Kevin Anderson - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Suddenly the monstrously muscled Hyde winced as if he had swallowed acid. The pain immediately escalated, rippling through his chest and shoulders. "You call it a parlor trick?" He gasped for breath, his throat convulsing. "Wait until you see my next one." Hyde clutched his stomach and doubled over. "Abracadabra."

He thrashed against his remaining chains, screaming and howling as his hairy body distorted. His muscles contracted, his skin tightened, tissues distended. Bones cracked and reshaped as his body transformed.

He slammed against the chamber wall, back and forth, shrieking and howling, agonized as the metamorphosis wracked his body. The band around his neck snapped clean off, and he broke the remaining shackle on his left wrist. But escape was the last thing on his mind at the moment.

Hyde fell to the floor, still flailing in his fearsome seizure. None of the others approached him, wary for their lives.

Little by little Edward Hyde shrank into a smaller person. His coarse, unruly hair and thick black nails receded until finally, the beast was entirely gone. Another man lay there on the deck, awash in the monster's sour sweat.

"At least he fits those clothes better now," the invisible man pointed out, unhelpfully.

Shaking with weakness and personal misery, the scrawny stranger arose, blinking his nervous, saucer-wide eyes. He was a slight man who easily slipped his entire hand out of Hyde's wrist shackles, leaving the torn chains on the floor. His ashen face reflected his ordeal. His large Adam's apple bobbed up and down as he gulped.

"Henry Jekyll, at your service. And I would very much like to earn my pardon and return to London." He swallowed hard. "May I have a glass of water, please?"

"So the League is set," Quatermain said when the seven members gathered later inside the plush parlor of the submarine boat. Nemo had offered them all yellowish homemade cigars fashioned from a rare nicotine-containing seaweed. Quatermain drew a long puff, expecting to dislike the cigar, but found it rather pleasant. "Now we can finally be about our work."

Hearing a chatter of machinery, Nemo went to tear an incoming ticker tape from a wall unit. He skimmed down the punched words. "And so is the time and precise location for the conference. We have three days."

"Three days to get all the way to Italy? Goodness!" said Tom Sawyer. "Can this canoe do it?"

"Do not underestimate the Nautilus ." Nemo went to stare out at the swirling undersea view. The ship cut through the waters at incredible speed, her long, lean lines demonstrating the accuracy of her nickname, Sword of the Ocean.

The League gathered in the amazing vessel's conning tower as the submarine boat cruised the surface of the Atlantic off the coast of Portugal. A white wake curled from the bow as the beautifully ornamented vessel glided ahead. The salty air was as refreshing as the bright daylight.

"This is a whole lot different from riding a paddle-boat," Tom Sawyer said.

Beside him, the famous hunter cleaned his big elephant gun in silence. Sawyer watched him, unable to keep silent. "So, you named your gun, Mr. Quatermain?"

"Matilda."

"Who's Matilda?" The young agent seemed eager for conversation. "Somebody special?"

"My gun." The old hunter sighted the gun out to sea, past where Mina Harker and Dorian Gray stood together on the far side of the Nautilus's deck.

Gray smiled curiously as he looked at the woman in her formal blue dress, white scarf, and long gloves, all of which were certainly inappropriate for standing outside on the open deck of a submarine vessel racing across the water. He had witnessed the terrible changes in her, knew the demonic creature that lurked half-hidden beneath her perfect exterior. Just like himself. He edged closer. "Mina — rediscovering you… Ah, the mullahs of Arabia would call it kismet."

Mina did not find the moment quite so magical. "Don't get any ideas, Dorian. Our past is just and only that."

"Did I hurt you so?" His thin patrician lips formed a pained expression, which had no effect on the pale, beautiful woman.

"Don't flatter yourself. Until M mentioned your name, I'd all but forgotten you existed." She sniffed. "You were always strange, Dorian. Until the incident in your library, watching you riddled with bullets and remaining completely unaffected… I just didn't realize how strange."

"Strange? I prefer 'timeless."

"At least your appearance finally makes sense to me. Quatermam knew you as a grown man when he was just a boy? Even before, when we were together, I wasn't naive enough to think that your 'youth' was due to clean living. You haven't aged a day."

"Its an overrated practice. And you yourself don't appear a moment older."

"I have an excuse."

"So do I."

As she turned away from Gray and started toward the conning tower's hatch, Sawyer watched the beautiful woman with obvious admiration.

Quatermain continued to study his elephant gun, gazing through the sight and never taking his eyes away, but still he sensed Sawyers fascination with Mina Harker. "She's out of your league, boy."

With good-natured American cockiness, Sawyer said, "Fortune rewards the bold, Mr. Quatermain." He stepped forward with his disarming grin, intending to be a gentleman and open the hatch for Mina. "If you require any help during the voyage, Mrs. Harker, let me know."

Mina let him work the heavy hatch. "Help? I'm curious as to how you think you could assist me, Agent Sawyer."

The young man struggled with the wheel, still grinning. "Oh, heavy lifting. Light banter. Whatever you need. I'm a useful guy."

"Not to me," Mina said as he finally hauled open the hatch. "You're sweet and young, Mr. Sawyer. Neither of which are traits I hold in high regard."

Sawyer managed to keep a straight face as Mina descended into the confues of the Nautilus . "Well, you're sure to the point, Ma'am. I'll give you that."

Gray followed a moment later with a smug smirk, enjoying a moment of amusement at the young agent's expense. Sawyer stayed outside on the upper deck, not sure what to do next.

As he stared across the open, peaceful waves, Captain Nemo received a message from Ishmael. He called to the others still on the conning tower. "We will be diving in a moment. Please come back inside."

"Good," said Sawyer, humiliated. He glanced back at Quatermain, who remained farthest from the hatchway.

Their eyes locked as the old hunter cracked open the gun and ejected shells.

Only a few minutes later, the Nautilus dove beneath the waves, slowly descending like a leviathan. Turbines churned, propellers cut the water, and a great belch of ballast bubbles boiled upward.

The golden statues on the conning tower and the bow stood against the brine, as if resisting the depths to the last moment, and then they too sank deep beneath the waves.

Nemo sat in his scrolled captains chair, using nautical logs of his own design to plot their best course to the northeastern coast of Italy. Lead scribing pencils and protractors lay spread out on the chart table.

Outside, schools of silver fish swirled about, attracted by the submarines dazzling running lights, but fleeing from the swift approach of the armor-plated vessel.

So far they had traveled down the Thames and out of London, across the English Channel and along the French coast to the Seine, which they had followed to Paris. They had navigated back out to the Atlantic, keeping to the deep waters around the Iberian Peninsula, and passed through the Strait of Gibraltar into the calm, blue Mediterranean on their way to Italy.

Not bad for little more than a day's sailing.