The League of Seven

by Alan Gratz

  Archie helped Fergus to his feet while Hachi scouted the loading dock.

  “Watch your knees in there, mate,” Fergus told him.

  “Sorry,” said Archie.

  “We’re seven stories up,” Hachi told them.

  “Where’d you think you were headed, Coney Island?” the woman asked.

  “Only way down is an elevator,” Hachi told them. “And right now it’s on the second floor.”

  Fergus peered off the edge. “I think I can see my house from here.”

  Archie looked back nervously at the chutes. The Tik Tok could be there any second. “Where’s this ship headed?” he asked the woman.

  “Brasil.”

  “Not far enough away,” said Fergus. “Not near far enough. Got anything going to the moon?”

  Ding! A new capsule thumped into place to replace the one they had arrived in.

  “Maybe it’s just Mrs. Nittawosew’s new mink coat,” Archie said hopefully.

  The capsule slid open and the meka-ninja stepped out.

  “Or not,” said Archie.

  Fergus backed away, and Archie and Hachi closed ranks around him. Not that Archie could do much to stop the thing.

  “Locked sprockets!” the woman said. “What’s that?”

  “It’s about to be a pancake!” Fergus said. He’d climbed up into the steam winch and was working the controls. “Sayonara, Mr. Shinobi!” He punched the claw release, and a giant crate fell and smashed down on the loading dock right where the meka-ninja was standing.

  “Woohoo! Take that, you big bucket of—”

  Mr. Shinobi stepped out from behind the busted crate. He’d jumped back out of the way before it could hit him.

  “Oh, crivens,” said Fergus.

  The meka-ninja drew its long sword from its back, took a step forward—and then paused. Something inside its black metal chest rattled and tinked and sproinged, and its left arm fell off. Archie stared in disbelief. The Tik Tok took a step back and looked down at itself, trying to figure out what was going on. Something rattled inside the meka-ninja’s chest and down through its stomach. A flap on its bottom swung open, and Freckles the wind-up giraffe dropped out of it onto the ground.

  “Did that Tik Tok just poop a giraffe?” Fergus asked.

  Hachi called Freckles back to her compartment. “My sneaky, sneaky little girl,” she whispered.

  The one-armed Mr. Shinobi didn’t stand still for long. It picked up its sword with its good hand and took another step closer to Archie and Hachi.

  Wham! The boom arm of the steam winch slammed into the meka-ninja, knocking it off its feet. It crashed into the rail at the edge of the rooftop and it tore away. Mr. Shinobi teetered, trying not to follow it over the side.

  “Gotcha!” Fergus said.

  “Into the capsule!” Archie cried. He wasn’t going to wait around to see if Mr. Shinobi fell.

  Hachi and Fergus climbed in after him.

  “Sorry about the crate!” Fergus told the lady, and he smacked the plunger.

  The cylinder closed and the capsule dropped. Down, down, down. Right. Up. Left. Down. Left. Up. Right. After a while, Archie stopped thinking about what direction they were flying and just focused on not throwing up. Fergus gave a little burp like he was fighting it too.

  “Don’t,” Hachi warned them.

  Fergus swallowed loudly.

  “Next time, don’t get out,” Hachi managed to tell them. “We’ll just hit the plunger and keep going. Maybe lose him.”

  The capsule thumped to a stop and opened onto another loading dock—this one made of wood and riveted steel. A pair of empty railroad tracks lay just beyond the platform, and the hiss and chug of train engines filled the air. High above, beyond a series of elevated tracks and platforms and stairs, sunlight filtered in through thousands of tiny windowpanes.

  “Wait! I know where this is!” Archie cried. “It’s—”

  Hachi punched the plunger. The capsule door slid closed, and they dropped again, Archie’s last meal threatening to make an unwelcome return.

  “—Penn Station,” Archie said. “Right across the street from the post office.”

  “We can’t get out until we have a plan,” Hachi told them. “Some way to—”

  The capsule dropped sideways, which it never did, and they all cried out. The capsule slammed to a stop on its side, but the door stayed closed. Archie, Hachi, and Fergus froze.

  “What’s happened?” Archie whispered. “Why did we—?”

  Hachi shushed him. Somebody was talking outside the capsule.

  “Open her up,” said a woman’s voice.

  Something scraped and clanked on the outside of the capsule. The door mechanism triggered and the capsule popped open. All Archie could see was the ceiling of a dark tunnel, covered with dozens of pneumatic tubes, large and small.

  A lantern appeared suddenly, blinding them.

  “Well? What’d we get?” asked the woman.

  “We got kids.”

  14

  “What do you mean, ‘We got kids’?”

  Three more heads appeared over the sides of the capsule, and the man with the lantern gestured with an aether pistol.

  “See? Kids! In the dern capsule!”

  “All right, all right. Get that light out of their faces and help them out. And for Pete’s sake, put that aether pistol away,” the woman said.

  The bright light went away, and hands helped them out of the capsule. Archie’s first impression had been right—they were in a tunnel. Water dripped from a crack in the brickwork, and the only light came from a few lamps hung on posts stuck in the muck on the ground. There was just enough room for a grown man to stand without hitting his head on the dozens of pneumatic tubes that ran along the ceiling overhead.

  Pneumatic tubes! Any second now the meka-ninja would arrive, and—

  Shung-shung. Shung-shung. Shung-shung. The big tube their capsule had dropped out of rattled over their heads as a cylinder whooshed by and was gone. Archie breathed a sigh of relief. Their capsule had been diverted, but the one carrying Mr. Shinobi (he presumed) had just sped by. The meka-ninja would never know where they had gone.

  The man raised the lantern to Archie’s head. “Is your hair white, boy?”

  A girl with a huge scar on her neck and a boy with black tattoo lines all over him, and he wanted to know about Archie’s hair? Archie pulled away from the light.

  “You kids do a lot of traveling around by pneumatic tube?” the woman asked them.

  “We were … kind of trying to get away from something,” Archie said. Hachi shook her head at him and frowned, and he realized with a pang he shouldn’t have told these people they were wanted. There was no telling who they were or what they were up to.

  “Well, you’ve disappeared nice and good,” the woman told him. “Ain’t nobody gonna find you down here.”

  “A dump well,” Fergus said. He was looking at the ramp grafted onto the tube they’d been traveling in. The whole contraption was made of different kinds of scrap wood and metal, and there were more like it, all within a few yards, tapping into tubes big and small.

  “You’re shunting capsules off the main line, so you can—”

  Archie saw the donkey cart for the first time, just beyond the circle of light from the lanterns. It was piled high with boxes and packages.

  “So you can steal from them,” Hachi said tiredly. She drew her dagger, ready for another fight, and the man with the aether pistol pulled it back out again and aimed it at her.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” the woman said, stepping in between them. “Yes, we’re thieves. But we’re not killers, and we’re not kidnappers. By the sound of it, you’re looking to stay as incognito as we are. So unless you kids are gonna make trouble, we’re not either.”

  “If you’re not killers, what’s the aether pistol for?” Hachi asked.

  “The rats,” the woman said. “Those we kill, because I think they’re icky. Go on now, Hector. Put it away.” />
  “Aw, Liv! You used my name!”

  “You just used hers too,” Archie told him.

  “Dern it!” Hector said. He holstered the aether pistol, and Hachi put away her knife.

  “This here’s Hector,” the woman said. “I’m Liv. That’s Luis over there. And Onatah.”

  Archie and the others introduced themselves, and there were nods all around. The thieves wore breeches tucked into their boots—even the woman, Archie was surprised to see—and each of them had on dirty shirts and gloves and hats. They looked like they’d been down here a while. Liv, the ringleader, wore a long black duster and had her long hair tied back in a ponytail.

  “I get the big capsule shunts,” Fergus said. “But why all these smaller dump wells? What are you stealing from those? Money?”

  “Checks sometimes, yes,” said Onatah. He was shorter than the others, an Iroquois with long, dark hair. “But bank records, bills, deeds—personal information like that is even better. Then we get access to whole accounts. We hack into the line, intercept a few p-mails, and we can steal more than your new pair of shoes or your new vacuum cleaner. We can steal your identity.”

  “Dern it, Onatah! You gotta tell them all our business?” Hector said.

  “It’s all right,” Archie said. “We won’t tell anyone. We just need to get out of here.”

  “Well, that’s a problem, isn’t it?” said Liv. “We lead you out, you’ll know where we are. Took us a little while to set up this little operation, and I’d hate to come back and find out you’ve led some lawman down here to catch us.”

  “But you can’t just—!”

  Liv held up a hand. “We’re not going to leave you down here either. There’s miles of tunnels under Mannahatta. But I think we’ll have to blindfold you on the way out. You’ll have to walk too—there’s no room in the cart. It’s been a good day. Onatah, get that capsule they came in back in the system, and then make sure all the dump wells are tied off. Luis, you about finished over there?”

  Luis was the one of the four they hadn’t heard from yet. He was young and very dark skinned, the deep tan of the southern tribes, but his curly black hair pegged him as New Spanish.

  “Almost done,” he said. He was rolling up letterpress fliers and putting them into capsules from the cart, which he fed into different lines.

  Hector ripped blindfolds from a rag in the donkey cart, and Archie and the others let the hackers tie them on. Archie thought Hachi would protest, but she was relaxed and quiet. Archie figured she must be up to something. She was always thinking ahead. Had a plan. Archie had been stupid to think he was any kind of leader of a new League of Seven. Hachi might be a warrior, and Fergus might be a tinker, but Archie was nothing but a twelve-year-old kid blowing steam.

  Archie’s blindfold went on, and Hector led him to the side of the cart for him to hang on. The hackers finished securing their dump wells and packing up, and soon they were on their way.

  “Luis, you hang back with the kids. Keep an eye on them,” Liv said. “Hector, don’t take us straight out. Take a roundabout way, so that girl can’t find her way back. I think she’s the smart one of the bunch.”

  Of course. That’s what Hachi was doing. She was quiet because she was paying attention to the turns they made. Archie shook his head. She was the smart one.

  “What was that you were sending out, Luis?” Fergus asked. “I thought you just stole stuff.”

  “Oh, no. It was Liv’s idea. She hired me to write them. They’re letters, fishing for people to send their account numbers to a special p-mail address we have.”

  “Who would just send you their account numbers?”

  “Oh, no one would send them to me. But the letters don’t come from me. They come from a Nigerian prince who needs a small sum of money transferred to him to free up a fortune in stolen diamonds. Which, of course, he will split with the person who sends him the money, as a reward. It’s an old con, and many people fall for it.”

  “You guys are behind those?” Archie said. “We get those at the house all the time! All they do is clog up the Inter-Net and fill up our inbox!”

  “It’s not just us. We run into other hackers down here sometimes.” Luis lowered his voice, like he was talking just to them. “I would rather write books. The Adventures of Professor Torque and His Amazing Steamboy. Do you know these novels?”

  “Professor Torque’s my favorite!” Archie said.

  “I want to write books like these. Adventure stories. But Nigerian prince letters pay better. Perhaps one day we’ll make a killing and I can quit,” Luis said.

  “I’m not sure ‘make a killing’ is a phrase I want to hear while I’m being led blindfolded by a pack of criminals down in the sewer,” Fergus said.

  “Oh. Yes. Sorry,” Luis said.

  They walked on without talking for a little while, the only sounds in the tunnel the echo of the squeaking donkey cart and the slurch of their shoes in the muck. Archie didn’t like not being able to see where they were going. It made being lost in the tunnels underneath the city even more scary.

  “Screeeeeeee.”

  Something big and inhuman squealed deep within the underground caverns. The donkey whinnied and backed up in his tracks.

  Archie’s heart skipped a beat. “What was that?”

  “It’s just the rats,” Liv told them.

  “That’s some rat then!” Onatah said.

  “It’s just the rats,” Liv said again, in a tone that said she didn’t want to hear any more about it. “Hector, get that donkey moving. Where in Hades are we?”

  “You said take a roundabout way out!”

  “I didn’t say get us lost.”

  “I know where we are. I been following the tubes. See?”

  “Screeeeeeee!” The sound was closer now. The donkey brayed and fought to get out of its bridle, and the cart jerked under Archie’s hands.

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Fergus said.

  Archie heard the schnik of Hachi’s dagger, and he knew she didn’t much like the sound either. He still had his blindfold on and was listening as hard as he could, turning this way and that.

  “Hector, give me that pistol,” Liv said. “I think there’s something—”

  Slosh. Crunch.

  Liv screamed. Archie let go of the cart and staggered back in fright. The ground shook and the donkey thrashed. Archie ducked down low and ripped off his blindfold. Hachi, Fergus, and Luis crouched with him.

  “Liv! Liv!” Hector yelled. The red beam from his aether pistol lit up the dark corridor and sizzled in the damp air. Zaaaaak. Zaaaaak. “What in the name of Hiawatha is it? Liv!”

  The thing screeched again, and Archie peeked over the top of the cart. The creature at the far end of the tunnel was enormous. It filled the passageway completely, its giant mole-like head hitting the ceiling and walls. Tentacles wriggled from its mouth, and patchy bald spots on its hairy face oozed orange pus. Its eyes were so pale and glassy Archie thought it must be blind, but it had found Liv well enough. It swallowed the second half of her with a gulp.

  “Liv!” Hector cried again. As Archie’s eyes went to him, so too did the mole monster’s. Zaaaaak. Zaaaaak. Zaaaaak. Hector fired into the thing’s tentacles, severing some of them with explosions of orange pus. It squealed again and lurched forward, snatching Hector up and stuffing him in its mouth.

  Archie dropped back behind the cart with Hachi, Fergus, and Luis.

  “What—what is it?” Luis asked.

  “Is it a Mangleborn?” Hachi asked.

  “No,” Archie said. “It’s too small for that. A Manglespawn maybe. A child of a Mangleborn.”

  “Too small?” Fergus said. “Crivens. Do we run for it?”

  “Where would we go?” Hachi asked. “I had Freckles watch all the turns, but that’ll only take us back where we came from.” The little giraffe’s head stuck out of one of the bandolier pouches.

  Luis stared at Freckles as the creature snuffled and sloshed
behind them. “Who are you children? How do you know what’s going on?”

  “Do you know any other way out?” Fergus asked.

  Luis shook his head, his eyes bulging.

  “Wait. Where’s Onatah?” Archie asked. He popped back up for another look. He scanned left and right, the creature’s head turning with him. There—Onatah was crouching in the darkness at the edge of the tunnel, frozen with fear. The creature turned its head to Onatah just as Archie’s eyes found him, and its tentacles snaked out for him.

  “Onatah! Onatah, move!” Archie cried.

  The hacker was too scared. The tentacles wrapped around him and dragged him, screaming, into the thing’s sucking mouth. Archie looked away, and the monster’s head moved with him.

  No, Archie thought. No. It can’t be. He glanced right, and the thing looked right. He glanced left, and the thing looked left. He looked up at the ceiling, and the thing’s tentacles groped there, searching.

  Archie dropped back behind the cart, thinking hard.

  “Do we attack or run?” Hachi asked him.

  Archie blinked. Hachi was actually asking him to make a decision?

  “You know more about these things, White,” she said. “Do we attack, or run?”

  “I—I think we need to put the blindfolds back on.”

  “What?” Fergus and Luis said together. Everyone looked at him like he was crazy.

  “If we do that, we’ll be helpless!” Luis said. He turned and looked underneath the cart, through the snorting donkey’s legs.

  “No, don’t look at it!” Archie told him, but it was too late. Tentacles wriggled out and snatched up the donkey, dragging it and the cart toward his mouth.

  “It’s blind!” Archie yelled, scrambling to put his blindfold back on. “The monster’s blind, but it can see through our eyes. It sees what we see. Trust me. Put your blindfolds on and it can’t see us! Hurry!”

  Hachi immediately did as she was told, but Fergus still wanted to argue.

  “Fergus, look at the tubes,” Archie told him. “Don’t look at any of us. Just the tubes. Watch what it does.”

  Archie had his blindfold on now and reached out to find Hachi.

  “Twisted pistons!” Fergus said. “It’s—it’s moving wherever I look!”