The League of Seven (12 page)

“Hello, Archie Dent,” John said. “There's something in the basement I'd like you to see.”

“We don't have time,” Archie told him. “You have to help us. My parents, they're prisoners of Malacar Ahasherat, the Swarm Queen. You have to call the rest of the Septemberists.”

Uncle John stood. “Hello, Archie Dent. There's something in the basement I'd like you to see.”

Archie's skin grew cold as he realized what Uncle John was saying. It was the same thing the Septemberist council had told him, over and over again. He felt sick. Uncle John must have one of those bug things on him too. Archie took a step back.

“Hello, Archie Dent. There's something in the basement I'd like you to see,” John said again.

“Um, no thanks,” Archie said.

Hachi stepped behind Uncle John. “There's a bug on him, just like the rest.”

“There can't be,” Archie said. “We need him!”

Uncle John came around the desk toward Archie.

“Hello, Archie Dent. There's something in the basement I'd like you to see.”

“Okay,” Fergus said. “That's just creepy.”

“Uncle John, please. It's me. Archie. I need your help,” Archie said.

“Hello, Archie Dent. There's something in the basement I'd like you to see.”

Hachi jumped onto Uncle John's back and rode him to the ground.

“Don't hurt him! Don't hurt him!” Archie told her.

“I'm not going to hurt him. I'm going to get this bug off him. Help me hold him down.”

“Hello, Archie Dent. There's something in the basement I'd like you to see,” Uncle John said into the rug. Archie, Fergus, and Mr. Rivets held John still while Hachi slid her knife under the throbbing, bulbous insect on the back of his neck.

“Careful—taking it out's going to hurt him. He's going to scream and cry,” Archie told her.

“Has to be better than having this thing in him,” Hachi said through gritted teeth. The sucking insect
slurched
as she pried it out. Beneath her, John shuddered and screamed.

The bug wrapped its little legs around Hachi's dagger as she lifted it away, the tail sliding out inch by painful inch. Archie felt sick just looking at the thing, especially knowing there were two of them buried in his parents' necks.

The bug finally came free, and Uncle John screamed again and then went slack, sobbing into the rug. Hachi flipped the insect away and leaped on it, driving her dagger into it.
Pltttt
. It popped like a balloon, splattering everything around it with a filmy green pus.

“Uncle John?” Archie said. “Uncle John? It's me. Archie Dent. Can you understand me?”

“Archie?” John said, still blubbering. He kicked and thrashed. “No!… shouldn't be here. Go. Now. You have to run. Get away.”

“I can't. Uncle John, my parents are in trouble. They went to Florida. To Malacar Ahasherat's prison. She has them. They have bug things in their necks, just like you. Just like everybody here.”

Uncle John cried into the rug. “Run, Archie,” he said through his tears. “Please. Run. The basement. Everywhere. Bugs are everywhere. Can't—can't let them have you.”

Hachi hurried over to John's desk and started rifling through the drawers.

“What are you doing?” Archie asked her.

“He's useless. I'm trying to find who his other Septemberist contacts are.”

Fergus got up and went to help her. Archie stayed with Uncle John.

“Please, Uncle John. You're the only Septemberist I know. You have to help us.”

John shook his head, still weeping.

“Then tell me who to go to! Uncle John, my parents are in trouble!”

“Shouldn't be here…” John burbled. “Too soon. Not ready.”

“What do you mean too soon?” Archie asked. “What's not ready?”

“There's just a bunch of pages of nursery rhymes,” Hachi said, pulling papers out of a drawer.

“Wait, I've got something,” Fergus said. “Um, Archie? You better take a look at this.”

Fergus laid a scrapbook on the desk. It was filled with sepia-toned daguerreotypes and handwritten notes and letters.

All about Archie.

“What is this?” Archie asked.

“I found it in a hidden compartment in the bottom drawer,” Fergus said. “Had a spring mechanism that activated it. Simple, really. You just put a tension rod in the … But, you don't care about that right now, do you?”

No, Archie didn't care about the hidden compartment. All of his attention was focused on the book about him hidden in Uncle John's desk. Pictures of him as a baby, as a toddler. A picture of him from just last year, when John had visited. He hadn't even known a picture had been taken of him. And the papers—letters about his academic progress, graphs of his height and weight, charts plotting his reaction speeds and strength. When had all this been written?
Why
had all this been written?

“Uncle John, what is this? Why do you have a book about me in your desk?” Archie asked.

John just cried into the carpet.

“Mr. Rivets, why does Uncle John have a book about me?” Archie asked.

“I'm afraid I couldn't say, Master Archie,” the machine man told him.

Archie almost didn't hear it, almost didn't make the connection, but then it hit him like a blast of steam. “What did you say?” Archie asked.

“I said, ‘I'm afraid I couldn't say, Master Archie.'”

I'm afraid I couldn't say
. That was what Tik Toks said when they'd been ordered to keep a secret.

What did Mr. Rivets know that he wasn't telling him? “Mr. Rivets—”

“Archie!” Hachi said. More bugs like the one she had pulled off Uncle John's neck were squeezing their way under the door.

“Twisted pistons!” Fergus said, and he tried to climb up on top of the desk.

Hachi was already moving. She grabbed a small wooden step stool from the foot of a bookcase and flipped it over, using it like a mallet to flatten the things as they came.
Splurch. Splurch. Splurch. Splurch
. Mr. Rivets waded in among them too, stepping on as many as he could, but there were more of them than they could ever hope to kill.

“What do we do now? How do we get out?” Archie cried.

“Window!” Hachi said without turning around. Archie hadn't even noticed it, but there was one, right behind John's desk. He was as thick as clinker. He ran to it and yanked on it to open it, but the handle snapped off in his hand. He shook it, angry, like it was the handle's fault he was such a clacking klutz.

“I broke it! I can't open it!”

“Hang on, I can fix it!” Fergus said. He dug into the pouch on his belt for his tools.

Hachi gave the boys an exasperated huff and tossed the stool through the window, showering the fire escape outside with glass.

“Or we could do that,” said Fergus.

Archie ran for Uncle John as Hachi climbed out the window. The door splintered and cracked, and more smiling, enthralled people from the office began to push their way inside. The bugs were coming fast and furious now too, their back ends raised like scorpion tails.

“Hello, Archie Dent. There's something in the basement I'd like you to see,” the woman from the copy machine said. The people behind her started saying the same thing, over and over again.

“Archie! Leave him! We have to go!” Hachi called from the window.

“No!” he said. “He's a Septemberist!” He picked up Uncle John's arm and pulled, but bugs already covered John's feet and were scurrying up his legs.

“Everywhere. Everywhere!” he blubbered. “Shouldn't be here, Archie … Too soon … Too soon!”

“Help me!” Archie cried. The bugs were already up to Uncle John's chest.

“Mr. Rivets! Bring Archie!” Hachi called.

Archie felt Mr. Rivets' metal hands snatch him up just before the bugs got to Uncle John's hands. Uncle John jerked and screamed as the bugs covered him, and Archie saw one of them settle onto John's neck and slide its long tail down into his spine. John Douglas suddenly stopped thrashing and crying. He stood and came after Archie like the rest of the smiling people.

“Hello, Archie Dent,” Uncle John said. “There's something in the basement I'd like you to see.”

“No—no!” Archie said, squirming in Mr. Rivets' arms. “You're not supposed to take orders from Hachi! You're
my
machine man!”

“And I should like to remain so, Master Archie,” Mr. Rivets said. “But that will require our immediate departure.”

“No! Noooo!” Archie cried, but there were so many of them. Crawling up the walls, covering the floor and ceiling.

Mr. Rivets handed him through to Hachi and Fergus, and together they hurried down to the alley below where Archie ran, slag his cowardly hide. He ran as fast and as far away as he could.

 

12

“We need rayguns,” Hachi said. “Big ones.”

“Aye,” said Fergus. “We'll need coffins too, we go back down to Florida to fight that beastie. I've always fancied a brass one myself. With a tartan blanket inside. Maybe a clockwork tombstone too, like those ones where the planets circle around.”

“An orrery, sir,” Mr. Rivets said. “That is the device to which you refer.”

“Aye. An orrery. Lovely piece of mechanics. Bring a tear to me mum's eye when she comes to visit me
in my grave,”
he said, emphasizing that last bit for Hachi. She voted for gearing up and going back to Florida, of course. Fergus voted for—well, Archie couldn't tell
what
he was in favor of, besides not dying.

Archie hadn't said a word since they'd dragged him out of the print shop office. To leave Uncle John there like that … And why did Uncle John have a scrapbook filled with pictures and graphs and notes about Archie? He flipped through the pages as they sat on a bench in Central Park, trying to figure out their next move. Every year of Archie's life was in this book, every accomplishment, every milestone. He looked back on Uncle John's regular visits now with new eyes. Tossing a lacrosse ball in the yard with Uncle John—that must have been a test of his coordination. Asking Archie to carry his luggage to his room—a test of his strength. The parlor games they played after dinner—a test of his intelligence? But why? Why did Uncle John care? And was it just he who cared, or was he watching Archie for the Septemberists?

Mr. Rivets knew. Mr. Rivets, who Archie thought had never kept a secret from Archie in his life, who was Archie's tutor, his guardian, his best friend. Mr. Rivets knew why Uncle John kept a scrapbook of Archie in his desk and visited twice a year for checkups—for Archie realized now that's what they were. “I'm afraid I couldn't say, Master Archie.” That's what machine men said when someone had ordered them to keep a secret. Mr. Rivets knew what the scrapbook meant, but someone had told him not to tell.

Which meant, Archie suddenly realized, that his parents knew too. They were the only ones who could give Mr. Rivets the order not to say anything.

“What do you say, Archie?” Hachi asked.

“What?”

“What do you say to going to find this other Septemberist contact Mr. Rivets knows?” Fergus said.

“Mr. Rivets says he's got rayguns. Lots of them,” said Hachi.

Archie had missed part of the conversation. “You know another Septemberist, Mr. Rivets? Here in New Rome?” Mr. Rivets suddenly seemed to know a lot of Septemberist secrets that Archie didn't.

“Not here, sir, no. He is ensconced in a hidden facility some miles north, as the airship flies. And if he has been …
compromised
the way Mr. Douglas and your parents have been, the trip may prove a waste of time.”

“Aye,” Fergus said. “And get us killed to boot. Or taken over by those little clinkers.”

“There is that concern too, sir,” Mr. Rivets said. “Instead of flying there directly, I suggest we send a dispatch by pneumatic post. If his response is anything other than a sunny salutation and an invitation to the basement, we may assume that he has not yet been placed in the thrall of the Manglespawn in the catacombs, and thus seek his help in person with all due haste.”

“And he's the only other Septemberist contact you've got?” Hachi asked.

“I'm afraid so, miss,” said Mr. Rivets.

Archie knew Mr. Rivets couldn't lie, but he still found himself doubting everything his old friend said now.

“You guys should have a member directory, with addresses and everything,” Fergus said.

“A written directory would not do well for a secret society, sir.”

“Nae, I guess not,” said Fergus.

“All right. The post office then,” said Hachi. “What's the closest branch, Mr. Rivets?”

Mr. Rivets clicked and whirred as he accessed his New Rome and Surrounding Areas Visitors Guide card.