Chapter 23
Edited by Penulis
"Clear!" Skinner yells back around the corner at the turban captain standing up against the wall.
"Do you think you should be yelling that?" Nemo snaps at the invisible man quietly as he goes down the clear hall, suddenly two men turn the corner at the end and spot them.
"Halt!" One of the men yells as they both open their jackets to reach their revolvers.
"Well there goes the peaceful escape plan." Skinner chimes before Nemo runs past him and jump kicks one of the men down and roundhouse kicks the other guy in the face.
"Come on Skinner we have no time we must run!" Nemo orders as the two now run down the halls.
"To think, they're supposed to be England's finest!" Skinner mutters, attempting to put more of a light spin on their situation as they halt at the entrance door. Outside near the gate is a carriage with one of the guards helping the young soldier that Skinner had followed in earlier.
"I think we can still pull of the peaceful yet aggressive approach, ay there captain?" Skinner playfully smacks Nemo's shoulder as the voice of Bond echoes through the halls.
"You fools! You didn't even take your guns out of holsters to stop them!" Bond stands over the collapsed men who just moan and hold onto their heads as they try to gain the strength to stand back up.
Miss. Rigg walks up behind him, "I locked that door Sir, but the key went missing between leaving the door and back to your office-"
"-I doesn't care for excesses right now !" The fat man steps over the two men making them groan more. The carriage moves away from the guard, giving him a view to the front gate as his fellow mate collapses down the ancient stonewall holding his head with his hand. Nemo and Skinner keep low in the back of the carriage next to a dead body. Curiosity gets to Skinner and he slides the cover off of the face to see Steed, "Well there's a familiar face."
Nemo looks at what Skinner is talking about, "My God. Well now peacefulness goes back out the carriage Skinner." Nemo motions his head towards the young soldier driving up front. Skinner unseen moves up next to him,
"Gloomy day aye?"
The voice makes the young man turn his head to outside of the carriage, thinking it came from some officer in the street, when he feels something push him off balance and out of the seat to the coble stone road.
"Thanks for the wheels mate!" Skinner yells as he takes he reins.
The automobile pulls into a driveway barely visible if not for the lines of carriage wheels. Tom stops and parks a small walking distance away from the carriage house expecting a hand, he looks around expectantly.
"What? Did everyone take a snow day?"
Mina ignores his annoyance as she reads the file on the young duchess "Maybe a good thing." she murmurs. Mina looks at him to make sure she has his attention before continuing on, "She was riding her pony before falling ill."
Skinner whoops for joy as he causes the carriage to slide sideways onto the dock into a few other soldiers who were standing in guard of the Nautilus. He straightens the carriage out to go up the cargo door ramp and comes to a crashing halt in front of the cargo. Nemo jumps out of the back and pulls a lever on the wall, lifting the ramp up to close up the entrance as bullets begin to fly and bounce off the ships exterior.
"Captain?" a sailor came down the steps of the cargo storage unit as Nemo looks at him and yells,
"My lady must leave dock. Any direction a distance away from here will do!"
"Hey!" Mina hears Tom yell on the top floor above her in the carriage house as she looks over the empty horse stalls.
"What?" Mina yells up to him.
Tom stands at the top of the stairs and looks on to the torn bundles of hay, "Just that. Hay!" He steps into the knee-deep unused straw causing strands to fall through the cracks onto Mina and her surroundings. Mina picks the pieces out of her hair as she notices a metallic reflection on the ground before her.
"Keep still!" She yells up to Tom who stops in place in the hay. Mina bends over and picks up the small object and holds it between her thumb and index finger tips, "I think I found the needle in the hay stack!"
"As fast as we can!" Nemo barks out to the navigator. The man pulls down on the lever of the golden circle with black letters in English labeling speeds and direction to cue the engineers below to start up the propellers. The motion jerks everyone on board forward before going backwards while the Nautilus sinks down to escape the harbor quickly without boats getting in the way.
"Where to captain?" The navigator asks with his hands on the steering wheel.
"We must get out of Royal national water-"
"-No!" Skinner yells unseen in the room with them, "What about Tom and Mina? They're in the deep end of horse manure right now and how about Henry? I know he got his pardon but, imagine abandoning the poor bugger.. he'd get depressed!."
"Your right Skinner," Nemo says as he pets his beard and rolled his eyes as if he could see the brightness Skinner felt at being right, "But don't let it get to your head!"
Skinner's devastating sigh echoes, "What if we go further up the river and find a way to get there minus the Nemo-mobile?" Skinner adds his inside joke on Nemo's automobiles.
"We will reach there ahead of the ministry!" Nemo says with a slight smile behind the beard.
The young maid sits nervously, intertwining her fingers on her lap and avoiding eye contact with Tom and Mina sitting across from her at the dinning room table. This was not a casual meal with friends, the space was put to use to interview those who serviced the manor at the time the illness cursed it.
"I am sorry to inform you that I am the only one of us left." The young woman with an Irish accent shifted her weight to one side of the chair and shifted her eyes back down to the ground. Mina and Tom glanced at each other and as if they could read each other's minds, they both picked up that the girl knew a lot more but was too scared to say anything. Mina, being a woman had a better understanding of the girl's emotions so spoke first,
"We're not going to force you to say anything you don't want to and nothing you tell us will go outside this room." Tom bit down on his top lip at Mina's last words which reminded him of a former situation he had been in.
"Agent Sawyer?" The deep voice of Jim West echoes inside Tom's room at the military hospital. Tom didn't answer, he just sat up in his bed staring down at his blanket that covered his legs.
"This is very critical, what has happen to you, and the surgery-"
"I never gave you or the other Jim permission to turn me in to a freak!" Tom was just pushing for a fight and West gave in.
"You were dying for Christ sake! Doctor Jim, Artemis and I... we had nothing to lose by taking this risk. After all Jim knew you as a child-"
"- there were other men in that explosion. Just because I'm an agent and a Doctor for the service was my aunt's slave shouldn't have given me leeway to be first!" Tom's guilt got to him and the agent that was so tough on the outside caved in to the hurt boy inside as he began to sob.
"You have time off to recuperate." This didn't grab Tom's attention as he curled up into a ball on the bed but West continued. "Huck volunteered to take your place over in Europe."
West took the black cow boy hat in his hands and placed it on his head before turning to leave the room as he heard Tom's rough voice, "Does Huck know?"
Jim West turn his head to look at Tom whose sobbing was disturbing, "No. No one but you, the three of us and the president."