CHAPTER 7 - LEOPARD
They black-bagged Leopard, drew his hands and bound them behind his back, and marched him to his own execution. Monkey’s gambit had failed, and now they were all going to die. The only thing that kept him walking was the fact that they hadn’t killed him yet.
The Animals had worked with the Syndicate before. Monkey had been enamored by the pay and infamy, but Leopard had seen right through it, had made him say ‘never again’ to any thought of doing business with such a network of sharks, raptors and vipers. The Syndicate was as much their enemy as the IESA.
But there was no fear. If he was going to die, then he was going to die. Leopard hadn’t made peace with it, but it didn’t worry him, either. He’d been shot before—slashed, stabbed, beaten, burnt. Any of those could have ended his life. It’d been a short one and a violent one, and he had violently shortened the lives of many others. The only thought he had of his death was that there would be symmetry, at least.
Shadow’s heavy footsteps ceased somewhere ahead of him, and one of the Syndicate enforcers jabbed Leopard in the spine with the barrel of their rifle. He stepped forward, utterly blind and bracing for what was coming, and the world lurched around him, the sounds of Asclepion torn away, and he was somewhere else.
His boot stepped off concrete and came down on metal. In the space of a single footstep, Shadow’s master had wrenched them across the planet. It was easier to deal with, this time, when his eyes and inner ear weren’t at odds. Being teleported across the planet as you stepped through a simple doorway had a way of messing with one’s senses.
Someone dragged the bag from Leopard’s head, and he squinted against the harsh, stark lighting. The walls were bare metal, like a holding cell or abattoir. Leopard remained where he was and let his inner ear find its equilibrium again. After a moment, he stretched his neck left and right, and the world finally settled in a way that his eyes and mind agreed upon.
But no bullet came, and Shadow’s eidolon remained an impossible silhouette under the halogen glare. Two of the Syndicate hitmen set the footlocker down and then filed out of the room. Leopard figured Shadow would want to do it personally. He had a reputation to uphold, after all.
“Gate will see you momentarily,” Shadow said, and he turned and left. Leopard stood there and listened to the quiet hum of the ventilation system.
“What the fuck?”
Monkey turned to each member of the group in turn. “Everyone okay?”
Leopard nodded. Tiger shrugged. Snake forced a smile, swaying on her feet. Rooster nodded, started to say something, and then leaned forward and vomited all over his boots.
The three of them had taken such a physics-defying jaunt before, but the newbies hadn’t. Quantum shock, Monkey called it. “Hey,” Tiger said to Snake. “First time’s always a little rough. You’ll be okay.”
Leopard wasn’t so sure.
A section of the wall slid away, revealing a young woman in an elegant black dress. “If you’ll follow me,” she said. Shadow had said the same thing.
But Monkey led the way and Leopard fell in just a step behind, followed by the rest of the Animals. The corridors that the woman led them through were as cold and sterile as the cell had been. The Syndicate had its tendrils all over the world, but there was no telling where they were. They could’ve been deep underground or at the bottom of the ocean.
She led them to a doorway and ushered them through. A marble table made of one massive slab dominated the room, a holographic emitter for the two dozen seats. There was a touch of incense to the air, and the sound of running water. A trio of brightly-colored birds peered at them from a perch in one corner of the room.
It was the most opulent room that Leopard had ever seen.
“We are fucked,” Rooster said. “Oh, we are so fucked.” There wasn’t a mark on him—no blackened eye, no busted lip, no blood or bruises. Leopard wondered if he had even fought at all. His fingers tingled, and he tugged at his wrists, found them still bound.
“We’ll be fine,” Monkey said. “If they haven’t killed us yet, they’re not going to. This is all just pantomime, they need to think they’re saving face. So, just play along.”
There was a strange tightness around Leopard’s ribs. They may have been animals, but the Syndicate were sharks. And here the five of them had come, stepping off dry land and into the depths…
“Don’t you guys get what’s happening?” Rooster asked. “That was Shadow! We are fucked, we are dead!”
“I’m aware,” Leopard said. “I had his foot on my throat. So, you need to shut your mouth, or I’m going to come over there and shut it for you.”
Rooster’s eyes widened, and he glanced to Monkey.
“He’s right,” Monkey said, with a small shrug. “If you had’ve done your job, then we might’ve had some warning. So, please, just shut up for a bit. And Spots, dial it down a little, okay? It’s all working out as I planned.”
“Sure,” Leopard replied. “Sorry.”
A door sighed open on the far side of the room and Gate stepped through. His black gear obscured any trace of who he might be beneath it, the material shimmering like ink on water. Over the tight armorweave, he wore a black suit and tie—or perhaps it was tailored into the suit itself. Almost ridiculous, really, but power had a way of making the ridiculous suddenly serious. Suddenly dangerous. A cobra dressed in a suit and tie could still bite you.
But it wasn’t just that. It was his name. Every empowered who set their sights on becoming a known figure had their eyes set on a definitive title, a definitive name—and simplicity ruled all. It was all about the branding, the trademarks, the reputation. If people wouldn’t defend ideals, then they’d certainly protect profits. That, Monkey always said, was the first sign the entire system was rotten.
For those operating outside the law, it wasn’t much different. For them, it came down to the ability to hold the title—through resources, influence, or sheer power. The more ruthless a so-called villain, the less chance anyone had of usurping their title by reputation and less still of simply killing them and taking the mantle. Different ideals, different profits.
Gate had held his very simple title for a very long time.
“I see things are more tense than they were the last time we spoke,” Gate said. His voice was clipped and precise, like he selected each syllable for absolute accuracy. Everything about him suggested control and danger, like a walking scalpel.
“What can I say, Gate,” Monkey replied. “Asclepion’s hectic this time of year.”
Gate advanced on Monkey, reaching into his jacket, and adrenaline simmered in Leopard’s veins, his muscles readying to spring.
Gate pulled a knife and, with a sharp movement, cut Monkey’s bonds. He handed the knife off without stopping and continued towards a bench on the far side of the room. Monkey stepped behind Leopard and cut his wrists free, then moved to the others.
“Please,” Gate said, “Be seated.”
They sat down, Leopard rubbing at his wrists. The logo of the Syndicate was etched into the marble surface: a snake wrapped around an apple, forever devouring its own tail. There was symbolism there, but Leopard wasn’t sure what. Maybe Monkey knew.
Gate turned from the bench, raising his arm. Every muscle in Leopard’s body tensed, adrenaline punching through the headache and fatigue. He wouldn’t make even a meter before Gate killed him or Monkey or anyone else, and yet he had to.
“Tea?” Gate asked, pot held out before him.
The fire went out as quickly as it had kindled. Leopard slumped down into his chair.
“No,” Monkey replied. “But thank you.”
Gate set the pot down and walked to the head of the table, sat down. “We have much to discuss.”
“As far as I’m concerned, we’re just here to hold up our side of the deal.”
“Yes,” Gate said. “And I suppose you would like me to overlook your attempted treachery.”
“If I wanted to betray you, Gate,” Monkey replied, “then I would’ve done a better job of it. All I wanted was to ensure that we’re dealing on equal terms, and now we are. No harm, no foul.”
“Such trickery can only take you so far, little hou. Had I known that this is the path you would choose, I would’ve reconsidered our arrangement. But you have the package, and that is all that matters.”
Monkey shook his head. “I don’t think so, Gate. You were holding out on us—you didn’t tell us that we’d be hitting an IESA target.”
“I am merely the intermediary, little hou,” Gate replied. “Had I known it was such a target, I would have informed you. It does not reflect well on me if my chosen associates fail, after all. And had I known, I would have been less forgiving of this treachery.”
While Leopard took time to process everything that had just been said, Monkey laughed, like it was all a joke. “Now, now,” he said. “There’s no need for that. They can’t track your doorways, right?”
“Not yet,” Gate said. “But anything can be counteracted. I did not get this far by hoping I can’t be tracked down.”
“Neither did we.”
Gate didn’t deign to reply. After all, he had built his underworld empire from the ground up. Leopard didn’t know where his choice of name came from, but he could guess: in a castle, the most powerful man was the one who controlled the gate. And this man could link any doorway to any other doorway with but a thought. He could open any door, breach any defense, rescue any person—or kill them, of course.
What were five people with guns to that?
“Regardless,” Gate said, “it is time to speak of the future. But this conversation is only for us, little hou.”
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“No way,” Leopard said. “You’ve fed us bad intel before. Monkey, we’re done. We can’t trust a word he says, and the last thing any of us are going to do is sit here one-on-one with him.”
“Spots,” Monkey said, a strange expression on his face, “I’ll be fine. Trust me, okay?”
“The rest of your people may consider themselves guests of the Syndicate until our business is concluded,” Gate said.
“Don’t you dare talk about me like I’m not here!” Leopard snapped. “Who the fuck are you really representing, anyway? What the fuck did you have us drag off that ship? It has to be pretty goddamn valuable if you’ve got Shadow on a leash!”
He was standing now, and maybe shouting. “Tiger,” Monkey said, “Get him out of here.”
Tiger pushed herself to standing and took a step toward him. Leopard rounded on her, heat flaring through his core, and she pushed into his space, took him by the neck and bent him back, her forearm across his throat like a metal bar.
He fought, he thrashed, and Tiger held him there. She held him as his vision went grey, and then dark, and the urge to fight finally drained out of him.
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The water swirled brown around the drain. Leopard felt his neck twitch, like the thought triggered some final fuse to close and ignite. Still, for the moment, he watched the water from the shower run off him and swirl around the drain some more.
He’d come to on the floor of the shower, drenched in lukewarm water. Tiger must’ve dumped him there. It wasn’t so bad, really. It was like the enclosure of the cubicle allowed him to focus on himself, to reassemble his psyche, and find once again the ability to think. He was alive, Leopard knew, and that was good. But the thought was academic—without feeling.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been in the shower. But he drew himself up against the wall and reassembled his perspective, like he was putting together some ancient, stained-glass monument. Like all the pieces belonged to someone else.
“Hey,” Monkey said, from outside the bathroom. “Spots—you okay in there, man?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, great.”
A few seconds passed.
“I’m just hopping out,” Leopard said. “Give me a minute.”
He did so and dried off, stripped off his armored vest and gear. Monkey was standing in the suite proper, red mane damp and brushed back. Leopard had no doubt the guest suite could function as a holding cell if required.
“Well,” Monkey said, grinning. “We could get used to this, couldn’t we, Spots?” He tossed Leopard a bundle of clothes.
Leopard caught the clothes, shrugged, started getting changed, and words bubbled out of him before he could stop them: “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What, about the shower?” Monkey shrugged. “Looks like you found it well enough.”
Often, Monkey’s jokes lightened the situation, lightened him. But this time it just made Leopard irritated. “No,” he said, jaw tight. “About all of this. That Gate was the one who fed us the Adriatic job. That you were working with him.”
“Ah,” Monkey said, and sighed and nodded. “Because I know how you feel about him and the Syndicate. But, the enemy of my enemy…”
“Is not our friend,” Leopard snapped. “They’re not our friends. The Syndicate isn’t motivated by anything but profit, and there’s no goddamn way they don’t have an arrangement with Geneva. Do you think IESA just lets empowered like that walk around? You know it, I know it, everyone knows it! It’s what we’re fighting against!”
“I know, buddy, I know,” Monkey replied. “But one day, we’ll be calling the shots, won’t we?”
“This room is probably bugged.”
Monkey laughed. “Let them hear—it won’t change anything.”
Leopard rubbed at his elbow. “You still should’ve told me.”
Monkey sighed. “I know, but I thought…” He trailed off. “This is what I wanted to avoid. Imagine if you’d had all of this on your mind when you hit the Adriatic, or were planting the charges, or even just figuring out the plan.”
It was a good point, Leopard had to admit that. “It could’ve gone wrong.”
“Exactly,” Monkey said. “Had it been one or the other, I would’ve told you. Look, think of it this way—we both know we’re going to go up against the IESA eventually. I mean, that’s our whole goal, right? We need allies for that—equipment, resources. We’ve just advanced the schedule a little bit, that’s all.”
No, Leopard thought, you did. But he didn’t say it.
“Besides,” Monkey said. “We came through it okay, didn’t we?”
“I guess.”
“Gate’s not that upset. It was a rough patch, sure, but he’s a businessman. He wants us to take another job for him.”
“You can’t be serious. Is it him, or whoever he’s representing?”
“Good catch, Spots,” Monkey replied. “My guess is that it’s the latter. Not that they were there. It was just him—all these bullshit theatrics, man. He says the Syndicate is looking into expanding some of their operations and they need muscle to make sure things go smoothly.”
“And what does that mean?”
Monkey held up his hand. “Let’s not get into the particulars of it now. We’ve had a hell of a day, so, I think we should have some fun.”
“You can’t keep doing this,” Leopard replied. “Shutting me out.”
“I’m not,” Monkey said, and slapped him on the back. “Trust me—in about five minutes, you’ll see what all my little subterfuges have been for. Come on, I’ve got something to show you, you’re going to love it.”
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Once Leopard had dressed, Monkey took him down a level and to a storage room—bare except for a set of crates on the far side. Monkey pointed Leopard forwards. “There we go, man,” he said. “Do the honors.”
The crates were all identical. Leopard stepped up to the closest of the three and pulled the top away. Inside, there were several folded bundles. All of them were matte black, with a particular texture, but not one Leopard had ever had the chance to examine so close.
“Where’d you get armorweave?” Leopard asked, looking up at Monkey. “Where’d you get five sets of armorweave?”
Monkey’s smile as wide as he’d ever seen it. “From Gate.”
“Bullshit.”
“Technically true,” Monkey countered. “It’s our payment for services rendered, and an advance on what’s coming next. He told me that much, at least.”
“And what’s coming next?”
“Patience, man, patience—check out what’s in case number two first.”
Leopard pulled the top off that crate, too. Inside, there was an armory for five people—rifles, shotguns, handguns, grenades. A number of magazines were stacked in there, and Leopard picked one up, checked the load.
The tip of the bullet glowed an ominous blue.
“Jesus,” Leopard said. “Breaker rounds.”
“Yeah,” Monkey replied, grinning. “Those’ll make a superhero stop. Make ‘em reconsider their life’s choices.”
It was one hell of an understatement. Breaker rounds—capebreakers, as they had come to be known—had come right out of the Collapse and accounted for a substantial percentage of dead superheroes since. Leopard didn’t know how they worked, just that they did. Breakers punched through empowered defenses like they weren’t even there.
“These are illegal,” he said. “Like, extremely illegal.”
“Those in power always fear losing it,” Monkey said. “Do you know why they banned these, Spots? It was like when man invented the crossbow. Suddenly, all those knights on all those horses had to take the dirty peasants seriously. And when IESA sees our new faces, they will take us seriously.”
Leopard tapped his thumb against the magazine. “I just...” It wasn’t that he wasn’t ungrateful, wasn’t excited. “Doesn’t this seem odd to you? They feed us this first job for something they desperately want, and only then give us the cape-killing shit?”
“It does seem odd to me,” Monkey replied. “In fact, I’d say it feels like a trap—and you agree with me, right?”
Leopard sighed. “Yeah.” But part of him felt like he’d seen it first.
“Like Gate said, he’s just an intermediary. I don’t know who gets to use a former Golden Age supervillain as a go-between. But, like I said, we’re in the big leagues now.”
Or we’re biting off more than we can chew. Or both.
“I want to know who we’re working for here,” Leopard said. “Who we’re really working for. You said this was going to be the start of us building our own legend. But here we are, dancing on someone else’s strings.”
“Sure,” Monkey said, nodding. “But we have to know about the strings before we can cut them, right? Now we do. First step of evading any trap is knowing that there’s a trap, right?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Everything we have ever done has led us to this moment, man. Everything. We’ve got weapons, we’ve got suits and helmets—we’ve got a real identity now. Soon, the whole world will know who we are.”
A thrill ran down Leopard’s spine. “Wait, did you say helmets?”
Monkey’s blue eyes gleamed. “Did I? Well, let’s see what’s in crate number three.”
It’d been their dream. Back when they had first ended up on this path, back before they had even been Leopard and Monkey. It was why they had taken the names, in preparation. Leopard tossed the top of the third crate across the room.
Inside, there were five helmets—all of them similar in style, if not in specifics. All of them with the visage of an animal, cast in gleaming chrome. A rooster, a cobra with the flared hood and all. A pair of big cats—one of them snarling, another calm and watchful.
“That one is for you,” Monkey said, tapping the snarling helmet, before reaching down and into the crate. “And this one—this one is for me.”
His helmet was handsome, in an atavistic sort of way. A hint of the truth behind his choice of name, and a reminder of the separation between them and the rest of the Animals. A secret that only the two of them knew.
“This is incredible,” Leopard said. “This is what we always wanted.”
“I knew you’d see things my way,” Monkey replied. And then, “Hey, want to take this gear for a test drive?”
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The armorweave fit like a second skin. Every step Leopard took left him surprised at how easy it was—how simple. It was the miracle material that made so many superheroes super. Turned a gunshot into a mild bruise, resisted fire and water in equal measure. Knives could still be a problem, sure, but you had to be brave or stupid to square up to a cape with only a knife.
Huh, Leopard thought. Wonder which one I am.
Of course, there was more to their new sets of gear than just the armorweave—there were plated sections over the torso, shoulders, knees and elbows. Didn’t add much weight to him at all. Outside the New American Imperium, Leopard wasn’t sure where you’d find gear like it.
He followed Monkey through the halls again. And the helmet! The helmet was packed full of incredible features, including three separate vision modes and a full tactical display. He could barely recall Christmas, but he was pretty sure that this was what it had felt like.
The two of them paused outside Rooster’s quarters, weapons in hand. “You ready?” Monkey asked, and the helmet gave his voice a mechanical growl.
“Always,” Leopard said.
They swept in, Monkey leading and shouting, weapons up. “Get on the ground! Get on the fucking ground!”
Rooster fell out of his bed, half-awake and tied up in his covers. He screamed and scrambled to get away from them both, but Monkey marched over to him, stood over him. Drew his handgun and placed the barrel against his brow, between his eyes.
“Got you,” Monkey said.
Rooster opened his eyes. “Monkey, is that—”
“Didn’t the helmet give it away, you idiot?” He laughed and holstered his weapon. “Come on, man—you’ve got to do better than scream and give up at the first sign of trouble.”
Rooster lay back against the wall. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “Jesus Christ. I didn’t— I’ll do better, promise.”
“Damn right you will,” Monkey said. “Get your ass in gear, man—we’ve got a job to do come tomorrow morning. Come on, Spots.”
When they were outside, Monkey burst into laughter. “Did you see— The look on his face, man!” He imitated the scream, shaking his head. “Did you know he thinks he could replace you?”
“Yeah,” Leopard said, and now that Monkey had voiced it as the joke it was… “But good luck to him, right?”
“He’ll need it,” Monkey said. “We all will, I think, where we’re going.”
“And where’s that?”
“Where else, buddy?” Monkey replied. “Back to Asclepion. Gate needs us to handle a problem there as a show of good faith. One more job, Spots, and then we’re done.”
Funny. It felt like he’d said that the last time, too.