Well. I'm on a roll! Two chapters in two days...not too bad, I think. -beams-
Alys: Meep! -hides- I've updated! I've updated! Don't kill me, please! I have a revolution to take care of!
angel-flame: Yes, Tom does seem to have terrible luck, doesn't he? Wonder how good he is at poker...-runs off to go find out-
Clez: I shall make you a plushie of said informant, and you can practice voodoo on it to your heart's delight.That work with you?
Revolution
Chapter 8
"Friends are some of the greatest assets you'll ever have."
- Unknown
He had found Damon ten minutes too late. By the time Damon had arrived, running all the way from the other side of the city to the apartment building, Tom, the Kwaden and Reed had long gone.
Stopping in front of the small apartment, out of breath, Damon stared at the mess in front of him.
"Blimey," Owen panted as he caught up with the Underground's second-in-command.
The house was a wreck. The door hung from its hinges, swaying desolately. The cheap furniture that decorated Tom's apartment was riddled with bullet holes, and so was the floor. Stepping into the room, Damon stepped on something. Looking down, he saw that there were dozens of spent bullet shells; in fact, the ground was full of them.
A table was overturned, its contents lying smashed or broken on the floor. Damon carefully stepped inside, watchful of the bullet shells that might cause him to fall. He made his way towards the table. It looked as if Tom had tried to take refuge there.
A whole lot of refuge it gave him, Damon thought grimly. Approaching the back of the table, he saw Tom's beloved Winchester lying on the ground in pieces.
"Are you sure it was Noah they took?" Damon asked, bending down to pick up the gun.
"I'd bet my hat on it, Mr. Archer," Owen said, staying at the door. Obviously, he didn't want to touch anything. "Little Jimmy tells me that Mr. Caine was unconscious when they took 'im out."
Damon's worst fears had come true; two days to the most important meeting of the Underground's decade-long history, and their most important figure was captured by the Kwaden, no less.
Damon knew little of Tom's past — the American didn't like to talk about it — but he knew that Tom had once encountered Dante and Reed before, a decade ago. Tom wanted to get rid of Reed especially, and now that Reed had him, well...
This did not bode well.
The first thing that struck Tom Sawyer as he woke up was the throbbing at the back of his skull.
The second was that he was in a small cell, lying down on a camp bed.
The third was that he was not bound.
He lay there for a while, staring up at the non-descript ceiling, willing the throbbing to go away. It did, a little, but it still hurt.
Sitting up and groaning, Tom touched the back of his head gingerly. His fingers came away with no blood, thank goodness, so that means he hadn't been knocked out too hard.
He looked around. The cell wasn't very large, just enough for its sole intended occupant to stand up and pace around a little bit. There was some kind of light source along the corridor which the cell looked out too, but Tom guessed that the light was far away. The corridor was not very bright, but the light in his own cell burned brightly.Moving to the bars, he reached out to touch them — before changing his mind. He had seen the inside of Dante's prisons before, and the bars were heated so that anyone who touched them would be burned — and badly.
He looked around the cell, trying to see if there was anything he could use. There, on the bed — there was its metal frame. Since the camp bed wasn't very heavy, Tom pushed it towards the bars, letting the edge of the frame touch them.
Tom decided to leave them there, to test his theory. Meanwhile, he looked around the cell once more. There was a small washbasin and a toilet to the back of the cell, near the bed, and that was about it.There was no alternate source of light except the gas bulb that lay overhead. That was large, and the glare it gave off was bright enough for Tom to read, even.
Three minutes, something in Tom's head told him. Three minutes since you put the bed to the bars.
Moving over to where the bed still touched the bars of his cell, Tom pulled it back, and felt the frame; it was hot enough to cook an egg.
"Thought so," Tom said to himself. It effectively cut off his only route of escape. "Damn."
He sat back down on the bed, trying to think of a way out. Instead, his thoughts drifted off in a different direction.
Reed had mentioned a 'fair trial'. Tom wasn't naïve enough to think it would be fair in anyway; such things did not exist in this day and age. The trial would be a public one — after all, Dante and Reed would want to gloat — and Tom's fate was sealed.
He would consider himself lucky if he got away with a painless death.
Probably by now, men would be building the stage for the Second Reich's most important arrest since Sam Masters. The gallows would be the first to be completed, Tom thought grimly. It always is.
Trafalgar Square would be full of people on the day of the trial, all eager to see who the mysterious Black Duke was. Children would crowd around the edges of the gallows, and Owen would be among them, no doubt, along with his little street friends.
Tom sighed. His fate was sealed, and he knew that there was no way out of any of Dante's prisons. Besides, there'd be guards with automatic rifles which could cut you down in seconds, he thought.
Damon paced furiously in the privacy of the meeting tent where he and Tom had spent so much time planning, carefully planning all the Underground's moves, their attacks, their safehouses.
A map of London was spread out on the table, along with reports of the various branches of the Underground. Red pins stuck into the map told of their locations. The blue pins, much fewer in number, were where members of the Underground's top ten were staying.
They needed to make a rescue attempt. Tom had to be taken out of there, and put in one of the safehouses, so that the revolution could go on.
Damon was all for assembling a task force of the best men he had at his disposal, but Dante's prisons were huge and state-of-the-art. No one had ever broken in (or out) without being killed.He paced some more. They needed legends.
They needed a group of extraordinary men.
Something clicked in his head. A solution came; he ran to the table, scribbled a note, and pulled in the first person he could find outside.
"You," he ordered, "Take this, go to this place" — he pointed at the map, indicating the location — "and give it to the captain of the vessel. Give it only to the captain. His name is Nemo. Do you understand?" The man nodded. "Good. Now, go! Hurry! The life of the Duke depends on this."
Nemo frowned. He read the note again. The man who had sent it had hurried off, and this was the third time the Indian captain was reading the note.
Only a group of singular individuals can save Tom.
- Baron de Greene
He knew that Tom had been captured by the despicable Kwaden and Reed. He had been among the first to hear the news. He assumed that the Baron was Damon Archer, the man who seemed to be Tom's lieutenant.
Would he do the right thing? Obviously, Damon thought that Nemo and what remained of the League should go and save Tom.
Nemo was all for it, of course. Tom was a friend, despite the years that they had spent apart. He wasn't so sure about the rest of the League, though.
Summoning his men, Nemo sent out messengers to places where the rest of the League members would be found; the Carfax Asylum, Whitechapel, and Old Quarter. After that, he would contact the Baron.
(#1) The Baker Street Irregulars are of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's creation. They help Sherlock Holmes in gathering information.