by Alan Gratz
Señor X died in a shower of yellow sparks.
“Señor X—no!” Gonzalo cried. He went down on all fours, feeling for pieces of the shattered raygun. “Señor X!”
Martine swept Archie off his feet with her aetherical harpoon, and a giant two-legged green dinosaur stomped on him. Thoom-thoom-thoom-thoom. Archie grabbed for the creature’s foot, punched at it, but his hands went right through it.
Kitsune. Kitsune the deceiver.
The lizard wasn’t real. But whatever was beating him into the ground was. Hachi. Hachi and her wave cannon.
Archie grabbed the tip of Martine’s glowing green harpoon and yanked it out of her hands. Whack! He batted Hachi’s wave cannon away even though he couldn’t see it, and hurled the harpoon at the last place Kitsune had been standing.
Shunk.
The big green lizard disappeared and Kitsune appeared, staring down at the aetherical harpoon stuck straight through her left thigh. The Dragon Lantern clanked to the ground beside her, and she collapsed.
Fergus hit Archie with lektricity again. Kazaaaaaaak! Archie grabbed Fergus and hurled him, still sparking, at Martine. They tumbled away in a jumble of arms and legs and lektricity.
“Mr. Rivets! Your Surgeon card! Quick!” Hachi cried. She knelt on the ground with Kitsune’s head in her lap, the wave cannon tossed aside. Dark red blood soaked Kitsune’s white kimono around the glowing green harpoon. “Oh, Archie, what have you done?” Hachi whispered.
“What have I done?” Archie said. “What have I done? The same thing you have! You betrayed me!”
“And what would you have done?” Hachi yelled. “What would you have done if somebody you knew became a mindless monster any time he got mad and you had no way to stop him?”
“I would have trusted my friend!” Archie screamed.
“Really?” Hachi said. “Take a look around you, Archie, and tell me how that worked out for all your friends!”
Archie closed his eyes. “No,” he said. “No, you did this to me. I only did this because you didn’t trust me! Because you went behind my back!”
“No,” Hachi told him. “You did this because you were always going to. Because of Moffett and the Mangleborn and the puzzle trap and everything else. Because of how you were born. You did this because you wanted to forget who you are—what you are—and just be a monster. Because being a monster is easier. I know.” She got quiet. “I was just the idiot who gave you the push.”
Archie opened his eyes. Hachi still sat on the ground with Kitsune’s head in her lap while Mr. Rivets tended to her wound.
“All of them, they all did this to me,” Archie said dully. He dragged Buster’s severed arm to him and held it like a club. “Clyde and Fergus went to Dodge City to get the amber tech. Martine adapted it to Gonzalo’s gun. Kitsune lied to me. But it was all your idea, Hachi. I know it was.” Archie said. “Right from the start. Wasn’t it. Wasn’t it?” he roared, threatening her with his club.
Hachi raised her head and looked Archie straight in the eyes. “Yes,” she said.
Archie lifted the club and slammed it down on her.
29
Hachi ducked, bending protectively over Kitsune.
Krunk.
She flinched, but the big arm didn’t hit her. She looked up. Buster! Buster had caught it!
“That belongs to me,” Clyde said through Buster’s speakers. The big steam man yanked the brass arm out of Archie’s hands and swung it at him like a golf club. Thwank! Archie went flying, landing somewhere in the middle of the battlefield half a mile away.
Mr. Rivets picked Kitsune up in his powerful brass arms. “My Surgeon card is inside Buster,” he told Hachi.
Hachi caught movement out of the corner of her eye and turned. It was Moffett! Philomena Moffett had picked up the Dragon Lantern and was running away. Away from them, and away from the Monster War. Twisted pistons. Hachi’s first instinct was to chase her, but Archie was the bigger problem now.
“Clyde! Clyde, we need Buster’s medical bay!” Hachi called.
Buster knelt and opened his mouth, and Clyde scrambled down to help Mr. Rivets bring Kitsune inside. Mr. Rivets took her directly to the steam man’s surgery.
“Freckles! I need you,” Hachi said, and the little brass giraffe her father had made her burst from its pouch on her bandolier and fluttered in front of her. “Follow Moffett. Find out where she’s going. Then come back here and tell me. Got it?”
Freckles chittered at her and buzzed away.
Clyde gave Hachi a hand up into Buster’s mouth. “Archie did that to Kitsune?” he asked.
“Yes,” Hachi said. “And he’s going to do worse if we don’t stop him.”
“Did Gonzalo use the blue amber?” Clyde asked.
“Yes,” Martine said. She and Fergus led the crestfallen Gonzalo between them. In Gonzalo’s hands, he held the smashed pieces of Señor X.
“Archie’s strength exceeded the blue amber’s stress tolerance,” Martine told Clyde.
Clyde looked to Fergus.
“He broke out,” Fergus translated. “And then he broke Señor X.”
“Está muerto,” Gonzalo muttered, tears streaking his face below his black blindfold. “Mi mejor amigo está muerto.”
“No está muerto,” Martine told him. “Está simplemente soñando.”
“¿Como?” Gonzalo said.
“I will take care of Gonzalo and Señor X,” Martine said, taking them both on board Buster.
“I’ll do for Buster’s broken arm,” said Fergus.
“But what about Kitsune?” Clyde asked. He and Hachi followed Mr. Rivets to the medical bay, where he already had Kitsune strapped to a bed. She didn’t look good.
“I will see to Miss Kitsune’s wound as best I can,” he said. “But please—you must help Archie. If you can.”
“If the blue amber didn’t work on him, how do we stop him?” Clyde asked Hachi.
“‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s men,’” Kitsune muttered.
“Lie still now, miss,” Mr. Rivets told Kitsune.
“No,” Hachi said, suddenly hopeful again. “No—Edison’s rhyme: ‘Sticks and stones can’t break his bones, but words can surely hurt him!’ Archie’s weakness is his human brain. It’s what makes him lose control, and what makes him regain it. And I know just the words to tell him!”
Kitsune grabbed Hachi’s arm. “No,” she whispered. “Show him.”
* * *
Archie picked up a squirming leech-like thing and ripped it in half. A UN soldier snapped off his bayonet on Archie’s chest, and Archie hurled him aside. An airship’s raycannon blasted the ground beneath his feet, and Archie went flying again. He landed with an oomph on a walrus-like creature with the head of an eagle, and punched a hole in the thing’s chest before using it to club another UN warrior.
Tezcatlipoca, the voices sang. Mountainheart.
Enemy to Both Sides.
Rayguns hit him. Manglespawn bit him. Archie raged on, his anger blotting everything else out. The monsters and the men, the clanker tanks and giant steam men—who they fought for and what they fought for meant nothing to him. They were nothing but objects to vent his fury on.
And then they were gone. All of them. The warriors, the monsters, the airships, the clanker tanks. There were no searing rayguns, no explosions, no cries of pain. Day became night, and Archie spun on a dark, quiet glade in the middle of a tree-filled swamp, looking desperately for something to hit, something to destroy.
“Where—where are you?” Archie said, panting. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you all!”
Slowly, thickly, Archie’s brain told him he wasn’t in Gettysburg anymore. Wasn’t even in Powhatan territory. He knew this place. Yes—he had been here before. He was sure of it. If he could just think—but all he wanted to do was rip a tree from the ground, use it to smash the other trees. Pound the tree to splinters. Rip up the stone altar and hurl it into the swamp.
The stone altar. Archie’
s thunderstorm brain cleared for the briefest of moments, and he remembered. Knew where he was.
Chuluota. Where it had all begun. Where Archie had been born.
Where the Jandal a Haad was reborn, the Mangleborn sang.
Archie pounded on the sides of his head, trying to unhear the voices.
When he looked up, there were people in the glade. Seven of them, all standing around the stone altar. Men and women, Yankees and First Nations, old and young. Archie knew one of them. Had fought one of them. Beaten on his cackling, metal body when the man was just a brain in a jar. Archie’s fists clenched, longing to pound on him again.
Edison. That was the dead man’s name. Edison.
Edison raised a pair of lektrical gauntlets, and the air crackled. The other people in the circle chanted words he didn’t understand, and whoosh—swirling green flames erupted around something small and gray hidden underneath the stone altar.
Something small and gray and made of stone.
Something in the shape of a baby boy.
Archie staggered back like he’d been punched by a steam man. This was Chuluota, twelve years ago, and the lifeless stone homunculus under the altar was him, before he’d been brought to life.
“No!” Archie cried. “It’s a trick! A trick!” He pulled a tree from the ground and hurled it at the circle of people, but it swept right through them.
A man in a black hood dragged a bound, struggling man into the circle of seven and threw him on the altar. One of the conspirators stepped forward with a knife, and with a flash of silver and red, the bound man’s body went limp.
“Talisse Fixico, the potter,” Hachi said.
Archie jumped. Hachi stood right beside him. Anger flared in him. “You’re doing this!” he cried. Archie swung at her, but she disappeared, replaced by the gray, ghostly image of a Seminole man with clay-caked fingers. Archie drew back, afraid.
Another kicking, fighting Seminole man was dragged to the altar, and the gray ghost of a bent and bearded old man appeared beside Archie. He jumped away.
“Chelokee Yoholo, father of Ficka,” Hachi said behind him.
He turned to hit her, but she was replaced by the ghost of a young Seminole man in a suit and neckerchief.
“Hathlun Harjo, the surgeon.”
Everywhere Archie turned, there was a new ghost. A new victim. And every time, Hachi said the dead man’s name.
“Odis Harjo, the poet.”
“Iskote Te, the gray-haired.”
“Oak Mulgee, the machinist.”
“John Wise, the politician.”
“Emartha Hadka, the hero of Hickory Ground.”
Archie twisted away from each one, trying to get free, but they surrounded him. Penned him in. Archie put his hands over his ears and dropped to his knees, but he still heard Hachi’s voice saying the names in his head.
Ficka Likee. Petolke Likee. Ockchan Harjo. Micco Chee. Sower Sullivan. Cosa Yoholo. Artus Harjo.
Name after name. The ghosts crowded out his rage as they filled his brain. They watched him. Stared at him. Not angry or hurt, but expectant. Like they were waiting for him to do something. As Hachi said the names, Archie found himself saying them with her, repeating the mantra she’d taught him. Konip Fixico. Chular Fixico. Tallassee Tustunnugee. Long John Gibson. Talkis Yoholo.
One hundred ghosts. One hundred men. By mantra’s end, it was just Archie’s voice calling their names. Including the last:
“Hololkee Emartha, father of Hachi.”
Archie looked up. The ghosts were still there, waiting. Watching.
“What do you want from me?” Archie asked.
“You carry our blood,” said Thomas Stidham, the horse breeder.
“You live for us,” said Pompey Yoholo, the seventh son of a seventh son.
“I killed you!” Archie said.
“You weren’t even born when we died,” said Nehar Larne, the cogswright.
“But it’s my fault you died!” Archie told the ghosts. “I’m a monster!”
“No,” said Harmer Thlah, the wicked. “A monster wouldn’t cry over the dead. Your remorse is what makes you human.”
“You died so I could live!” Archie told them.
“Yes,” said Abraham Emathlau, singer of songs. “And what do you do to honor our memory?”
Archie put his head in his hands.
“You carry our blood,” Thomas Stidham said again.
“You know our names,” said Hahyah Yechee, the sheriff.
“You have the strength of a hundred men,” said Petolke Likee, the orange grower.
“What will you do with it?” asked Hololkee Emartha, father of Hachi.
“I’ll—I’ll be good,” Archie said, sobbing. “I’ll fight the monsters. All the monsters. I’ll be the one monster who’s good. I’ll be the man you want me to be. I promise.”
The ghosts had what they had come for. They nodded and disappeared, one by one, until only Hololkee Emartha, father of Hachi, was left. He gave Archie a small smile, and he was gone.
Hachi appeared in his place, tears running down her cheeks. Still on his knees, Archie put his arms around her legs and lay the side of his face against her stomach.
“I’m sorry, Hachi,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean any of it. I just—I just forgot myself. I forgot everything.”
Hachi put her hands on Archie’s white hair. “I know,” she told him.
Archie wept. “I’m not as strong as you,” he told her.
“No,” Hachi said. “You’re stronger. If I had your power, there wouldn’t be a world left to save.”
30
Chuluota faded away with Archie’s anger, and he could finally see what they’d done to get through to him. There was a metal hat on his head, like the ones Tesla had given them at Atlantis Station to keep out the voices of the Mangleborn, put there by Hachi’s flying circus when no one else could get near him. Gonzalo, Martine, and Clyde fought to keep the monsters and soldiers out of the little circle they’d cleared around Archie on the battlefield, and Fergus hovered overhead on his rebuilt lektric gyrocopter, carrying a pale and sagging Kitsune in his arms.
Archie stood. “Oh gods. Kitsune.”
Fergus landed beside them, and Archie hurried to Kitsune’s side.
“I’m so sorry, Kitsune. I didn’t know what I was doing.” He looked down at the red-stained bandage on her leg. “I could have hit you anywhere. I could have put that harpoon through your heart.”
“I should have … hidden better,” Kitsune said. “You’re the only person … who’s ever caught me twice.”
“She’s not good,” Fergus said. “But she insisted on doing this.”
“Never … stolen somebody else’s memories before … and showed them to somebody else,” she said.
“Stolen somebody’s memories?” Archie said. “But you were only a baby when it happened,” he said to Hachi. “You couldn’t possibly remember all that.”
“I don’t remember it,” Hachi said. “Not like that. But I’ve seen it. Every night when I close my eyes and sleep. Thanks to Malacar Ahasherat.”
“They’re breaking through!” Clyde cried, and suddenly Manglespawn were throwing themselves at them. Archie punched a snarling lion-like thing away before it could pounce on Hachi. Hachi ducked between the legs of a skinless man and came up behind him, knives flashing. Gonzalo used a raycannon to blast a metallic blob back into the trees. Fergus lit up a cross between a woman and a fish with lektricity. Martine hopped on the back of a short, squat thing that was all fingers and ears and drove her harpoon into it. Buster snatched up a ten-foot-tall tree man in his mouth like a stick.
But there were more of them—too many more. Just as the Manglespawn threatened to overrun them, there were fourteen Leaguers. Twenty-one. Twenty-eight. More. Twenty-eight Archies and Hachis and Gonzalos and Ferguses and Martines and Kitsunes, and twenty-eight Clydes riding twenty-eight Busters. The monsters jumped and gnashed and bit and slimed at them all while the Le
aguers who were real moved among them, hitting and shooting and stomping and slicing, until it was just the seven of them, all standing in a circle with their backs to each other, their weapons raised to take on the world. Together. The League of Seven, reborn.
Raycannons and aether rifles still crackled as what was left of General Lee’s army fought the thousands more Manglespawn that poured over the hill, but for the briefest of moments, the League found themselves in a lull in the storm.
A lull that ended when the three Mangleborn loomed up over the battlefield. One looked like a huge black mountain lion with fish fins on its back and backward deer horns on its head. That was the Buster-sized one. The second was a towering ice-man with broken pine trees and boulders buried in his frozen skin. The third looked like a giant skunk.
“What have we got, Mr. X?” Clyde asked.
“Mishipeshu, the Underwater Panther. The Wendigo, an ice giant with a human cannibal where its heart should be. And Aniwye—pretty much a giant skunk.”
“Xiuhcoatl!” Archie said. “I thought I destroyed you!”
Gonzalo hefted the raycannon he carried. “Martine said he was only sleeping, and she was right! She couldn’t rebuild his old body, so she woke him up and put him in this raycannon.”
“I wasn’t sleeping, I was in cyber-limbo. Nano-dormancy,” Señor X said. “It’s like existing in a great black space where the only thing you can see, hear, smell, feel, or taste is a flashing white cursor that just types whatever I think. Luckily somebody here knows how to migrate biocognitive lektroneurons into a fresh ecosystem.”
“I have nae idea what any of that means,” said Fergus.
“I do,” said Martine.
“I may have more firepower now, but that don’t mean I forgive you, kid,” Señor X told Archie. “I liked my old body. It had style.”
“Later,” Hachi said. “Moffett’s gone. I saw her take the Dragon Lantern.”
Archie could feel the excitement the Leaguers had just been feeling ebb away.
“Confirmed,” Martine said, consulting her harpoon.
“As Mrs. DeMarcus used to say, we got bigger chicken to fry. Fergus, Martine, Gonzalo, take down that big skunk,” Clyde said. “Me, Hachi, and Kitsune will take care of the water panther. Mr. Rivets can see to Kitsune inside Buster. Archie, keep that Wendigo busy until we can all gang up on it together.”
