of people who were crowded anxiously around her hospital bed. Those in black suits were representatives of Roxxon, the international oil conglomerate, whilst those in grey were affiliated to the Brand Corporation, Roxxon’s bedfellows in certain major projects. The men and women in white coats were scientists and surgeons employed by one or other of those two organisations. None of three groups contained friends or family. Suddenly, in a room of approximately two dozen strangers, Tanya felt very alone.
However, it was too late for recriminations. The operation was over. The experimental procedure that had been performed upon her – that she had allowed these people to perform, in exchange for healthy financial remuneration – was done. And now, of course, she was terrified. An intelligent woman, she had nevertheless acted in haste when a representative from Roxxon had approached her, having become increasingly disillusioned with her lot as an exotic dancer and sometime call girl in Chicago. That had led her here, to the promise of wealth and a new life – but what if she had made a terrible mistake? Everything had changed. She could feel it. But there was no going back.
Tanya raised a tentative hand to her forehead, her fingertips tracing the rough outline of bandages.
“Did it work?” she asked, weakly. “Did you… get the results you wanted?”
One of the men at her bedside – the chief surgeon, with scruffy, dark hair and a narrow face dominated by a pair of heavy-framed spectacles – leaned in close. He was smiling as he took her hand in his. “It may be a few days before we can be sure,” he said, kindly, “But… yes. Yes, Tanya, I think you’re going to be exactly what we were hoping for.”
The surgeon’s name was Malus. Karl Malus. He had introduced himself to Tanya before the operation, and she had warmed to him. Now she was relaxed enough in his presence to close her eyes and allow her head to sink back into its pillow, her black hair soft against her cheeks. She sighed as an image of the surgeon’s face entered her mind, and breathed deeply as she felt herself reach out to him, not physically, but with some part of her inner self. She saw hands – her hands? – cup his face and draw him towards her, for a kiss. Her mouth parted in anticipation. The surgeon couldn’t resist. She could hear the quickened throb of his heart, his blood, as their lips pressed together…
…and then, she heard the shouting. Her eyes shot wide, but for a moment she could see nothing – nothing except darkness, swirling dense and black. It was then that she heard a voice at her ear, a woman, urgent.
“Stop it, Tanya,” the female doctor at her side hissed. “Let him go. Just relax and let him go.”
Instinctively, Tanya did as she was bidden. A second later, the cloud of darkness about her head dispersed with an almost disappointed hiss, fading away like smoke. Tanya blinked as she found herself staring at the surgeon, Malus, who was clawing at his throat and struggling for breath, his face dark crimson.
“What happened?” Tanya gasped.
The female doctor grinned, entirely too pleased given the circumstances. “You tried to suffocate him,” she said. Tanya flinched in shock, then glanced down at her hands.
“No,” the doctor murmured, delighted. “Not with your hands…”
Tanya frowned. Karl Malus coughed, then managed a wry smile as he turned towards the crowd of executives, all of whom were utterly stunned by what they had just witnessed. “Well, ladies and gentlemen,” Malus rasped, “I believe I may have to bring forward my diagnosis. I’m thinking that we can already declare today a qualified success…”
[Flashback ends]
Tanya crouched in the shadows of the alleyway, her breath erupting in bursts and her heart hammering so fiercely that she was convinced she was going to suffer some kind of seizure. What was she doing here? Why her? The Grandmaster had offered an explanation for that first question whilst addressing those he had abducted from Earth, but he hadn’t elaborated on his selection criteria. She shivered, struggling to come to terms with it all. One moment she had been preparing dinner and sipping red wine, and the next – blink! Here she was, in full costume, on another planet, seemingly expected to launch into battle against other super-powered criminals. It was… well, it was insane, that was what it was.
Ironically, Tanya didn’t even consider herself a criminal any more. She had certainly walked that path in the years after leaving the employ of Roxxon and hooking up instead with the felonious organisation known as The Serpent Society, but recently The Society’s charter had decreased in members and their unlawful activities had all but stopped – and so, she could only ask once more, why her? She looked up accusingly at the enormous vessel that was dominating the storm-dark sky overhead, its eerie luminescence not dissimilar to bright moonlight, against a backdrop of the gigantic red eye of Rem peering through the clouds and lightning. So strange, so alien…
Tanya pouted, then sighed. To rail against the injustice of her situation was pointless – for now, there were obviously no answers forthcoming, and there was a far more urgent matter on her agenda.
Survival.
Tanya glanced down at herself, and – despite everything – she couldn’t help but smile. She wasn’t as young as she used to be, but she still cut a damn fine figure of a woman. Which was just as well considering the aforementioned costume she found herself wearing: a black leather bodice, cut low at the bosom and moulded sharply about her slender waist, and sheathe leggings and arm-length gloves, also of black leather. A green serpent crafted of lightweight steel was curled about her forehead like a crown, stark against her long, black hair and porcelain skin; four similar snake bracelets wound about her wrists and ankles. Her attire was provocative but also empowering, and the familiar sensation of the leather against her warm body was enough to rouse a much-needed feeling of confidence within her.
At that moment, hearing the sound of movement in the alleyway behind her, Tanya whirled, squinting into the shadows. When a silver-black orb some twenty inches in diameter descended abruptly before her, trailing steel tendrils in its wake, she gasped, before recognising it as one of the strange drones that had been swarming in The Grandmaster’s presence back up in the Elder’s ship.
Identity confirmed, the drone bleeped authoritatively, in a chillingly warped version of a genderless human voice. Designation: Black Mamba. Probability of overall victory: 2.9 per cent.
Tanya Sealy, alias Black Mamba, blinked. Then, she scowled. “Confirm this,” she snapped, raising both hands towards the drone – and then, weaving her fingertips, conjuring a sudden burst of seething black matter from thin air. This was the energy known as Darkforce, the pure, concentrated essence of an other-dimensional existence entirely lacking in light or heat; it was akin to a tide of oil and smoke, and it devoured everything in its path like a virus, including the surrounding shadows. It was this substance that had recently threatened to engulf the whole of Manhattan. One drone in an alleyway, therefore, was but a light snack.
At the last moment, the drone baulked and scooted away with an approximation of a squeal. Black Mamba snorted, then let her hands drop back to her sides; immediately, the Darkforce she had unleashed was stemmed and began to dissipate, drifting away on the air like mist. Once again, the alley settled into natural shadow. Dwelling morbidly on the drone’s proclamation – a measly 2.9 per cent chance of victory carried all the weight of a kick to the gut – Mamba was preparing to scout out the wider location where she’d materialized when she heard another sound. Snarling, expecting to see the orb attempting to creep up on her once more to deliver more gloom and doom, she turned – and was stopped her in her tracks. Some twenty metres away there was a slender form, silhouetted against a backdrop of pale silver at the head of the alleyway. This bizarre individual was brandishing an even more peculiar weapon.
Mamba raised a dark eyebrow. “Well, well,” she breathed. “Unless I’m very much mistaken, it looks like I’ve got myself a voyeur…”
[Flashback]
The elderly man had a name, of course – all men have names – but the thugs who set about him late one night as he was locking up his gentleman’s tailors in downtown Los Angeles didn’t know it, much less care. They just knew that this unfortunate fellow was a freak – frail to the point of illness, ugly, and effeminate – and that he was an easy target.
They beat him with baseball bats studded with nails. They broke one of his arms, and both of his collarbones, and dislocated both kneecaps. They ruined his face and shattered his right eye-socket, and then one of them – the leader of the pack – had laughed as he had stepped down hard on his victim’s throat and crushed his larynx. The old man should have died, but he did not. He never spoke again, and he was blind in that right eye, but he didn’t die. In fact, as he lay in hospital, seething in silent and impotent rage at what had become of him, his left eye began to burn with a preternatural intensity; the savagery inflicted upon him had damaged his brain, releasing certain chemicals that would have confounded the doctors had they been aware of it before their patient was discharged. But the old man kept his condition a secret, for he seemed to know instinctively how it would help him in days to come.
The old man should have died, and perhaps, in a way, he did; he returned to his tailors shop only to fashion himself a costume and mask to hide his ruined countenance, and to gather a selection of needles and thread, and thereafter he had become someone other. In the days that followed he had tracked down the youths who had attacked him, and he had exacted revenge. Frail to the point of illness, yes, but not as weak as that description would suggest – not with the aid of his eye, burning bright as fire and hypnotising his prey into a state of conscious paralysis.
He could have killed them. But that would have been a mercy.
Instead, Vernon Finch – that was his name, for all men have names – had employed all his expertise in using his needle and thread to render his victims mute and blind, just as he himself had been left that fateful night…
[Flashback ends]
A silver drone swooped in close, bleeping.
Identity confirmed. Designation: The Needle. Probability of overall victory: 0.5 per cent.
The old man whose real name was no longer required – his moniker, The Needle, serving more than adequately instead – glared up at the drone, then waved his weapon towards it in irritation. The drone drifted away, with a sense of nonchalance, leaving behind a rakishly thin figure clad entirely in a tight-fitting, neatly stitched patchwork costume of white fabric squares. His mask was white sackcloth, tapering to a drooping point, and it covered his face entirely save for an irregular slit through which his left eye stared out into the shadowed alleyway where he now stood. The weapon in his hand was a gigantic steel needle, some six foot in length, thin, and viciously barbed.
Facing the man, Black Mamba looked on with bemusement. Whilst leather and snake bracelets may not have won her many fashion awards there was at least some cachet in fetishwear; modelling oneself on an item of embroidery equipment was something else entirely. She knew that she should have taken the initiative and launched an attack – that was the purpose of the game she reluctantly found herself participating in, after all – but instead she found herself shackled by pity.
“Okay, now listen,” she warned, meeting The Needle’s gaze with authority. “I can’t even begin to imagine where you managed to get your hands on that pig-sticker of yours, and I’ll admit it looks as mean as hell, but you won’t get anywhere near enough to use it. Trust me on this: you’re outmatched here. So just… just…”
Her words faltered, and for a moment she couldn’t understand why – until she realised that her tongue and lips had suddenly become numb. In the space of a heartbeat, she felt her entire face freeze, followed by her shoulders, her arms… and, before she could even think about trying to find a way to stop it, she was petrified from head to toe. Just like that. The only thing she could move were her eyes – appropriate, really, considering that it was The Needle’s burning eye that had placed her in this state.
Black Mamba could barely breathe, so it was no surprise that she was also unable to scream as she watched, helplessly, as The Needle slowly extended his weapon towards her until the sharp point came to rest upon the curve of her throat, just above the scoop of her bodice. The masked man cocked his head, that single eye shining like a silver dollar in the darkness. Mamba was suddenly aware of a foul odour upon the air, acrid and antiseptic, but such was her paralysis she couldn’t even draw clear. Worse still, she was unable to unleash the Darkforce; just like everything else, the sophisticated implant that had been embedded into the frontal lobe of her brain by Roxxon’s scientists all those years ago had been rendered inoperative by The Needle’s stare.
And, judging by the churning agony that beginning to build in her skull like the mother of all migraines, the Darkforce was not pleased.
The Needle paused awhile, studying his victim as if she were nothing more than a moth snared in a net. It occurred to him that he had always made it his mission to punish young men, like those who had attacked him, whilst leaving women unharmed, but a situation such as this shifted the parameters. And, in truth, there was so little that remained of this man’s rational mind that The Grandmaster’s edict was less of a consideration than an urgent, irresistible need for a victim, any victim regardless of gender, to join him in his world of silence and darkness. He nodded then, making his decision. He would be kind: regardless of the rules of the game, he would not kill this one.
He would simply sew up her mouth and remove both her pretty eyes, and leave her for one of the others to claim.
His own eye blazing and his breathing ragged with excitement, The Needle lay his main weapon aside and lurched forwards, deftly removing a regular needle and thread from the sleeve-cuff of his costume. And Black Mamba could only stare on in mute recrimination at her foolishness in underestimating her opponent, as thin, gloved fingers closed about her jaw, followed by the sensation of the first, sharp stab beneath her lower lip…
…but only for the briefest instant. The next thing she saw was The Needle suddenly reeling backwards, a wordless shriek erupting from behind his mask. The man’s gloved hands were clasped to his face, his fingertips scrabbling at his visible eye – which was now spurting blood by virtue of a silver disc with a serrated, razor edge that was embedded there. The Needle fell to his knees, writhing and squealing. And, in that moment, Mamba felt a presence at her shoulder.
“I always reckoned I was accurate enough to thread one of those beauties through the eye of a needle,” said a deep, male voice. “Nice to have the opportunity to put the theory to the test.”
Still utterly paralysed and unable to turn to face the newcomer who had apparently saved her, Mamba then felt a gloved hand come to rest on the curve of her hip, and then another slip beneath her arm, searching out the swell of her breast. Her heart skipped. She felt hot breath on her neck, then lips against her ear, so disgracefully intimate that every part of her would have recoiled in disgust if only she were able… and then there came a mechanical whirring from above.
Identity confirmed, a drone bleeped. Designation: Bullseye. Probability of overall victory: 5.1 per cent.
Black Mamba’s blood ran cold. One of the invading hands slid over the bare flesh of her upper bosom and curled about her throat.
“Now,” the male voice whispered, “Normally I don’t like to take advantage of a lady – so you just tell me when to stop, okay, sweetheart? By the way – they call me Bullseye because I’m a man who always hits the spot, know what I mean? So, you just feel free to start screaming whenever the urge takes you…”
[Flashback]
“Dude?”
“Curt, I’ve done it! See, I’ve added little ridges on the sides of the boots, and the gloves, and - ”
“Dude, we need to talk.”
“…so, not only can I now control my speed, I can also change direction without slowing down, so no more slamming into walls or losing balance and skidding along for fifty metres on my - ”
“Dude!”
Jalome Beacher stopped talking and glanced up from his workbench, blinking behind his goggles. Standing in the doorway of the makeshift laboratory, Curtis Carr stared sadly at the man whose lifelong friendship he so valued that he considered him a brother. Unfortunately, because of this relationship, it was ultimately up to him to tell Jalome that he was acting like a lunatic.
“What?” Jalome asked. “Are you mad at me?”
“Pretty much,” said Curtis. “But nowhere near as mad as Sophia.”
Jalome reached up and removed the mask that he was wearing, a silver sheath that covered his entire face, replete with a pair of green goggles that resembled bug eyes. It revealed the countenance of a handsome, middle-aged African-American, with short hair and twinkling, intelligent eyes, and a mouth pursed into a dismayed pout. “She called you?”
“She left you, Beach. And you were so busy out here in your damn shed with your damn super-costume, you didn’t even notice…”
Jalome blinked some more. Then he looked down at his athletic, well-defined body, which was currently clad in the same slinky, silver mesh as his mask. The suit, a modified speed skater outfit, gleamed in the light of his desk lamp, treated as it was with a special – no, not just special, revolutionary – experimental chemical that rendered whatever it coated completely frictionless. This chemical was the future. It was Jalome’s future. And no one was going to take that away from him. Not even… not…
Jalome grimaced and slipped his mask back over his head.
“Whatever,” he said, quietly. “We both know she’s better off without me anyway.”
Curtis shook his head in dismay. “Man, you know what? You must be, like, the eighth cleverest scientific-type genius guy in the world to have developed this stuff of yours. Back at uni, you and Pete were always so far ahead of me and Raxton… but, man, I’ll be damned if you’re not the biggest fool I’ve ever met.”
“Says the guy who amputated his own leg.”
“Accidentally.”
“Oh, because that makes it better.” Jalome adjusted his goggles. “Anyway, you finished?”
Curtis’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah,” he said, with a sigh. “Yeah, as it happens, I am. You know, Beach, one day you’re going to stop thinking only about yourself and instead, just the once, you’re going to do the right thing by someone else. Just don’t count on me being around to see that miracle take place, okay?”
And with that, Curtis Carr turned tail and limped out of his best friend’s life.
[Flashback ends]
“Ohmanohmanohman,” whined the man in the gleaming, all-over silver bodysuit. “Please someone tell me this isn’t happening…”
The rooftops of the town district were starkly illuminated in the unearthly glow of The Grandmaster’s vessel, but Jalome Beacher was having trouble seeing anything – the reason being, his goggles were on back to front. Which, quite frankly, was ridiculous. Some meddling, intergalactic doofus had plucked him out of the middle of a restaurant, transported him across the universe, and dumped him, in full costume, on a moon built to look like a set from a Tim Burton movie… but he couldn’t have magicked his goggles the right way around? Goddamn. It might have been funny if it wasn’t all so mind-scramblingly, pants-wettingly terrifying…
Identity confirmed. Designation: Slyde. Probability of overall victory: 1.2 per cent.
Finally sliding his eyepiece into its correct position, Slyde stared up at the silver drone that was hovering above him, its tendrils shimmering. “What was that?” he barked. “What did you say?”
The drone began to drift away, ignoring him. Slyde waved an angry fist.
“Hey! Hey, you! Sergeant Major Zeroid! Hey, I’m talking to you!”
The drone paused, then swivelled back in Slyde’s direction.
“Yeah, damn right you better listen!” Slyde yelled. “You go tell your boss, I am not down with this, you hear me? This is a serious breach of human rights! I know people! I know lawyers! And, dammit… I was on a date. The first time Sophia’s given me the time of day in, like, a year, and… and… hey, where’re you going? Hey, I said - ”
The drone sped past Slyde’s head, slapping him blatantly across the face with its tendrils, then slowed to a halt some fifty metres away, above an adjacent rooftop. Slyde swivelled, muttering irate curses beneath his breath – but then his words died and his eyes shot wide behind his goggles.
Identity confirmed, bleeped the drone, in recognition of the hulking figure that was standing at the edge of the other roof, staring across at Slyde. Designation: Armadillo. Probability of overall victory: 1.8 per cent.
Slyde croaked.
“Oh, crap…”
[Flashback]
Falling, falling, falling…
So, this was how King Kong must have felt. An absurd notion, Antonio Rodriguez mused – but then, plummeting from the Empire State Building with just a few seconds remaining until impact, what else was a man-monster to think? About the geneticist, perhaps? Doctor Karl Malus had been a flawed genius – the flaw being that, for all his skills as a surgeon, he was actually criminally insane – but he was nonetheless the only man who could diagnose and cure the previously unrecognised wasting disease that was afflicting Antonio’s wife, Bonita. And cure her he had… for a price.
Should he think then about what came next? The experiments? About how, in exchange for his wife’s life, Antonio had agreed to become a subject for Malus’s lunatic research; how he had allowed his body to be bombarded with radiation and chemicals, and his DNA to be spliced with that of the Dasypus novemcinctus, more commonly known as the nine-banded American armadillo, altering his physiology at molecular level and resulting in a lumbering, eight-foot-tall, six-hundred-pound mutate of man and animal?
Or, perhaps, he should just think about Bonita. Beautiful Bonita, with her girlish figure and dark hair and come-hither eyes… how Antonio had considered himself blessed that someone like her had chosen someone like him. Sacrificing his own humanity to save her had been an act he had performed gladly. Unfortunate, then, that so soon afterwards she had rejected the monster he had become and had sought joy in the arms of another man.
Following that wretched betrayal, taking his own life had become his only recourse, and New York’s world famous landmark had been as good a location as any to do the deed. Except…
In the instant before impact, one last thought occurred to Antonio. Considering that his mutated hide was actually a hundred times tougher than the bony, armoured shell of a real armadillo, and in the past he had proven resistant to bullets, fire and heavy impact… could he be certain that a fall, even from such a significant height, would actually prove fatal…?
[Flashback ends]
Armadillo swatted at the drone that was circling his head, with a swiftness that belied his size, and the four, eight-inch claws at the end of his massive paw almost found their target. The drone bleeped and sped away, tendrils twitching. Armadillo growled, and returned his attention to the man in the silver bodysuit on the next rooftop. Bathed in the light from overhead, he was truly a behemoth, almost as wide as he was tall; his misshapen head was sunk deep into an armoured, golden-red shell that crested about his shoulders and back in a series of overlapping scales, whilst his arms and legs were squat and extraordinarily powerful, each limb culminating in those savage talons. When he moved forward, as he did now to the edge of his roof, the echo of his footsteps was almost as thunderous as the storm raging across the heavens high above.
It was no wonder that Slyde turned tail and ran. Or, rather, he didn’t run – he skated. That was what he did. The soles of his boots, like every other part of his costume, was treated with the special, frictionless chemical he had invented, allowing him to propel himself forward with sudden, terrific speed at a moment’s notice. Now he shot away in the opposite direction like a greased silverfish, leaving Armadillo momentarily startled.
“No!” the monster roared. “Come back. I’m not… that is, I don’t… nyarrgh!”
Swinging his massive arms in frustration, Armadillo tensed then leaped forward, his sheer size and momentum compensating for his lack of mobility. He covered the twenty-foot gap between roofs with ease, and landed with a cacophonous crash. He was furious, more with himself than with the strange silver man. Of course he was going to run – anyone would, faced with a mutant beast, let alone in a situation like this where each of them had been presented with the task of slaughtering one another in a vicious free-for-all. However, if only he could show the other man that he had no intention of following The Grandmaster’s directive and therefore wasn’t a threat, then –
Armadillo grunted as he felt his feet give way beneath him – along with the section of roof where he had just landed. The air was suddenly rent with splintering wood, and the monster found himself falling. Just like at the Empire State Building that time, when he had thought – hoped – that he was plummeting to his death, only to end up with little more than a handful of broken bones. This time, he doubted he’d come to any harm whatsoever, but that wasn’t his main concern.
He was tumbling into darkness, with no idea what might await him below – and the silver man was going to get away…
Slyde didn’t look back when he heard the creature behind him roar in what could only have been a bloodthirsty battle cry, nor when he heard a resounding crash, followed by a rumbling and a splintering and another, oddly muffled howl…
…but then, by that point, he had more important things to worry about. Approaching the edge of the roof at significant speed, the ground had shifted beneath his feet at precisely the most disastrous moment – just as he was using the ridges on the soles of his boots to maintain his balance as he prepared to leap from one roof to another – and as a result he found himself skewing sideways, his legs shooting in the air and his arms flailing. Spinning helplessly out of control, he shot out into empty space… and then rebounded with a hearty crack! off a brick wall, somersaulted, and began to fall.
He didn’t even have time to shriek. He hit another wall, curling into a ball in a desperate attempt to protect his arms and legs; then, a second or two later, he crashed to earth with a gasp of pain, but proceeded to skid away along a stretch of cobbled street like a sardine. Such was his momentum and his frictionless state he would perhaps have continued for a significant distance in this fashion if not for instinctively snatching out a hand and gripping at a wall with his ridged glove as he passed the entrance to an alleyway. He spun in circles on his backside, cursing and spluttering, then finally slithered to a halt halfway down the alley.
“Ow,” he said, weakly. And then, “Ow,” again, with an added sniffle of self-pity. Lying on his back, he reached up and adjusted his goggles. It was at that point that he realised he was not alone. A few feet away, a man in a black costume was frozen in the act of pawing a woman clad in a revealing leather ensemble and a snake tiara, whilst alongside them there was another man, huddled on the ground, clutching at a masked face that was awash with blood.
“Ah,” said Slyde. “Sorry to disturb you. Obviously a bad time, so…”
The man in black cocked his head curiously towards Slyde. On the forehead of his mask there were three concentric white circles, like a target. Or, to be more exact –
Bullseye’s mouth curled into a cruel smile. “Bad time?” he asked. “Buddy, you don’t know the half of it…”
[Flashback]
One morning when he was twelve years old, Leonard Lester trudged out to the woods near his home in Kilkenny with two burlap sacks. In one sack there was a collection of specially selected stones and a length of white nylon cord. In the other there was a neighbour’s marmalade cat. Leonard held the cat down whilst he tied the cord about its back legs, then threaded the other end of the cord between two strong branches of an oak tree and pulled, lifting the thrashing animal some ten feet in the air. He tied the cord in place around the trunk of the oak, then took his bag of stones and paced out a distance of forty feet. He whistled all the while. It was a fine spring day, warm, with a china blue sky scudded with clouds overhead and a pleasant haze of lavender and tree sap on the air. Perfect.
Leonard took a deep breath, smiled, and palmed the first stone. The cat wriggled and spat, which was good; a moving target was always best for practice. Leonard drew back his arm, and threw. The stone clipped off the trunk of the oak and ricocheted off the cat’s rump, causing it to buck with a plaintive mewl. Again: perfect. Leonard’s young life was all about perfect. His smile became a grin. He was feeling in the zone today.
Leonard hurled thirty-seven stones over the course of the next hour, and each throw was successful. Half were simple, single ricochets, the rest were more complicated double rebounds. He was most proud of one strike, which had been achieved with a stone with one long, curved edge and two jagged ends, because one rebound had utilised the curve whilst the other had glanced off one of the points, just as intended. Thy key to it all wasn’t how hard one threw, of course, or in simply having a keen eye; it was judging the weight and shape of one’s missile to the tiniest fraction, and maintaining concentration. Therefore, it was unusual that Leonard’s self-satisfaction at his accomplishments caused that concentration to waver, for the thirty-eighth and final stone skimmed the trunk on its second ricochet instead of striking with a touch more angle, and it sailed harmlessly over the head of the bloodied, bludgeoned cat, which now barely twitched as it hung from its back legs.
Leonard froze, unable to breathe. His eyes flickered. His mouth tightened into a snarl. A pounding roused in his head, at the base of his skull, and he almost felt faint. He’d missed. He’d… missed.
“Bastard,” he hissed. “Useless, good-for-nothing bastard.”
Eyes misting with tears and rage, he snatched a wedge of old wooden fencepost from the grass at his feet and hurled it without thought. The wood slammed into the head of the cat, shattering its skull and causing its carcass to swing wildly on the end of the cord. Leonard snorted, pressing his hands to his temples, his eyes clenched tightly shut.
“You know what happens when you miss, Lenny,” he whispered. “Now, take your punishment like a man, son.” He tensed his shoulders, and his arms began to quiver. And then, he drew back his fists… and catapulted them back at his face so hard that he fell backwards, blood spurting from a split lip. He picked himself up, then commenced to beating himself, savagely and without further pause. He punched and gouged his own face until he was almost as bruise-black as the dead cat and until he sank to his knees in exhaustion. Only then did he allow himself respite.
It was a vicious castigation, but necessary. After all, his father had taught him the importance of discipline – the importance of perfect – and, next time, Lenny would strive that much harder to achieve it…
[Flashback ends]
Bullseye’s hand flashed to his belt and returned with a single, silver shuriken. Slyde’s eyes flew wide behind his goggles.
“No!” he yelled. “Wait a - ”
Bullseye threw. The razor-edged disc glinted momentarily, then struck home…
…or, at least, it should have done. Instead, it glanced off Slyde’s shoulder and skimmed away harmlessly along the length of the narrow alleyway. Bullseye’s jaw sagged, what would have been a cackle of delight dying on his lips. Slyde – who hadn’t survived through any act of swiftness or agility on his part, but rather because the shuriken had simply skidded off the oiled surface of his suit instead of biting home into his jugular as intended – simply whimpered. Then, he was up on his feet, ready to skate.
It was at this point that he glimpsed the look of absolute terror on the face of the woman with the green serpent twined through her hair. Her body was twitching and straining, as if bound, although to Slyde’s eyes she was entirely without restraint – of a physical variety. The fact that she couldn’t move when she so obviously wanted to was evidence, however, that she was suffering from some kind of mental or magical possession. Slyde thought of how Bullseye’s hands had been all over his captive’s hips and breasts when he had inadvertently crashed the party, and how the woman’s expression was contorted with desperation, and his eyes narrowed behind his goggles.
“What the hell are you doing to her, you son of a bitch?” he barked. “What, like this whole situation isn’t bad enough already?”
Bullseye snarled, procuring three more shuriken from his belt as he stepped clear of Black Mamba. “You should learn to keep your greasy silver nose out of other people’s business, slick,” he breathed. “Or maybe I’ll just go ahead and slice it off before I kill you…”
Slyde growled in his chest, then dipped his head and spread his arms, like a bird ready to take flight. Then, he kicked down at the ground, propelling himself forward – and, instantly, he began to skate, pumping his legs as if his life depended upon it. Which, of course, it did. Bullseye released the three shuriken in one go, each directed towards a different area of Slyde’s onrushing body, but each weapon skimmed harmlessly off the silver man’s chemically-treated suit, unable to find purchase.
“No!” Bullseye screamed, suddenly apoplectic. “That’s impossible! You can’t - ”
“Already did,” Slyde retorted, whipping out an elbow into Bullseye’s face as he swept past at high velocity. Bullseye’s head snapped back like a whipcrack, blood trailing from his mouth. Slyde then kicked out at the wall of the alley with one foot, spinning on the other, skimmed against the opposite wall and shot back towards Bullseye without losing momentum, all in the space of a heartbeat. This time he led with a fist rather than an elbow, slamming a blow into his foe’s midriff with such force that he lifted him off the ground. Bullseye snarled and attempted to twist in mid-air, only for Slyde to butt him in the face then ram him bodily into the wall, pirouetting at the last moment so that his impetus carried him clear.
Bullseye rebounded with a grunt and staggered, but kept his footing. “Son of a bitch,” he hissed, spitting blood. “I swear, I’m going to rip your heart out through your funnuhhh!”
Slyde shot across his enemy’s path once more, crunching another elbow into the small of his back – but this time he himself recoiled, shrieking in pain and clutching at his arm. He had lined his suit with a layer of concentrated protective padding, having learned the hard way during his early experiences in costume that non-cushioned collision at high speeds really hurt like hell, but this impact felt like he had struck a steel girder – which actually wasn’t far from the truth.
Bullseye glanced up, smirking through his own blood and discomfort. “Adamantium grafts, slick,” he rasped. “Spine, ribs, joints… I’m a regular bionic man. Get the feeling you just bit off more than you can chew, streaky?”
Slyde grimaced behind his mask and pumped his legs, recovering the speed he had lost in an instant. He hurtled towards Bullseye once more… then shifted his bodyweight to one side at the end of his approach, sashaying his hips in a feint to fool his enemy into thinking he was heading in the other direction. Bullseye flailed a useless fist into thin air, losing his balance as Slyde kicked him square in the butt as he passed, shunting him forward into the alley wall once more. Slyde then twisted towards Black Mamba – who remained frozen in place like a statue as the scuffle took place before her – and gathered her into his arms. He spun on his ridged heels, expertly angling his body so that he wasted none of his momentum in supporting the woman’s additional weight and instead transferring his impetus into her body, spinning one-hundred-and-eighty degrees so that she seemed to be pushing him along towards the end of the alleyway and beyond.
He executed the manoeuvre with all the grace and guile of an ice skater, even managing a cheeky wave back in the direction of his enemy before disappearing in a flash of silver, leaving Bullseye flatfooted and utterly dumbfounded by this astonishing turn of events.
“I missed,” the man in black muttered, clenching and unclenching his fists. “Oh, man. Oh, I am so going to enjoy ripping off your little silver head when I catch up with you, you piece of - ”
He faltered then, hearing a noise from behind him. He turned to see the scrawny form of The Needle, about whom he had completely forgotten, and who was now up on his feet and staggering away along the alley in the opposite direction. Bullseye’s scowl darkened still further. “Et tu, skinny?” he breathed. “I don’t think so…”
He bent at the waist then, and snatched something from the ground. It was The Needle’s own weapon. Bullseye grunted, then raised the six-foot needle to his shoulder, like a javelin. He took a moment to judge the distance between them, and the weight of the object in his hand, then let fly. The weapon cut sharply through the air and impaled The Needle cleanly through the back of the skull, penetrating bone and brain before exiting from the fleeing villain’s mouth in a gout of blood. The strength of impact lifted The Needle from his feet and sent him crashing to the ground a few metres further down the alley, twin slivers of thin steel protruding from the front and back of his head.
Bullseye stalked forward, muttering beneath his breath, and came to stand over the corpse of his victim. Then, grimacing, he shook his head. “Kind of begs the question,” he snarled, “Where the hell does someone get a six-foot freaking needle anyway?”
He nudged his victim with the toe of his boot, but the man didn’t respond. Bullseye had seen enough dead bodies in his time to recognise one now. At that moment, from overhead, there came the sound of whirring.
Fatality confirmed, declared a drone, its tentacles twitching. Deceased: The Needle. Survival confirmed. Designation: Bullseye. New probability of overall victory: 5.3 per cent.
Bullseye snorted, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his gloved hand. “Yeah,” he muttered. “First fatality. Soon to be followed by a certain, greased-up little freak and his new snake-hips chippie – and anyone else in this whole stinking charade who dares gets in my way from now on…”
Armadillo grunted and shook his head, swabbing his eyes with his paws as he attempted to clear his vision of the clouds of dust and grit that assailed him. As expected, the fall hadn’t harmed him, but he was still anxious to see where he had ended up, having crashed through three wooden floors into what seemed to be a pit; the ground beneath him was rough stone and the air smelled stale and tinged with smoke. In fact, although he was underground, this was no pit – it was a crossroads of tunnels, as he became aware when the debris settled. Four passageways, tall and wide, stretched away from this central junction, lit by flaming torches bracketed to the walls but clogged in deepest shadow where they vanished into the distance.
Armadillo scowled, his ire rising. Although customarily kind-hearted he had always been quick to lose his temper, more so since his transformation; now he was close to being overwhelmed with the need to let loose, to smash. He flexed his claws and snarled. What was he supposed to do in this ridiculous situation? Fight? Kill? Or had he been chosen just to provide fodder for more bloodthirsty foes? It was all –
“Who daresss?”
A voice sounded in the dark at the end of one of the tunnel branches – a rasping, sibilant hiss – and Armadillo scrambled to his feet and whirled to face it, his scaly outer shell scraping against the rocky walls on all sides as he all but filled the width of the junction.
“Who daresss?” the voice came again, this time accompanied by a disconcerting scratching and slithering, and the emergence of an oddly shaped figure from the gloom. “Who daresss sssteal me from my jungle home? Who daresss now attack me from above?”
“Hey, hold on a second,” Armadillo snapped. “Listen, I don’t know who you are, but - ”
“Then your attack isss all the more ill-judged,” the hissing voice declared – and then, the speaker stepped fully from the shadows, torchlight glinting on a body sheathed in shining, mottled orange scales, very much like Armadillo’s own, but rendered more inhuman with a crest of spines that stretched from head to his spiked reptilian tail.
At that moment there came a whirring from above – and then a silver-black drone appeared, drifting down through the cavity in the roof of the tunnel created by Armadillo’s fall, its sensors whirring. Identity confirmed, it bleeped. Designation: Stegron. Probability of overall victory: 1.3 per cent.
Armadillo regarded the creature before him with a thrill of fear, looking deep into his burning red eyes, and for a second he felt as if he was somehow staring at his own warped reflection in a funhouse mirror. But only for a second. For at that moment, without further hesitation, Stegron the dinosaur man threw back his head, fangs bared, and emitted a blood-curdling screech… and then attacked.
His life was full of regrets, but that fight with Luke Cage was by far the biggest.
Curtis Carr rubbed at his right thigh, his expression thoroughly miserable, as he sat slumped on a small hillock of what appeared to be translucent crystal striated with threads of copper and steel wire. The immediate landscape all about him was dominated by mounds and columns of this same crystal, punctuated at irregular intervals by an insanely random scattering of leads pipes and twisted girders. It was like a school chemistry project and experimental sculpture rolled into one, and it was simultaneously beautiful and disturbing – but Curtis had never been one for experiencing wonder, and this panorama of alien splendour was lost on him. All he cared about was the realisation that he was about to die, and the awful memories that this brought flooding back.
He had designed and manufactured his alchemy gun not long out of university whilst working for a pittance at an automobile factory. It was a time when the world was undergoing such dramatic upheaval that anarchy never seemed far away; everywhere one looked there were mutants, freaks, men and women with super-powers. It was all the newspaper and the television networks ever talked about. No one cared about engineering or the traditional sciences any more, the emphasis was on genetics or the development of weapons to use against the evolutionary marvels who were emerging. Curtis had constructed his gun utilising experimental electronics and a crude, miniature replication of a particle accelerator that could stimulate elemental chemical transmutation; with one flick of a trigger he could emit a frequency ray that could transform one element into another at atomic level, in accordance to a series of pre-programmed neutron configurations. He had intended to patent and sell his invention, but had unwisely become involved in conflict with his boss at the motor factory, leading to his confrontation with Cage, a mercenary-for-hire who also happened to be one of those aforementioned super-freaks.
With skin so durable it was resistant to bullets, let alone physical blows, Cage was a formidable opponent. Curtis – in his first outing as Chemistro – had been beaten like a cur and had panicked. Accidentally transmuting his own foot into steel, with which he had then attempted to kick Cage into submission, Curtis had thus become victim to a chemical fragility that was inherent in his elemental conversions. Under impact, his foot had crumbled into dust. Later, doctors had been forced to amputate his entire leg.
His prosthetic limb was marvellous in many ways, but a constant ache reminded Curtis of his own stupidity. And now, here he was, on an alien world so very far from home, expected to engage in a battle for survival. Curtis shook his head slowly, then buried his face in his hands.
Sometimes, life truly sucked.
Upon materializing in the western quadrant or crystal and steel, Pete Petruski was momentarily frozen by fear. He gazed about at his surroundings in awe, then up at The Grandmaster’s craft overhead, against the backdrop of Rem and Se’dai’s sister moons, and an atmosphere of glittering tempest. Then, with a start, his brain and body exploded into action.
The first thing he did was check his immediate arsenal – his gun, and a number of belts looped about his waist and shoulders like rifle ammunition, each supporting an abundance of silver cylinders. Then, he slipped one hand inside his boiler suit and searched out the item that was clipped to a harness across his chest. His fingers slid over a familiar object and he smiled behind the visor of his mask.
He thought of the meeting at The Cat Lick Club he had been attending when he had vanished from Earth, and his musing turned to Lady Deathstrike. In the few minutes he had been suspended in stasis in The Grandmaster’s Court he had caught a glimpse of those other villains who had been abducted, and Deathstrike, with her distinguished beauty and her gleaming claws, had been one of them. Bullseye, the assassin with the white concentric circles on the forehead of his black mask, had been another. Such serendipity. Petruski patted the object strapped to his chest and breathed deeply.
It always paid to be prepared.
So lost was he in his own self-pity, Curtis didn’t register that the noise he heard behind him was footfall until it was too late. He cursed, scrambling to his feet and whirling, gun raised – but, if the man approaching him had meant him harm then he probably would have been dead already. Realising this – and also recognising the bronze body armour and mask with reflective faceplate that the man was wearing – Curtis held off from pulling the trigger and transmuting him into glass.
“Hey,” he said, slowly. “You too, huh?”
Lancaster Sneed, Shockwave, nodded. “Regrettably, yes,” he murmured, his English accent crisp even from behind his mask. “Are you going to shoot me?”
“Depends. Are you going to kung fu electrocute me?”
“That would be what’s expected of me. Of both of us. But I’ve never been one for following orders I disagreed with.”
“Spoken like the true professional you are, Lance.”
Shockwave and Chemistro turned at the sound of a familiar voice and saw a figure emerge from behind a pillar of crystal, modified firearm slung over his shoulder. Pete Petruski, The Trapster, had lifted his visor so that a cigarette could dangle from his lower lips. He exhaled a haze of smoke rings and smiled thinly at his two fellows.
“I doubt we’ve got a hall of a lot of time, so let’s just cut to the chase, shall we?” he declared. “Now, we can either take it as coincidence that we’ve all been beamed planet-side within fifty metres of one another… or, we can suppose that we’ve ended up back together for a purpose. Maybe this Grandmaster likes our style. But, whatever. Back on Earth I was building a solid rep as a man who makes things happen, an organiser who assembles those of like mind to achieve greater success than they might as a unit. I’m thinking that this is a perfect opportunity to continue that work.”
Shockwave and Chemistro glanced at one another. The Trapster flicked away the butt of his cigarette, slid his visor back into place, and hefted his gun.
“Proceed individually, we’ll all of us eventually get our ticket stamped,” he stated, simply. “But together – with as many more recruits as we can muster – we’ve got a chance of sweeping the board clear. This is a war, remember, and wars are won by armies. Then, when we’re done… we take the fight to the big man upstairs.”
The Trapster gestured with the nozzle of his gun to The Grandmaster’s craft overhead. Shockwave breathed deeply. Chemistro pursed his lips.
“We got a choice in this, Pete?”
“Sure, Curt. You can refuse. You can even try and turn me to gold, or whatever the hell you fancy. Maybe you’ll get lucky. But without me you’ll end up just as dead. Both of you.” The Trapster cocked his head, reflected light gleaming in his visor like a beacon. “So, gentlemen… are you with me?”
The Grandmaster settled back into his gigantic throne, sighing with contentment. His Court was filled with a cluster of images, hanging in the air like holograms, revolving and alternating places with one another as they jostled for attention. The Grandmaster studied each one with satisfaction whilst attended by his drones; every participant in his game had a screen of his or her own, and whilst very little had occurred thus far each window onto the moon of Se’dai was supremely fascinating in its own fashion.
Except, of course, for the one that was already dark. The war’s first casualty.
It was at that moment that a flicker trembled in the ether – the barest whisper of movement, but enough to alert the drones, all of which suddenly erupted in a fluster of bleeps and tentacles.
Anomaly.
Anomaly.
Intruder.
Anomaly.
The Grandmaster leaned forward in his seat, his brow furling in consternation. He waved his hand once and the drones immediately ceased their frenzied chirping; he waved it again, and a wide expanse of ethereal matter at the heart of the chamber abruptly warped and shimmered…
…and then solidified, revealing a construct of intricately woven chrome and steel in the shape of a cube some two hundred metres across, levitating in exactly the same area of the hall where the abducted villains had been suspended in their energy cocoons before being despatched to the battlefield. The cube flickered with winking lights and pulses of energy. The Grandmaster scowled, red eyes flaring.
“Well, well,” he breathed, roughly appropriating the words he had heard uttered by Black Mamba. “Unless I’m very much mistaken, it appears that I also have a voyeur…”
To Be Continued...
Significant Issues
Important events referred to in this issue occured in the following Marvel titles:
The Needle's origin was recounted in Spider-Woman # 9
Armadillo threw himself from The Empire State Building in Captain America # 316
Chemistro transmuted his own leg into steel in Luke Cage, Hero For Hire # 12
