Island of Doom: Hunchback Assignments 4 (The Hunchback Assignments) (15 page)

“You broken,” Typhon announced, then lumbered toward the airship.

For several moments Modo couldn’t move. He heard the
pop pop
of pistol fire. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to roll onto his side. Octavia was crouching behind a statue of a man on horseback and firing her derringer at the airship. Modo still couldn’t catch his breath, couldn’t get up. He turned his head to see the airship beginning to rise, the soldiers aiming rifles at them. A bullet struck the cobblestone near Modo’s head, spraying him with stinging chips of stone.

A bell rang in a nearby church. Modo blacked out, for how long he couldn’t say. When he opened his eyes again, his head was in Octavia’s lap. “Modo! Modo! Wake up! Wake up!”

With great effort, and her help, he was able to slowly sit up. “Don’t move too quickly,” Octavia said. “You look like hell. Your face has some rather wicked gashes.”

Modo nodded. Townspeople had gathered, and he could hear the buzz of their whispering. “Where’s my mother?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, Modo. I tried to stop Lime, but he’s got her.”

“And Colette?”

“She’s …” Octavia averted her eyes. “She’s over there. She’s not doing well.” Octavia helped him to his feet and he limped to where Colette had been thrown.

“It’s really bad,” Octavia warned him.

And it was. Colette had struck her head and was bleeding from several scalp wounds; a trickle of blood leaked from her nose. Her body was crumpled on the cobblestones, her left arm obviously broken. Her eyes were open.

They crouched over her.

“Colette,” Modo said.

She raised a hand as if to wave. “Did you … did you save your mother?”

“No.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “Ah, I am so sorry, Modo. This is what happens when you do not have a proper plan.” She gritted her teeth. “I—I am not long.… ”

“I won’t hear of it,” Octavia said. “Someone’s gone for the doctor.” She squeezed Colette’s hand and tears came to her eyes. “We still have too much to argue about.”

Colette managed a smile. Modo dabbed a handkerchief at the blood on her face.

“Tavia—may I call you that?”

“Please.”

“May I”—she coughed, but her voice remained weak—“have t-time alone with Modo?”

“Of course.” Octavia left and Modo could hear her trying to keep the townspeople back, saying,
“Non! Non!”
The total of her French vocabulary.

“Modo,” Colette said in a faltering voice. “I have failed you.”

“No, you haven’t.” But to himself he said:
We failed. We failed, failed, failed
.

“I ask—” She took a sharp breath and it was several moments before she sucked in another. “Will you show me your face? Just once more.”

“No.”

“Please, Modo. Don’t deny me this. I must see it.”

It was easy to shift his shape as he was completely exhausted. He let his features slide, his face blossom back into ugliness. A few moments later it was as deformed as it had been at birth. His hair began to fall out in clumps. Modo prepared for her reaction.

She looked up with red-veined eyes, blinked. “It is beautiful,” she whispered, so sincerely that he wondered if she were delirious. “
Merci
, my
bonne chance
friend.” She closed her eyes and breathed one last broken breath.

He brushed her dark hair back behind her ear and began to sob. She was, despite her wounds, still so perfectly elegant. So much lost. His sob turned to a low howl, his body shaking.

After several moments he felt Octavia’s hands on his shoulder, pulling him away. “We have to go, Modo. Gendarmes will soon be here.”

He stood and turned around to see that a very large, noisy crowd had now gathered. A few braver townspeople explored the wreckage, perhaps looking for more victims; the warier ones had gathered at the edge of the debris. Some backed away from Modo when they saw his face.

“She was Colette Brunet!” Modo shouted. “She served your country well. Her name was Colette Brunet.”

And then Octavia led him away.

A
young man named Oppie slept restlessly on a cot in a military tent he shared with several other soldiers. He dreamed of his home far, far away in London.

More than a year earlier he had been inside a giant that walked across London and swung its metal fists at the Parliament buildings. He was one of many children chained to the giant to make it work, and he remembered only blurred images of those events. If he didn’t know better he would’ve said that none of it had happened. A nightmare, a horrible flight of fancy. But he had bolts sticking out from his shoulders that proved differently, and memories of a redheaded witch with a metal hand and an evil white-haired doctor who had poked and prodded and made him drink potions that changed him. When he closed his eyes at night he saw the hideous pair lurking in the darkness, so he rarely slept well.

He had been removed from the broken body of the giant, set on the ground, and given chocolate. He did recall talking to Mr. W, a detective type who’d had a room at the Red Boar, Oppie’s place of employment. Then Oppie had been taken away in a carriage to be poked and prodded and questioned by men in black uniforms and an old, gruff man named Mr. Sockrats, or something like that. And later still, Oppie was poked and prodded by other, friendlier doctors. Within a week they had cut the ends off his bolts, patched him up, and sent him home to his mum.

He enjoyed six weeks of bliss and joy and magic. His mum suddenly didn’t have to work because of something she called “shush money.” So she stayed home and Oppie went to school—actually went to school—the place Mr. W had said he should attend. He’d started to read his first words. And the best part was that his father was growing stronger each day. He’d been yellow with some sickness that had crawled down his throat, but his mother could now buy medicines and pay a doctor. Within a week his dad got up and walked and laughed and rubbed Oppie’s head and said, “My boy, my boy.” And Mum had told Oppie that he had a brother or sister who would be delivered by a stork. A stork, of all things! He didn’t understand exactly where the stork was from, but his mum kept rubbing her tummy.

One night his dad went to sleep. The next morning his mum was shouting for the doctor, but his dad was already cold and yellow and dead. Then Oppie got sick too. His shoulders grew bulkier. His feet and his hands outgrew the rest of his body. Then the rest of his body began to catch up. Sometimes he’d grow an inch in height overnight! And
his temper grew too. He wouldn’t remember his tantrums, but would wake up to broken chairs or dishes or pots lying all around him, his mum huddled in a corner like a frightened bird.

The men in black uniforms returned, along with Mr. Sockrats, who told Mum that Oppie was changing because of the potion Britain’s enemies had given him. It was affecting his body and his mind. Making him age. He didn’t understand, but he had to go with the men to a secret fortress. His mum hugged him and said she’d see him again when he was all better.

Then they put him in the back of a carriage, and thus began a journey that would take him away, far, far over the ocean.

M
iss Hakkandottir was the first to see the airship
Erebos
descend from the heavens. She was standing on a rocky plateau looking over the cliffs when she spotted the dark oval in the sky.

She marched to the dock as the
Erebos
lowered to the ground. A squadron of Guild soldiers had been on guard there all morning, piquing her curiosity. She knew the airship had been on a mission in France, and judging by the torn straps and the trailing smoke, it had returned at full speed. Its armor was frosted, a sign that it had been traveling dangerously high in the atmosphere and catching strong air currents. The outer balloon looked worn.

Soldiers caught the landing ropes and the ship descended gracefully until it was floating only a few feet from the sandy
ground. The squadron flanked the airship and the side gates opened. First to step haughtily down the gangplank was Lime, a triumphant light in his eyes, a buffalo coat wrapped around his thin frame. Behind him trudged Typhon. The monster still amazed her. She had watched as Dr. Hyde had brought it back from the dead. She wondered if the doctor would ever do the same to her one day.

She had hoped to see one of the Association’s spies—Mr. Socrates or Modo—all trussed up and stumbling down the gangplank, so she was disappointed when a frightened woman, who kept crossing herself, was led down by soldiers instead. She was short, haggard, several years older than Miss Hakkandottir, her hair protruding wildly from under a torn bonnet. She had the strong-shouldered build of a peasant, of someone who worked with the earth. And so plain! Lime gave Miss Hakkandottir a leering smile, then followed the soldiers and the woman to the Crystal Palace.

What had she just witnessed? Who could be so important? She stood watching until they had entered the palace gates. The woman matched no one in Miss Hakkandottir’s files.

Only an hour later, sitting alone at a table in the mess tent eating rabbit stew, did she put it together. She dropped her spoon with a clatter and immediately went to the doctor’s cave.

She found Dr. Hyde arranging his collection of needles. “I would like to see her,” she said gently.

He shuddered and turned. “Ah, Ingrid, you know that is not possible. She has just arrived. We need her to be in perfect condition for our tests. She must rest.”

“Did the Guild Master expressly forbid me from visiting her?”

Dr. Hyde paused to think that through. Perhaps because his brain was steeped in formulas and calculations, Miss Hakkandottir found him easy to manipulate.

“I would never harm her,” she promised. She put her metal hand on his shoulder. “I am only curious.”

She did have some affection for him, or something resembling affection. He had, after all, constructed her metal hand. She would never want her weak flesh-and-bone hand back again; the metal one was perfect. It struck fear in the hearts of her enemies and it never wore down.

He stroked her metal hand. “Perhaps your hand needs adjusting. Though it did not rust with the altitude and humidity of your airship adventures.”

He was trying to change the subject. He found a small lever in his pocket and used it to adjust her index finger. “Ah.” He tightened it. “Better?”

“Yes, much. Could you one day replace my arms? My legs? My body?”

His eyes widened, magnified by his odd glasses. “If required. I would turn you into a goddess.”

“
More
of a goddess,” she corrected with a hard laugh. “We would rule the world.”

He laughed too, and she knew that he was picturing them side by side. Perhaps he too would have his own gleaming metal body.

“Please, Cornelius, let me see her.”

“I—I suppose there is no harm in it.” He paused. “She will be extremely valuable to us.”

He led Miss Hakkandottir to a stone door, which he opened with a key from his pocket. The room was one of the many recent additions on the island. She followed him inside. He turned another key and an electric light buzzed to life. A perfectly clear quartz wall cut the chamber in half. On the other side of the wall was the woman, sitting on a stone slab, gazing at the floor. She looked as though she had just awakened, terrified. Hakkandottir stared at her. How tiresome and weak some humans were. But from this woman had come such a powerful child.

“She can hear me clearly?” she asked.

“Yes.” He gestured at holes drilled into the quartz. “But please don’t upset her. I need her to be as relaxed as possible for my tests. Fear and anger may alter her blood chemistry.”

The woman looked up, and Miss Hakkandottir was taken aback by her proud eyes, the way she fixed them on her and did not turn away. There was a bandage on her arm, but there were no bruises. A Bible sat on a stone table. Perhaps the Guild Master had given it to her. To what end, Miss Hakkandottir couldn’t guess.

“So you are the mother of Modo,” Miss Hakkandottir said in French.

The woman shook her head.

“But indeed you are. Lime is an unerring fox and he sniffed you out. You are the mother of a most interesting creature.”

“I have no children.”

“You had one. Of that we are certain.”

“No. I have none. I would not have willingly given birth to that abomination.”

That term made Hakkandottir smile. “Yes, an abomination.

You did give birth to one. And perhaps you will be the birth mother of even more.”

“Please, Ingrid,” Dr. Hyde remonstrated. “We are not to upset her.”

“I am nearly done, my dear,” Miss Hakkandottir said, without moving her gaze from Modo’s mother. She didn’t know exactly why she wanted to see the woman writhe. Was it because Modo had bested her? Modo had battled Fuhr, her friend, and dragged him to his death in the Thames. Modo had been in the submarine
Ictíneo
when it stabbed her ship from below, sinking the unsinkable
Wyvern
. And he had turned his horrific face upon her at the Egyptian temple in Queensland and she had been forced to flee. Three times he had defeated her. Defeated the Guild.

Was she just here then to taunt Modo’s mother? She shrugged. Or maybe there was something she could learn about such a powerful adversary. Was the Guild Master using the mother as bait, hoping to lure Modo here?

“I shall tear your son into pieces and feed him to my hound,” Miss Hakkandottir said. The woman met her eyes, then picked up her Bible and began reading aloud.

“We must leave her,” Dr. Hyde said. “Please.”

“I have seen enough. Words will not save you,” she said over her shoulder as Dr. Hyde pulled the door closed behind them.

T
he return voyage to Canada was not one Octavia would ever want to repeat. They had reported by telegram to Mr. Socrates; within hours they received commands to return home, home now being Montreal, of course. She and Modo sailed first to Liverpool, stopping so tantalizingly close to London. She wanted to flee to the rugged and ragged streets of Seven Dials where she had grown up. She’d be safe in any of those ratholes they called pubs. Even the Clockwork Guild wouldn’t poke their noses in there. Instead, she and Modo booked a second-class cabin on the SS
Montreal
, playing husband and wife for the third time.