The League of Seven

by Alan Gratz

  “‘His pelt impervious to every weapon,’” Archie said. “That bearskin he’s wearing. It must have protected him. If we had that pelt, we would be protected too.”

  Hachi pulled another book to her. “I saw something else about the Great Bear in this one.”

  Archie read the rest of the entry about Malacar Ahasherat in Plutarch’s Seven Lives of the Mangleborn while Hachi flipped back through her book. There wasn’t much more except descriptions of all the plagues and disasters the Swarm Queen had caused. “‘The monster, like its cousins the insects, is attracted to the light of the full moon and draws strength from its pull,’” Archie read aloud. “Mr. Rivets, when is the next full moon?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have that information, sir,” Mr. Rivets said. “Perhaps one of the Mark IVs will have the answer encoded on his shiny new aluminum memory cards.”

  If Archie didn’t know it was beyond his programming, he would have thought Mr. Rivets was being a little snippy.

  “Here,” Hachi said. “It says the pelt was buried with him. The bearskin and his club. ‘In the mouth of the great bear.’” She looked up. “The Great Bear was buried in the mouth of the Great Bear? How does that work?”

  “I don’t know. Does it say where he’s buried?”

  “What, now we’re going to rob a grave?”

  “If that’s what it takes to beat this Mangleborn and get my parents back, yes!”

  “Archie, it’s just a story,” Hachi told him. “One of your half-truths, like Atlantis. There’s no such thing as bearskins that weapons can’t pierce, or people with the strength of a hundred men. It’s just mythology. Tall tales. Some guy was strong, and a thousand years later people remember him being some kind of superman.”

  “You mean like mole monsters that can see through other people’s eyes? Or ichor of lektric squid turning Fergus into a computing machine?” Archie stood. “Why do you have to be like that? Why do you have to deny everything, even when you can see it with your own eyes? You told me my parents were dead when you knew they weren’t. You saw them, didn’t you? In a dream, just like I did! Just like Fergus did!”

  “All right,” Hachi said, standing to face him. “Your parents might not be dead. Yet. But they will be. You can’t go down there with that thing and live. Nothing can. You heard it beating on the seal. It’s going to get out. Nobody’s safe. Not even aboveground. They’re dead, we’re dead—everybody’s dead.”

  “Then what were you doing there? In Florida?”

  “I was going to kill Edison. And then I was going to kill that thing that lives underground.”

  “How, exactly?”

  “I had a plan, okay? A plan you ruined.”

  “Then why don’t you just go do it yourself then, if you have all the answers?”

  “Maybe I will!”

  Hachi crossed her arms and turned away. Archie slapped his book closed. Behind him, Mr. Piston emerged from a row of bookshelves, his stovepipe hat puffing.

  “Mr. Piston, I need more books about the Mi’kmaq hero called the Great Bear,” Archie said. That pelt had protected the Great Bear from Malacar Ahasherat once, and Archie wanted it.

  Mr. Piston didn’t answer. Instead he played “Mister Twister, the Melancholy Machine Man” as he had in the elevator. Hachi turned to look at him.

  “Mr. Piston?” Archie said.

  The machine man kept walking toward them without a word. Archie heard Hachi draw her dagger.

  “Hachi, what’re you—?” Archie began. Then he saw Mr. Piston’s eyes.

  The machine man’s eyes were red.

  “Run!” Hachi said. She threw her chair at Mr. Piston’s legs, but the Tik Tok stomped it to splinters under his steam-driven feet. Archie was barely up out of his chair before Hachi slipped under the table and overturned it, scattering the tomes they had just been reading. The researcher’s son in Archie flinched at the books being tossed about, but when Mr. Piston’s whirling arms smashed right through the table he decided he didn’t care so much and ran.

  “I don’t understand what’s happened to them! They’re not allowed to hurt humans. It’s the first law of Tik Toks,” he cried.

  “That meka-ninja didn’t seem to be too worried about any laws,” Hachi yelled as they ran.

  “But these are different! They’re Emartha Machine Man Tik Toks!”

  “Yes, the irony hadn’t escaped me,” Hachi said. Archie didn’t understand what she meant by that, but there was no time to ask. Another machine man with red eyes came out of the stacks ahead of them and turned, his arms windmilling. He too was playing “Mister Twister, the Melancholy Machine Man”—DING-ding-DING-ding-DING-ding-DING-ding.

  Hachi ducked and slid along the floor, just missing the arms of death spinning above her. Shink. Pfft! She snipped a pressurized rubber hose at the back of the Tik Tok’s leg and it toppled, unable to stand. Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! The machine man’s arms kept spinning, pounding the stone floor like a paddle wheel.

  “I’m glad Fergus wasn’t here to see that,” Archie said.

  Their path to the exit was blocked by the thrashing Tik Tok. Hachi pushed Archie down one of the rows of books instead.

  “Not you, Mr. Rivets,” she told their machine man. “You take the next aisle.”

  “As you say, miss,” Mr. Rivets said.

  Archie didn’t see the point in running this way—they were headed away from the door. Things only got worse when a red-eyed machine man playing “Mister Twister, the Melancholy Machine Man” turned down the far end of their row and Mr. Piston appeared at the other end, playing the tune in stereo.

  DING-ding-DING-ding-DING-ding-DING-ding.

  “We’re trapped!” Archie said.

  “No we’re not,” Hachi told him.

  Archie didn’t see how both exits being blocked wasn’t trapped. And all Hachi was doing was standing there, watching the Tik Toks get closer.

  “Now—climb!” she told him. She jumped onto the shelves and started up. Books rained down as she climbed, making Archie wince again. His parents would be distraught.

  “Climb!” Hachi called down. She was already halfway to the top. Archie grabbed a shelf and hauled himself up unsteadily as the machine men drew nearer. Mr. Piston’s arms sliced the air near him—whht-whht-whht-whht—and Archie slipped, his foot breaking a shelf in half. Books slid off it and exploded in Mr. Piston’s whirling arms.

  Hachi grabbed the back of Archie’s jacket and helped pull him the rest of the way up. Below, the spinning arms of the evil machine men chewed up the shelves.

  “Mr. Rivets!” Hachi called. “Push it over!”

  The next aisle over, Mr. Rivets put his metal shoulder into the shelf they were on and pushed. The bookshelf swayed under Archie.

  “Jump!” Hachi told him. She leaped to the bookcase across the aisle as Mr. Rivets tipped theirs over. Archie stood shakily, tried to steady himself, and jumped. He hit the other bookcase stomach first with an oof. Hachi grabbed his jacket and held on as the bookcase behind him slammed down—boom!—burying the red-eyed Tik Toks under an avalanche of books and shelves. A decades-old cloud of dust poofed up from the wreckage as Archie scrambled the rest of the way up onto the top of the bookshelf.

  “A little warning next time,” Archie told Hachi.

  In the silence that followed the boom, “Mister Twister, the Melancholy Machine Man” still played faintly from beneath the debris of the wrecked bookshelves.

  “I believe my obsolete mainspring proved to have sufficient torque, wouldn’t you say, Master Archie?” Mr. Rivets said from the next aisle over.

  “Without a doubt, Mr. Rivets,” Archie told him.

  Hachi started off down the top of the shelves toward the exit, but Archie called to her to wait. He climbed down onto the mountain of debris below and yanked Mr. Piston’s talent card from his back. The machine man stopped thrashing and playing music.

  “Someone’s tampered with it,” Archie said, holding the talent card up for Mr. R
ivets to see. There were new holes punched into the metal—crudely done, but clever enough to override the Tik Toks’ fail-safes and make them act out their sinister new orders.

  “Who would know how to do this?” Archie asked.

  “I think the question is, who’s the only other person here with us?” said Hachi.

  “You don’t mean Tesla!” Archie said.

  Another machine man turned down the aisle, “Mister Twister, the Melancholy Machine Man” tinkling merrily from his internal speaking trumpets.

  Hachi drew her knife again. “Let’s go ask him,” she said.

  18

  “Come on come on come on,” Archie said to the elevator. Fergus was down there, alone, with Tesla. There was no telling what the man was doing to him.

  “Would it help if I hummed ‘Mister Twister, the Melancholy Machine Man’ while we wait?” Mr. Rivets asked.

  “No,” Archie and Hachi said together.

  “Very good,” said Mr. Rivets.

  The elevator hit the bottom floor, and Archie and Hachi rushed out. Down below, in the water tank Tesla had turned into a workspace, Fergus lay flat on a table. His shirt was off and wires stuck out of him all over his body. Tesla and one of the Mark IV machine men stood over him with pliers and screwdrivers in their hands.

  “Fergus!” Archie cried.

  Hachi slid down the ladder like a sailor, her feet wrapped around the sides. Afraid he would kill himself if he tried the same thing, Archie hurried down the usual way, one rung at a time. Mr. Rivets followed.

  “Get away from him,” Hachi told Tesla, her voice raspy and hard at the same time.

  Tesla looked up, blinking behind the metal cage he wore on his head. “What? Why?”

  Fergus sat up too, making Archie jump. Fergus’ bare chest was a maze of black lines, just like his face and arms.

  “What’s all this about then?” Fergus asked.

  “Has he hurt you?” Hachi said. She rounded on Tesla, her clockwork menagerie already hovering in the air around her. Tesla stumbled backward into a workbench.

  “What? No. Why would he? We were just mapping out one of the configurations of my tattoos. We think this one might be a difference engine. You know, something that can calculate logarithms and trigonometric functions by approximating polynomials. We still can’t figure out why I hear beeping, though. We think—”

  “Fergus, we were attacked,” Archie interrupted. “By reprogrammed machine men.”

  “Impossible,” said the Mark IV at Tesla’s side. His nameplate said he was Mr. Stoker.

  “I’m afraid not,” said Mr. Rivets. “Their human interaction fail-safes were overridden.”

  “By who?” Fergus asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Hachi said, cornering Tesla. “Who else is here with us?”

  “These wind-up animals of yours really are quite astounding,” he said, watching the flying circus buzzing around his head. “Wait. I’m sorry. You think I overrode the fail-safes on those Tik Toks? I didn’t—Aaah! What’s that?” Tesla pointed over her shoulder.

  “Right,” Hachi said. “Like I’m falling for that one.”

  Clang! A one-armed black Tik Tok leaped from the balcony onto Mr. Stoker’s back, startling them all.

  “Crivens!” Fergus said. He fell off the table in fright.

  “The meka-ninja!” Archie cried.

  “The what?” said Tesla.

  The titanium Mr. Stoker staggered under the weight of the assassinbot on his shoulders. As they watched, Mr. Shinobi disengaged the Mark IV Machine Man’s talent card, punched a series of quick holes into it, and jammed it back home. Mr. Stoker’s eyes turned red, and he began to play “Mister Twister, the Melancholy Machine Man.”

  “What is it? What’s it done?” Tesla cried, cowering behind Hachi.

  “You don’t know?” she asked.

  “No! I’ve never seen that Tik Tok before in my life!”

  Archie expected the meka-ninja to jump at Fergus, weapons flailing, but instead it leaped from Mr. Stoker’s shoulders onto one of the ladders and scurried back up to the top of the empty pool. It stood there and watched as Mr. Stoker’s arms began to spin, chewing up the table where Fergus had been lying just a few seconds before. Above them, more reprogrammed Tik Toks with red eyes started climbing down into the empty pool.

  Hachi pushed another table into the path of Mr. Stoker, whose new and improved steam-powered arms smashed it to pieces. “Tesla! I don’t suppose you got those weapons you promised us before you started tinkering with Fergus,” Hachi said.

  “Oh. Um. Well, you see, we got carried away with our experiments, and—”

  Hachi huffed. “That’s what I thought.”

  Mr. Stoker’s spinning arms backed them into the middle of the room as the other reprogrammed Tik Toks reached the floor.

  “If I might be so bold, sir,” Mr. Rivets said, “perhaps we could employ the same exit strategy Miss Hachi used in the library.”

  “I don’t see any bookshelves to climb here, Mr. Rivets,” Archie told him.

  “No, sir. But Mr. Tesla does have a winch to raise and lower equipment out of the tank.”

  “But someone has to stay here to operate it,” Tesla said. Clearly, that wasn’t going to be him.

  “I will stay, sir,” Mr. Rivets said. “The other Tik Toks have proven disinterested in me, and I daresay I can survive their attacks better than any of you.”

  “Go. Go, then,” Hachi said, shooing everyone onto the platform. The zombielike machine men were almost on top of them.

  Mr. Rivets activated the lektric winch. The platform lurched and lifted off the ground. The spinning arms of the reprogrammed Tik Toks clanged against the sides of it as they rose, but soon Archie, Fergus, Hachi, and Tesla were safely away and headed for the top of the empty tank.

  The Tik Toks turned and went back for the ladders.

  “They’re just going to climb back up after us!” Tesla cried.

  “If I might make another suggestion, sir,” Mr. Rivets called out. “If this tank is still functional, it could be refilled.” He nodded to an enormous spigot that curled out over the tank.

  “Yes, yes!” Tesla cried. “Swing us over to the balcony.”

  Mr. Rivets guided the hanging platform to the railing and they climbed over. The red-eyed machine men were halfway up the ladders. The black meka-ninja stood at the railing on the other side of the empty pool, still just watching them.

  Tesla ran to a big round wheel attached to the spigot. “I don’t know how we’re going to—unh—turn this thing. I had to—unh—had to have the steam-powered Tik Toks do it!”

  Hachi ran over and hung onto the wheel. Fergus put what weight he could into it too. It still wouldn’t budge. Archie found a place to put in a hand and tugged too. Squeak! The wheel came loose, and Tesla spun it. Gallons of water gushed from the pipe, pouring into the empty tank below. Tesla’s equipment sparked and shorted out as the waves caught it, but he didn’t seem to care. The water rose, swirling the wooden tables and chairs around and swallowing the thousand-pound Mr. Rivets. It filled the room quickly, catching the climbing Tik Toks on their ladders too. They fell off one by one and sank motionless to the bottom.

  “Mr. Rivets!” Archie cried.

  Tesla cranked the valve shut, and the flow slowed to a trickle. The water was clear, but pieces of furniture and bits of equipment swirled on the surface. Archie leaned out over the railing, but he couldn’t see the bottom.

  “We have to drain the pool!” he said. “We have to get Mr. Rivets out of there!” All his anger at Mr. Rivets’ keeping secrets from him was gone in an instant. The machine man had been his constant companion since the day he was born—his nursemaid, his teacher, his guardian, his best friend. He couldn’t lose him here, now. Not like this.

  Fergus put a hand on Archie’s shoulder. “He saved us, mate. He made the ultimate sacrifice for any Tik Tok: He gave himself to save his owner.”

  “No! No, we have to drain the pool
,” Archie said. “We have to—”

  Archie stopped. A brass hand grabbed the top rung of the ladder, and Mr. Rivets pulled himself up out of the water.

  “Mr. Rivets!” Archie ran to the machine man and threw his arms around him. Archie knew the hug Mr. Rivets gave him back was just the automatic response of the Tik Tok’s compassion subroutine, but he didn’t care. “I thought I’d lost you!” Archie said.

  “You forget, Master Archie, my ‘obsolete’ clockworks do not run on steam power, but the Emartha Mark IV Machine Man does. While steam power makes the Mark IV significantly stronger than the Mark II, it also requires a fire to boil water to create steam. Too much water, though, and the fire is extinguished, rendering the Mark IV just so much titanium scrap metal. With all due respect to the Emartha Locomotive and Machine Man Company, I believe you may call the Mark IV Machine Man ‘defective by design.’”

  “You know, what we need is a hybrid Tik Tok,” Fergus said. “A machine man that runs on steam power, but has clockwork backups when its fire goes out.”

  “Oh, that’s a rather good idea,” Tesla said. “In fact, the steam engine could keep the backup clockwork engine wound. All you’d have to do is—”

  “I hate to break up this fascinating discussion,” Hachi said, “but we still have the meka-ninja to worry about.” She nodded at the mysterious Tik Tok across the room, its red eyes staring at them from the shadows.

  Before any of them could say anything more, Mr. Shinobi backed away and disappeared among the machinery.

  “What’s the clacking thing up to?” Fergus asked.

  “It’s playing with us,” Hachi said.

  “It’s waiting for something,” Archie said. Then it hit him. “Or someone.”

  “Edison, you mean?” Hachi asked. “But how would Edison know where it is?”

  “Oh!” Tesla cried. “Oh! Oh oh oh! How could I be so stupid?” He rapped his fist against the metal cage around his head, then pointed at Fergus.