The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

FIFTY ONE M's Fortress

Inside the high keep filled with crates and torture implements, Quatermain drove the mastermind back. Moriarty retreated, and the old adventurer snatched up the Mongolian mace and pressed his attack, swinging the spiked ball.

M scrambled backward, desperate but not yet defeated. "You think you can come in here and destroy it all?" He laughed. "I'll just start again, rebuild from scratch."

"Is that supposed to convince me?" Quatermain raised the mace to smash Moriarty. He had had enough of talking.

"There'll be another like me, Quatermain! You can't kill the future."

But Skinner's bombs could.

Thunderous detonations ripped through the foundry, the dry dock, and the factory area. As floor upon floor shook and support walls collapsed, the whole high keep fractured. Crates and rusty equipment fell in a jumble.

Quatermain and Moriarty were both hurled to the floor even as it split wide open. The explosions continued.

A wave of fire and debris consumed everything across the factory floor. M's black fortress exploded. Huge granite blocks coughed out. Flames reached huge tanks of fuel, turning them into firebombs. Compressed steam tanks burst open. Stored weapons caught fire and erupted with whistling shock waves.

Unprotected, the Dante-beast turned just in time to be impaled by red-hot shrapnel. He slammed against the chimney and dropped his lethal ice spear, which shattered on the floor.

The impact of the detonation snapped a further brace of ice spikes from high above in the curving chimney. Stone blocks and heavy spears of ice cascaded from high above onto the screaming Dante-beast.

Jekyll dragged Nemo to the center as deadly shards came crashing down along the wall. They listened to the falling rocks, the wet sounds of slicing flesh and muscle, the brittle crack of shattering bone. When the ice shower stopped at last, the two huddled men opened their eyes.

"I… I can't believe we're unhurt." Jekyll checked his body for hidden injuries. All that remained of his clothes were blood-smeared tatters.

Nemo gestured toward a part of the chimney wall that had crumbled open behind them, exposing a small but convenient escape hole. "Yes, we are very fortunate."

On the opposite wall, though, in the opening through which they had entered, the less-fortunate Dante-beast lay trapped and mewling, impaled repeatedly by slowly melting ice lances and heavy shrapnel. The wall above the doorway had slumped down in a precarious collapse, dumping a thousand tons of stone onto the beast's back.

The monster stared imploringly at them, its remaining bloody eye desperate.

Just then the formula finally wore off, and Dante reverted to his human form. The feral eye changed to the smaller, frightened eye of a dying man. His body shrank into itself, and the fallen blocks shifted again, crushing him entirely.

Nemo shoved Jekyll to safety through the escape hole as a mighty collapse of the whole chimney generated a huge cloud of dust behind them.

Continuing explosions literally shook apart the tower room. One half of the high keep broke away, then settled with a lurch several meters below the rest of the chamber. Daylight and sparkling snow streamed through great cracks in the stone walls, where all had been shadow.

Quatermain fell between a creaking torture rack and a set of long, sharp-tipped iron rods. Moriarty got to his feet first, saw his opponents Bowie knife lying on the floor, and lunged for it. Knife in hand, he stumbled through dust and debris and snatched up his fallen silver mask and his leather satchel of the genetic and scientific information that had given the members of the League their special abilities.

Several thick wooden ceiling beams had already broken from the walls and fallen into the chamber. With scrambling, slipping footsteps, Moriarty started climbing to the high floor above, the top of the tower.

"Not so fast, M." Quatermain gripped a shaft of rusty pointed metal, which he aimed like a spear. "You've lost."

Moriarty turned to see the threat, Bowie knife at the ready, and smirked dismissively. "I've lost?" He jumped back down from the stairs. "Not yet. Not nearly."

"I have you." Quatermain stepped over a fallen beam, pushing the rusty spear closer to his nemesis.

M rolled his eyes in their sunken sockets. "Do you ever tire of being wrong, old man? The League. Me. Skinner. Wrong." He sighed. "And wrong about the young American, too."

"Sawyer?" A cold dread trickled like glacier water down his spine. "What about him?"

"He's a bumbling fool, just like his friend Huckleberry Finn. What a ridiculous name." Moriarty held up the retrieved Fantom mask where it gleamed in sunlight that filtered through the crack in the tower. "Do you think him ready and able? Ha! You didn't train him any better than you trained your son."

Quatermain saw Tom Sawyer reflected in the mask's mirrored finish — being held in the doorway with a knife at this throat by the powder-coated head and shoulders of Sanderson Reed. Sawyer struggled, but the knife pressed against his jugular.

Quatermain paused, knowing he had no choice but to surrender.

Moriarty laughed in his face. The old hunter locked eyes with his nemesis. M seemed utterly victorious, in spite of the explosions and the fortress crumbling around him. Quatermain wanted to kill him right then.

Instead, he spun and hurled his makeshift spear dead into Reed's chest. He missed Sawyer by a very comfortable inch. The invisible Reed writhed and wailed in pain, and his half-seen form slumped into death even before the spear stopped vibrating. The bureaucrats knife fell to the floor, and Sawyer broke free, kicking his dying form for good measure.

But as Quatermain straightened, knowing he had made the right choice, Moriarty sprang at the old adventurer and plunged Quatermains' own Bowie knife deep into his back. He twisted the hilt, grinding the blade farther into the hunter's lungs, questing for his heart.

With a disbelieving gasp, Quatermain dropped to his knees. Sawyer ran to him, distraught to see his mentor fall, torn between attacking the Fantom and staying beside Quatermain.

"I thank you for the game." Wiping his bloodied hands on his trousers, Moriarty dashed over to where a wide crack in the tower wall offered escape. Carefree, he jumped out into the open sky, soaring high above the ground.

With an angry shout, Sawyer rushed to the crack, seized the edge of the broken stone, and pushed his head out into the cold daylight. He expected to see the evil mastermind falling to his death at the base of the fortress.

Instead, Moriarty sailed gracefully toward a safe landing far below, his black cape extended into a wind-resistant barrier, billowing out like the skin of a flying fox.

"Not… over… yet," said Quatermain.

Sawyer turned to see the deeply wounded hunter staggering toward him. The Bowie knife still protruded from the middle of his back; his shirt was soaked in blood. But he'd had the strength of mind to retrieve his elephant gun. He cradled Matilda in his hands.

He lurched forward. Sawyer grasped his arm and steadied him. "We need to get you help. Got to find Mina, or Dr. Jekyll."

Quatermain shrugged him off. "No. No time for that." He reached the gap in the tower wall and peered out through the crack. He reeled, struggled to focus his eyes. He saw the black Fantom sailing to the ground. "There's the bastard!"

Moriarty skidded to a landing and took off running across the snow-swept field toward the half-frozen Amur River, where the curve of the stolen Nautilus still poked up through the ice.

Quatermain held his rifle with trembling arms and tried to aim, but he couldn't see. Slumping, barely able to stay on his feet, he fumbled in his pocket with bloodstained fingers. When he drew out his spectacles, both lenses were broken, the frames twisted.

With a sigh, he pulled Sawyer close so that they could stand together. "It's on you now, boy." He guided the young man to help him take aim. "Look there, find him. Show the bullet where to go."

Sawyer was uncertain, wracked with grief for his mortally wounded friend, but Quatermain clenched him tightly until he submitted to the hunter's intensity. The American agent leaned in and sighted down Matilda's long barrel.

"So, take your time. Last… chance."

Sawyer squinted, aimed, and adjusted the elephant gun. He concentrated, but finally hesitated, unsure. "It's too far."

"No, you're ready," Quatermain said, urging Sawyer to aim again. "Got to be ready."

Moriarty kept running, his black cape flapping like a bats wings behind him. Every step carried him farther away, closer to the small submersible.

"Take. Your. Time." Quatermain squeezed his eyes shut, fighting back the pain and the tide of weakness as his life continued to bleed away.

By now, Moriarty was so far away that he seemed barely a black dot. Exactly centered on the sight line. Sawyer accounted for breezes, the movement of the target — and took the shot.

With a loud crack the bullet whistled away from the rifle. An eternity passed.

Then… far off, Moriarty fell face first into the snow at the rivers ice-crusted edge. The leather satchel filled with vital, stolen secrets skittered along, teetered on the thinnest ice, then broke through and sank forever into the frigid water of the gurgling Amur.

The Fantom's mask spun away, it's polished silver surface spattered with blood. It came to a rest, the empty eye-holes staring up at the clear sky…

Up in the tower, Quatermain smiled with satisfaction. Then he collapsed with a dying gasp. Sawyer knelt by his side. The young man's eyes filled with tears, but there was nothing he could say, no way to help.

Quatermain clutched the front of Sawyer's shirt. "May this new century be yours, son — as the old one was mine."

"Allan," Sawyer said. "No, wait—"

And with that, Quatermain died.