The Age Atomic es-2

by Adam Christopher

  Rad and Kane exchanged a look.

  “Seems like you’ve been doing that already,” said Rad. The King smiled sweetly but his attention was on the robot in the other machine.

  “Look, your majesty, we’ve got a problem here. You gotta see it from our point of view. You’ve locked us up, and one of us has gone missing. It all worries me just a little. You got robots outside, you got quite the setup in here, and all the while the Empire State — the whole damn city — is dying. Turning the Ironclad crews back into people is a fine endeavor, don’t get me wrong, and maybe if we can work this out then the Empire State can help you out with that. But all this isn’t going to mean a damn when we’re solid blocks of ice.”

  The King looked up. Rad ran a finger around the collar of his shirt. The King must have been cooking inside his blue velvet suit, but the skin of his face was pale and dry.

  “Unless,” said Rad, lowering himself back onto the stool, “you turn everyone into a robot. Then the cold won’t matter. I really hope I’ve got you wrong on that, your majesty.”

  The King pursed his lips. He let go of the robot’s head and turned towards the other door, that one that was hot, the one that led deeper into the theater.

  “It’s time to show you something, Mr Bradley. Come.”

  Rad had braced himself for more heat, but the corridor beyond the green door was cooler than the workshop. Rad began to roll the sleeves of his shirt back down.

  “I’m afraid to say that the winter of the Empire State is my doing,” said the King, without pausing in his march down the corridor. Rad stopped, one shirtsleeve rolled, the other halfway done. He stood, frozen in the corridor, thinking about the heat and about Kane and about the fact that he hadn’t been to the bathroom in a while and kinda needed to go, and whether or not the King had really said what he thought.

  “Excuse me?”

  The King stopped ahead, at another door — one in heavy blackish metal, reinforced with bars — and turned on his heel.

  “Mr Fortuna is important, detective.”

  “Ah, well, yeah, he is. I’m sorry, I-”

  “No, detective. Kane is important to everything. To you, to me, to the city, to the Empire State, and to New York. He is integral.”

  Rad sniffed. “That a fact?”

  “It is a fact, yes,” said the King. “And to save him, I had to make a choice — the city, or the man. And it had to be the man, of course.”

  “Of course.” Rad vaguely remembered the old saying that a madman should be humored, and he wondered whether this was actually wise advice. He was alone with the King, who was both older and smaller than him. The King’s robotic servant hadn’t followed them and, Rad thought, maybe there was a chance the workshop door was still open. So really, all he had to do was stick his fist in the King’s face and hightail it back down the corridor, flip the lid on Kane’s machine, and they’d be gone.

  Assuming the King was lying about Kane, of course. Assuming Jennifer was still alive, somewhere. What Rad really hoped was that Special Agent Jones had gotten out and was heading back now, even as he and King walked down the underground passage, bringing with her that army of agents he knew the Empire State Building had at its disposal.

  If only Carson were here.

  Rad coughed. If only a lot of things.

  “So to save Kane Fortuna, I created my masterpiece, my piece de resistance.”

  The King extracted a set of keys on a large black ring from the pocket of his jacket and unlocked the door. Beyond was a light, white and blue, that waxed and waned and seemed to lick at the air like smoke and flame. A light that made Rad’s head hurt, that started up a buzzing, a vibration behind his eyeballs.

  Rad very much wanted a drink now. Something strong, like the kind of drink he and Kane used to share in Jerry’s speakeasy, back when the Empire State was a very small place and they didn’t think too hard about the world in case the Empire State pushed back.

  “The Fissure has not gone, detective. In fact, you’ve been talking to it for hours.”

  Rad frowned. The King was talking in riddles.

  “Kane Fortuna fell through the Fissure while it was unstable. He fell, and it became attached to him, tethered, like the Empire State was tethered to New York. He fell, and like elastic, the Fissure pulled him back. When he returned, the tether — the elastic — snapped. Kane is like a magnet, drawing the energy of the Fissure into him. He is the Fissure now. He and it are inseparable — the tether no long connects the Pocket to the Origin, it connects Kane to himself.

  “I saw him fall into the city like a shooting star, hot and blue. Had I not found him, detective, not contained the power, the Fissure — the power within him — would have destroyed the Pocket entirely. But I got to him quickly, the fallen star burning in an alleyway, the energy consuming him, on the brink of implosion. That is why he cannot leave the machine, detective.”

  Rad shook his head. “The machine — the box — is containing the power?”

  The King nodded, and gestured to the white and blue light that filled the doorway.

  “Not only that,” he said. “After you, Rad Bradley.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Black and white and blue and white and her eyes burning blue they are blue her eyes are blue cold blue the light at the end of the

  Marching. The machines are marching. Silver stiff as toys silver and tall like men. Marching marching marching the red light spins and spins. Counting down down the machines count down and then

  She is there. She stands in the darkness, she is the darkness. She spreads her arms and her army marches through the fog through the blue light the blue light her eyes are blue they are cold and blue and she left the world and was dragged back from

  She is looking. She is looking at me. She is looking at me but she can’t see me and she is falling falling falling falling falling falling

  Run.

  They are coming. They are marching. The atomic army marches.

  Run.

  Her.

  She will destroy all to destroy herself.

  It is written.

  Run.

  She is coming for me and

  Kane woke with a start, his throat tight. He’d screamed; after who knew how many days and nights of this, he recognized the signs now — he couldn’t touch his face but his skin felt cold and wet, and his neck was sore, as were the muscles that bunched at the back of his jaw. When he licked his lips he tasted the residue of the medicine and something else, something metallic. Blood. He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth and instantly found the wound in his cheek. He’d bitten it as he slept. He often did.

  But his throat was dry. He tried to clear it, but it felt like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together, and his larynx rattled and rasped. If he’d screamed, like he thought he had, it wouldn’t have been too loud.

  He craned his neck, but the machine he was in was so large he couldn’t see much. There was no mirror, not like on an iron lung, so all he could do was look at the ceiling, or at a stretch of wall behind him, upside down. When he tried that he could feel himself moving inside the machine.

  Kane flexed his fingers, and they seemed to work, although he wasn’t sure whether it was his imagination, a muscle memory echo of where he thought his hands should be. Maybe there was nothing left. Maybe he was just a head on a box. Maybe it would have been better if he’d fallen into the gap between universes and not returned.

  Kane sniffed, and took a deep breath, then let it out. No, he was all there, he was sure of it. He could breathe, and breathe normally, under his own control. Whatever the machine was doing, it wasn’t controlling this basic function. Just to prove the point, he held his breath, held it until it became uncomfortable, then a little more. Then he released it, gulping air as his throat burned. But that was good. And if he could breathe and feel his lungs and feel the walls of his ribcage move, then maybe when he flexed his fingers, his toes, then maybe the rest of him was OK too.

 
Kane closed his eyes, and maybe he slept. The next thing he was aware of was a click. He opened his eyes and rolled his head to his right, where he saw the King’s robot manservant standing over the other machine. It was holding the head of the robot in the other machine — no, it was stroking the metal cheek of the other robot with one hand.

  Kane licked his lips. He wasn’t sure whether he was awake or asleep. He wiggled his toes again, and tried to remember if he’d been able to do that before, and whether that meant anything at all.

  “Rest easy.” The Corsair’s voice was quiet, a whisper. It was male, and very human, muffled slightly beneath the metal face.

  Kane gulped, painfully. He’d never heard the Corsair speak before; he had assumed it didn’t.

  The robot lying in the other machine twitched, and the head moved slightly as the leather-covered hands of the Corsair continued to stroke its face. And there was a sound, a sigh, an exhalation from the robot in the machine, from the horizontal slot that formed the mouth.

  “Shhhhh,” said the Corsair. The robot’s head twitched again and there was something else, a voice, a whisper behind the metal that Kane couldn’t hear. The Corsair leaned over his charge, like it was listening carefully to the faint words. Then it stood straight, and hushed the robot again, and turned around.

  Kane closed his eyes, hoping he was quick enough that the Corsair hadn’t seen him watching what he felt, strangely, was a private moment. He tried to remember how long the other machine had been occupied, and realized the robot lying within it had appeared soon after Rad arrived.

  Kane felt the sweat trickle over his eyelids, and he felt his forehead twitch. There was a gentle sound of glass on glass, and Kane risked a peek. Between narrow lids he saw the Corsair preparing the second bottle of medicine, dipping the long pipette into the bottle, drawing it up, then turning back to the other robot. As Kane watched, it carefully inserted the narrow glass tube into the slot mouth, and squeezed, emptying the dropper.

  The robot in the machine jerked once, twice, as it coughed and gasped. Its head turned, suddenly facing Kane.

  Through the mouth slot, Kane saw human lips, delicate and dry, maybe female. They moved, and the tip of a tongue stained pale green poked out as it tried to moisten the lips.

  Kane coughed in surprise. He rolled his head back to stare at the ceiling as the Corsair, apparently startled, moved to loom over him, bending down low so the flat metal face was right over his.

  Kane fought against unconsciousness, but it was no use. And maybe he was asleep already, and this was all a dream, like the flexing of his fingers and the visit from his old friend Rad and the dead woman with the blue eyes. The green medicine.

  Green, like the pair of human eyes staring into his own from behind the flipped-up goggles of the Corsair’s mask.

  Kane cried out in surprise, and then the darkness claimed him once more.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The room was a basement or cellar, much like any Rad had ever seen. He’d stood in quite a few, he reflected, as they were places associated with bad deeds, where last stands were stood, where bodies were hidden, where victims and suspects and the innocent alike hid when above them was danger and chaos and violence.

  Rad blinked as his eyes adjusted to the brightness. The glow, blue and white and alive, was coming from what looked like a furnace or boiler. Set against the far wall, it was large and square, taller than Rad, with a fat black chimney that vanished into the ceiling. There were gauges and dials and controls, a couple of large wheels and several smaller ones. It was industrial, but nothing out of the ordinary.

  Except for the light. The furnace had a door, convex and square, with a large sprung handle, horizontal across the front, that was almost the size of Rad’s forearm. The door had a window, and through the window shone the light.

  Rad felt ill, partly because of the effects of the unusual light — an effect he hadn’t experienced in more than a year, a sensation long forgotten but suddenly, instantly familiar the second he was exposed to the source — and partly due to the realization that the King was telling the truth about the Fissure. And if that was the case, then chances were he was telling the truth about the rest of it. Where this left the mysterious disappearance of Special Agent Jennifer Jones — a woman the King now claimed never to have met — Rad wasn’t sure, but he was sure the conversation was about to come around to that topic.

  “What the hell have you done?” asked Rad, raising his arm in front of his face as he approached the furnace. The heat from the window was intense but just bearable — like sitting too close to an open fire — even though the door was closed. Rad didn’t remember any heat from the Fissure when it had been in situ down in the Battery, but things were clearly different here. “I thought you said the Fissure was inside Kane.”

  The King nodded. “He is the Fissure now, at least part of him. With Mr Fortuna in the machine out there,” he said, pointing in the direction of the workshop, “I can channel the power of the Fissure in here, allowing me all the energy I need for my work.”

  Rad shook his head. “What about the city?” he said. He waved at the walls of the basement, indicating everything, the totality of the pocket dimension. “Without the Fissure we’re all dead — the city needs the energy. The whole place is breaking up. You must know that.”

  As if to emphasize Rad’s point, the floor shook and the pipes on the furnace rattled. The tremors were certainly stronger here, in the north.

  The King stuffed his hands into his pockets and smiled.

  “We will survive,” he said.

  “Robots, isn’t it?” Rad took a step closer. “You’re going to turn everyone into robots. Then it won’t matter how cold it gets.”

  “You misunderstand, Mr Bradley. There is a greater danger approaching the city. One that will destroy us, if we do not act.”

  “Greater danger than freezing up or shaking to pieces?”

  “Kane has a unique perspective. His connection to the Fissure allows him to… see things. The future, perhaps.”

  Rad thought back to Kane’s feverish dream. He also thought back to the green liquid he was being fed. “You sure your drugs aren’t making him hallucinate?”

  The King laughed, the sound explosive. “Kane has seen them coming. Don’t you get it, detective? He can see the future, and the future is nothing but an army marching towards us. An army of machines, of atomic soldiers.”

  Rad scratched his head. The King sounded delusional, paranoid — if it wasn’t for the fact he’d heard Kane talking in his sleep. “A machine army? You mean robots, right?”

  The King tapped Rad on the lapel. “Got it in one.” He was still smiling, like Kane’s apocalyptic vision was nothing at all. Rad frowned.

  “Robots from where?”

  The King stepped up to the furnace, and almost pressed his face up to the glass of the door. It must have been terribly hot, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Where do you think, detective?”

  “New York?” Rad’s eyes widened. The robots hidden in the warehouse, and the King’s little enterprise suddenly made sense. “You mean to tell me a robot army is on the way here, and you’re building your own to defend the city? Based on something Kane saw in a dream?”

  The King was staring into the window of the furnace. He didn’t answer.

  Rad took a step forward. “Ah… hello?” The King didn’t move. Rad sighed and weighed his options. He paced the small room, processing this new information. Finally he came to a decision. He walked up to the King and addressed his back. “You going to let us go?”

  The King said nothing.

  “You going to tell me where Jennifer Jones is?”

  Nothing. The King was stationary, staring at the door of the furnace. Rad leaned over, looking at the King’s face, and saw it was frozen, the man staring blankly into the blue light.

  “Hey, anyone home?” Rad reached out to nudge the King’s shoulder, but somehow he didn’t want to risk it. The man wasn’t even bli
nking.

  A cry echoed from elsewhere, back down the corridor.

  Kane.

  Rad swore under his breath.

  “Play your games, your majesty, whatever the hell you like. We’re out of here.”

  He turned to leave and felt a hand on his shoulder. He pulled against it, then cried out in pain as the King’s fingers bit into his collarbone through the thin fabric of his shirt. Rad instinctively dropped, trying to ease the pressure and slide out from under the King’s hand, but the King was faster. His other hand grabbed Rad’s upper arm and pulled him around.

  Rad’s feet were yanked out from under him as the King — a man half his size and twice his age — threw Rad halfway across the basement. Rad hit a stack of packing crates, splitting the wood and spilling the straw from within, but he recovered quickly and rolled to one side, ignoring the pain in his back from where he’d landed on the gun tucked into his waistband. Pulling himself to his feet, he swung around, fists raised, years of experience automatically preparing him for a brawl.

  “What in the hell?” Rad shook his head. The King walked towards him, slowly, calmly, his hands in the pockets of his blue velvet suit, like he’d never laid a finger on Rad.

  “You cannot leave, Rad Bradley. Kane Fortuna is important. Kane Fortuna is the key.”

  Rad flexed his fingers, his mind racing. He had the gun but shooting an old man — even one as remarkably strong as the King — seemed a little over the top. He realized he’d have to lead with his left, considering his right was still sore from its little meeting with Cliff’s metal face.

  Rad lunged, teeth gritted, eyes fixed on his target. In that second before his fist was thrown forward, he actually enjoyed the sensation. This took him back. It occurred to him that he didn’t do as much punching as he used to, and rightly or wrongly, when he was younger that was the part of the job he enjoyed.

  Rad’s left fist connected with the King’s cheek, and there was a crack. Rad felt two of his knuckles slide out of position with a nauseating tug before snapping back. The King rocked slightly on his feet, but was otherwise unaffected by Rad’s attack. Rad cried out in pain, praying that his hand wasn’t broken, and reeled back towards the door.