The League of Seven (19 page)

“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 some
one
.”

“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.

“What? You don't think I'm still working for that madman, do you?” Fergus asked.

“No, no. That beeping noise you've been hearing!” Tesla ran to a cart of lektric machines and rifled through them. He found what he was looking for, hooked wires to it, and clicked it on.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
The sound came out of a little round mesh screen.

“Aye, that's it! That's what I keep hearing,” said Fergus. “Is that what's doing it? Crivens, it's annoying.”

“No, no. This is just a receiver. Your tattoos turned you into one too when they detected the signal. I suspect that's what that configuration was at the small of your back. The one we couldn't identify. Just above your—”

“Where's it coming from then?” Hachi asked.

“What? Oh. That black Tik Tok, I suspect,” Tesla said. “It's a sort of an auditory … beacon. A homing beacon. With a device like this, Edison can follow it right to its source.”

“And it's just going to hide out from us until Edison gets here,” Hachi said, looking up into the maze of walkways and corridors and caverns inside the enormous power station. “The reprogrammed Tik Toks were just to keep us busy.”

“We can
not
let Edison find this place,” Archie said. “Can you imagine what he could do with all this lektricity?”

From the looks on their faces, each of them had different ideas of what that would mean, and none of them were pleasant.

“How did it get in here?” asked Hachi. “What happened to that lightning room back at the entrance? Shouldn't that have kept it out?”

Tesla's dark eyebrows went up. “Oh. Oh dear. I suppose in all the excitement I … I left the door unlocked.”

Fergus snapped his fingers, making a little spark. “The Franklin Cage! Mr. Tesla, if we trap the meka-ninja in the Franklin Cage, would the lektrical current block the signal?”

“It's possible. Yes. Yes, I think it would! In theory, it will reduce the radio frequency's lektromagnetic radiation, which—”

“Great,” Archie interrupted. “But how do we get it in there?”

“It's following Fergus,” Hachi said. “We get
the rayguns,
” she said pointedly, “then we leave, and Tesla locks Mr. Shinobi in the room on the way out.”

“Yes. Yes!” Tesla said, running for a large metal door set into the rock wall. “Here.” Tesla tapped a series of numbers on a flat, glowing keypad, and the door rolled open with a clink and a hiss. Inside were racks and racks filled with oscillators, aether pistols, wave cannons, and more weapons Archie had never seen before. Hachi's eyes went wide.

“Mr. Tesla, come with us,” Archie said. “Help us.”

“What? Leave Atlantis Station? Oh, no. I haven't been outside since … um, what year is it?”

“Eighteen seventy-five,” Fergus told him.

“Oh. Oh dear. No, really? That long?” Tesla shook his head. “No. If I go out there, I'll hear them. They'll whisper to me. I've been touched, you see. By the Mangleborn. Just like you. No. Too easy for me to be lost. I'm safer in here.” He looked around at the walls as though frightened of what might lie beyond. Archie wasn't thrilled to know that the thing that scared Tesla most was the same kind of connection each of them shared with the Swarm Queen.

Hachi pushed oscillating rifles and aether pistols into the boys' hands. “We need someone to shut that Tik Tok in the lektric room behind us anyway,” she said. “Somebody has to stay behind.”

“Are there any more Septemberists who can help us?” Archie asked Tesla. “You have to know lots.”

Tesla shook his head. “All enthralled with those bug things. Every last one of them.”

Archie's heart sank. How could three kids and a Mark II Machine Man ever hope to defeat a Mangleborn?

Hachi came out of the weapons vault with a Chenault-Duffier personal wave cannon on her hip. “Let's do this.”

They hurried toward the corridor that led back outside. Archie glanced over his shoulder and saw the meka-ninja's red eyes glowing in the shadows.

“It sees us!” Archie said. “It's coming!” They had to move more slowly to stay with Fergus, and the meka-ninja gained on them quickly.

“Go, go, go, go!” Hachi cried. She turned and fired the wave cannon—
wom-wom-wom-wom-wom
. The walls shuddered and floor tiles shattered, but Mr. Shinobi jumped acrobatically out of the way of the wave pulse.

Archie burst through the outer door into the misty Cave of the Winds. Mr. Rivets came next, and Fergus hopped through after him. Hachi backed through, her Chenault-Duffier personal wave cannon at the ready, but Archie and Fergus slammed the door on the meka-ninja before it could slip out.
Clang!
The hinges rattled as Mr. Shinobi slammed into the door, but it held.

Ka-chunk. Ka-chunk.
Archie recognized the sounds of the automatic locks clicking into place.

“Tesla got it!”

The door began to hum, and Fergus grabbed Archie and Hachi and pulled them away. “Um, I think you guys better step back from the door.”

Spray from the waterfall sizzled as it hit the lektrified surface. Inside, the meka-ninja beat against the walls of its cage.

“If that thing's trapped in there, how's Tesla ever going to get out?” Archie asked.

“Don't know. It's clockworks, yeah? It'll run down eventually, won't it?” Fergus asked.

“Perhaps not, sir,” Mr. Rivets told him. “From the placement of the imported machine man's mainspring key, I believe it to be capable of winding itself.”

“A
self-winding
machine man?”