The League of Seven

by Alan Gratz

  “Blindfolds, everybody!” Archie said again, feeling more confident now. He was doing it. He was saving them. He was in charge.

  “I don’t have a blindfold!” Luis said.

  “Just close your eyes, then,” Archie told him. “Close your eyes and don’t open them, no matter what you hear!”

  The donkey brayed in panic, and then—crunch—it was quiet. They listened as the tentacles tore apart the cart and the packages in the back crashed to the ground.

  “Freckles, I need you,” Hachi whispered, and Archie heard the mad fluttering of metal wings.

  “What is it? What is that?” Luis asked in a panic.

  Archie shushed him.

  “Freckles, I need you to be my eyes. Tell me what you see.”

  More fluttering, then more of the music box chittering sounds the little lion and gorilla had made at her back in the glade.

  “Can you actually understand that?” Fergus asked.

  “In a way,” Hachi said. “Now hush.” She paused. “It’s getting closer, Archie. Coming this way. What do we do?”

  Archie’s heart raced. Hachi was the warrior. She was the one who always knew what to do. But for once Archie knew more than she did. Only he didn’t really know anything about the thing behind them. What could they do to get away?

  The thing snuffled near them, and Freckles chittered again.

  “Archie,” Hachi whispered. “It’s almost on top of us.”

  Shung-shung. Shung-shung. Shung-shung. Another capsule rumbled its way toward them in the big tube overhead, and Archie had a sudden inspiration. His heart in his throat, he yanked off his blindfold.

  The thing was right next to him.

  Tentacles snatched him up and lifted him out of the muck, raising Archie toward the monster’s slurping mouth. Hard as it was, as scared as he was, Archie tore his eyes from the mole-creature and stared as hard as he could at the big pneumatic tube overhead.

  “Come on, you ugly monster!” Archie cried. “Get it. Get it!”

  “Archie?” Hachi asked. “Freckles says it’s got you!”

  The creature’s tentacles followed Archie’s eyes to the ceiling and yanked the pneumatic tube loose. Shung-shung. Shung-shung. Shung—ptoom! A huge capsule fired out of the broken tube and slammed into the thing’s face. Krang! It staggered back, stunned, dropping Archie in the muck as it collapsed.

  “What the—?” Fergus cried, ducking even though he couldn’t see anything.

  “It’s all right,” Archie said, panting. “You can take your blindfolds off now.”

  Hachi pulled hers off and quickly moved to help Archie up. When he was on his feet, she surveyed the downed monster, the crumpled capsule, and the broken tube. A hint of a smile curled at the end of her thin lips as she put it all together.

  “Better,” she told him.

  “Is it—is it dead?” Luis asked.

  “I don’t know,” Archie told them, “but I don’t think we should hang around to find out.”

  Nobody argued with him. Hachi picked up one of the fallen lanterns and led them around the side of the thing. They had to squeeze flat against the wall to move past it, once even having to climb over one of its misshapen paws. The awful wet-rat smell of the thing was so powerful they could barely speak.

  “That was no insect creature,” Hachi said once they were clear. “Do you think it’s under the control of that thing back in Florida?”

  “No,” Archie said. “No, I think it’s something else entirely. The spawn of some other Mangleborn. Something imprisoned here, below Mannahatta.”

  “A creature imprisoned beneath Mannahatta?” Luis asked. “What are these Mangleborn? How big are they? What do they look like?”

  “I think we better worry about getting out of here,” Archie said, trying to avoid the questions. “Does anything look familiar?”

  A few yards on, Luis thought he recognized some graffiti, and they followed him through another few passageways until they found a ladder leading up to an alleyway behind a Texian restaurant. Night had fallen, and fatigue set in when Archie realized they’d been going nonstop all day.

  “I think I can find our way back to the ship from here,” Archie told them.

  Luis took each of their hands in his own in turn, shaking them fervently.

  “You have saved my life, my friends. You have saved my life! And these Mangleborn of which you speak, you have inspired me to write about them!”

  Archie shared a concerned look with Hachi and Fergus.

  “Look, don’t say too much about them. People aren’t supposed to know,” Archie said.

  “Oh, I will not tell anyone what I saw in the tunnels tonight. Who would believe me?” Luis said. “No—I shall write stories about them. Novels. About the Mangleborn, and the heroes who fight them! They will be bigger than Professor Torque ever was.”

  “Um, I don’t know…” Archie said.

  “Here. Please.” Luis pulled a Nigerian prince letter from his satchel and pushed it into Archie’s hands. “Please, if there is anything I can ever do for you. The address on here. Just send a p-mail to this address. My name is Luis Philip Senarens. Here.” He scribbled his name on the paper.

  “Okay. Sure,” Archie said. It felt strange to have a grown man thanking him like this. “We’ll let you know. Thank you.”

  Luis thanked them again profusely, and finally they were able to make their escape.

  “What good is a writer going to be?” Fergus said once Luis was gone, but he stuffed the note in his pouch all the same.

  Mr. Rivets was waiting for them in the Hesperus. He was much relieved to see they had escaped the meka-ninja, but was not at all happy to hear about their run-in with the mole monster in the tunnels.

  “I concur with Master Archie: a Manglespawn, not a Mangleborn.”

  “And what’s a Manglespawn again then?” Fergus asked.

  “The monstrous offspring of a Mangleborn and some other creature. Sometimes with a human, sometimes with an animal.”

  “Well, in this case it was with an elephant-sized mole,” Fergus said.

  Mr. Rivets’ worry subroutine knitted his brass eyebrows. “If Manglespawn such as these are becoming more active, we may have more than just the Swarm Queen to worry about soon. We may indeed be seeing other Mangleborn growing stronger and rising anew.”

  “And where exactly is this Septemberist Society of yours?” Hachi asked.

  “I don’t know,” Archie said. “Mr. Rivets, did we hear back from your contact?”

  “We did indeed, sir.” Mr. Rivets produced a piece of paper and handed it to Archie. Hachi read it over his shoulder.

  “It’s nonsense,” she said. “‘No one here. Gas main explosion. Big fire. Outbreak of whooping cough—very contagious. Possibly also bears. Stay away.’”

  “We’re too late then,” Fergus said. “That bug thing has already got him.”

  “Quite the contrary, sir,” said Mr. Rivets. “Unless I am very much mistaken, this missive proves the man in charge of Atlantis Station is still very much himself.”

  “Did you say … Atlantis?” Fergus asked.

  “Yes, sir. The sole occupant of Atlantis has always had … how shall I put it? A leaky gasket.”

  “Atlantis,” Fergus said again skeptically.

  “You’ve met him, Mr. Rivets?” Archie asked. “The contact?”

  “I have indeed, sir, as have you, though you may have been too young to remember it. His name is Nikola Tesla.”

  15

  As they drew nearer to Atlantis Station, Archie had the vaguest memories of having been there before. He remembered water—lots and lots of water.

  What he had forgotten was that Atlantis was a tourist attraction.

  “Niagara Falls?” Fergus said. “Niagara Falls is Atlantis?”

  Out the front window, the biggest waterfall in the United Nations spread out in a horseshoe of cascading water, plunging more than a hundred feet to the boulders at its base. White spray filled
the air around the falls like steam.

  “Niagagarega,” Hachi corrected him. “The Niagagarega lived here long before the Seneca.”

  “Atlantis,” Archie corrected them both. “An Atlantean power station, at least. Atlantis wasn’t a city, like in the old stories. It was an empire, and they ruled the Old World and the New World. They were bigger than Rome.”

  “That is correct, Master Archie,” said Mr. Rivets. “The Septemberists have uncovered traces of Atlantean civilization as far west as California and the Seattle Alliance. Some even believe Atlantis to have begun here and spread east across the Atlantis Ocean, making this their Old World and Europe their New World. Many First Nations languages are thought to be descended from ancient Atlantean. The First Nations tribes themselves are very probably the descendants of Atlantis.”

  “You know, half the time I think you’re making this stuff up,” Fergus said.

  “I assure you, sir, I am incapable of lying,” Mr. Rivets told him.

  But you’re really good at keeping secrets, Archie thought bitterly.

  Mr. Rivets steered the Hesperus toward a public park near a suspension bridge on the far side of the falls. “The Romans found this power station when they conquered the Americas,” he explained. “They realized at once it was an artifact from a previous civilization, even though Atlantis was almost as much a mystery to them as it is to us. The Mangleborn did a most thorough job of destroying Atlantis, as they did when the Romans filled the world with lektricity. Afterward, Atlantis became a legend once more—one remembered as being underwater.”

  “It’s like half of what I think is true is a lie,” Fergus said.

  “‘Misremembered’ might be a more charitable way of putting it, sir,” Mr. Rivets said. “That is what happens when the Mangleborn rise. Civilizations, and their accumulated knowledge, are destroyed. Humanity is returned to a primitive state and made slaves to the Mangleborn. Eventually we overcome our own ignorance and regain control, but only with the help of a new League of seven heroes. By that time, however—”

  “We’ve forgotten everything we knew and we have to start all over,” Archie said.

  “Except for myths about titans. And a deep-down fear of lektricity,” Fergus said. “Explains why people called Edison the Wizard of Menlo Park. They thought he was working dark magic.” He lowered his voice. “Turns out they were right.”

  “Indeed,” said Mr. Rivets. “The Septemberists encourage these myths. That fear—and the Septemberists’ efforts—have held science in check and kept humanity safe for hundreds of years.”

  Mr. Rivets settled the Hesperus onto a mooring, and they rode down in the elevator basket. The falls in the distance roared like a blacksmith’s fire, and the air was cool and damp. All around them, families from tribes across the United Nations and Acadia piled out of airships carrying raincoats, cameras, and picnic baskets for an afternoon of sightseeing.

  Mr. Rivets bought them tickets for the Cave of the Winds attraction, and they rode an incline railway down the steep slope to the bottom of the falls. A series of elaborate wooden walkways had been built helter-skelter among the rocks and boulders at the edge of the river below. Farther out in the water, the Maid of the Mist steamboat carried a load of gawking sightseers, its great paddle wheels keeping it steady in the churning water at the bottom of the falls.

  Archie, Hachi, and Fergus donned raincoats and followed Mr. Rivets along the snaking wooden platform to where water crashed down on rocks. The roar of the falls was so loud they could barely hear themselves if they yelled, so they stayed quiet and kept moving. The winds that gave the cave at the base of the waterfall its name swirled around them, blowing them this way and that. Walking was hard for them all, but Fergus had the most trouble, his locked left leg almost useless in balancing himself against the shifting winds. He clung to the railing and inched his way forward.

  At the top of the wooden walkway they came to the waterfall itself. Tourists pulled themselves through the pounding water on a rope line, laughing and screaming as they got drenched. Mr. Rivets strode through, and Archie and Hachi followed. Water came down on Archie like dozens of giant hands clapping him on the back, but he didn’t fall. On the other side, Mr. Rivets climbed up stone steps into a small cave beyond the waterfall. Hachi followed, but Archie realized Fergus wasn’t with them and went back through the pounding water to look for him. He found Fergus still clinging to the rail.

  “Come on,” Archie called over the roar of the falls.

  Fergus shook his head.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “My leg won’t hold,” Fergus yelled back. “I’ll get knocked on my butt.”

  “Lean on me,” Archie told him. Fergus looked reluctant. “We have to go through,” Archie told him. “That’s where the place is.”

  Fergus closed his eyes, then nodded. He leaned on Archie, and even though Fergus was older and bigger, Archie barely felt his weight on him. They worked their way through the waterfall together. Fergus slipped once, but Archie kept him on his feet long enough to push through.

  “Never did like water,” Fergus said on the other side. “Thanks.”

  Archie helped Fergus up into the cave where Hachi and Mr. Rivets had disappeared. At the back of the small space was a metal door marked with a pyramid eye inside a seven-pointed star—the symbol of the Septemberist Society.

  The four of them stepped inside, and Archie and Hachi pushed the door closed against the thundering winds. It clicked shut, and the world went mercifully quiet again but for the dripping of their raincoats and the soft clicking of Mr. Rivets’ clockworks. Archie hadn’t realized just how loud the falls were until they weren’t trumpeting in his ears anymore.

  Fergus slumped wearily against the wall while Archie and Hachi had a look around. They were in a small room, perhaps ten feet by ten feet, made entirely of a dull gray metal. A gramophone horn was attached to the wall up high in one of the corners, and another door like the first stood at the opposite end of the small space.

  “The power station is just through here,” Mr. Rivets said. But as he approached the other door, it ka-chunked, followed by a similar ka-chunk from the outside door—the unmistakable sounds of doors locking.

  Hachi drew her dagger.

  Something started to hum within the walls, like the sound of a distant steam engine. But different somehow. Archie didn’t recognize the sound, but it meant something to Fergus. He pushed himself up off the wall and frowned, listening to it.

  “I know you’ve come for me like the rest!” a man’s voice cried through the gramophone horn on the wall, making them all jump. “You won’t get out of this room alive. I’ll leave you in there until you die, then go out at night and slip your dead bodies into the water, where you’ll be washed miles downstream before anyone finds you!”

  “Well, that’s some welcome,” Fergus said.

  “I thought you knew this person,” Hachi said to Archie and Mr. Rivets.

  Archie shrugged. He barely remembered anything about this place.

  “Mr. Tesla, I am Mr. Rivets, Tik Tok valet to Dalton and Agatha Dent, and personal tutor for their son, Archibald.”

  Fergus and Hachi raised their eyebrows at him.

  “Well? What did you think Archie stood for?” Archie said.

  “If you will remember, sir,” Mr. Rivets continued, “we came here eight years ago when Mr. and Mrs. Dent used the Septemberist archives to identify an odd specimen that had washed up near Charles Town.”

  “You could be impostors!” Tesla said through the speaker. “Yes. That’s it. Impostors!”

  “Thirty days hath September,” Archie said, using the Society’s secret pass phrase. “Seven heroes we remember.”

  “You’d still know the Septemberist code words if you were brainwashed!”

  “If you’d just open the door, we could show you we’re not brainwashed,” Fergus said.

  “Oh, very clever! Yes! I open the door, and you put one of those bug things on me and
brainwash me like all the others,” Tesla said. “No thank you!”

  “Wait, I think I remember you now,” Archie said. “You had these shiny silver discs with holes in the middle of them. From Atlantis, you said. You put them in a machine with lektric coils that glowed orange, but it melted them. So you just used the machine to make toast instead. I was little, but you showed me. We had strawberry jam on toast.”

  The speaker was quiet for a moment.

  “Of course you would know that,” Tesla said finally. “Just like you know the Septemberist pass phrase. You’re the boy who was here before, but you and your friends have those little bug things in your necks!”

  “No, that’s why we’re here,” Archie said. “My parents, they have those bugs on them, and—”

  “I’m not letting you in!” Tesla interrupted. “And you’re not getting out. Not without frying yourselves. I may be the last Septemberist left, but I’m not going down without a fight!”

  “He’s lost his mind,” Hachi said.

  “Fried? What does he mean by that? Is he going to heat up the room?” Archie asked.

  “Nae. Listen,” Fergus said. He was listening to that hum again. “We’re in a Franklin cage.”

  “A what?” Archie asked.

  “A who?” Hachi asked.

  “Did someone just say ‘Franklin cage’?” Tesla said over the speaker.

  Fergus put a hand out to the wall and touched it, but nothing happened. He nodded.

  “Franklin was a Yankee inventor. He experimented with lektricity,” Fergus said. “Edison had some of his old papers. I saw them. Franklin was a genius.”

  “You’ll remember Benjamin Franklin, sir,” Mr. Rivets told Archie. “A local printer and diplomat from Philadelphia who was instrumental in convincing the Iroquois to accept the Yankees into their confederacy after the Darkness fell. He was eventually recruited by the Septemberists, and worked in secret for them for decades.”

  “He had this idea, Franklin did,” Fergus said. “You take a metal box, or a cage, or a can, doesn’t matter, long as it’s metal on the outside. You run lektricity to it, and the lektricity stays on the outside. Spreads around it, but not inside it, see?” He put his hand to the wall again. “No charge on the inside, but all around the outside is lektrified.” Fergus frowned as he thought. “But to generate the kind of lektricity that would fry us, that would take—”