The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

FOURTY EIGHT M's Fortress

After the armored colossus was defeated, Dante shouted for the rest of his fleeing cadre to turn around and redouble their attack against Mr. Hyde. "Use your bare hands if you have to! Would you rather face the Fantom?"

Many of the men clearly would, but they hesitated and came back. Then, gathering courage, they swept together, yelling as they charged forward in a concentrated offensive against the brutish man.

Now straining with the effort, Hyde protected the surviving Nautilus crewmen as best he could, using the battered iron shield to deflect a few frantic potshots. "Go find Nemo," he roared, and the crewmen ran to aid their captain in freeing the hostage scientists.

M's henchmen careened forward, stupidly attempting hand-to-hand combat with their monstrous opponent, but Hyde was brutal. He had no patience for the squirming annoyances that raced toward him.

Now that he no longer needed to protect the crewmen, he met their foolish charge by stomping forward and swinging the iron door like a ton-weight cricket bat.

He swatted away the first wave of henchmen, sending them flying like rag dolls over the mezzanines edge and down into the ruined lab area.

Nemo had gathered the terrified hostage scientists and pushed them out the barred laboratory door, where they were met by his surviving crewmen. Behind him, Hyde's victims crashed spectacularly into the shattered glassware, destroying the last few scientific implements that had survived Nemos battle with the guards.

Hyde hurled the metal door in front of him, crushing two of his henchmen, then stalked toward the remaining few. His heavy feet trod on the fallen iron plate, under which the dying henchmen stopped squirming and started oozing. When he reached the last scrambling henchmen, his punches and blows sent battered victims flying in every direction.

Finally he faced Dante: the final man standing.

Seeing his doom approach, the Fantom's lieutenant scrambled backward, trying to find shelter as Hyde stormed in for the killing blow. Dante fumbled in his pockets, frantically searching… He found it: an unbroken vial of Jekyll's potion, which he had kept for himself from the leather satchel he'd delivered to M. It was a desperate chance.

With Hyde's swollen form looming over him, Dante pried off the stopper and gulped down all the liquid.

"God, no!" Hyde howled, realizing what the man had done. "Not the whole thing!" Not even Jekyll in his weakest moments had ever consumed so much of the elixir at once.

Too late. Dante glared hatefully at him and wiped the last drops from his lips. Suddenly he writhed and screamed as the transfigurative chemical took hold.

A jet of curling flame rolled down the hall toward him, and Tom Sawyer dove headlong into the parchment room. He sprawled on the floor among rolled parchments and documents that Sanderson Reed had knocked from the shelves. But hundreds of ancient — and flammable — documents remained stored in the chamber.

The towering flamethrower man clanked to the doorway and raised a reinforced metal arm. With a whoosh, he unleashed another flood of incinerating fire, blasting the whole room while Sawyer scrambled for cover. A wall of parchments caught instantaneously.

Like a cornered river rat, Sawyer cast around for an escape route, but fireballs cut him off in every direction. The ironclad colossus closed in on him, raising the flame-throwing arm again.

From inside the armored walker suit, the voice of the Fantoms' man sounded surprisingly thin and small. "You left your luck on the doorstep, boy."

Sawyer found himself trapped in a corner with nowhere left to go. The flamethrower man loomed through the burgeoning smoke and took aim with his jet arm. Just as he shot a spurt of flames, something knocked the reinforced arm aside, and the fiery blast went wide.

The walking ironclad roared in confusion, and his fire jet petered out after incinerating a wall of empty shelves. Sawyer opened his eyes and saw the armored titan struggling with an invisible assailant. A long knife protruded from between the walkers iron plates, shoved deep to reach the man's vulnerable organs. Rising smoke delineated the outline of the newcomer.

"Skinner!" Sawyer cried. "The real one this time, I hope."

"I thought you Yanks were supposed to be the cavalry," Skinner said. A grin was barely visible on his smoke-stained face.

The wounded flamethrower man spun his armored body and knocked Skinner aside with an ironclad arm. He turned his fiery nozzle in the direction of his unexpected opponent and blasted at the invisible man, who skittered away.

Skinner didn't move quickly enough, and the leading edge of fire scorched him. Large areas of his transparent skin were burned visible: a patch of his back and part of one buttock, now bubbling and blistered. He yowled and cursed in a drawn-out, incomprehensible wail.

Tom Sawyer acted without thinking. He grabbed a piece of shattered shelving and charged the armored flamethrower man from behind, rammed into him, and knocked him spinning. He whacked against the tank on the ironclads back until he pierced the fuel reservoir. Sparks flying from the inferno in the room caught the flammable liquid and ignited the tank, causing it to spew fire like a Catherine wheel.

Sawyer rushed to where Skinner lay on the floor, burned and suffering. "Are you hurt bad?"

"Oh, no, it's really quite pleasant," the invisible man said sarcastically. "I can't wait to do it again."

Then Sawyer froze as another knife blade was suddenly pressed against his throat, drawing him up. He lifted his chin and swallowed hard.

It was Reed, still semivisible from the smeared ink powder. "You know what they say, Yank. Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer."