Sawyer Fan - Thanks very much! Now give me more father/son stuff to read by writing the next chapter of "The Sequel" really fast!
Lady Norbert – Thank you. I'm glad the first chapter worked and hope you enjoy the rest as well. I'm looking forward to more of your stories too!
Title: "Rubicon 1 - Aftermath" Chapter 2
By Ten Mara
Rating: PG-13
CATEGORY: Story, Drama/Angst
DISCLAIMER: The literary characters referred to are copyright their respective authors, and "LXG: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" is copyright 20th Century Fox, based on the comic books by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill. The characters and movie universe are used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended, no profit will be gained. Characters not recognized are mine, and a few real-life historical people of the time are used (information on the latter will be given in the chapters where they are featured).
xXx
The further away from the smoke Mina got, the more she was able to smell Tom's scent, as well as what she had first thought was Skinner's scent, but now knew was Sanderson Reed's.
The droplets of blood were getting smaller and further between, and Mina hoped that there would still be enough clues or scent left once they ran out for her to keep on the right track. There were some benefits to being half vampiric.
If the bleeding is easing, then hopefully Tom is not too badly hurt. And hopefully by now he has managed to get away from Reed. But how did he and Quatermain come to be separated? I might be reading too much into it - as Nemo said, they might have decided to split up. We just don't know what happened.
Within a minute she stepped into a corridor that also had smoke in it, which was coming from another open doorway - still part of that section of rooms which were on fire. The door was broken and hanging from a hinge.
Due to the smoke, Mina could only just make out traces of Tom's scent and Reed's. There was also something else mixed in with the smoke. Gunpowder.
Tom's rifle lay on the corridor floor. At least she assumed it was his rifle - it could have also been the identical one that he had given Quatermain, but Tom's scent was prevalent on this one. And nearby was a black coat that was definitely the young spy's. The discarded coat and rifle gave her just as much fear and worry as the blood.
The rifle was a little worse for wear, with marks on the wooden stock and even on the decorated metal. It looked like damage from a knife, and there must have been considerable force driving the blade to leave such imprints.
And no wonder she could smell gunpowder. Half the corridor had been shot up. A few paintings bore the brunt of the buckshot or had fallen. There were shells on the floor, both spent and unused.
American style shooting. But shooting at what? Reed?
Now to the blood. The droplets were larger here, and older. They seemed to go from a fallen bust into the nearby burning room. Unlike the room Skinner had been in, this one was an inferno. But then there was another separate trail of blood that she had followed out of Skinner's room around to here, which was the fresher of the two. Tom must have gone through those connected rooms, hopefully ahead of the fire, then come back around, full circle, with Reed.
Mina debated momentarily about gathering up Tom's rifle and coat, planning on following the faltering blood trail down the hallway, past all the shot-ridden walls.
Then her ears picked up that someone was approaching up ahead, from that direction. Quickly Mina darted around the corner and peered back around into the corridor, ready to pounce if necessary.
Soon Agent Sawyer came through the doorway. From the way he was moving, he was not in the grip of or at the mercy of any invisible person. And now that she could pick up his scent, she could not smell or sense any invisible presence. The spy was alone.
"Tom!" Mina did not try to hide the gladness in her voice or face as she stepped out into the hallway again.
Her sudden call and appearance startled him, and for a moment the Webley revolver in his hand was covering her, before he lowered it in relief.
They hurried towards each other, Tom saying, "Skinner - we have to help Skinner. He's hurt bad."
"We found Skinner. He's alive, and Jekyll is getting him back to the Nautilus."
"Thank God . . . ."
Even in the short time it took Mina to reach Sawyer, her mind was cataloguing what she was seeing, to assess if he was all right. He had Quatermain's prized elephant gun and revolver, but the hunter was not with him. The holsters that usually contained Tom's Colt pistols were empty. The small cut near the spy's eyebrow that he had received in Venice was now reopened. There was blood on his neck, but his head was bowed and at the moment she could not get a good look at it, apart from realising that it was not a serious wound. She could see blood on his left hand from a cut - the most likely contender for the blood trail.
"Are you okay?" he asked her at the same time as she asked, "Are you all right?"
She said, "Yes," and he nodded his reply. His eyes told a different story before he lowered his gaze.
Mina touched a hand to his jaw and lifted his chin to get a good look at his neck. There were several cuts: on the left side, under his jaw and across his Adam's Apple - just where a knife would have been poised. They certainly looked like knife cuts, and fortunately they were not very deep or long, just bleeding a little.
Still, Mina shivered inwardly at how close he had come to having his throat slit.
"It's okay. They're nothing," the special agent said quietly and dismissively, as he stepped away from her touch. Then he coughed, his body reacting to the smoke.
"We were worried, Tom. Skinner said that Reed had you hostage."
"Q-Quatermain killed him."
She did not miss the slight stumble over the adventurer's name. "And where is Quatermain?"
"Dead." I killed him, Tom could not help thinking. He saw sadness fill Mina's eyes at the news, but she nodded, as if she had expected it. "I have to get him and take him back to the ship," Tom said, his voice almost a monotone. "I'm not leaving him here." He turned to head back the way he had come.
"Wait!"
He turned and watched Mina hurry to fetch his coat and his own Winchester from where they were still lying on the floor. He had forgotten about them.
"Thanks," he said as she came back towards him. Impatient to get to the tower, he started off without waiting for her to catch up or to take the items off her. And perhaps to delay, even momentarily, having to explain what had happened.
They went past the shot-up walls and through the doorway where he had first appeared before her. The smoke was not as bad here. She closed the door behind them.
"You'd better put this back on." She offered his coat with her right hand and held out her left hand to temporarily take the elephant gun.
Tom nodded. He put the Webley revolver away and made the trade, while waiting for the dreaded question. But it did not come. Yet. He stuck his arms back into the sleeves of the duster and hitched it on, trying to avoid her scrutinising and compassionate gaze. He was aware on one level that he felt cold due to his exposure to the icy wind and snow from the broken tower, and the unheated hallways he'd traversed. But his mind was on other matters instead of his own physical discomfort. He was still on a mission, and everything else had to wait for the moment.
He put the elephant gun over his shoulder on its thick leather strap and reloaded his Winchester. Sawyer frowned in puzzlement as Mina started to tear her skirt.
"What are you doing?"
She held up a strip of material and indicated his cut hand. "Making you a bandage."
"Oh." Tom thought about how he had received the cut. Then when Quatermain had insisted that he make the shot in the tower, how he wiped that hand against his pants, trying to get the worst of the blood away from his palm and fingers so it would not interfere with his grip. Not on this most important shot.
He forced himself to keep speaking, to give information to his fellow team member. "M is either dead or captured - outside, near the Nautiloid. Nemo's men and British reinforcements have got him." Tom left out the fact he had shot M. His guilt over Quatermain and Skinner were overriding any sense of satisfaction or pride.
"Good," Mina said as she wound the makeshift bandage around his hand.
"You mentioned Jekyll - are he and Nemo okay?"
She nodded, then asked gently, "What happened to Allan?"
"He died saving me from Reed."
At that, Mina did not probe any further. She would soon see for herself. She briefly put her own hand over the spy's, then they set off again. It was a relatively silent trip, though Tom did ask if Gray was dead.
No stray members of M's army stumbled across their path. This area seemed deserted.
They entered the broken tower. Mina started at the sight of Quatermain's slumped body, then gathered herself and hurried forwards.
But then a sight and smell hit her at the same time that momentarily stopped her. Dry ink defined an invisible body that was sprawled on the floor on this tier, and it also revealed the fatal bullet wound to the head. Here was Sanderson Reed.
A knife lay on the ground next to the corpse.
After taking this in, Mina went down to Quatermain's body. Oh, Mr Q . . . .
There was a bowie knife lodged in the hunter's back. M's scent was on the weapon. At least there was some comfort that he was now dead himself, or a prisoner.
The sequence of events was now confirmed to her. Quatermain had shot Reed, saving Tom, but exposing himself to attack by M.
Mina felt the urge rise up in her to tear Reed's body limb from limb, but suppressed it. She could hear noises through the crack in the tower wall and went over to it. There was the Nautiloid observation pod, poking out of the ice, and Nemo's men and British troops were together at it and in the foreground.
Realising that the youngest League member had not come to Allan's side with her, Mina turned around and looked for him. He was out of sight, further along in the 'top tier' of the tower, but she could hear him moving things, as if searching through the clutter. "Tom?"
"I'm here," came the reply, but he remained out of sight.
I should have kept him with me, Mina thought.
With that mental chastisement, she got up, intending to see what Sawyer was doing, but then she saw a broken rifle on the floor that gave her a moment's pause - most likely the Winchester that Tom had given the hunter.
"Tom!" She could see him now, tugging at what looked like a rolled up tapestry or rug which was poking out of a pile of assorted furnishings.
"We can wrap him in this . . . ." There was a haunted look in Tom's eyes, but burning determination too.
Mina helped him free the length of material, and they carried it solemnly down to become a burial shroud.
xXx
On their way back through the fortress, Sawyer and Mina came across Nemo and some of his men as well as a contingent of British soldiers. The leader of the latter was a member of British Intelligence, an Agent Jones.
Captain Nemo did not have to ask who the wrapped body was. He gave a bow of respect and sorrow to the shrouded corpse of the man he had come to deeply regard. As Nemo did so, Tom noticed, as Mina had earlier, that his back seemed to pain him.
Jones informed the three reunited League members that M was definitely dead. Mina told him and Nemo that Reed was also no longer a problem.
Then Tom told them, "Allan discovered that M was Professor James Moriarty."
"Sherlock Holmes' nemesis?" Mina asked in surprise.
Tom nodded.
"Somehow he survived the incident at Reichenbach Falls then," Nemo said.
Tom continued, "When Quatermain and I were chasing M, M had a case containing samples that he was going to take to Europe to sell." The agent thought back carefully over the moment when he saw M fall. "When I shot him, I thought I saw the case fly out of his hand and into the water near the Nautiloid, but I was a distance away. Has it been recovered?"
No one in the group knew the answer to that, so some men were dispatched to check that area and inform the others.
Jones also said that Campion Bond, Jones' superior, wanted to see Nemo back at the Nautilus as soon as possible. "You can brief him on the situation."
"And there is the matter of the released and captured people," Nemo said with a nod. He turned to Mina. "Your help in the infirmary would probably be welcomed at the moment. A lot of the people we released needed care and others were M's men wounded in the battle."
As she agreed, Tom found himself wondering if one day he would get the chance to ask Mina how she dealt with being around blood in that way without going into vampire mode. After all, she had tended to the injured on the submarine for days after the bomb blasts. But either she only made sure to be in the infirmary after her thirst had been sated or her curse was 'light' enough that she had a lot of control over it. Perhaps she only turned over into her darker self when pushed or she chose, like when held at knifepoint in Gray's library. After all, mirrors and sunlight were of no problem to her. Unless those aspects of vampirism were just a myth.
Jones said to Sawyer, "We've got groups combing the fortress. You know the layout better than us - we could use you as a guide."
"Sure." He felt Mina's gaze on him but did not turn to look at her, not wanting to see any concern. For a moment he thought she might suggest that he come back to the Nautilus too and hoped she would not, even though he wanted to continue to accompany Allan. There was still work to do and he was capable.
So Mina and Nemo went back to the submarine, along with some sailors who were now carrying Quatermain's body. Tom had given one of the sailors Allan's coat and elephant gun, asking the man to put them in the hunter's room. After Mina and he had shrouded their leader, they had discovered his coat lying discarded on some furniture in the tower. Tom had not wanted to leave it behind.
The spy remained in the fortress with the British contingent, and for the next six hours helped guide and direct them through the huge building. Skinner's bombs had caused a lot of destruction, but the whole place still needed to be checked.
xXx
The League had first infiltrated the fortress around six in the morning. Sawyer was finally back on board the Nautilus by mid-afternoon.
He quickly put his Winchester and the revolver in his room and then headed to the infirmary, wanting to find out Skinner's condition. Hopefully he was still alive.
But those burns . . . .
Inside the infirmary, he looked around. It was like the aftermath of when the bombs had crippled the submarine. There were a lot of Nemo's crew occupying the bunks, beds and hammocks, and there were also British officers and other men.
The scientists? Or the slaves that M was using? Probably both.
He could see some of Nemo's uninjured men standing against walls at intervals, keeping a watch on the room, and a few of Nemo's medical staff and some women going around and tending to the men, but no sign of any members of the League. Not in this section of the infirmary anyway.
He headed through to the next section. One of Nemo's crew members who was on watch saw him and hurried on ahead before Tom could ask him any questions.
Suddenly Jekyll appeared from that very area, looking tired but relieved to see him, and Tom realised that the crewman had gone to tell the doctor he was there.
"Tom, how are you?" Mina had told Henry that the agent's injuries were minor, but he wanted to see for himself and make sure nothing new had happened to the younger man in the meantime. The doctor looked closely at the marks on Tom's neck.
"I'm fine. Nothing worth bothering about." Physically he did feel all right, apart from some tiredness. Mentally was a matter he really didn't want to check at the moment. "How's Skinner?"
"Doing better than expected. Here, come and sit for a few minutes and I'll fill you in on what has been happening. I was about to have a break anyway."
In short order they were in a small office area where Jekyll was obviously writing up patient records. The doctor produced the supplies necessary to set about checking and treating Tom's injuries.
"Skinner saved my life in the fortress. How is he?" Tom asked.
"Considering the burns he has received, he's doing remarkably well. Sleeping a lot, but that is for the best and when he is awake, he's lucid. The degree to which he's been able to withstand the pain and to talk is amazing."
Tom almost gaped at the doctor. Even as optimistic as he usually was, this report on the heroic thief's condition was beyond his hopes and prayers.
Jekyll started work cleaning the cuts on Tom's neck, and continued, "Skinner said that when he first took the invisibility formula, he noticed that he was then able to withstand very cold temperatures."
"Which comes in handy when sneaking naked around London or in Mongolia," Tom said thoughtfully. So that's how he managed it. I just thought he was used to cold temperatures from walking around London for so long.
"Exactly. No frostbite or hypothermia. And he said that the few times he has received an injury like a cut since then, it has healed very fast, so he and I are hoping the same happens here. The formula might have had some effect on his skin other than just making it invisible."
Relief was daring to grow inside the spy. "Do you think it has made him immortal?"
"No, but who really knows? Time will tell. And I'm treating him with a special solution that Nemo invented - it's an extract from a rare form of seaweed and has antiseptic and healing properties. I've seen how effective it is on the burns suffered by his men when those bombs went off."
"Can I see Skinner?" Tom asked.
"He's sleeping most of the time. No visitors yet, but perhaps tomorrow."
"Please let me know."
"I will," Jekyll assured the American, glad he could give him some good news.
Tom paused briefly, then asked, "How are Mina and Nemo?"
"All right. Though Mrs Harker has been somewhat . . . distant. She is helping in the infirmary, along with the able-bodied who were rescued from the fortress. We've had to set up temporary bedding and care in other rooms to cope with the injured."
Tom nodded. Jekyll looked okay, apart from a few bruises and scratches, but then in Hyde form his body seemed capable of withstanding an amazing amount of punishment. So perhaps these marks had happened after he changed back. Then Tom took a deep breath and asked: "Where's Quatermain?"
"Nemo had his men put Allan's body in one of the refrigeration rooms. We're going back to England first, then on to Kenya to bury him."
Tom stared at Jekyll in disbelief. The sting of the antiseptic on his cuts was not even registering. "England first? But that's stupid! We've got to go along Africa anyway to get to England!"
Jekyll sighed regretfully. "Although Kenya is close to the route we are taking, it is not close enough for British Intelligence, especially since we'd have to travel inland to get to Nairobi. They want us and our 'cargo' back in England as soon as possible."
"Cargo? What cargo? The people rescued from the fortress?"
"Yes, and some of the contents of the fortress. To the British Secret Service a detour to bury Quatermain would take too long at this time." Tom opened his mouth, fit to explode, and the doctor cut in before he could. "I know; we don't like it either. But we have a lot of people here that need help and to return to their homes. This is the fastest method of transportation available, and Campion Bond of the British Secret Service has promised us that once we have done this, we will be free to go to Kenya."
With a great effort of self-control, Tom gave a tight nod. He was a government agent - he knew the burden of duty.
Jekyll explained to him that the Nautilus would remain here near M's fortress until the British were satisfied that everyone had been rescued or captured, as the case may be. And time to make sure that anything of value or use had been salvaged from the fortress that needed to be taken back to England quickly. The sheer number of goods and refugees had meant that Bond had come to ask Nemo if they could be boarded on the submarine for the trip back, as well as captured bad guys, for imprisonment and interrogation.
There was the scientists and their families. There were freed slaves too, mainly from the peasant settlements that the League had seen from the conning tower of the submarine. They were to be questioned to see if they had any useful information, and to see if they wished to leave Mongolia.
So the Nautilus would head back to England at top speed, easily ahead of what any of the British ships could manage, with a number of British officers aboard to talk to the scientists, learn what they could from M's captured men, and make plans. It was a good debriefing and meeting place, and certainly possessed more room. Families who came from certain countries along the way would be dropped off if the British allowed it, but most likely they would all go back to England and be distributed from there.
After Jekyll finished giving this information, and checking and taking care of the agent's injuries, he was about to ask Tom how he was, as in how he was feeling, but then one of Nemo's men knocked on the door with a question. The doctor gave Tom an apologetic look. "I had better get back to work."
"Sure, but first, what can I do to help here?"
As they stood up, Jekyll gave a faint smile, knowing the futility of trying to make Tom take things easy. Thankfully the American's injuries were on the whole fairly minor.
But the sadness in the young man's eyes was a different issue, and one Jekyll dearly wished he had the time to address now. He could see that Tom was sad but resolute.
He heard Hyde snort in his head, then fortunately go quiet again.
"You need to have some food and take it easy for a few hours. Then go see Nemo; I'm sure he'll have something for you to do. Or he'll tell you exactly what I did. And dinner will be served relatively late tonight."
Tom nodded, absently running his fingers over the fresh bandage Jekyll had put on his hand. He wanted to see Nemo anyway, though he knew the Captain would be very busy dealing with the British officers and the influx of so many people under his 'roof'.
Jekyll smiled at Tom and went off. Tom hesitated, then had a quick look around for Mina. In another section of the infirmary he saw her across the room, easily locating her by her red hair, but he could quickly see how busy she was helping patients, and decided to wait until later. He left without any sign from Mina that she had noticed him.
END PART TWO