Previously in Agents Of Gemini…

At the behest of a pair of mysterious employers, the Shroud has been tasked with retrieving twin halves of the powerful Gemini Key to prevent impending catastrophe. Traveling to a remote Pacific island with a band of reluctant companions – Puma, Morbius and Scylla – Shroud’s mission is thwarted by rival treasure hunters led by Silver Sable. Sable’s team – Slyde, Asp and Werewolf By Night – retrieve the Key half they’ve been pursuing and then escape, planning to return to Symkaria to meet their employer, Vera Gêmeos, who already possesses the other Key half.

With Puma badly wounded after a personal battle with the Werewolf, and with Morbius having been robbed of his vampiric abilities by Asp’s toxic touch, Shroud is a desperate man. Armed with a homing device connected to the Keys’ energy signature, he knows the only way to obtain both Keys is to utilize the dangerous, otherworldly pathways of the Darkforce Dimension – but what of the monstrous Predator that lurks in that godforsaken realm?

Meanwhile, Silver must also deal with dissension in her ranks. She promised Jack Russell that she would locate an ancient relic on the island, one that could potentially cure his lycanthropy – but when Slyde had a chance to acquire that relic he deliberately left it behind to spite Jack. If the team learn of his deception, blood will surely be spilled…

I HOLD A MYSTIC SIGN

By Meriades Rai

Plotted by Steve Seinberg and Meriades Rai

Someplace Dark…

“Where the hell are we, Shroud? And, more importantly, how long before we get somewhere that isn’t here?”

The Shroud grimaced beneath the overhang of his cowl, his scarred and sightless eyes narrowed in frustration. Scylla was at his shoulder again, a belligerent presence, and even in this place of darkness – of emptiness, of absence, because that was what darkness was when you got down to it, the absence of anything else – even here, she was an imperiously physical thing, all flesh and hot metal, all odor and taste and noise. And she was emotion. Rage and fear mostly, which in the shadows manifested as nothing less than the essence of succulence.

To advertise oneself in such a fashion was definitely not a good thing, not in a realm inhabited by a singular entity possessed with a singular function: to feed.

“This is the Darkforce Dimension, Miss Markham,” Shroud snapped, his patience long since drained. “It’s a place between here and there, the shadow between the light. It is a place of utter dread, blacker than the blackest soul, human or… otherwise.”

“And you reckoned it was a wonderful idea to bring us here? You’re all heart, Max.”

Scylla loomed menacingly, towering over the man in the voluminous black cloak before her. The Shroud was a fluttering silhouette dimly bathed in the inner light that leaked from the curious fissures that decorated Scylla’s augmented body, a composite of flesh and sinew and of cybernetic circuitry and metal plates. Most humans glowed teasingly in the living darkness of this stygian world; Scylla, in contrast, was a veritable will o’ the wisp, radiating a brash and terrible light that would surely arouse the attentions of the creature that inhabited the Dark. The creature known as the Predator…

“Your friend needs medical assistance, if you’d forgotten,” Shroud said, flourishing a gloved hand towards the hunched male figure drifting through the shadows just beyond Scylla. This was Thomas Fireheart, a Native American warrior sometimes known as the Puma, a man who’d recently been carved like a joint of beef in a brief but bloody skirmish with another werebeing: Jack Russell, the Werewolf. Cylla Markham was Fireheart’s bodyguard and personal assistant, and perhaps there was more to their relationship besides that, but Shroud didn’t particularly care. He had more important concerns just now than scrutinizing Scylla’s brittle psyche and her obvious worry for her injured employer.

“I certainly haven’t forgotten your promise,” Scylla hissed. “Remember, after you’ve collected this damned Key you’re so obsessed with, then you’re then going to deliver us lickety-split to New Mexico where Thomas can be healed by his tribe. If this is the quickest way to get there, then fine – but don’t expect me to like it. And if you so much as think about forgetting our deal and stabbing me in the back, shadowman, then I’ll take off your hooded head. Understand?”

Scylla’s inner light flared even brighter. Shroud winced, his heightened senses – and his natural affinity with the Darkforce Dimension – informing him that the Predator had caught their scent and was drawing ever closer. Damn this woman and her infernal sentiment. She–

“We’re almost there,” another male voice reported, deliberately puncturing the growing quarrel. “Travel through this… place is swift but not instantaneous. It would also be impossible to be homing in so accurately on our required destination if not for the device Silver Sable’s ally dropped back at the island, and which you retrieved, Scylla. So, we’re in your debt for that… aren’t we, Shroud?”

The voice belonged to the fourth and final member of the group, Michael Morbius. Until recently Morbius had been suffering from a curse – or, to be more scientific, a rare genetic disorder – that had rendered him akin to a living vampire, with a treacherous thirst for blood. That affliction had somehow been negated after skin-to-skin contact with a woman named Asp, whose lethal touch typically resulted in the death of those unfortunate enough to earn her attention. Now Morbius looked decidedly healthy – certainly fare healthier than the gaunt, alabaster manifestation his companions had become accustomed to – but there was also a rather manic gleam in his dark eyes, one that suggested his recent transformation hadn’t left his mind in as vigorous a state as his body.

Shroud raised the device clutched in his hand, comforted by the stark, steady blip-blip-blip it was emitting. A homing signal, locked on to the specific frequency of the mystic item they were tracking, the Gemini Key – or, at least, half the key. The other half had been in their grasp back in the twisted chateau belonging to Josef Schwartz, but Silver Sable and her allies – specifically the criminal Slyde – had got the better of their opponents in that instance. This was now Shroud’s last chance to snatch victory from defeat, and to fulfill the task set to him by the voices – the voices! – that had plagued him these past few days.

Yes, Morbius was a true diplomat, and he had a point. The detection device was invaluable and therefore there was much reason to be thankful to Scylla.

But if it came to it, Shroud would not allow her hostile concern for her employer Fireheart to compromise his mission. When you got to the heart of the matter, both Scylla and Puma were decidedly expendable…

High Above The Pacific Ocean, 600km Off The Coast Of Chile…

“You turn this blasted plane around right now, Silver! You understand me? You got your Key, but that’s not why I came out here. You promised me a cure!”

Jack Russell was enraged. This was a troublesome state of affairs at the best of times, but when this powderkeg of a man was contained inside a hermetically sealed metal box high in the sky, with no potential escape close at hand for those caged with him… well, that was just a grenade waiting to detonate. Silver Sable extended a placating hand, trying not to quaver as it occurred to her that she could lose that appendage all the way up to the elbow inside the blink of an eye.

“I do understand, Jack,” she breathed, meeting her companion’s stare with only the barest flinch. “Please, believe me. There was a hell of a lot more I wanted to salvage from that island too. According to Vera Gêmeos, Schwartz has squirreled away thousands of artifacts in his private collection, including Nazi war spoils stolen from Symkaria over sixty years ago. I wanted everything, not least that crescent staff I pledged to you. But we weren’t counting on running into the Shroud, of all people – or that cyborg Scylla creature. She all but dislocated my shoulder when we clashed, and Slyde says he was lucky to get past her alive once he’d found the Key…”

Jack snarled, stretching his arms wide and arching his back. Silver took a hesitant step backwards, fear evident in her eyes. This was unusual for her – she was a hardy combatant, and she’d witnessed plenty of terrible things in her time – but there was something about this man before her right now that was irrefutably unnerving. Probably because he wasn’t a man, not right now, not fully. Jack’s familiar rugged good looks – the leathered skin, the russet hair, those dangerous yet captivating amber eyes – had darkened, become coarser, and his features had begun to twist and lengthen as his cheekbones arched and his jawline distended to accommodate a sudden eruption of sharp teeth, spilling out of mouth widening into a snout.

It was Jack’s curse. Lycanthropy. He was trying to hold the transformation back, you could tell from the shiver lashing through his body… but he was failing. The rage was consuming him, and that spelt trouble from them all.

“I promise you now, Jack,” Silver whispered. “Please. Please. We will go back to Schwartz’ chateau and we’ll loot the place for all it’s worth, like Ali Baba and the forty furry thieves, right? Are you in there, are you listening to me? But afterwards, Jack… after I’ve delivered this half of the Gemini Key to the woman who hired us, and after we’re sure that Shroud and his cronies aren’t on our trail. Okay?”

Jack quivered again, and slaver drooled from his open maw… but there was a spark of light in his eyes, just a flicker of that amber that hadn’t yet turned red, and the woman now reaching out to gently press the palm of her hand over his thudding heart felt she could breathe a sigh of relief. It was working. Silver was, according to legend, a kind of wolfsbane after all. And–

“No reason to go back anyhow,” a male voice suddenly slurred. “I told you, there was no bloody moon scepter there!”

Her expression aggrieved, Silver’s attention snapped towards Jalome Beacher, the man also known as Slyde, who was seated towards the rear of the plane. He was still wearing his preternaturally slick all-in-one silver skater’s suit but had removed his mask, principally so that he could chug back neat whiskey from a crystal tumbler. Silver Sable’s Royal Symkarian airways, spare no expense, as Jalome had commented earlier. Now a half-empty bottle was cradled in his other hand, and the sag of his body in his seat indicated he was thoroughly drunk.

Cleo Nefertiti, the Asp, was seated as far from Slyde as she could, which was notable considering that they were supposed to be a romantic item. Jalome was drinking himself unconscious for a number of reasons, not least because he’d spent his day fighting nightmarish golems made of crabs, driftwood and kelp, but Asp’s disinclination to keep him company was even more of a kick in the guts. Slyde should have been afraid of Jack, but he was a cussed sort at the best of times, let alone when he was in his cups. When the other man, still teetering on the verge of tipping over into fully-fledged wolf, turned slowly in his direction and snarled, Jalome merely grinned and raised his glass.

“Don’t see why you’d want a cure anyhow,” he said, with a barking laugh. “The hairbag look suits you. All teeth and… and… Sasquatch-ish. That or Chewbacca. You’re obviously a hit with the ladies. Is that because you play fetch? Roll over and let them tickle your tummy?”

Jalome cast Asp a nasty look. He obviously hadn’t forgotten her making moon eyes at Jack earlier. Asp ignored him, mostly because she – like Silver Sable – was regarding Jack with legitimate concern. If he went over the edge in this environment the consequences wouldn’t just be disastrous, they’d be fatal. Slyde needed to shut his damn slippery mouth before–

“You swear you couldn’t find that staff?” Jack snarled, his guttural voice barely recognizable as human any more. “Bet you didn’t look too hard, right?”

“I was fighting for my life at the time, and trying to keep the Key half safe,” Slyde protested. “You realize it was me who found the first half of the Key too? In this weird-ass labyrinth in Indonesia? Yeah, that was me. And then I got the second half. Super me, super slick. I’m the damn man, you know?”

Silver scowled. “Slyde–”

“No, no, let’s tell it how it is,” Jalome cried, spilling his drink as he lurched forward. “There I was, risking my life, that cyborg honey coming at me with her kinky whiplash tentacles and all that, and the German guy conjuring up seaweed golems, and… and you’re on my earpiece, telling me to kick my heels a while longer, to go treasure hunting, all for Scary Hairy Maclarey here? Hell. He’s got you all weak at the knees, hasn’t he? Real tough guy, all hot and furry, like a goddamn spaniel gone feral. Well, count me out. I’m glad I didn’t pick up that stupid, motherlovin’ staff again when I had the chance… when I… uh.”

Slyde paused. He looked down at his empty glass, lips pursed.

“Ah, horse-feathers,” he said, quietly. “Did I just go and say that out loud…?”

The Werewolf – because, in that instant, there was no more Jack Russell to be found – threw back its head and roared, its eyes wild and scarlet and its teeth bared all the way to the back of its throat. And then it launched forward, claws whirling and ripping through plastic and seat fabric and metal, shredding its way towards Slyde, who finally found the good sense to scream…

Srebró Square, Symkaria…

Vera Gêmeos sat outside a nondescript café drinking black kafa and smoking drina jedina, her eyes hidden away behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses. She was elegant and alluring in a simple charcoal skirt suit, with ivory blouse, dark nylons and understated black heels. Her dark hair was pinned neatly in place. She was demure, reticent, drawing no attention to herself. As lovely as she was, she faded into the background somewhat, as was her intention; it would never do to reveal her true nature to the unsuspecting passers-by around her.

Vera was waiting, just smoking and drinking away her afternoon. Waiting for the woman she’d hired the previous day, Silver Sablinova, to return to Symkaria with the item she’d contracted her to acquire: the second half of the Gemini Key. And then, and then…

Movement across the paved courtyard caught Vera’s eye. She glanced up to see three figures loitering about an elaborate sandstone fountain at the heart of the square, and her breath snatched in her throat when she recognized them for what they really were. Two men and one women, casually dressed and every bit as taciturn as her so as not to attract notice, they were in fact the proverbial wolves in sheep’s clothing; beneath their puppet skins of flesh and cloth they were demons of shadow and reflection, shaped in a world far different from this earthly plane. They were smiling and twitching in their excitement, their devilish eyes bright as they observed her with such naked hunger.

Soon, they promised in unspoken words. Soon, you belong to the Master again… and to us.

But Vera merely lit a new cigarette and looked away from them, calming her heart with the idea that she wasn’t truly under threat. Her hand strayed to her throat and the open neck of her blouse, where the first half of the Gemini Key was laced upon a delicate silver chain. She could feel the cold weight of the artifact upon her sun-kissed skin and she smiled thinly. No, no threat. She was safe whilst she had at least one half of the Key. And when Sablinova finally returned with the other and Vera was in possession of both…? Oh, when she had both, she’d be taking her revenge on the Master and his insidious acolytes. She would–

There was a scream, and a clatter of glass. Vera’s head snapped up, her eyes wide behind her shaded glasses.

In the center of the square, an impossible darkness has suddenly bloomed – a cloud of billowing black, as if erupting from some invisible volcanic crater, bursting forth and enveloping all in its path. The demons in their fleshy skins had vanished, and seconds later a scurry of panicking tourists disappeared in similar fashion. The plaza was a good hundred foot square but it was being overwhelmed in seconds. Vera leapt up from her seat, knocking her chair and table aside, but it was already too late to run.

The torrent of Darkforce engulfed her…

The Darkforce Dimension

…and then she found herself cold and shivering, carried aloft upon a tide of liquid shadow. The rustic olde world cityscape of Symkaria she’d become accustomed to was gone, replaced only by subtly shifting shades of black upon black, as if the planet had succumbed to perpetual night. Vera’s heart seized in her chest as she scrambled helplessly against the flow, holding her breath in case the oily obsidian began to pour down her throat and into her lungs like something ten times more vile than common cigarette smoke. She tore her glasses away, her hair coming loose about her face. It did no good. Everything remained black. She was astonished, and terrified. She’d thought it was him attacking her, the Master, somehow circumventing the protection afforded by the Key about her neck… and though in a way she was correct, this was something unexpected.

She was immune to the attentions of the Master’s demonic disciples, this was true. But the man who now approached her from the shifting blackness, his ebon cloak and cowl the blue-black of eternal twilight, was no demon. He was human, of a kind.

Just as Vera Gêmeos had sought the services of Slyde and Asp, and then Silver Sable, so the Master had hired an emissary of his own…

“I’m sorry,” the Shroud whispered, with what seemed like genuine regret. “I don’t know who you are or what part you play in this wicked performance, but I need that Key!”

Vera shrieked and attempted to recoil, but the darkness – this living, seething darkness, somehow at this man’s control – held her fast. The Shroud reached out and closed his gloved hand about the Key at Vera’s neck, tugging hard and causing its delicate chain to splinter.

Vera screamed. Her eyes flared wide and were suddenly no loner dark and seductive; instead they burned red and gold, the hue of blistered flesh, and her own dusky skin now began to color with a fiery tincture. Her back arched and snapped, her arms thrown wide. Her legs began to buckle, curling and distending at the ankles, her plain heels slipping free of nylon feet that were now twisting and splitting and hardening into hooves. Her fingers splintered with raking claws. Her shoulders ruptured in a mist of blood and useless flesh, black bones suddenly spiking out from either side of her gnarled spine… bones that now began to quiver and fragment into hundreds of blade-edged feathers as they lengthened and spread into glorious, terrible wings.

The beast inside Vera Gêmeos was free, gushing forth with the loss of the Key half and with the onslaught of her rage. Before her, Shroud recoiled in amazement… but it was too late for recrimination.

He had one half of the Key. Now, dare he risk returning through the corridors of the Darkforce Dimension to claim the other…?

The Shroud withdrew as swiftly and unpredictably as he’d arrived in Symkaria, and in Srebró Square the inexplicable cloud of darkness dispelled in turn, dissipating into a drizzling mist that colored the late afternoon air for a moment or two more before finally dissolving in the sun. A scattering of people were left behind, sprawled upon the flagstones, many still shivering and weeping from their brief but appalling sojourn into the heart and soul of the Darkforce. Most were unharmed, save for psychological scarring; here and there, a few individuals bore wounds they couldn’t quite explain. A half dozen people were missing entirely, just dark patches of blood upon the bleached stones marking their mystifying passing.

Beside the stone fountain at the heart of the courtyard, three shadow demons in human guise exchanged wary glances. This event has been as unexpected for them as it had for Vera… but, unlike them, Vera had not been left behind when the cloud of living darkness had disappeared.

The looked around in frenzy, their eyes blazing and their lips furled to reveal decidedly inhuman teeth. Gone. Gone!

But if Vera Gêmeos wasn’t to be found here in Symkaria any longer… then where was she?

High Above The Pacific Ocean, 600km Off The Coast Of Chile…

“Jack, no!” Silver Sable cried. “Don’t–”

But it was too late. The Werewolf, now utterly bestial, lunged at Slyde as he screamed and skittered backwards towards the rear of the plane compartment…

…but then both Slyde and Werewolf vanished into a sudden miasma of coagulated darkness that bloomed forth from no discernible juncture, rapidly expanding in an ashen fog to fill the entirety of Silver’s private aircraft. Somewhere, Asp shrieked. Silver heard a monstrous roar, not unlike Jack’s snarling but from some other source: it was a banshee wail of fury and desperation, emanating from some poor wretch who had just lost the thing that was more important to them in the world than anything else. There was a flap of leathery wings, a glimpse of burning red eyes and flesh… but then there was only chaos.

Disoriented and tumbling in the inexplicable blackness, Silver’s hand traveled instinctively to her tunic pocket. That was where she carried the half of the Gemini Key that her team had appropriated from Josef Schwartz’ island lair, and she felt its cold weight now, pressing into her ribs like a weapon… but not just that. It wassquirming, like something alive. It had come alive, responding to… what?

The presence of its sister half, perhaps…?

Silver felt a sudden presence behind her and she began to whirl, already reaching for the firearm she kept looped to the belt about her waist. Her reactions were dulled however, not just by the living blackness about her but also because of the shoulder injury she’d suffered in a skirmish with Scylla back on the island. Now, one sneaky blow delivered to that same shoulder was enough to blind her with momentary agony, and she cried out as she fell to one knee, the impossible world of darkness spinning in and out of her vision. She felt gloves hands roam over her body, taking advantage of her momentary weakness and searching through her tunic. She also heard a strangely familiar blip-blip-blip of some electronic signal, and it took her a second or two to register the sound.

It was the homing device, the one that had led Slyde to Schwartz’ treasure chamber back on the island. The one connected to the unique energy signature of the Key. It could only be the Shroud, using that same device to now track the Key again and to steal it out from under her nose. The audacity of that man, like a literal thief in the night!

Silver grunted and pushed herself to her feet, ignoring the flare of pain in her shoulder and back. She caught the briefest glimpse of her enemy in the shadows, all cloak and cowl, and she kicked out for all she was worth before he could retreat with the Key he’d stolen from her. She was rewarded with a satisfying physical impact, perhaps even the splintering of bone, and an immediate cry of pain. Shroud went down, clutching his leg.

“Serves you right, you squirrelly bastard!” Silver hissed through clenched teeth. “Now give me back that damn Key…”

She threw herself forward.

Somehow, somewhere, in the twist between dimensions, the aircraft lurched.

Someone screamed. Asp again? Slyde?

And there, tumbling through the black ether, it was the cyborg Scylla, desperately trying to protect a hunched, bloodied figure – Thomas Fireheart? – from attack by some demonic winged harpy. What in the world…?

There was no time to try and make sense of any of it. Silver breathed deeply then grabbed a fistful of silky black cloth, pulling herself towards Shroud; he controlled the Darkforce, so wherever he was going, she was damn well going too. Unfortunately for all concerned, events were about to take their customary turn for the worse. Behind Silver, another presence loomed. Everything was chaos: upside-down, back-to-front, inside-out: but that presence, an essence of sheer evil, andhunger, it clarified everything in a heartbeat. Of all the potential dangers any of them faced, this was the real killer.

The Darkforce seethed.

And then something rushed out of it, something so very black and lost and terrible, something with infinite teeth and a ravenous appetite.

The Predator…

TO BE CONCLUDED in AGENTS OF GEMINI #5…