Marvel Monkey King: CH 8 (Patreon)

A heavy, suffocating silence settled over the tavern the moment the glass door clicked shut behind Cottonmouth and his crew.

Roy remained motionless behind the mahogany bar, the dead cigar clamped tight between his teeth, holding a clean tumbler in one hand and a rag in the other. He didn't say a word. In half a century of pouring liquor for gangsters and dockworkers, he had learned that when predators left the room, the smartest thing a man could do was pretend to be part of the furniture.

Up on the ladder, Turk let out a long, ragged exhale, clutching the aluminum rungs as if his knees were about to liquefy.

Then Jack moved.

It was sudden and violent. In a blur of motion, Jack crossed the subfloor, grabbed Turk by the thick collar of his canvas jacket, and yanked him clean off the third rung.

Before Turk could even yell, Jack slammed him hard against the exposed brick pillar.

Slam.

Dust puffed from the mortar, and the breath exploded from Turk's lungs in a pained wheeze. Turk clawed desperately at Jack's forearms, kicking his heels against the floor, but the scrawny teenager's grip was like forged steel.

"Who are you?" Jack growled, his golden-amber eyes burning into Turk's face.

"I'm Turk!" Turk choked out, his eyes bulging. "Turk Barrett! You know me, man! Let go!"

Jack shoved him harder into the brick, his forearm pressing against the man's collarbone. "Are you even a handyman? Why the fuck are you really here?"

Turk squirmed, panic rising in his voice. "I am whatever anybody pays me to be, alright? A guy has gotta eat in this city!"

In that single second, Jack's instincts clicked.

He recognized the breed. An informant. The kind of bottom-feeding cockroach who scurried between rival crews, playing the harmless fool, hiding behind mediocre trades and odd jobs just to dig up information he could sell to the highest bidder.

A stray thought flickered through Jack's mind. 'Wait a minute... was this the same Turk from the comics? The one who ran guns and got tossed out of windows?'

Jack killed the thought before it could take root. Thinking like an outsider was suicide. These were living, breathing men with their own selfish hungers, their own families, and their own knives. Nobody was reading off a script.

Roy stood behind the counter, watching the interrogation with cold, tired eyes, offering neither help nor hindrance.

"Why are you here, Turk?" Jack's voice dropped to a razor-sharp whisper. "Did Kingpin send you?"

Turk clamped his lips shut, staring stubbornly at the floor, refusing to meet Jack's gaze.

"I swear to God," Jack murmured, his tone eerily pleasant. "You better start talking before I decide to see what your ribs look like."

Turk tried to find a scrap of street toughness, puffing his jaw. "You can't make me say shit, kid!"

Jack didn't argue. With a lightning sweep of his foot, he kicked Turk's ankles out from under him.

Turk hit the subfloor flat on his back with a loud, rattling thud.

Before the man could roll over, Jack reached up to his right ear.

The tiny needle detached with a chime, expanding in an instantaneous blur of dark metal. A heavy, one-and-a-half-meter iron staff materialized in Jack's hands, humming with suppressed power.

Clang.

Jack planted the cold iron shaft directly across Turk's throat, pinning him to the floorboards.

"If I let go of this staff," Jack said, leaning his weight forward until his shadow swallowed Turk whole, "it will crush your windpipe into powder. The floor will give out before the iron does."

Turk looked up, and the breath died in his chest.

From this angle, he saw the golden-furred tail whipping restlessly behind Jack's waist like an angry viper. He saw the impossible black metal pressing into his skin, cold and immovable as a mountain.

The rumors were true. This was the freak who had broken three men in the snow.

"Want me to prove it to you..." Jack began.

"No! No, no, no!" Turk shrieked, his hands shooting up in frantic surrender, the dam breaking completely. "Alright! Alright, I'll talk! I got hired by a couple of Kingpin's lower-level captains! They didn't want to freeze their asses off doing footwork in the cold, so they tossed cash to guys like me to sniff around Harlem and see who dropped those three thugs! That is all it was, I swear to God! Please don't kill me, man! I got a cat at home!"

Jack stared down at him with a deadpan expression. "You are allergic to cats."

Turk blinked, flustered. "A wife and kids?!"

Jack: "You are single."

Turk squeezed his eyes shut, tears of frustration leaking past his lids. "Okay, fine! But everything else is the absolute truth! I swear on my mother's grave! Just get this heavy-ass pole off my neck!"

Jack held the staff in place for three quiet seconds, watching the raw, unvarnished fear in Turk's face.

He let out a short, amused sigh.

With a flick of his wrist, the heavy iron vanished in a flash of light, contracting back into the tiny rod dangling from his ear.

The crushing weight on Turk's throat disappeared.

Jack stood up, dusting off his denim trousers, and extended an open hand down toward the floor.

Turk stared at the hand with deep suspicion, rubbing his bruised neck. "You... You aren't gonna eat me, are you?"

Jack grinned, his sharp teeth flashing. "I might, if you keep talking nonsense."

Turk hesitated, then took Jack's hand, letting the boy haul him back onto his feet.

Once upright, Turk immediately took three steps backward toward the front door, his voice shaking. "Look, Jack... Sean... Whatever the hell your name is. I won't breathe a word to Kingpin's people. I swear. Just let me walk out of here, and I will find Luke a real handyman. Friend price, no markup."

Jack's smirk widened. "And what about you, Turk?"

Turk groaned, rubbing his temples with trembling fingers. "Me? I am going to find work with some other jackass who isn't connected to Stokes or Fisk. I like having all my teeth."

Jack stepped forward, his eyes gleaming with that familiar, predatory mischief.

"I'd say you keep digging, Turk," Jack said softly. "Specifically on Stokes and Fisk."

Turk's jaw dropped in sheer disbelief. "Are you out of your goddamn mind? You want me to feed you intel on Cornell Stokes and Wilson Fisk?!"

Jack nodded, chuckling as he stepped into the center of the tavern.

"The very same guys who rhyme with 'pokes' and 'fish,'" Jack said, his golden tail swishing happily behind him. "How about we call this little venture... Operation Poke the Fish, kekekeke."

…

The winter sun dipped beneath the Hudson, leaving a cold sliver of moon to keep watch over the rooftops of Harlem.

Luke pushed through the bar's front door, bringing a draft of icy night air inside. He stopped just past the threshold, looking around the hall.

The renovation was coming along nicely. With the rotten studs replaced and the subfloor leveled, the skeleton of the room was finally visible. Luke could already picture where the leather booths would line the south wall, where the polished tables would sit, and where neighbors might gather for a warm drink out of the cold.

He looked toward the bar.

Roy was wiping down the counter with a dry rag, and Jack was stacking clean glassware onto an overhead shelf.

"Where is Turk?" Luke asked, pulling off his heavy work gloves.

Jack didn't turn around, placing a pint glass neatly on the rack. "Picked up another job. Said it was urgent and that he'd call a buddy of his to sub in tomorrow for the wiring."

Luke narrowed his eyes. The response was too smooth, delivered with the practiced ease of a kid who had lied to truant officers his entire life.

Luke turned his head toward the counter, his deep voice carrying a quiet edge. "Roy..."

Roy didn't even wait for a second word.

He dropped his rag on the zinc surface and threw his hands up in total surrender.

"Stokes's crew came through the front door searching for Barrett," Roy said, the words tumbling out in a single breath. "Four heavy hitters and a guy in a mink coat. And this kid right here stepped in the middle of it, stared down the boss, and decided he is going to use Turk to spy on the guy and another guy named Kingpin."

Jack froze, a glass still in his hand.

He slowly turned his head, staring at Roy with a look of pure, theatrical betrayal.

"Dude," Jack whispered. "What the actual fuck?"

Luke let out a long, heavy sigh. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache brewing behind his temples.

"Thanks, Roy," Luke said quietly. "Leave us."

Roy looked nervously between Luke's iron expression and Jack's murderous glare. "You... You aren't going to fire me, right?"

"That is what you're worried about?!" Jack barked, slamming the glass onto the counter. "Hooo, I ought to tie you up by your ankles and let you dangle from a streetlight outside!"

Roy grunted defensively, reaching for his coat behind the rack. "He's the owner, kid. A boss needs to know when his roof is on fire."

"Spineless old coot," Jack muttered.

Luke pulled out a stool, sitting down with a tired creak of wood. "You still have a job, Roy. Go home. Let's call it for the night."

Roy didn't need to be told twice. He buttoned his coat to his chin, gave Luke a hasty nod, and scuttled out into the cold avenue, the front door clicking shut behind him.

Jack rolled his eyes, shook his head, and turned toward the back staircase leading up to the second-floor bedroom.

"Not you," Luke said.

Jack stopped. He let out an agonized groan, his shoulders sagging in defeat. He trudged back to the bar, pulled out a high stool beside Luke, and unceremoniously dropped his face flat against the cold mahogany with a dull thud.

"I'm asleep," Jack mumbled into the wood. "You are talking to a corpse."

"I know what you are trying to do, Jack," Luke said, his voice level and immovable.

Jack lifted his chin, resting his cheek sideways against the polished counter. "Then don't get in my way."

Luke leaned his broad forearms against the bar. "What is your endgame, kid?"

A dry, raspy chuckle scraped out of Jack's throat.

"Kekekeke," Jack laughed. "An endgame? That sounds like something twenty years from now."

Luke tilted his head, his dark eyes studying the boy's strange, unbothered grin.

"Those men in the alley almost put me in the dirt, Luke," Jack said, his tone turning quiet, stripped of its sarcasm.

"Almost," Luke replied. "But they didn't."

"Yeah. A certain bald guy fished me out of the snow," Jack admitted, tracing a scratch in the varnish with his fingernail. "I'm grateful. But the thought of having a sword hanging above my neck because some fat bastard downtown decided my existence is inconvenient? That isn't a feeling I care to live with."

Luke nodded slowly. "Like the Sword of Damocles."

Jack blinked. "I don't know who the hell that is, but yes. Exactly like that."

Luke leaned closer, his deep baritone carrying the weight of hard experience. "You don't have to fight back, Jack. You can fight forward. You can build something here."

"Bullshit," Jack snorted, pushing himself upright on the stool. "That sounds like something printed on the back of a church pamphlet. That ain't how the world works."

"Too many young men die in these streets trying to prove they are untouchable," Luke said firmly. "Do you want to end up another name in statistics as another number?"

Jack stared at Luke, his golden-amber eyes flaring in the dim tavern light.

"Stokes uses every young Black kid on these corners to pass poison into another brother's hands," Jack said, his voice cutting like a scalpel. "Kingpin uses his political cronies, his aldermen, and dirty cops to keep his boot on the neck of Hell's Kitchen. And Turk told me some lunatic calling himself the Devil has been tearing through Fisk's warehouses, beating his enforcers into pulp. Some say he is white, some say he is Black. Some say he's an angel with horns, others swear he's a demon from the sewers."

Jack leaned over the mahogany, his gaze burning straight through Luke's stoic armor.

"This isn't about race, Cage. This is about power. It is a rot eating this city from the bone outward. I don't know about you, but if I've got the strength to do something about it, I will."

Jack slid off the stool, pulling his red varsity jacket tight across his narrow shoulders. His golden tail flicked beneath his waistband with restless defiance.

"Because what is life without the freedom to enjoy it?"

Jack turned on his heel and walked toward the stairs, his footsteps light and confident against the new subfloor.

Luke Cage remained seated in the quiet tavern, listening to the floorboards creak above him as the boy retreated into the small upstairs room.

Outside, the winter wind rattled the loose glass in the front windows, carrying the distant, lonely wail of a siren across 125th Street.

Luke stared down at his heavy, calloused hands resting against the mahogany. His mind churned, the silence in the room pressing heavy.

Power.

He had spent years believing the old tales was a warning reserved for kings, tyrants, and rulers perched atop precarious thrones. He had thought the blade hung only over men who reached too high, a reminder of the price of ambition.

Yet that scrawny kid with golden eyes had flipped the fable on its head.

For the ordinary people walking the frozen avenues of Harlem and Hell's Kitchen, the Sword of Damocles hanging above their necks was their own stolen freedom. Every day they bowed their heads, paid their extortion, looked away from the corner poison, and prayed they would be left alone, all while the horsehair thread frayed beneath the weight of predators.

Power held a harsher truth than Luke had cared to admit. It was the single force capable of reaching up to catch the falling blade.

Luke rubbed his temples with the heels of his palms, letting out a long, weary breath into the dark.

It had been a lot for one night.