... and I believe that the origin of these skin samples may not be animal but, in fact, human...
Mina Harker pulled her glasses off and tugged lightly at the bridge of her nose, frowning in concentration. She didn't want to look at the clock for fear that knowing exactly how late it was would make her too exhausted to work, although she suspected that she had reached that point at the last paragraph. She pulled her journal back to her and scanned the latest entry for coherency, then realized that in her current state if it made no sense she wasn't likely to be able to tell.
Mina had been up for the better part of the evening studying the collection of specimens, samples, and data that the Pinkertons and the Marshals in the United States had managed to gather. It was, admittedly, a far greater data-store than any facility in Europe had been able to gather, and yet it was more puzzling to the scientific eye and mind. It was as though the more information they gathered, the less likely they were to comprehend the whole picture. And it would have been infuriating enough for a scientific sense of curiosity like Mina's, but when there were children involved it made everything that much more urgent, and that much worse.
At least she had the latest news that Nemo and the others discovered, almost the very same day they discovered it. She had been given a portable telegraph unit and taught to interpret the Morse code that came down the line, and while she dreaded every message that began something like "Hello my freaky darling..." she relished the break in the monotony, and whatever news the telegraph brought.
"Miss Harker..."
"Yes?" She looked up, annoyed at the interruption. Although she had been given a luxurious apartment with room both for living quarters and a well-appointed personal laboratory, she had also been required to submit to a pair of bodyguards, US Marshals outside her door. At least they were normally unobtrusive.
"You asked us to tell you when it was four o'clock in the morning...?"
Oh... right. She smiled slightly, remembering the puzzled expression on the man's face when she had made the request. From the look of him now he was understanding why she had. She, herself, was all too aware of her tendency to lose track of time, no matter how many grandfather clocks were installed in her lab.
"Yes... thank you, Smith," she smiled appreciatively at the man, who grinned back in a very young way that reminded her of Sawyer when they had first met. At least, she thought with a sigh, most men improved with age.
Mina scribbled a few quick notes in the back of her journal, made sure to turn off, cap, or shut up everything in the lab in its proper place. As tired as she was, she was very aware that a lapse in habit now could be fatal later. When everything was put away, only then did she dismiss the guard, turn down the lamps, and follow him out. Yawning the whole way to her room, she went through the motions of changing for bed automatically, as a sleep walker.
As tired as she was, though, she couldn't seem to get to sleep once she had finally crawled into bed. Her thoughts kept swirling around in her head, nagging problems that wouldn't go away. The potential uses of the skin samples, the possible sources. And there were the other samples too, not skin, but bone and tooth and claw. Where had those come from? Worst of all, there was something in the samples that was suspiciously human, although no human... even in the League... possessed phosphorescent skin.
Mina stared at the ceiling. The few children who had returned had been so traumatized that none of them would speak at all, much less of the terrors they had endured. The vast majority of them wouldn't even acknowledge the presence of another person in the room. The investigators, both Marshals and the privately owned Pinkertons, had been forced to deduce what had happened from what terrified the children most, a clumsy approach at best and downright sadistic at worst. The most disturbing findings, though, had come from the (thankfully few) bodies that had turned up.
She shuddered as she thought of the autopsy results. Fourteen, fifteen year old girls who had show signs of pregnancy... multiple pregnancy, in one case. Boys that showed signs of backbreaking labor, rock dust under their fingernails and ribs showing through their sides. Callused feet with pieces of glass, iron, lead in the soles. Scars from claws and teeth on places she didn't want to think about because of the implications. Burns from scalding, broken and badly mended limbs, fused and dislocated spines, all signs of hideous and long-term abuse.
The worst thoughts came just as Mina was drifting off to sleep... thoughts of her own two charges, the children of the League. It explained so much about them as well; their near-perfect silence for the first year, the many scars and broken bones. Was this what Marie and Percy had endured for fourteen, ten years? Was this the sort of environment they had grown up in?
It explained at least why they had taken the strange natures of herself, Henry, and Skinner in stride. After all, what threat was there in an invisible man if he didn't beat them or torture them? Hyde was only a danger without Jekyll, and even then she wasn't entirely sure... something in her long association with the man... both men... had given her the impression that there were still certain things Edward wouldn't do. Compared to the horrors the children had endured for the first decade of their lives, the strange habits of the League must have seemed normal to them. Then again, could they ever really have the same idea of what was normal as any average human being?
The images chased themselves around and around in her head, torturing her long after she had fallen asleep.
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Across the Atlantic, similar thoughts were having their effect on the old Indian captain of a unique and fearsome vessel. All those tons of steel, of machinery, and they still couldn't keep one boy entirely safe from his own nightmares. Skinner's words, though Nemo would have swallowed live fish before he would have admitted it, had cut deeply into the captain's soul. He suspected he would be suffering from his own set of nightmares before long; nightmares that had very little to do with the current case.
He watched as young Percy chatted amiably with the other members of the crew, showing no sign of discomfort or unease. And, really, why should he? No one in the League had told either child that their old aggressors had resurfaced. The young man only knew that something was amiss in Paris, and even Marie had likely not managed to piece Tom's unhappily revealed information with the whole. The two of them remained blissfully ignorant of what was to come. Nemo wondered what the boy's reaction would be when he was finally told. He wondered if the boy would handle it well. Then again, Nemo also wondered if he himself would be able to handle it well.
So many years, and he still had not yet mastered the art of remaining distant from those he must care for, work with, and protect. He felt so keenly the urge to protect the boy, to shield him from anything that might terrorize or threaten him. He felt other things stirring too, old feelings long repressed, now rising to the surface more rebellious and unbidden than before. Not that it mattered. Not that he would let any of it show in his face, his words, or his actions. He had to be the Captain of the Nautilus, above reproach and above fraternization with any of his crew.
But sometimes it was so very, very hard.
Nemo walked past the crew, smiling and nodding to them all and giving what words of encouragement he could find in so black a mood. Percy looked up at him with such youthful brightness that the aged Captain almost felt his heart stop. He somehow managed to smile back.
"Did you enjoy your visit with Marie?" he asked after a few seconds of trying to force words from his throat. Percy, sensing a conversation imminent, followed Nemo a short distance down the corridor.
"I did, sir." Percy walked with his hands clasped behind his back, almost in a very military position. A very English military position; nothing he had learned on the ship. Nemo wondered briefly where he had picked that up from. "Thank you for allowing me to come along."
"It was not a question of allowing. Family is important, young Harker, and should come above all else. You know that."
The young man looked up at him with a quizzical stare that Nemo couldn't quite interpret. Part of the stare, at least, was to rebuke his Captain for telling the boy what he did indeed already know. Percy and Marie had come to them clinging to each other, and to their charges, and had since displayed the sort of connection and sense of family ties and values that would have made even Nemo's own demanding parents proud. There was no need, Nemo thought wryly, to have reminded him of the importance of family members. Yet part of the stare was something entirely different, and he was at a loss to identify what it was.
"Yes, sir."
Nemo stopped in the hallway and stared at him, finally piqued enough to ask. "Was there something, Mr. Harker?"
Percy smiled, and for a second it almost seemed as though he were trying to talk to Nemo in his child's dialect. The Captain shook his head just imperceptibly, and the moment passed. "Sir, you are all our family. You, Miss Mina, Henry... everyone. You are all our fathers and mothers. And as you said before, sir... family comes above everything."
With those cryptic words, Percy bowed slightly and returned to his duties, and Nemo stared after the young man as he retreated down the hallway. He had no idea what to make of that statement, although it had raised conflicting impulses in his mind. Granted, he had been under the impression for a long time that although Mina had adopted the two children in the eyes of the law, they had all in a sense adopted them... the entire League. And yet...
Nemo shook off the strange thoughts and feelings. He had other, more pressing matters to attend to, and while most of them would involve the puzzling pair they would not involve anyone's perceptions of each other. He pushed the door open to his rooms...
"Hello, Dakkar."
... and froze in absolute shock.
"Close the door, will you? It wouldn't do to have us having this conversation in the hallway for everyone in your crew to see and hear."
The Captain stepped into his rooms and slowly closed the door, staring at the robed stranger with the graying hair who was kneeling before his small altar, smiling. "I hadn't expected to see you here so soon," he said, stalling for time to gather his wits and his thoughts.
"It's been a year and a day, as promised. I was wondering if you had given any further thought to my proposal, or come to any sort of conclusion as to what you might do about it?"
"Now?" Nemo asked, his indignant tone only partially feigned. It seemed particularly unfair of the man to show up here, now, when they were in the middle of what could well be a long-term campaign. Even worse, when they were in the midst of a possible internal crisis dealing with the youngest of the League members and charges. How, a small and petulant voice wondered in the back of Nemo's mind, how could he be expected to make such momentous decisions in the middle of an all-encompassing crisis?
"What better time?" the older man smiled, spreading his hands wide and shrugging, his manner entirely benevolent, calm, and at his ease. "You are at a crossroads, why not consider another fork, another alternative to the paths before you?"
"I have enough alternatives," Nemo snapped in an uncharacteristic display of temper. "I do not need one more." I do not, he thought to himself, need to be reminded of my obligations. I am more fully aware of them than I would like.
He was also fully aware that he was being almost childish, and he resented that impulse within himself. And yet, here stood a man more powerful than any he had ever encountered, who was most likely not a man in fact at all. And he was asking, calmly and with a smile on his face but asking it nonetheless, to take away from Nemo everything that the Indian prince held dear.
"Yet you have it, the obligation as per our agreement, and whether you like it or no you have to at least consider my debt owing from you and choose one of the options presented. It need not be as burdensome as you think."
Nemo took a deep breath. "I have considered the options you presented to me. I have not yet chosen by which means I will repay my debt, but your proposal would be intriguing, if..."
"... if your precious children were not in danger?" The words could have very easily been made sarcastic, ironic, and yet they were delivered with a knowing sort of kindness that relaxed the captain and set him at his ease. "I know more of your situation than you might think, Dakkar, and I am not unsympathetic to your needs. Our bargain was that you choose the manner of your repayment within three years and three days, and I have presented you with a number of options to choose from."
"I know the terms of our bargain," Nemo snapped again, losing the little patience he had gained and beginning to pace up and down, agitated beyond reason. "I know what I must do. I simply..." He took a deep breath, uncertain how to phrase it. "This... is not a good time."
"Is there ever a good time for good-byes?" the older man said, smiling slightly. "I agree that this might be a worse time than most, but a bargain was struck. You know the consequences if you ..." He trailed off at the look on the Captain's face: stricken, and self-recriminating.
"I know the terms of our bargain," Nemo repeated. "I will have an answer for you upon the conclusion of our current assignment."
The older man put a hand on the captain's shoulder, a reassuring gesture before he turned to leave. "You might find the choice easier to make than you think," he said, although he didn't explain the statement. Not that he ever explained anything he did. Men such as the captain's unexpected visitor never explained their actions and, really, were never required to. Nemo stared at the floor as the door creaked open, the footsteps started out.
"Krishna..."
The older man turned and stared at the captain with a penetrating gaze as blue as lightning. "Yes?"
Nemo opened his mouth to say something. Anything. As had happened a year ago, two years ago, when Percy had lay in his arms dying, he couldn't think of anything to say.
"I'll see you in a year and a day," the older man smiled kindly, and left.
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Mina woke to sunlight so diffuse and cheerful that it contrasted wildly with her dreams of shadows and pitch-black darkness; it made her blink, bemused. At first she had forgotten entirely where she was, and it was only when she could focus and had looked around the room that she remembered. America. The laboratory. She shook her head. It was a bad night when she woke up with that extreme a feeling of alienation.
She stretched, rose, and splashed some cold water on her face. She had to pull it together at least long enough to gather something useful out of today's work. Nemo and the rest of the League would be expecting a report soon, and she only had another few days left in the States. Perhaps there wasn't anything more to be gained from studying the samples, but she had to try. For all their sakes, she had to make the effort. A few more days of study wouldn't hurt.
"Miss Harker?" The voice of one of the soldiers outside came clearly through her door, as did the polite and gentle knock. "There's someone here to see you."
Mina frowned. "At this hour?" she murmured, wondering who it could be with the rest of the League on the other side of the Atlantic. She made her decision, straightened up, then called out to her bodyguard. "Well, show him in, I'll be decent in a second..."
"It's all right," came a soft and somehow familiar voice. "She won't mind."
"Yes my lady."
The door opened, the soldier politely averting his eyes. "The lady Orlando, Miss Harker."
Mina spun around fast enough to see the look of puzzlement on the man's face just before the door closed behind him. The young woman... young-seeming woman, at any rate, for Mina knew from first-hand account that Orlando was older than she and Dorian put together... stood there with a slight smile on her face, hands clasped in front of her.
"Orlando!" The two women came together in an enthusiastic embrace. "Dear Lord, it's been so long..."
"Two years, seven months, and eighteen days." Orlando smiled as Mina gave her a thoroughly bemused look. "Not really. But it has been a long time. I thought, seeing as you were in the neighborhood, that I would drop by and find out what you had been doing with yourself?"
"League business..." Mina disappeared decorously behind a screen, dressing more quickly than she had had energy for a moment ago. "This and that. Nothing terribly exciting, at least... not until recently." She sighed, wondering if she should be talking to her old friend... (more than friend, her mind whispered)... about the League. Then again, it wasn't as though her friend was any more ordinary than her colleagues. She herself had seen the proof of that.
"Why?" Orlando's eyes narrowed at her "What's wrong, Mina? You look..."
Damn. Was she really looking that peaked? She shrugged it off, moving towards the door and dismissing all concerns with a casual remark. "I haven't been sleeping well... working in the laboratory too late, I imagine. It's nothing."
The other woman folded her arms and stood in the doorway, barring Mina's exit. "I know you better than that, Mina. There are some days when I believe I know you better than you know yourself. There is something the matter, something that's been causing you to loose more sleep than you usually do when you're working. What's wrong?" Orlando frowned. "Does it have something to do with those lovely children you adopted?"
Mina sighed, nodding. She should have known better; after several centuries, Orlando was both more patient and more obstinate than perhaps any other human being alive. "If I tell you, will you let me work?"
She stepped aside and opened the door, bowing ironically. Mina gave her a half-hearted glare as she walked past. "I'll even help you with your notes. As I recall, my handwriting is better than yours."
"You've had more practice."
They fell into step, fell into lighter conversation, and for a moment Mina felt the longing for days and nights long past, so much less bittersweet a memory than her final parting with Dorian, or even the death of her husband. Her love affair with the lord of Whitehall had been long over, and the lord himself had changed past all recognizing, yet the friendship remained as sweet and as precious to her as the day they had met. Now it reminded her of a time long ago, when food did not turn to ashes in her mouth and the sun didn't blind her eyes.
She wondered what Orlando would think of her transformation, and what she would make of Mina's new abilities... and hindrances. She wondered if, after centuries, anything fazed the woman.
"Do you remember the day we first met?" Orlando asked then, as though reading her mind. But then, she had always been able to do that.
"I must have looked such a sight..." Mina chuckled. "Not that it was any great distance from the pony to the ground."
Orlando smiled. "You looked perfectly beautiful," she said, laying her hand on the other woman's shoulder. "You still do."
Mina blushed, smiled, and entered her laboratory with a light heart and a spring in her step for the first time in what seemed like years. Had it only been weeks since she'd arrived on American soil? The case was weighing on her more than she thought.
"So..." Orlando looked around the laboratory. "My. Things have changed since I was learning the sciences ..."
"Well, you couldn't very well expect them to stay the same," Mina teased. She fiddled with her microscope as the slide seemed strangely out of focus, realized her glasses were on her forehead, and replaced them. Much better. "Just in the last decade or so alone there have been tremendous leaps and strides."
"So I've noticed," the other woman commented dryly. "Who would have thought of linking man and ape together in one family?"
Mina sighed at her old friend's tone. She supposed it was to be expected; Orlando could not be presumed to abandon her set-in ways in a day, or even a decade. "As preposterous as it may sound, there is evidence to stand behind that theory. Perhaps man is not the direct descendant of ape, but there may have been some common cousins..." in the microscope. She frowned. What was this she was seeing? "... in past aeons..." she had completely lost the thread of the conversation.
"You've found something?"
"Perhaps..." Mina took the slide out and replaced it with another, a more fresh sample. "Perhaps if the tissue is not quite so degraded." She stared at the fresher sample, wondering. Then she exchanged that slide with another. And then another.
"What is it?"
Mina reached over and compared her current results with her notes (the last of which were entirely useless, as she had surmised). "I'm not sure yet..." she frowned. "I had supposed, at first, that the skin samples we recovered were animal... someone who kept a babooon, perhaps, as a pet. Then ... just now I have compared them with a human's... there are similarities. But I am at a loss to actually quantify what sort of animal this sample came from..."
"What is it a sample of?"
"Skin..." she replaced all the slides and sat back, still with a pensive frown on her face. "Skin samples taken from the fingernails of the survivors... those who clawed at their abductors. Or taken from the grates to the sewers, where they made a hasty escape. There was also blood and fiber at the scene, as well as bits of what appeared to be bone, tooth, and claw."
"So if, like a magician, you wanted to recreate a whole abductor, you could practically do so."
Mina stood and gave her old friend a wry glance. "If, like a magician, I had the ability to convert the parts into a whole creature, yes, I could."
Orlando chuckled. "Merely a suggestion. Perhaps you should look into one of those voodoo resurrectionists."
Mina was abruptly cast back seven years, to a grave in Africa, and a strange-looking priest performing an ancient rite in the distance. She dropped her gaze, thinking of an old hunter who stubbornly insisted that Africa would not let him die. The aged medicine man, the voodoo resurrectionist had not managed to resurrect him. "Perhaps. But I don't set much store by them."
"I'm sorry," Orlando said quietly, and Mina knew she was not talking about the resurrectionist.
"It's all right." Forcing the gloomy mood off of her, Mina reached across the table and handed her friend the stack of witness reports and sketches made by the Pinkertons of what they had seen. "Here... it might be a little easier to understand if you took a look at this."
Orlando dutifully flipped through the stack of papers, peering at the sketches and reading the descriptions and witness reports. "... I don't understand. A new sort of ape they've discovered...?"
"Those descriptions are not of an ape... they are descriptions of the sorts of creatures that have been glimpsed running away from the scenes of failed abductions, successful escapes..." Mina couldn't bring herself to actually say it, not now. "Or other such incidents. They are at least accurate as a still portrait... some bright soul managed to show one to a child, and the poor thing went completely berserk."
Orlando blinked, frowned, looked through the folder again. "But..." she started, and then fell silent.
"Ape-like creatures that walk on two legs, not four, and appear to have some sort of claw or talon affixed to their hands. Some of the samples ... well. I haven't yet looked at all of the fibers, but most of the samples seem to bear it out. The confusing element lies in placing the actual sample between man, ape... or something entirely different that only resembles either sort of creature superficially. Underneath, perhaps on a sort of scale we cannot recognize or examine yet, they might be completely different from us."
Orlando set the folder aside gingerly, as though it had some sort of disease or filth on it that she did not want to touch. "They are kidnapping children, from what you've told me." She sighed. "They are impregnating and creating children to raise children. And what does that suggest about them?"
Mina stared, not at anything in the laboratory, but with the distanced look of someone who is gazing at the past. "That perhaps they are infertile, perhaps they cannot have children of their own. And if that is the case, then perhaps they are not so different from ourselves, from humans, after all."
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There was something almost noble about the young man who stumbled along the streets of the East End. It was an air that seemed to convey the impression of a man who had seen better times and more prosperity, once a long time ago. Whoever the man was he had now clearly fallen upon the most dire of straits.
His clothing, which had clearly once been tailored of fine linen and lace, now hung in tatters around him. Dirt smeared every visible patch of skin, caked in his hair and under his fingernails, and dried blood was matted in the back of his head. His eyes had the glazed look of someone under the influence of copious amounts of opiates, but his walk was steadier than it should have been. He did, however, reek of alcohol. Even the least reputable whores and pimps were avoiding him, shrinking back as though he carried the aura of death wherever he stepped. Which, really, was true enough.
By the time he reached the steps of the brownstone he had been walking for several miles, and it showed in the dirt and manure caked on his shoes, the blisters that had cracked and bled on his feet. He stared at the door for a long time before finally stumbling up the steps and knocking. It seemed to take forever for someone to answer... or perhaps it was just his skewed perception of time. He swayed on his feet as he waited.
"What..." an unfamiliar voice (female?) asked, shortly before he collapsed onto an unsuspecting person who turned out to be much smaller than himself. "Oh dear... Huck..."
Stronger hands helped pick him up, carry him inside. The man started to protest that he could manage by himself, but couldn't force the words out past suddenly clumsy lips. And if he couldn't manage that... his feet refused to respond to his will anymore. He really was falling apart. Or perhaps just exhausted.
"Huck, get Henry..."
He knew that name. Where did he... Oh. Right. He had meant to come here. The man tried to focus his eyes on the ceiling as he was laid down on something soft, with something warm thrown over him. It was becoming so hard to think... words swirled around him, formed in the air out of sound with letters floating before his eyes to make sense of it all. He couldn't think... he was so tired.
"Dorian!"
Ah yes. That was it. Dorian Gray smirked and let his eyes droop closed, safe in the knowledge that he was in the home of his old enemies at last.
Mina Harker pulled her glasses off and tugged lightly at the bridge of her nose, frowning in concentration. She didn't want to look at the clock for fear that knowing exactly how late it was would make her too exhausted to work, although she suspected that she had reached that point at the last paragraph. She pulled her journal back to her and scanned the latest entry for coherency, then realized that in her current state if it made no sense she wasn't likely to be able to tell.
Mina had been up for the better part of the evening studying the collection of specimens, samples, and data that the Pinkertons and the Marshals in the United States had managed to gather. It was, admittedly, a far greater data-store than any facility in Europe had been able to gather, and yet it was more puzzling to the scientific eye and mind. It was as though the more information they gathered, the less likely they were to comprehend the whole picture. And it would have been infuriating enough for a scientific sense of curiosity like Mina's, but when there were children involved it made everything that much more urgent, and that much worse.
At least she had the latest news that Nemo and the others discovered, almost the very same day they discovered it. She had been given a portable telegraph unit and taught to interpret the Morse code that came down the line, and while she dreaded every message that began something like "Hello my freaky darling..." she relished the break in the monotony, and whatever news the telegraph brought.
"Miss Harker..."
"Yes?" She looked up, annoyed at the interruption. Although she had been given a luxurious apartment with room both for living quarters and a well-appointed personal laboratory, she had also been required to submit to a pair of bodyguards, US Marshals outside her door. At least they were normally unobtrusive.
"You asked us to tell you when it was four o'clock in the morning...?"
Oh... right. She smiled slightly, remembering the puzzled expression on the man's face when she had made the request. From the look of him now he was understanding why she had. She, herself, was all too aware of her tendency to lose track of time, no matter how many grandfather clocks were installed in her lab.
"Yes... thank you, Smith," she smiled appreciatively at the man, who grinned back in a very young way that reminded her of Sawyer when they had first met. At least, she thought with a sigh, most men improved with age.
Mina scribbled a few quick notes in the back of her journal, made sure to turn off, cap, or shut up everything in the lab in its proper place. As tired as she was, she was very aware that a lapse in habit now could be fatal later. When everything was put away, only then did she dismiss the guard, turn down the lamps, and follow him out. Yawning the whole way to her room, she went through the motions of changing for bed automatically, as a sleep walker.
As tired as she was, though, she couldn't seem to get to sleep once she had finally crawled into bed. Her thoughts kept swirling around in her head, nagging problems that wouldn't go away. The potential uses of the skin samples, the possible sources. And there were the other samples too, not skin, but bone and tooth and claw. Where had those come from? Worst of all, there was something in the samples that was suspiciously human, although no human... even in the League... possessed phosphorescent skin.
Mina stared at the ceiling. The few children who had returned had been so traumatized that none of them would speak at all, much less of the terrors they had endured. The vast majority of them wouldn't even acknowledge the presence of another person in the room. The investigators, both Marshals and the privately owned Pinkertons, had been forced to deduce what had happened from what terrified the children most, a clumsy approach at best and downright sadistic at worst. The most disturbing findings, though, had come from the (thankfully few) bodies that had turned up.
She shuddered as she thought of the autopsy results. Fourteen, fifteen year old girls who had show signs of pregnancy... multiple pregnancy, in one case. Boys that showed signs of backbreaking labor, rock dust under their fingernails and ribs showing through their sides. Callused feet with pieces of glass, iron, lead in the soles. Scars from claws and teeth on places she didn't want to think about because of the implications. Burns from scalding, broken and badly mended limbs, fused and dislocated spines, all signs of hideous and long-term abuse.
The worst thoughts came just as Mina was drifting off to sleep... thoughts of her own two charges, the children of the League. It explained so much about them as well; their near-perfect silence for the first year, the many scars and broken bones. Was this what Marie and Percy had endured for fourteen, ten years? Was this the sort of environment they had grown up in?
It explained at least why they had taken the strange natures of herself, Henry, and Skinner in stride. After all, what threat was there in an invisible man if he didn't beat them or torture them? Hyde was only a danger without Jekyll, and even then she wasn't entirely sure... something in her long association with the man... both men... had given her the impression that there were still certain things Edward wouldn't do. Compared to the horrors the children had endured for the first decade of their lives, the strange habits of the League must have seemed normal to them. Then again, could they ever really have the same idea of what was normal as any average human being?
The images chased themselves around and around in her head, torturing her long after she had fallen asleep.
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Across the Atlantic, similar thoughts were having their effect on the old Indian captain of a unique and fearsome vessel. All those tons of steel, of machinery, and they still couldn't keep one boy entirely safe from his own nightmares. Skinner's words, though Nemo would have swallowed live fish before he would have admitted it, had cut deeply into the captain's soul. He suspected he would be suffering from his own set of nightmares before long; nightmares that had very little to do with the current case.
He watched as young Percy chatted amiably with the other members of the crew, showing no sign of discomfort or unease. And, really, why should he? No one in the League had told either child that their old aggressors had resurfaced. The young man only knew that something was amiss in Paris, and even Marie had likely not managed to piece Tom's unhappily revealed information with the whole. The two of them remained blissfully ignorant of what was to come. Nemo wondered what the boy's reaction would be when he was finally told. He wondered if the boy would handle it well. Then again, Nemo also wondered if he himself would be able to handle it well.
So many years, and he still had not yet mastered the art of remaining distant from those he must care for, work with, and protect. He felt so keenly the urge to protect the boy, to shield him from anything that might terrorize or threaten him. He felt other things stirring too, old feelings long repressed, now rising to the surface more rebellious and unbidden than before. Not that it mattered. Not that he would let any of it show in his face, his words, or his actions. He had to be the Captain of the Nautilus, above reproach and above fraternization with any of his crew.
But sometimes it was so very, very hard.
Nemo walked past the crew, smiling and nodding to them all and giving what words of encouragement he could find in so black a mood. Percy looked up at him with such youthful brightness that the aged Captain almost felt his heart stop. He somehow managed to smile back.
"Did you enjoy your visit with Marie?" he asked after a few seconds of trying to force words from his throat. Percy, sensing a conversation imminent, followed Nemo a short distance down the corridor.
"I did, sir." Percy walked with his hands clasped behind his back, almost in a very military position. A very English military position; nothing he had learned on the ship. Nemo wondered briefly where he had picked that up from. "Thank you for allowing me to come along."
"It was not a question of allowing. Family is important, young Harker, and should come above all else. You know that."
The young man looked up at him with a quizzical stare that Nemo couldn't quite interpret. Part of the stare, at least, was to rebuke his Captain for telling the boy what he did indeed already know. Percy and Marie had come to them clinging to each other, and to their charges, and had since displayed the sort of connection and sense of family ties and values that would have made even Nemo's own demanding parents proud. There was no need, Nemo thought wryly, to have reminded him of the importance of family members. Yet part of the stare was something entirely different, and he was at a loss to identify what it was.
"Yes, sir."
Nemo stopped in the hallway and stared at him, finally piqued enough to ask. "Was there something, Mr. Harker?"
Percy smiled, and for a second it almost seemed as though he were trying to talk to Nemo in his child's dialect. The Captain shook his head just imperceptibly, and the moment passed. "Sir, you are all our family. You, Miss Mina, Henry... everyone. You are all our fathers and mothers. And as you said before, sir... family comes above everything."
With those cryptic words, Percy bowed slightly and returned to his duties, and Nemo stared after the young man as he retreated down the hallway. He had no idea what to make of that statement, although it had raised conflicting impulses in his mind. Granted, he had been under the impression for a long time that although Mina had adopted the two children in the eyes of the law, they had all in a sense adopted them... the entire League. And yet...
Nemo shook off the strange thoughts and feelings. He had other, more pressing matters to attend to, and while most of them would involve the puzzling pair they would not involve anyone's perceptions of each other. He pushed the door open to his rooms...
"Hello, Dakkar."
... and froze in absolute shock.
"Close the door, will you? It wouldn't do to have us having this conversation in the hallway for everyone in your crew to see and hear."
The Captain stepped into his rooms and slowly closed the door, staring at the robed stranger with the graying hair who was kneeling before his small altar, smiling. "I hadn't expected to see you here so soon," he said, stalling for time to gather his wits and his thoughts.
"It's been a year and a day, as promised. I was wondering if you had given any further thought to my proposal, or come to any sort of conclusion as to what you might do about it?"
"Now?" Nemo asked, his indignant tone only partially feigned. It seemed particularly unfair of the man to show up here, now, when they were in the middle of what could well be a long-term campaign. Even worse, when they were in the midst of a possible internal crisis dealing with the youngest of the League members and charges. How, a small and petulant voice wondered in the back of Nemo's mind, how could he be expected to make such momentous decisions in the middle of an all-encompassing crisis?
"What better time?" the older man smiled, spreading his hands wide and shrugging, his manner entirely benevolent, calm, and at his ease. "You are at a crossroads, why not consider another fork, another alternative to the paths before you?"
"I have enough alternatives," Nemo snapped in an uncharacteristic display of temper. "I do not need one more." I do not, he thought to himself, need to be reminded of my obligations. I am more fully aware of them than I would like.
He was also fully aware that he was being almost childish, and he resented that impulse within himself. And yet, here stood a man more powerful than any he had ever encountered, who was most likely not a man in fact at all. And he was asking, calmly and with a smile on his face but asking it nonetheless, to take away from Nemo everything that the Indian prince held dear.
"Yet you have it, the obligation as per our agreement, and whether you like it or no you have to at least consider my debt owing from you and choose one of the options presented. It need not be as burdensome as you think."
Nemo took a deep breath. "I have considered the options you presented to me. I have not yet chosen by which means I will repay my debt, but your proposal would be intriguing, if..."
"... if your precious children were not in danger?" The words could have very easily been made sarcastic, ironic, and yet they were delivered with a knowing sort of kindness that relaxed the captain and set him at his ease. "I know more of your situation than you might think, Dakkar, and I am not unsympathetic to your needs. Our bargain was that you choose the manner of your repayment within three years and three days, and I have presented you with a number of options to choose from."
"I know the terms of our bargain," Nemo snapped again, losing the little patience he had gained and beginning to pace up and down, agitated beyond reason. "I know what I must do. I simply..." He took a deep breath, uncertain how to phrase it. "This... is not a good time."
"Is there ever a good time for good-byes?" the older man said, smiling slightly. "I agree that this might be a worse time than most, but a bargain was struck. You know the consequences if you ..." He trailed off at the look on the Captain's face: stricken, and self-recriminating.
"I know the terms of our bargain," Nemo repeated. "I will have an answer for you upon the conclusion of our current assignment."
The older man put a hand on the captain's shoulder, a reassuring gesture before he turned to leave. "You might find the choice easier to make than you think," he said, although he didn't explain the statement. Not that he ever explained anything he did. Men such as the captain's unexpected visitor never explained their actions and, really, were never required to. Nemo stared at the floor as the door creaked open, the footsteps started out.
"Krishna..."
The older man turned and stared at the captain with a penetrating gaze as blue as lightning. "Yes?"
Nemo opened his mouth to say something. Anything. As had happened a year ago, two years ago, when Percy had lay in his arms dying, he couldn't think of anything to say.
"I'll see you in a year and a day," the older man smiled kindly, and left.
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Mina woke to sunlight so diffuse and cheerful that it contrasted wildly with her dreams of shadows and pitch-black darkness; it made her blink, bemused. At first she had forgotten entirely where she was, and it was only when she could focus and had looked around the room that she remembered. America. The laboratory. She shook her head. It was a bad night when she woke up with that extreme a feeling of alienation.
She stretched, rose, and splashed some cold water on her face. She had to pull it together at least long enough to gather something useful out of today's work. Nemo and the rest of the League would be expecting a report soon, and she only had another few days left in the States. Perhaps there wasn't anything more to be gained from studying the samples, but she had to try. For all their sakes, she had to make the effort. A few more days of study wouldn't hurt.
"Miss Harker?" The voice of one of the soldiers outside came clearly through her door, as did the polite and gentle knock. "There's someone here to see you."
Mina frowned. "At this hour?" she murmured, wondering who it could be with the rest of the League on the other side of the Atlantic. She made her decision, straightened up, then called out to her bodyguard. "Well, show him in, I'll be decent in a second..."
"It's all right," came a soft and somehow familiar voice. "She won't mind."
"Yes my lady."
The door opened, the soldier politely averting his eyes. "The lady Orlando, Miss Harker."
Mina spun around fast enough to see the look of puzzlement on the man's face just before the door closed behind him. The young woman... young-seeming woman, at any rate, for Mina knew from first-hand account that Orlando was older than she and Dorian put together... stood there with a slight smile on her face, hands clasped in front of her.
"Orlando!" The two women came together in an enthusiastic embrace. "Dear Lord, it's been so long..."
"Two years, seven months, and eighteen days." Orlando smiled as Mina gave her a thoroughly bemused look. "Not really. But it has been a long time. I thought, seeing as you were in the neighborhood, that I would drop by and find out what you had been doing with yourself?"
"League business..." Mina disappeared decorously behind a screen, dressing more quickly than she had had energy for a moment ago. "This and that. Nothing terribly exciting, at least... not until recently." She sighed, wondering if she should be talking to her old friend... (more than friend, her mind whispered)... about the League. Then again, it wasn't as though her friend was any more ordinary than her colleagues. She herself had seen the proof of that.
"Why?" Orlando's eyes narrowed at her "What's wrong, Mina? You look..."
Damn. Was she really looking that peaked? She shrugged it off, moving towards the door and dismissing all concerns with a casual remark. "I haven't been sleeping well... working in the laboratory too late, I imagine. It's nothing."
The other woman folded her arms and stood in the doorway, barring Mina's exit. "I know you better than that, Mina. There are some days when I believe I know you better than you know yourself. There is something the matter, something that's been causing you to loose more sleep than you usually do when you're working. What's wrong?" Orlando frowned. "Does it have something to do with those lovely children you adopted?"
Mina sighed, nodding. She should have known better; after several centuries, Orlando was both more patient and more obstinate than perhaps any other human being alive. "If I tell you, will you let me work?"
She stepped aside and opened the door, bowing ironically. Mina gave her a half-hearted glare as she walked past. "I'll even help you with your notes. As I recall, my handwriting is better than yours."
"You've had more practice."
They fell into step, fell into lighter conversation, and for a moment Mina felt the longing for days and nights long past, so much less bittersweet a memory than her final parting with Dorian, or even the death of her husband. Her love affair with the lord of Whitehall had been long over, and the lord himself had changed past all recognizing, yet the friendship remained as sweet and as precious to her as the day they had met. Now it reminded her of a time long ago, when food did not turn to ashes in her mouth and the sun didn't blind her eyes.
She wondered what Orlando would think of her transformation, and what she would make of Mina's new abilities... and hindrances. She wondered if, after centuries, anything fazed the woman.
"Do you remember the day we first met?" Orlando asked then, as though reading her mind. But then, she had always been able to do that.
"I must have looked such a sight..." Mina chuckled. "Not that it was any great distance from the pony to the ground."
Orlando smiled. "You looked perfectly beautiful," she said, laying her hand on the other woman's shoulder. "You still do."
Mina blushed, smiled, and entered her laboratory with a light heart and a spring in her step for the first time in what seemed like years. Had it only been weeks since she'd arrived on American soil? The case was weighing on her more than she thought.
"So..." Orlando looked around the laboratory. "My. Things have changed since I was learning the sciences ..."
"Well, you couldn't very well expect them to stay the same," Mina teased. She fiddled with her microscope as the slide seemed strangely out of focus, realized her glasses were on her forehead, and replaced them. Much better. "Just in the last decade or so alone there have been tremendous leaps and strides."
"So I've noticed," the other woman commented dryly. "Who would have thought of linking man and ape together in one family?"
Mina sighed at her old friend's tone. She supposed it was to be expected; Orlando could not be presumed to abandon her set-in ways in a day, or even a decade. "As preposterous as it may sound, there is evidence to stand behind that theory. Perhaps man is not the direct descendant of ape, but there may have been some common cousins..." in the microscope. She frowned. What was this she was seeing? "... in past aeons..." she had completely lost the thread of the conversation.
"You've found something?"
"Perhaps..." Mina took the slide out and replaced it with another, a more fresh sample. "Perhaps if the tissue is not quite so degraded." She stared at the fresher sample, wondering. Then she exchanged that slide with another. And then another.
"What is it?"
Mina reached over and compared her current results with her notes (the last of which were entirely useless, as she had surmised). "I'm not sure yet..." she frowned. "I had supposed, at first, that the skin samples we recovered were animal... someone who kept a babooon, perhaps, as a pet. Then ... just now I have compared them with a human's... there are similarities. But I am at a loss to actually quantify what sort of animal this sample came from..."
"What is it a sample of?"
"Skin..." she replaced all the slides and sat back, still with a pensive frown on her face. "Skin samples taken from the fingernails of the survivors... those who clawed at their abductors. Or taken from the grates to the sewers, where they made a hasty escape. There was also blood and fiber at the scene, as well as bits of what appeared to be bone, tooth, and claw."
"So if, like a magician, you wanted to recreate a whole abductor, you could practically do so."
Mina stood and gave her old friend a wry glance. "If, like a magician, I had the ability to convert the parts into a whole creature, yes, I could."
Orlando chuckled. "Merely a suggestion. Perhaps you should look into one of those voodoo resurrectionists."
Mina was abruptly cast back seven years, to a grave in Africa, and a strange-looking priest performing an ancient rite in the distance. She dropped her gaze, thinking of an old hunter who stubbornly insisted that Africa would not let him die. The aged medicine man, the voodoo resurrectionist had not managed to resurrect him. "Perhaps. But I don't set much store by them."
"I'm sorry," Orlando said quietly, and Mina knew she was not talking about the resurrectionist.
"It's all right." Forcing the gloomy mood off of her, Mina reached across the table and handed her friend the stack of witness reports and sketches made by the Pinkertons of what they had seen. "Here... it might be a little easier to understand if you took a look at this."
Orlando dutifully flipped through the stack of papers, peering at the sketches and reading the descriptions and witness reports. "... I don't understand. A new sort of ape they've discovered...?"
"Those descriptions are not of an ape... they are descriptions of the sorts of creatures that have been glimpsed running away from the scenes of failed abductions, successful escapes..." Mina couldn't bring herself to actually say it, not now. "Or other such incidents. They are at least accurate as a still portrait... some bright soul managed to show one to a child, and the poor thing went completely berserk."
Orlando blinked, frowned, looked through the folder again. "But..." she started, and then fell silent.
"Ape-like creatures that walk on two legs, not four, and appear to have some sort of claw or talon affixed to their hands. Some of the samples ... well. I haven't yet looked at all of the fibers, but most of the samples seem to bear it out. The confusing element lies in placing the actual sample between man, ape... or something entirely different that only resembles either sort of creature superficially. Underneath, perhaps on a sort of scale we cannot recognize or examine yet, they might be completely different from us."
Orlando set the folder aside gingerly, as though it had some sort of disease or filth on it that she did not want to touch. "They are kidnapping children, from what you've told me." She sighed. "They are impregnating and creating children to raise children. And what does that suggest about them?"
Mina stared, not at anything in the laboratory, but with the distanced look of someone who is gazing at the past. "That perhaps they are infertile, perhaps they cannot have children of their own. And if that is the case, then perhaps they are not so different from ourselves, from humans, after all."
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There was something almost noble about the young man who stumbled along the streets of the East End. It was an air that seemed to convey the impression of a man who had seen better times and more prosperity, once a long time ago. Whoever the man was he had now clearly fallen upon the most dire of straits.
His clothing, which had clearly once been tailored of fine linen and lace, now hung in tatters around him. Dirt smeared every visible patch of skin, caked in his hair and under his fingernails, and dried blood was matted in the back of his head. His eyes had the glazed look of someone under the influence of copious amounts of opiates, but his walk was steadier than it should have been. He did, however, reek of alcohol. Even the least reputable whores and pimps were avoiding him, shrinking back as though he carried the aura of death wherever he stepped. Which, really, was true enough.
By the time he reached the steps of the brownstone he had been walking for several miles, and it showed in the dirt and manure caked on his shoes, the blisters that had cracked and bled on his feet. He stared at the door for a long time before finally stumbling up the steps and knocking. It seemed to take forever for someone to answer... or perhaps it was just his skewed perception of time. He swayed on his feet as he waited.
"What..." an unfamiliar voice (female?) asked, shortly before he collapsed onto an unsuspecting person who turned out to be much smaller than himself. "Oh dear... Huck..."
Stronger hands helped pick him up, carry him inside. The man started to protest that he could manage by himself, but couldn't force the words out past suddenly clumsy lips. And if he couldn't manage that... his feet refused to respond to his will anymore. He really was falling apart. Or perhaps just exhausted.
"Huck, get Henry..."
He knew that name. Where did he... Oh. Right. He had meant to come here. The man tried to focus his eyes on the ceiling as he was laid down on something soft, with something warm thrown over him. It was becoming so hard to think... words swirled around him, formed in the air out of sound with letters floating before his eyes to make sense of it all. He couldn't think... he was so tired.
"Dorian!"
Ah yes. That was it. Dorian Gray smirked and let his eyes droop closed, safe in the knowledge that he was in the home of his old enemies at last.