The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

FOURTY ONE M's Fortress

Now that Skinner, Hyde, and Mina had breached the fortress's outer defenses and passed the guards, the rest of the League entered a vast hallway with silent granite walls. The place spoke of brute-force grandeur, majesty without finesse. Brooding statues of Cossack warriors stood along the corridor, petrified gurdians carved full of intimidation.

Tom Sawyer stared around, open-mouthed. He almost whistled in admiration, but caught himself in time. He and his companions moved quietly ahead, backed up by armed crewmen from the Nautilus.

Quatermain once again fit his role of great white hunter, carrying Matilda over one shoulder, a Winchester over the other, and a Bowie knife in his belt. When they reached an intersection of large corridors, he stopped for a moment to listen down the halls. Without a word, he gestured to Skinner, asking for directions.

The invisible man indicated that Hyde, Nemo, and his crewmen should take the main artery, Mina a side corridor, and Quatermain and Sawyer a third hall. Quatermain nodded, and the three groups separated.

Before they could move away, though, the League members all paused and turned back briefly to look at each other, as if fearing it might be the last time they would ever be together. They suddenly seemed to be of one mind.

Breathing heavily, his nostrils flared, Hyde extended his massive hairy hand. Quatermain, without hesitation, placed his hand on top. Mina, Sawyer, Nemo, and finally Skinner, all did the same.

When they gazed at each other, determined smiles shone on their faces. Although the Fantom's gigantic fortress loomed all around them, it no longer seemed impregnable.

They had been a League before; now they were truly a team.

Reaching an echoing mezzanine on whisper-quiet footsteps, Quatermain and Sawyer crept past roughly shaped pillars. Beyond them, an expansive laboratory was filled with chemistry apparatus, crackling electrical devices, bubbling flasks and beakers. There, the miserable kidnapped scientists worked under armed guard.

The laboratory walls were covered with chalkboards which were, in turn, covered with furiously scribbled, and often erased, sketches and equations. Surly-looking guards holding the Fantom's sophisticated firearms kept watch over their charges, though the guards did not seem to have any interest in the science itself.

As they crept forward to get a better look, Sawyer pointed to the other side of the mezzanine, from which the loudest sounds and thickest smoke emanated. The factory floor below was filled with hundreds of Mongolian workers, either slaves or sluggish laborers, who operated machines, presses, and pistons. Hissing steam boiled out of jets, drenching the sulfur-smelling air with its moisture. Sparks flew from grinders that shaped components to fit his diabolical machines.

A swarthy foreman, high up in a caged control room, barked orders in Mongolian over a tinny-sounding electronic loudspeaker. "Team Ten, move those parts to the assembly area, now!"

"Do you understand what he's saying?" Sawyer asked.

The old adventurer shook his head. "At least he's not raising the alarm. Come on, this way." He moved out.

"You lead, I'll follow." Sawyer crept after him in a stealthy crouch. They moved on together, unnoticed.

The prison passage was silent and empty. The guards were bored and sleepy; they did not realize the emergency until it was much too late.

Before they could call for help, Hyde had punched them both and hurled the men against a far wall. They could barely muster a whimpering groan while slumping unconscious to the floor.

Hyde strode forward with a lurching, stalking gait, forced to duck his massive head beneath a low ceiling. In the beast-man's wake, Captain Nemo and several armed crewmen entered the passage and approached the heavy iron floor grates.

Nemo motioned the fearsome Hyde back as he crouched on the grate and peered into the dungeons below. He saw the hopeful faces of hostages turned up to look at him. "These must be the scientists' wives and children."

In a flash of memory, he thought of his own wife and son, both tragically killed. His fingers clenched, and he had to force the thoughts away. Nemo called upon his philosophy and his prayers, just to make his heart go numb again, his past go blank.

He put a finger to his lips, and the hostages inside fell quiet, stifling their confusion and joy. "We will rescue you. Do not be frightened." He signaled for Hyde to come forward, and as the brutish mans shadow fell over the grate, Nemo held out a hand to calm the captives. "Do not be frightened of him."

He and his crewmen gave Hyde room to work. Jekyll's monstrous alter ego bent over the grates and wrapped both of his hands around them. His back muscles strained, his biceps bulged, the cords in his neck stood out as taut as piano strings.

Then with a screeching groan, the metal grate tore free, ripping mortar and stones loose. Snarling at his own strength, Hyde lifted the heavy set of bars over his head and made as if to hurl them down the tunnel, but Nemo stepped in front of him, fearless, and gestured for silence. Disappointed, Hyde set the grate down with a thud on the tunnel floor.

Nemo extended a hand, and the first hostage reached out to take it. He helped her out of the cell, and the rest of the terrified captives began to stream out. "You are free now, but you are not yet safe."

He and Hyde kept watch as the Nautilus crewmen guided the escaping prisoners down the echoing tunnels. One by one, the captives climbed out of the cell chamber, blinking and frightened.

Karl Draper, disheveled and desperate, emerged from the pit and clutched the sleeve of Nemo's uniform. "Please, sir — he has my daughter. That horrible Fantom… he took Eva!" His voice cracked with despair, as if he had already imagined endless nightmares of what M might be doing with her.

Beside him, Hyde growled.

"If she's here in the fortress, we shall bring her to you," Nemo said. He could see the anguish on the structural engineer's face. "Now go with the others. Get away from this place."

Though the group was large, they moved like phantoms down the narrow passage back toward the sluice gate — and their escape. Glancing over his shoulder for reassurance, bald and mousy Karl Draper scuttled after them. Hyde looked at the German scientist and sniffed, as if Draper reminded him of Henry Jekyll.

Neither the brutish man nor Nemo noted one of the two stunned guards recovering. Slumped against the passage wall where Hyde had hurled him, the guard stifled a groan. His head hurt, his jaw felt as if it had been knocked halfway around his head… not so different from a typical hangover.

But when he opened his eyes he was confused by all the people and the noise outside the prison pit. Next to him, his partner still lay crumpled, out cold. Then he saw Hyde, a misshapen anthropoid monster standing next to the torn metal grate while the last of the prisoners fled down the corridor.

Even before his focus and balance returned, the guard let out a yelping scream, stumbled to his feet, and turned to run.

Hyde grunted with surprise and turned his coal-black eyes to see the man running away. Nemo, also startled, gave chase, but the frantic guard raced down the halls in absolute panic. He bleated for help like a terrified sheep. His wailing shouts echoed back through the passages, calling out a warning; Nemo didn't need to translate the Mongolian words to understand the message.

The captain came back, panting from the effort, adjusting the turban on his head. "We have trouble."

"Trouble?" Hyde said with a twisted grin. His eyes lit with anticipation. "I'd call it… sport." He cracked his hairy knuckles.

Inside the foundry, workers and guards labored under the intense heat and spraying sparks. Despite the flaring light of molten metal and furnace fires, there were still enough shadows to offer hiding places, if necessary.

Not that an invisible man needed the shadows.

A hot spark flicked through the air and settled on his bare skin. Skinner snuffed it out, restraining his reaction to no more than a hiss. It gave him all the more incentive to blow this whole place to Hell.

His invisible hands held three bombs that glided through the smoky air. He made his way behind the largest furnace and planted the first bomb at the base of the hot brick structure. Skinner hid the explosive and set the timer, already thinking of the best places to install the other two bombs.

One of the guards looked up, thinking he heard an amused chuckle and skipping footsteps that moved out of the foundry at a rapid pace. But he saw nothing, so he turned back to shout orders at his workers again.