from the office. 'Show me what?'
Out in the bright sunlight, Dex, Polly, and Sky Captain stood at the entrance of one of the Legion's warehouses. After fumbling in his pocket, Dex produced a ring heavy with jingling keys. Though he had dozens to choose from, the younger man selected the proper key without pause, opened a padlock securing the warehouse, and slid open the tall corrugated door.
'Here we are, Polly. Wait till you see this.' Dex flipped a switch, and the room lights shone down upon row after row of incredible scientific artifacts. 'I always told Cap we should open a museum or something.'
The warehouse held a bizarre collection of mechanical oddities: giant burrowing machines with tractor treads and jagged conical prows, clunkier models similar to the robot giants that had just attacked New York City, coffin-sized glass cylinders holding electrical creatures that swirled about like lighting in a bottle, flying contraptions that defied description.
Polly's jaw dropped. 'My God, what is this? Where did they all come from? Dex, did you — '
The younger man blushed. 'Oh, no, Polly. Even I don't have enough imagination to create designs like these.'
She'd been following the exploits of Sky Captain and the Flying Legion for years now, and she knew most of the enemies they had fought. She remembered their battles with the Fossil: a man who, after injecting himself with Tyrannosaurus blood extracted from amber, was converted into an atavistic creature determined to bring back dinosaur rule. The Flying Legion had been severely damaged by the Fossil's pteranodon-style flying war vehicles.
And then there was the Lensmaster, who had used meteorite glass in a viewing scope that let him see into another, sidewise universe. The Lensmaster could step around the fabric of space, past the tightest security, to assassinate world leaders. When Sky Captain had finally cornered him, the Lensmaster fled through his scope and stumbled into an impossible dimension where he remained lost to this day…
None of the contraptions, though, looked familiar to Polly.
'They started appearing three years ago — an invasion of innovative robotic designs, all of them obviously created by the same design team,' Dex said. 'We've managed to keep it secret until now.'
Sky Captain didn't have much to say as Polly followed the two men down the center aisle of the warehouse. Every step revealed something new and incredible.
Dex continued. 'These machines showed up without warning, took what they wanted, and disappeared without a trace. Just like the recent attacks.' He sighed. 'Three years, and we still can't explain what they want or who sent them here.'
He led Polly past a row of damaged machines, then stopped at a fearsome-looking mechanical crab. 'We found this one outside Buenos Aires on May fourth.' He gestured to a machine that looked like a manta-ray hovercraft with dangling steel cables, each of which ended in hooklike pincers. 'This one crashed fifteen miles from Vienna on June thirteenth.'
'June thirteenth?' Polly's brow furrowed as thoughts began to click together.
'And this one came down in — '
'Hong Kong, right?' Polly was excited.
Sky Captain stopped short. 'That's right. What aren't you telling us, Polly?'
'And it was July eighth,' she said, 'in the evening.'
'How do you know this?' Sky Captain demanded.
Polly did her best to look down her nose at him. 'If you'd read the Chronicle, Joe, you might have followed the stories I've written. Those are the same cities where the scientists disappeared, and on the same dates. It can't be a coincidence.'
Dex shook his head. 'Shazam! Not a chance, Cap. Can't be a coincidence.'
Sky Captain leaned closer, tired of games. 'What else do you know?'
In answer, Polly approached one of the stored machines. 'If I'm right…' With her hand, she brushed off a layer of grime and dust to reveal an ominous, familiar crest in the form of an iron skull with metal wings. Her tone grew serious. 'Dr. Vargas was the sixth scientist to vanish mysteriously. Then a man — another scientist — sent me a message and arranged to meet me at Radio City Music Hall today. He was terrified, said someone was coming for him. I asked him who he was so afraid of, and he repeated one name. Totenkopf! He nearly went white when he said it.'
'Totenkopf? Who is he?' Dex peered closely at the malicious-looking skull.
Polly withdrew a German newspaper article from her bag. 'Apparently, he's the invisible man. I went through every record in the library twice, looking for anything. Called every contact I have from Paris to Bangkok. This was all I could dig up.'
She spread the article on a flat surface of the deactivated machine. A grainy old photograph showed a group of seven men in lab coats surrounded by complex but unrecognizable apparatus. 'Herr Totenkopf ran some kind of secret sciences laboratory stationed in Berlin before the start of the Great War. Something called Einheit Elf or Unit Eleven.'
Despite his annoyance with her, Sky Captain looked closely at the article, scanning the young faces of the Unit Eleven scientists. None of them looked familiar to him. He didn't want to admit that he couldn't read the German text of the newspaper clipping.
'Nobody really knows what Unit Eleven was doing,' Polly explained, 'but there were rumors that they were conducting inhuman surgical trials on prisoners, and the facility was ordered shut down. Totenkopf disappeared with his research. There's still an international warrant for his capture. It's been more than thirty years since anyone's spoken his name, until today.'
'After all that time, what makes you think it's him?' Sky Captain asked.
She pointed to a small inset photograph in the newspaper. 'Note the insignia he chose for the unit.'
He could barely make out an iron skull with metal wings. 'The scientist who came to see you… where is he now?'
Polly looked at Sky Captain, a coy smile on her face. She dangled her information in front of him like a carrot on a stick. 'So we're in this together… right, Joe?'
He stared her down, first scowling, then frowning in resignation as he knew she'd beaten him. 'Polly, none of this gets published until I say so. You don't write a sentence or take a picture without asking me first. Understood?'
She nodded with solemn agreement. 'Understood.'
When he wasn't looking, Polly shifted the small camera under her arm. She stealthily snapped a picture of one of the giant machines in the museum warehouse.
9
An Important Address. An Intruder in the Laboratory. A Dire Warning
That afternoon, Polly's black Packard sped down a rain-soaked New York street, but it wasn't clear that she knew where she was going. Sky Captain sat sullenly next to her, staring straight ahead as she drove. He would have felt safer in the cockpit of his Warhawk, where at least he could have his hands on the controls.
When he sensed Polly starting to smile at him, he grew annoyed. He refused to look anywhere but through the wet windshield at the street. Finally, exasperated with the waiting, he said, 'What?'
'I missed you, Joe.' When he turned to look at her in surprise, she said, 'Thanks for saving my life during the robot attack, by the way. If it wasn't for you, I would have ended up as a smear on the bottom of a big mechanical boot.'
'Oh? Were you down there?' Sky Captain turned to the side and concentrated on counting brownstone doorways, lampposts, traffic lights — anything to maintain his feigned uninterest. 'I didn't notice.'
Polly continued to smile, not buying it. 'I see you missed me, too. How nice.'
'Mind the road.' He leaned closer to the rain-streaked windshield, trying to see where they were going.
