CHAPTER 49 - LEOPARD

Spots, the letter began. If you’re reading this then you’re as smart as I always knew you to be. Smarter than me, even. If you’re reading this, I’m so proud of you...

The words ran frenzied circles in Leopard’s head, round and round like a pack of frenzied dogs. Memories, too, unbidden and unwanted. Once, he’d seen one of the many petty warlords east of Melbourne throw someone to a pack of snarling hounds the size of horses. He didn’t remember anything more—he’d cut the terror away. But Monkey had said he’d protect him from that, and he had.

I did what I did for a reason, and someday, I hope you’ll understand. I am grateful, and honored, to call you my friend. To the ends of the world and back again. You and me, forever.

The others would never understand what he was doing nor why he had to do it. Not Defiant, not Impel, not Tiger, and not Revenant. It surprised him that the latter didn’t stop him. He’d expected her to ambush him as he slipped out of their hideout in the dead of night. But by the time he had hot-wired a car and watched the suburbs fall away behind him, he knew he’d made good on his escape.

Love the treachery, he thought, but hate the traitor. Something like guilt gnawed at him, but why? He was a leopard, and they couldn’t change their spots. They wanted him to change; they wanted him to be human. But he couldn’t.

But this isn’t treachery, Leopard told himself, this is reconnaissance.

Defiant and the others wouldn’t understand, but maybe they’d figure it out. He hadn’t taken anything but his own weapons and gear. Just because he was going to stab them in the gut didn’t mean he had to twist the knife. Monkey was his friend. Whatever closure there was going to be, it had to come from him. Then, and only then, could he let Monkey fall into their hands.

There were coordinates at the end of the letter. The directions led him south-east for over an hour, until he pulled the car onto a long dirt road. Orange dust flared out behind him. The car rumbled and shuddered. Leopard didn’t notice—there were only the words.

If there was any chance at saving Monkey, then he had to try. He owed him that much.

The moonlight illuminated the place Monkey’s coordinates had led him to. Leopard stopped the car and got out, shouldered his pack, and slung his rifle into a relaxed position. An industrial complex stood before him, dark and quiet. Beyond it, in the distance, was a vast, yawning chasm. An excavation engine loomed over it all, like a slumbering colossus. Whatever they had once mined here was a question for the past.

Someone hit him with a floodlight and the low-light visor of his helmet went incandescent, blinded him for a moment before it reset. Leopard heard the first bullet strike the dirt before him, felt the second nail him in the chest—the impact rippling out through his armorweave—and drive him to one knee. He raised his rifle as someone shouted, “Stop firing! Jesus, can’t you see his helmet?!”

At the edge of the complex, two figures came sliding down a ladder and jogged over to Leopard as he stood up. Men in ballistic vests armed with rifles. Leopard sucked in a breath, felt something throb in his ribs. If not for the remark about his helmet, he would’ve opened fire.

“Are you good, man?” one man asked. “Sorry, we weren’t told you were coming. We thought there was only two of you guys.”

“You can call me Leopard,” he replied. “Monkey’s expecting me.”

“He’s probably asleep.”

Leopard took one step forward. “Then wake him up.”

The man took a step back, nodding. “Sure thing. You want to get on that, Bob?” he asked his companion. “I’ll take our new friend to see the boss.”

The man led the way towards the complex. So, Monkey had been recruiting—it wasn’t much of a surprise, but it made Leopard frown. They didn’t have code names, but they seemed to respect him on the basis of who he was. It felt odd.

The whole complex was covered in a fine layer of orange dust. Once they were among the metal structures, walking beneath gantries and pipes and in the shadow of massive vehicles, Leopard could note the little things that made it clear the facility wasn't abandoned. Tread tracks in the dirt, recent enough to have not been disturbed. The quiet hum of a generator somewhere, like a persistent mosquito once he was aware of it.

“This way,” the man said, and they turned left, following the tread of massive tires to a building on the far side of the complex. A machine shop—huge yellow trucks sat side by side, forever in a state of overhaul. Figures moved around them. Leopard heard someone laughing. Just how many people had Monkey been recruiting? A dozen? More?

The man led Leopard inside. The people there were just as armed and armored as the two sentries had been. Someone working on one of the trucks peered at him as he passed, heading for the office at the far end of the workshop. None of them were masked or helmeted.

“Here you are,” the sentry said as he led Leopard up some metal steps and paused outside the office door. He knocked once, then someone opened the door from the inside. Leopard clenched his teeth and stepped through.

Behind the desk, a tall, broad-shouldered figure rose to standing. His copper-red mane was pulled back into a loose ponytail, and there was a moment’s confusion in his roguish blue eyes—but then Monkey smiled, strode over and gathered Leopard up into his arms.

“Welcome home, buddy.” He laughed. “I knew you’d make it back—I knew it!”

Rooster, standing by the door, without his helmet, frowned.

“We should search him,” he said.

“You might have a point if it was anyone else,” Monkey said, releasing him. “But this is Spots. I trust him with my life—so, how about you shut your mouth? In fact, better yet, how about you take a walk?”

Rooster did so. Monkey rolled his eyes.

“It’s been a while,” Leopard said.

“It has.” Monkey smiled. “You’ve still got your helmet.”

“It’s a very long story.”

“I’d love to hear it. So, how do you like my little operation?”

“You’ve been busy.”

Stolen story; please report.

“Well, the mission must continue, right?”

Leopard nodded. Does it? was on the tip of his tongue. He bit down on it.

“It’s a lot to take in, I know,” Monkey said. “There’s a lot I need to fill you in on. Come on, walk with me.”

Leopard fell in just behind him, like nothing had changed, like nothing had ever happened. There was an eerie sense of comfort in it. Leopard told himself that it was just nostalgia, that he had to stay on his toes.

“Looks like you’re gearing up for something big,” Leopard said.

“Mm,” Monkey said, nodding. “Better to be safe than sorry, right?”

“How’d you afford it?”

“It’s not a question of money, Spots, but influence.”

“Influence?”

Monkey laughed. “Yeah, man. I’ll explain it in the morning.”

“Did I wake you?”

“No, I was awake, actually,” he said, smiling sheepishly. “Reading, actually.”

“Since when do you read?”

“Like I said, there’s a lot I need to fill you in on.”

“Seems like it. How many people have you got here?”

“Nineteen so far,” Monkey said, as they stepped into the night air and crossed over to another building. “But I think I want fifty. It’s a nice even number, isn’t it?”

That’s, what, a full platoon?

“Guess so,” Leopard said. Monkey stopped at the door to the next structure, turned about.

“Listen,” he said. “There’s a lot you need to know. But we can discuss all of it in the morning, when we’re both less tired. Take any bed you want. If someone’s sleeping in it, kick ‘em out and tell them to take it up with me.”

Leopard felt pride well up behind his ribs. “Sure thing, man.” Here he was again, the beloved prodigal son, and the feeling was intoxicating. For a moment, Leopard drifted in it, considered drinking it in, but then caught himself. No, he had to be careful. He was here on a mission, and nostalgia was poison.

He had to save Monkey’s soul. He had to see if there was a soul there to save.

Monkey slapped him on the back. “It’s good to have you back, Jack. I mean it. I’ll see you in the morning, okay? Come meet me by the pit when you wake up, it’ll be just like old times.”

The building, whatever it was before, had been converted into something close to a barracks. Leopard picked out the bunk furthest from the door and sat down on it, set his gear down. He removed his helmet, listened to the hiss of the seal, and held it before him. He rubbed a thumb along the chrome and stared into the black visor.

He wasn’t sure he recognized who was staring back at him.

----------------------------------------

The next morning, Leopard woke up, checked his weapons and gear, geared up, nursed a horrible ration bar, and put his helmet on. He crossed the way back toward the open-air mining pit. He still couldn’t shake the uncomfortable feeling of nostalgia.

You didn’t have eyes on recruiting a platoon of armed fighters without an objective. Whatever it was, Monkey was gearing up for one hell of a fight. But against who, and why, and when?

Years ago, Leopard wouldn’t have cared. He would’ve relished the prospect of taking on the entire world. The world was broken, and it had to be torn down. If he died in the process, then, well, he died a martyr. Dying a martyr was better than dying alone. But he thought of Sabra and her father, and of Pavel and Aegis. What had he ever achieved? We have to fix what we can fix, Sabra said, and Leopard wasn’t sure if it was his memory or imagination.

Either way, it was why he was here. Monkey was his responsibility and, therefore, his to fix.

Monkey stood at the edge of the pit, alone, with his hands on his hips and the wind tugging at his mane. “How incredible is this?” Monkey asked.

Leopard glanced down. It had to be two-hundred meters deep. Maybe more. He wasn’t sure how to answer, so he shrugged.

“Whoever did this, they left their mark on the world,” Monkey continued. “This will take hundreds of years to be undone—maybe a thousand! That’s what we could do, Spots. That’s what we will do.”

But do we have to do it this way? Leopard wanted to say. Instead, he pointed over to the derelict colossus of an excavator. In the daylight, he could see that someone—or something—had twisted the titanic machine back on itself. “No one person did it,” he said. “That machine did it. Maybe hundreds of people did it.”

“But that’s my point, too, Spots! That’s why we need more people. Enough people to tear down the greatest machine the world has ever built.”

“I remember when we were five people,” Leopard said. “I kind of thought I’d be coming back to that.”

“I hear you, but Asclepion proved we needed more people. In fact, let me grab the initiative here—how’d you make it out of there, anyway?”

Ah, now there was a problem, one of many possible snags. But Leopard had anticipated it, planned his strategy. All he had to do was assemble a working narrative from the facts. He couldn’t risk any naked lies. Something about Monkey’s tone informed him that it was a probing question.

So Leopard shrugged the question off. “Last night, I said it was a bit of a story.”

“You did.”

“SOLAR captured me, interrogated me,” he said. “Then, they gave me an offer: they’d use me to track you down. I took it because I had them figured out pretty quickly. They only bothered making a deal with me because they had no idea how to find you. And that’s because you’ve been hiding here, right?”

Monkey nodded, grinning. “You’ve got it.”

Now for the hard part. “There’s a full SOLAR team in Perth—six capes. I had to lead them to Promethea, but they thought I was on their side and got sloppy, so, I gave them the slip a few nights ago. I made sure they couldn’t find me before heading here.”

Monkey beamed like Leopard was the smartest man on the planet. “Pretty crafty, Spots. I knew you’d get out of there. That bag you brought with you—that’s filled with your gear?”

“Yeah. I guess SOLAR wanted to keep all options available.”

“It’s why they’ll lose,” Monkey said. “I knew everything would work out. I wished I could’ve given you some warning about my plan, but it’d risk exposure if they looked inside your head. We’ll deal with your new friends later.”

Some part of Leopard bristled. A plan? Warning? What a load of crap. But he just said, “How?”

“With something they can’t stop and won’t expect, the same as anything else. See, that time you spent slowing them down in Asclepion, it brought us time to expand our operations, and our scope.”

“I see,” Leopard said.

“No, you don’t,” Monkey replied, grinning. “Not yet.” He pulled his phone out, made a call. “Can one of you bring our honored guest out to the edge of the pit? Thanks.”

“See,” he continued, slipping his phone away, “the first thing was that I had to throw away some of our old rules. The big one is that I needed a cape to make all of this possible. The IESA has one thing right, buddy—if you want to change the world, you need capes.”

“I was wondering about that. How you did this with no one noticing. To bring in these weapons and people, it would’ve attracted attention.”

“You’re going to love it, Spots, trust me.”

Boots crunched on the orange dirt behind them. Leopard turned and saw two of Monkey’s people approaching, shoving a battered, bruised man before them. They jabbed the man with the barrels of their rifles, forcing him closer. There were nullifier cuffs around his wrists. So, the prisoner was a cape.

Leopard looked at the prisoner, trying to place him. Tanned skin, narrow eyes, and hair that was more grey than black. Leopard didn’t recognize him. Even if he looked past the bruises, the abrasions, the left eye that was swollen shut, there was no recognition. But there was something in the way he moved, the way he held himself even shackled as he was. Something in his long face and overall build...

No, Leopard thought. It can’t be.

“Remember what I said, Spots?” Monkey asked. “One day, we’d be dictating terms to this guy? Well, here he is.”

Gate.