Progress, a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen fanfiction
By A. Keller
Chapter 2
Mina Harker paced back and forth through the Nautilus's broad white conference room. Rodney Skinner leaned against one of the support beams behind her, captain Nemo stood with a hand on his sabre to her left, and Tom Sawyer leaned over the edge of the long table, resting on it with both hands.
"I told you someone should have gone with him!" Sawyer said, spinning around to face Mina. "He can't control himself, you all know that."
"He's a grown man," said Mina pointedly. "You should hardly judge the doctor by your own childish standards."
Sawyer pointed into her face. "Don't pull that on me. Nemo may be the captain here, but you know that Quartermain appointed me second-in-command. And we're talking about Jekyll here, he has Hyde seething under his skin at all times."
Mina looked away. "I know. Forgive me." She continued pacing.
"Aw, don't all get your panties up into a bunch," said Skinner. "He's probably having a rollickin' good time. Probably made his way over to meet some ladies. Give the man a break."
Nemo stepped forward, hands behind his back. "Mr. Skinner, you mustn't try to wave away the seriousness of the issue. If Jekyll is away from us and makes the mistake of letting the beast loose, there's no telling what he could do to the city. Or what could be done to him."
"I was just sayin'."
"Yes, I have an especially bad feeling about that," Mina said. "If anyone has recognized Jekyll, they might go after him for his formula. That is, if they know him like we do."
"But who could know that he's Hyde?" Said Sawyer.
"There's no telling that," said Nemo. "But I am sure that somebody out there does."
There was a silence as each member of the League delved into thought.
"I don't suggest we go looking for him ourselves," Nemo finally said.
Mina bit her lip. "We should consult Mycroft, then?"
"Not that crazy old bloke," said Skinner.
"And you'll be the one to tell him, Skinner, since you can't seem to take this seriously," Mina said, her eyes biting.
"Whether he's broken loose or someone's taken him, we'll have to formulate a plan of attack," said Sawyer. "Maybe Mycroft has a werewolf up his sleeve or something."
"Shall we?" Said Nemo, nodding to the others.
They returned the nod, and moved out of the room, toward the front deck.
Jekyll resurfaced with a gasp. The warm off-white walls of a standard Victorian bedroom greeted him. He was slumped on the floor against one of the walls, weak, with no recollection of how he came to be there. He heard muffled voices from outside the door. A fireplace crackled on the other end of the room. An inn? He strained his ears, trying to hear what the voices were saying.
"… just some guy. HQ literally told us nothing except class, type and mode. Are we supposed to be afraid of him? Are we not supposed to worry about it? I just want to know what they expect us to do."
"I'm sure they want us to wait for orders."
"But that's what you do. They're supposed to tell me who I'm dealing with and then I make the orders. Dammit, I wish I'd thought about this earlier."
"Hey. Calm down, Rotto. We can handle this."
"Okay. Sorry, sorry. We'll just let the IDT load. We'll have a nice chat with everyone, show them our guy, and they'll give us what we need and we'll move on."
"If they'll give us what we need, that is."
Jekyll's head throbbed. He pressed a palm against his temple. The conversation through the door sounded like it was being conducted in a different language. Then there was a sharp pain through his right shoulder, and suddenly he remembered.
The strange young man and woman. They knew he had Hyde. They attacked him, they injected him with something – they kidnapped him. But at once he was puzzled. He felt around his person, as frantically as he could with the small amount of energy he had, for the vial of elixir he had taken with him from the ship. His pockets were empty. He looked at his hands, which trembled only slightly. He remembered drinking the whole vial. Why was he fully clothed, why had he found himself in a warm inn? Where was Edward Hyde?
He strained his ears to listen for the deep, hateful voice that so frequently occupied his mind. Nothing. Another sharp pang in his head caused him to cry out, quietly, in pain, and he leaned forward.
The conversation in the hall halted at the sound. Outside the door, the young woman and officer Ryder looked at one another.
"Well, he's awake now," said Rotto.
The young woman stared at the door for a moment, then turned back to face Rotto.
"I'm going to see if he can tell us anything. I have some really uncomfortable hunches. I'm glad you don't, but I do." She opened the door.
"KC, he could be really dangerous," Rotto whispered.
"He's tranquilized, he can't do anything," she said, and she entered the room, closing the door behind her.
The young woman came in to see Dr. Jekyll slumped to the floor, holding his temples between his thumb and ring finger. He breathed heavily, clearly in a lot of physical pain.
She knelt beside him. "How are you doing, Doctor?" She said. She placed an arm on the wall by his head.
With surprising intensity, his eyes raised to look at her. They held, dark, icy and red-rimmed. "First you stab me with a syringe..." He said. "Then you ask me how I am? What have you done to me, why?"
She stayed crouched beside him, ignoring his anger and gazing at the floor. "Doctor, I'm sorry we had to do that. What I'm told is that you're a Class L — a Physicite brutus, God knows how — and you're too dangerous around us. The order was to tranquilize you. I'm just here to keep your Brutus behind bars for now and transport Officer Ryder when he needs me to."
"You expect me to understand all your technical jargon?" Said Jekyll, his voice biting. "I know a man like you. His science is beyond me. I've given up on science, like I gave up on everything else." He looked up at her. "What did you say I was?"
"Type and mode. Physicite brutus. It means you're one of the most powerful of your kind," she said. "Now I have a question. What do you do? You must be based in size manipulation. Tell me about it."
He made a kind of short, hissing, cynical laugh. "Oh? I thought you knew about my other self."
"Dr. Jekyll." The young woman looked him in the eye.
"Henry," he said. "Please, you owe me no reverence."
His posture sang out self-hatred. She put a hand on his shoulder bravely. "We don't know. Please tell me. It means nothing to me, I promise you I've seen much worse."
He didn't make a sound, just bit his lip and looked away like a child. Then, "I would like to know your name."
"It's Kat Constantine."
Dr. Jekyll's mouth twisted into a dark smile. "The emperor who ruined Rome?" Kat nodded. He looked away. "Years ago I tried to become a chemist, to make a medicine that could wash away sin, even thoughts of it. I finished one, after all, and prepared to make myself into a truly good man. It did the opposite. Whenever consumed, all my worst is set free. I'm a walking sin, capable of destruction I never even thought was possible. That is what I am now." He was silent for a few seconds.
So was Kat. "Shit. You are that Doctor Jekyll, then."
"I am what Doctor Jekyll? I'm sure I share a name with someone."
"People will learn about you for years to come."
He looked up at her again. "Oh? And will it be a happy remembrance?"
Constantine looked into his eyes, observing, rather sadly.
He turned again. "How could you possibly know such things, anyway?"
"That's something you do need to know, so you can understand why Rotto and I are here." Kat's eyes settled on her hand, and where it sat on his shoulder. "We're not from here, Henry Jekyll. I'm from America, but the America of the year two-thousand eleven. Rotto is from twenty-three oh-eight."
He recoiled slightly, tilting his head to look at her, eyes filled with intrigue and fear. "Don't play games with me. You can't travel through time."
"I can." She leaned closer, boldly. She moved her thumb over the fabric on his shoulder. "I have to say, you are one of the most fascinating people I've encountered so far."
Another short, cynical, nervous laugh. He stared. "Changeful, aren't you? You don't know how hideous I can be."
"I didn't say pretty. I said fascinating."
He stared again and swallowed. The blood was beginning to flow into his face again, and she could feel the muscles in his shoulder tensing. His breathing took on weight. He was holding himself back.
"You're testing me," he said.
"Maybe," she said. "I know you're an inhibited man. It's funny when you talk about 'sin', because those Christian, Victorian values are so far from me. Does that bother you, Doctor?"
His eyes didn't come off her face. "No, much to your chagrin. Christianity is no longer capable of saving me."
Kat leaned closer, cruelly. "But you still hold back, huh."
Jekyll was biting back his breaths, eyes wandering fearfully over the young woman's face. Hyde wasn't speaking to him, and it terrified him. Was it the tranquilizer? Or was this what Hyde wanted?
"What are you trying to do, Emperor Constantine?" He whispered.
"Don't be an ass," she said, centimeters from his lips. "Live a little."
He let go and leaned forward sharply, pressing his mouth against hers, and she kissed back. She moved off his mouth and kissed up his jawbone, putting her teeth on his ear, then promptly pulled away. She grinned mischievously. He gazed at her, out of breath.
"The more you lock this part of yourself away, the more Hyde is going to destroy you," she said. "I was testing you." She kissed him again, gently, and stood. "And your jumbled Victorian values. I have to report back to Rotto about your condition. Goodbye, Henry Jekyll."
She left him sitting there, on the floor, where he was when she first came in.
On the Nautilus, Skinner and Sawyer sat playing cards while Mina read a book and Nemo sat by the window, meditating.
Skinner lay down two cards. "Read it well, mate."
Sawyer released a frustrated breath and lay his cards down on the table. Skinner laughed and collected a few coins from the middle. Sawyer leaned back in his chair. He looked around the room. It felt somewhat empty, with just the four of them.
"Hey – you guys ever think about what it would be like… if the old man was still with us? Old Quartermain?" Sawyer said.
"All the time," said Skinner, taking a drink of scotch. "Can't always tell, but I really miss that plucky bastard."
"I do as well," said Mina, not looking up from her book. "Allan had somewhat of a presence on this ship that feels quite empty now."
"Yeah," Sawyer said, looking down at his cards. He remembered leaving his life as a poor boy in Missouri, his adventures on the river, for the Secret Service, and the weight of all that responsibility on his shoulders. He remembered the sense of confidence and contentment Quartermain had instilled in him, a young, wily American who could really be something, with the right support. The best thing he could have ever shown Quartermain was a shot that the old man never got to see. Sawyer hung his head.
Then Nemo turned around, having broken from his trance. "Is anyone aware of the time?" he said.
Sawyer looked at the clock on the wall. "Just past three, captain."
"Ah, Skinner, would you mind turning on the radio transmission device? A broadcast is about to come through."
Mina gave Skinner a strange look, and he shrugged. "Don't know what he's saying half the time. The what?"
"It's the silver knob on that brown box on the wall," said Nemo. "Turn it counterclockwise."
Skinner went to the device and did so. A crackling noise sounded, and then voices came from the box as if from a gramophone. Everyone looked a little startled, except for Skinner, who wandered back to his seat.
"Nothing surprises me anymore," he said.
"A device created from Marconi's invention," Nemo said, gesturing to the radio. "Now, are you all familiar with the work of a man named Tesla?"
"The man who worked with Edison?" Said Mina.
"Not quite," said Nemo, stepping toward the radio. "Nikola Tesla has produced many great inventions. I have even worked with him several times in the past. But at this time I am not interested in him."
The group watched Nemo in fascination, the soft crackle of the radio punctuating the background.
"Years ago, when Tesla was just a child, he had an older brother who was supposedly killed in an accident. Dane Tesla was his name. But curiously, just recently, a man emerged into the field of science with groundbreaking new ideas – none other than Dane Tesla himself. He had faked his death at that very young age and disappeared from society, and has apparently dedicated his life to science ever since. Today he is announcing the plans for his latest scientific endeavor one which he says will change the future forever."
Each member of the league turned his or her attention to the radio. A voice sounded through the static.
Thousands of miles away, Dane Tesla stood on a podium before an enormous crowd, a strange microphone-like device suspended by his head. The crowd listened in rapt attention.
"Time," said Tesla. He was an enormous, broad-shouldered man, with the same notable Serbian facial characteristics as his younger brother, but with a distinct, puckered scar on his right cheek. "The passage of time, that slow grinding of sand in an hourglass, is what keeps us from the wonders, the conveniences, the cures of the future.
"We can only do so little with the technology, with the knowledge that we possess today. All the while, we still cannot connect in our everyday lives with people across the globe, children are dying of crippling diseases, and we spend many a day traveling toward our destination when we all wish we could just appear where we want to be."
Mina held her head with one hand as she listened. "What could he possibly be getting at?" She said.
"We are trapped," said Tesla, "In the slow web of progress."
Nemo was completely silent, as if he held his breath. So was the crowd standing below Dane Tesla.
"But what if we could reach into the world of the future?" Tesla said, folding his hands behind his back. "What if we could stitch together the fabric of our present and the present of hundreds of years from now? Progress is like that long period of travelling to a destination. If we could connect with societies of our distant future, we could have all the cures, all the conveniences, all the astounding technology we need instantly and we would appear, without the wait, at our destination."
"You're sure he isn't mad?" Said Skinner. No one paid him any mind.
"A time machine is not what I propose," said Tesla on his podium. " I am currently completing a machine not to travel through time, but to fold it. I will bring the world of the future to us, and we can do away with wistful notions of a faraway, seemingly ungraspable 'future' to our present. 'Future' and 'present,' gentlemen, will become one and the same."
The crowd erupted into cheers and rose to a standing ovation. Hats were thrown. Whistles sounded. Tesla stood there, proudly, and placed a hand on the podium. He would put an end to his brother's reign over science, once and for all.