The League of Seven (16 page)

“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—”

“Who is that?” Tesla asked. “Who's talking? How do you know so much about lektricity?”

“Let us in and we'll tell you,” Hachi said.

“No. No tricks!” Tesla said. “I don't care. I don't. I'm going away now. I'm not listening to you anymore.
La la la la la la la la.
”

“He probably has his fingers in his ears,” Hachi said.

“I heard that!” Tesla said.

“I thought you said you weren't listening anymore,” Hachi told him.

“
La la la la la la la la,
” Tesla said again.

Hachi flung her dagger at the door in frustration, and it lodged there with a twang.

“That's helpful,” Archie said.

“Just letting off steam,” she told him, and she went to retrieve her knife.

“Nae, wait!” Fergus said, reaching for her. “Don't touch that! If it penetrated the outer wall, it could—”

A white-hot bolt of lektricity leaped from the dagger to Fergus' outstretched hand.
Kazaaak!
But Fergus wasn't jolted or thrown across the room. Archie and Hachi stepped back in fear as lightning arced from the dagger to his hand in a constant stream. All over Fergus' skin, the black lines danced and rearranged themselves.

“Fergus, what—?” Archie asked.

“I—I don't know,” Fergus said. His startled face glowed in the lektric light. “But keep back. I should be dead. This should be killing me, but I don't even feel it.”

Lektricity surged between the dagger and Fergus' outstretched hand, more and more of it, until the humming sound outside the room died and the sparks stopped coming. Fergus staggered back and stared at his hand. The black lines on his skin were moving again, rearranging themselves.

“Your face and arms,” Archie told him. “The lines are moving there too.”

The door to the inside of the facility
kachunked
, and a tall, thin man with a metal cage on his head ran out. He wore oversized rubber gloves and rubber boots, and metal foil stuck out of his sleeves and pant legs like he was wearing tin long johns.

“How did you do that?” Tesla demanded, his curiosity apparently overcoming his paranoia. “That was one hundred milliamperes! Where did it go? You should be dead!”

“I know. I think I—I think I absorbed it,” Fergus said. He tapped the ends of his thumb and forefinger together, and lektricity sparked between them.

“O Bozye!” Tesla muttered. He took a screwdriver out of his pocket and touched it to Fergus' skin, but nothing happened. “No discharge! You're nonconductive now. Come with me.”

Before any of them could protest, Tesla grabbed Fergus and pulled him inside. Tesla forgot he was wearing a cage on his head and banged into the door frame. He cursed in some Old World language and turned to them, embarrassed. “To keep the voices out of my head,” he whispered, tapping the cage. “So they can't
control
me.”

Archie might have thought Tesla was crazy if he hadn't heard voices in his head himself. The voice of a Mangleborn.
JANDAL A HAAD,
the Swarm Queen had said. Like she was speaking just to him. Like she was … calling his name.