Author's Note: Like I always do, I apologise for the delay in the update. Acknowledgements might be a bit short this time, but I'll give you all a shout out, so here we go:
Angharad: I couldn't make Skinner the traitor, no matter how much I follow the book, heh. The ending is a surprise. Everyone always seems to want to protect Tom ::nods:: I'll delve more into Tom's head and his reaction later. Not this chapter, but the next. Thanks.
Raven Silvers: Aww, we know Skinner isn't the bad guy, and hopefully the League will too… Now, now, Rave, no slapping of self. Heh, suspense is good, we all know this, especially you, as a fellow writer. Thanks.
Hex M Aurosa: Yay! I am forgiven! I couldn't make Skinner the villain! I like him too much for that! And yes, Rave was happy. Thanks.
Anacalagon: Thanks, Ana. Glad to see you happy.
Leigh S. Durron: Nope, wasn't Skinner. M. Holmes… can't tell you what he's doing. Nobody likes Holmes… or Bond… wonder why. But thank you!
LotRseer3350: Yes… don't try to kill Tom… 'says the girl who tries to kill him in every story she writes'. Ahem, yes. Mina is a bit off… shall we say. Mycroft's intentions cannot be explained by me, sadly, have to leave that to the characters. Thanks!
Sethoz: Scaring you is so fun, though! Ack, fist shaking! Hehe, Thomas Marvel (for those of you who don't know) is actually a real character from The Invisible Man. Found him, and decided to use him. ::nods slyly:: Heh, yes, read the comic… but then I wouldn't be able to keep you in suspense! Nooooooooooo!
TARilus: Nope, Skinner isn't wacko… though it was tempting for a time. And yes, Marvel is a jerk. You and your damn cool taglines you can make up! Heh. Ack, Hyde killing Skinner would be bad. And as for the rest… well… hehehehe. Thanks.
queerquail: Yup, wasn't Skinner. An insane Skinner is interesting, yes. Scary too, like you said. And everybody needs to (if they're not already) feel sorry for Skinner! Thanks.
Miss-Smilla: Thank you. Glad you are enjoying this. Bloody difficult to reverse is a tad of an understatement, yes… difficult and scary to imagine. As for your bracketed question… you'll have to wait and see ::winks:: Thanks again.
Lady Moon3: Hehe, you should really read this chapter and reconsider your next freak out in regards to the term holiday ::grins:: Still, funny to read your review, and thank you for giving it to me!
drowchild: Hehe, a confused and startled 'drow' is a funny 'drow'. Don't imagine… it's scary o.O Thanks.
Nimmo Gray: Okay… took me a minute to get used to the chat speak, but I think I read your review right, heh. I'm an angst-addict, my dear… it's not an 'official' term, but there are a few of us about, and we're usually linked to Tom, heh. Thanks.
And with further apology and no more delay, here is Part 7 of LXG2: Above & Beyond!
They had seen Nemo and Jekyll to the docks, where the mighty Nautilus had been waiting for them, pushed out of the water with crew guarding her in her majesty. People were milling around, looking for passage on any vessel clearing out of London, and with the rain still pelting down all around, it was hard to keep track of them all, given that visibility was low.
When that was done, Mina, Sawyer and Quatermain had been immediately transported to the train station, where an engine had been waiting to take them to their 'holiday' destination. Their bags were already aboard for them, having been carried by some of Holmes' men, and all they need do was find an empty compartment for the journey. They had little difficulty in doing so, seeing as Holmes had secured them one, in First Class… not that it mattered right now. The cabin – if you could call it that – wasn't exactly amazingly spacious, but the three of them had enough legroom for comfort, anyway.
There were small posters and ads on the walls of the compartments, showing products and services, but the vampire heeded not one of them. They interested her very little, especially with a pensive American spy to her left, opposite Quatermain. The hunter was stoically silent for a time, staring out of the window to look down the corridor of the train carriage, and here and there, eyeing the posters with mild interest. Sawyer kept gazing at his Winchester leaned up against the compartment wall near to him, as if he would need it at a moment's notice. And the vampire… she closed her eyes for long periods of time, as if in thought, when she was simply – in actuality – trying to get thoughts of treachery and Skinner out of her mind, not to mention the numerous deaths of innocents at the 'hands' of the aliens.
The thought of such a mobile device as the 'milking-stool' terrified her, though she would not so openly admit such a weakness. Weaknesses, to her, were something to be exploited, and she did not like them. At all. She loathed them; though she was never against feeling them… she could do little to stop it actually.
From Wapping – at the beginning of their subsequent journey – the three of them had been taken – by carriage – to Waterloo, where they had been to commence on their journey by rail, as they were now. Despite the rain and the lateness of the hour, there had been some families with their belongings in the streets. The panic had begun. It would no doubt be worse in the morning.
Smithson, who had wished them luck, had seen them off. Sawyer had been oddly quiet during the entire journey, and had started once or twice at a sudden noise, the hand gripping his Winchester tightening on reflex. She had wanted to console him, tell him that Skinner could not be following them, as she had no doubt he was suspecting. Though she had failed recently to do so, she would have smelt him if it was the case.
Mycroft Holmes – if Mina had understood it correctly – was sending them off to visit the South Downs; to locate a scientist engaged in highly secret Government endeavours. Somehow, to her, this was suspicious. In fact, the endeavours were so secret, that the three of them had been told neither his name nor his whereabouts.
They were to locate him and inform him that H-142 must be conveyed to London. Needless to say, they had not been told what that was either. It was starting to grate on her last few remaining nerves, and it was all she could do not to growl at the thought of it.
Quatermain shifted slightly in his seat, arms no longer tightly crossed over his broad chest as he looked across the compartment to Mina, saying solidly, "I can't get around the idea of this three-legged thing we saw."
Sawyer turned his head from staring out of the rain-smeared window, to look at the hunter. Mina followed suit, and turned her azure gaze upon the older man, interested in what he had to say.
"It was the way it moved so quickly across the horizon," Quatermain embellished darkly, "with this kind of controlled toppling." He sighed, shaking his head back and forth pensively. "If you could have seen it…"
"Frankly," Sawyer interjected, eyeing the gloomy sight out of the window again as they carried on their way, "I've been more concerned with what I couldn't see…"
Mina and Quatermain turned their unified gaze upon the young spy, and looked on him with concern and awkwardness. What to say now?
"I'm so sorry I left you alone with that treacherous… with Skinner," Mina said to him sincerely, her heart burning with anger and guilt at the betrayal. She didn't think she could take any more of this insanity, with the members of what was supposed to be the last line of defence failing and turning against one another. It made her blood boil with rage.
Sawyer's inexpressive shrug was what worried her as he unconvincingly said, "I've been through worse." He sighed lightly, and Mina knew that Quatermain had missed the subtle sign of the attack truly bothering the young man.
"What alarms me," Mina began, in the hopes of moving the conversation along, "is Skinner's defection could cost us the war."
"You're right," Quatermain agreed solemnly. "The odds against us are high enough already." He shook his head, and went back to curiously and guardedly peering down the corridor outside their room once again. "Especially if Nemo was right, and London has to see off two of those milking stool monstrosities."
Sawyer and Mina were both staring out the window; however, their eyes widened, and had not heard a single word of what the preoccupied hunter had said. Their breathing had simultaneously quickened, and the spy was shaking very subtlely, something Mina could sense, and had to command herself not to mimic.
"Three…" she murmured, in a low voice not too unlike a whisper.
"What?" Quatermain turned his head from his curiousity, and moved out of his seat, intending to look out the window.
Together, Sawyer and Mina repeated, "Three." The vampire's hand slowly rose, pointing out of the window to the countryside beyond, and the heavens above.
Up over the fields and small houses in the darkness of the night, another shell was careening down for a thunderous landing, a fiery trail burning out behind it as it rocketed downwards, taking the hopes and optimism of the three League members in the train with it.
Young Jimmy Grey walked with his aristocratic and well-dressed mother and father down the bustling hallway on the express train out of London, to the south of the river, and was rather hesitant about leaving the home he had grown so accustomed and attached to in his boyhood. There were adults and their children everywhere, hurrying to evacuate as swiftly as possible, and the train's carriages were reaching bursting point by the time the Greys had managed to squeeze aboard.
"Ah…" his primly suited father began, lifting the rim of his cap enough to peer into the opened door of the compartment he was viewing. "Look to it, my dear. There's seats here." He entered, and started to slip his case up on the luggage rail overhead.
Jimmy was gently pressured ahead of his upset mother, into the booth, even as she said to him, "But it's so full of people! Really, must we pack up and run like this?" She gave him a soft nudge in the back, adding, "You sit there, child."
Jimmy entered the booth, and took his seat by the window as his father replied, "Dearest, it's only temporary, because of the meteorites. We'll be home soon, you'll see."
The young boy had seen about the aliens all over the tabloids his father always read at the breakfast table, and it both frightened and fascinated him. He wasn't sure what to make of it, with his mind so filled with games and innocence and childish fantasies. These were the things of dreams and nightmares, and he was having trouble coming to grips with the fact that they were coming into reality. How could this be?
"Oh, now it's hardly moving," his mother complained sorrowfully. "All these people, I expect. Oh, it's all too bad. I'd had those lovely new curtains delivered." His mother was dabbing at her eyes with a frill-edged handkerchief, and she sniffled every few moments, her lip quivering, as though she were about to sob. His father took the mantle in calming her down, from across the carriage, where he sat opposite his young son, Jimmy.
"They'll still be safe when we get back, old thing. Now, chin up, eh?" His father gave a curt nod of his head, and attempted a smile from behind a thick, bristling moustache. He tipped his cap atop his head slightly, and neatened his tie, even as his wife outstretched a hand to her husband.
Jimmy's keen eyes strayed out of the window as they shuddered along, and in the distance, he saw an odd spectacle of a thing, trundling towards them on three spindly, spider-like legs, with small tentacles waving about from underneath its large, bulbous body.
"But really!" his mother continued dramatically. "Those announcements, saying everyone south of the river should evacuate. I've never known anything like it."
"Father…" Jimmy attempted, looking to the rotund man in question, to try and get his attention. He wanted to alert his father to the strange creation that was approaching, though he was vaguely aware that there was nothing the man could do about it, really. He just wished for someone else to see it, to know of its presence.
"Just a moment, lad," his father said calmly. "Your mother and I are talking." Turning his dark eyes back on his wife as she wiped at her eyes with the handkerchief, he continued, "Darling, you mustn't let things like this upset you…"
His mother sniffled, nodding rather feebly. "I know," she whimpered. "It's just that our whole lives were in that house. When I think…"
"Father, look! Look at it!" Jimmy had watched the menacing approach of the monstrous creation with silence and wide eyes, and could take it no longer. It was gnawing away at him, and he simply bellowed out his command to his parents, and pointed roughly out of the window as it towered over the train, in the river, tentacles flailing viciously.
"Good god…" His father stared with eyes like saucers out of the window, and the man next to him dropped his paper in disbelief. "What on Earth is–"
Before his father could finish his oddly ironic sentence, the alien creation tore into the rail, and Jimmy was powerless and terrified, as they were thrown about in the train, the entire engine and its carriages plummeting down and into the raging river waters, taking all its passengers and baggage with it. The creaking, screaming and groaning of the rail as they were destroyed, and the train as it collapsed, not to mention the horrified passengers, was almost enough to make Jimmy wish he were no longer awake… was this some kind of horrible nightmare?
All thoughts on nightmares and dreams were ripped out of the child as he felt the river churn around him, engulfing him, and swelling with blood all around, bodies of the murdered passengers rising to float horrifically on the surface, with its bobbing suitcases and disembodied hats and scarves. The bodies littered the waters, and Jimmy looked around in terror, searching wildly for his parents. They were nowhere to be seen, and he thought he caught a glimpse of his father's wide hat floating off to one side. Coughing and spluttering, he whimpered. "Oh… oh… mother! Father…"
He tried to push back the tears, to be brave as his father had always taught him, but when he caught a glimpse of a mostly crushed skull to his side that could very well have belonged to a loved one, he gave in, and let out a yelp of fright and sadness. "Oh no… oh please. Please, I don't want to…"
Feeling the bubbles and the motion from beneath him, Jimmy gave in to a new, curious kind of terror, and his eyes shot open all the way, as he felt something solid rise up beneath his feet. Amazingly still holding his brown cap in his little hand, he wobbled, and rose up with the miraculous creation. "Wh…?"
A huge silver thing had raised up beneath him, lifting him up with it, cool metal beneath his small shoes, gleaming in all its miraculous splendour with images and pictures all over it, carved from the finest materials of silver and steel. Something rose out of the top of the vessel – for that was what he assumed it to be – and groaned eerily, levelling at the murderous alien creation, and let off a cannon-like boom, that shook through Jimmy and knocked him flat on his rear, as he gave a yelp of surprise.
What shocked him even more was the subsequent explosion from above and behind him, as the alien creation was blown clean apart, from the legs up, and pieces of it were sent rocketing off in all directions. Jimmy instinctively covered his head and cowered as white-hot debris started to rain down all around, and he gave a yell of fright.
Even the sound of boots clanging along the bulk of the ship he was cowering on could not calm his racing heart, and he had curled up into a tiny, timid little ball, whimpering, and crying out, "Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord, save me!"
People were shouting; though he couldn't understand them, try as he might. They were communicating in some foreign language, and it was not one Jimmy comprehended. He continued to whimper, and cry out for help, feeling so very small and inconsequential.
A man had come up to him, large and imposing, and Jimmy tried to scoot away, despite the impending threat from falling debris all around. "No!" he yelled at the man in terror. "Who are you?" Without waiting for the man to answer, he continued frantically, "Please, my mother and father…"
"They are dead, my young friend," said the strange foreigner, reaching down gently to help him up. "You must be a man now." There was sympathy and understanding in those dark eyes, but that did not stop Jimmy from being afraid. He was helpless to stop himself from being picked up by the large man, and carried to a hatch further back along the body of the saviour vessel. "No!" he cried as he was carried. "Mother…"
It was with a subtlely sympathetic, yet mostly stoic expression that Captain Nemo watched the young child brought below by two of his crewmen. The one who had rescued him handed him down to Patel, who took him under the arms, and hoisted him down to the ground. "There. It is all right now, young man."
Nemo felt the pressure in the ship equalising slightly as they pushed deeper under the Thames, and he regarded the small boy with a scrutinizing eye, so used to analysis and perception. He was studying every detail about him, from what had been a slight polish in his shoes, to the wideness of his brown eyes as he gazed around, positively soaked from his plunge into the turbulent river.
"This is the one we surfaced beneath, Captain," Patel said, placing a hand on the boy's shoulder, to calm him.
Jekyll stood beside Captain Nemo, obviously concerned, and wishing to give the boy a thorough check-over in the infirmary. But such things could wait. Poking and prodding the child would not do to calm his nerves.
"Find the boy some dry clothes, Patel. And give him some hot broth from the kitchens." Nemo clasped his hands behind his back, chin up, and turban proudly sat atop his head like a crown, almost. "Put him ashore when we dock at Wapping."
"Yes, Captain," Patel acknowledged with a brief inclination of the head. "Come along, young man, let us get you comfortable."
The boy was still staring at the Indian and the doctor as he was lead away, and the two League members watched him carefully, unsure how to act around him. Jekyll was obviously quarrelling with the voice of Hyde inside his head, as always, and Nemo turned a calm eye on him. "He is speaking deviously of the child, yes?"
Jekyll nodded abruptly, closing his eyes, and removing his pocket watch, to rhythmically open and close its golden, polished face, with a snap and a click each time. "Yes… and it is getting so much harder to block him out."
Nemo regarded his friend with pity and sympathy, though it was veiled beneath dark brows, and behind a mask of indifference. "It will pass, Dr. Jekyll. Simply put aside his own thoughts, and collect your own on the matter."
Turning his head to the crewman who had rescued the boy from the top of the now submerged vessel, Nemo said, "Retrieve the wreckage."
The crewman nodded, and bowed, and was off on his mission, to fulfil his orders by any means necessary, as Nemo knew all of his crew would be, when given a command. He had handpicked the most loyal, hardworking and dedicated men available.
Jekyll was looking out of the windows at the front of the bridge nervously, and sighed. "Hyde just keeps chattering about how this is all so unfair."
"What is unfair, Dr. Jekyll?"
"How we are stuck here, in London, with his unquenched desire to kill… and Quatermain, Sawyer and Mrs. Harker are off… on holiday."
Nemo smiled behind his moustache and beard, glancing out into the dark, murky waters where debris was slowly sinking to the depths. "I doubt very much that they are indeed on a holiday, as Holmes claimed… I doubt that very much…"
