The King smiled, and Rad saw his punch had done something. At the corner of the King’s mouth, the pale flesh of his face split, revealing something silver and bright beneath.
Rad backed away, shaking his fist. He moved the fingers, and they all still worked; he’d been lucky. He’d just put his fist into a metal face for the second time in a few days.
The robot King of 125th Street smiled, and stepped towards the detective.
“You have got to be kidding me,” said Rad. He reached behind his back and pulled out the gun, and when he pointed at the King the man stopped and looked at it. Then he laughed.
“You wouldn’t shoot a defenseless old man, would you now?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” said Rad. “But then you’re not a man, are you? You’re another machine, like Cliff. One of the ‘upgraded’ models.” He raised the gun.
“Mr Bradley, please. Violence is not the answer.”
“Not always, but sometimes,” said Rad. He took a step backwards and his right heel touched the stairwell behind him. He was running out of room.
“Besides, robots are bulletproof. Or hadn’t you heard?”
Rad gritted his teeth. He thought back to Cliff and the little metal tube. Was it a weakness? He’d felled that machine with a single punch, but, Rad knew, either his blow had been very lucky or the robot had been faulty or damaged in some way…
“You cannot leave, Mr Bradley,” said the King. “I need Kane’s power. I have a city to protect, and I need you and Jennifer Jones for my army. I need you alive to begin the process, but I do not necessarily need you to be… intact.”
The King stepped forward and reached towards Rad, his fingers curled into claws and the serene smile still on his fake face.
Rad was out of options. He raised the gun, aimed along the barrel at the King’s head, and fired once, twice, three times.
The first shot tugged another chunk of artificial flesh off the King’s face, but the second hit his left eye. The orb shattered in a shower of glassy splinters and the King staggered backwards, his head dipping so that Rad’s third shot cut a strip off the robot’s fake scalp.
It wasn’t the result Rad had been hoping for, but it wasn’t bad. As the King raised his head, thick black liquid oozing from the damaged eye, he snarled and lunged forward. Rad stepped back and nearly tripped on the stairs, but forced himself to take rough aim at the King’s head. As he fell against the staircase, he fired five more times, hoping that at least one round would hit the mark.
The King pulled up as he was hit, the artificial flesh of his face shredded by the shots. There was a louder bang and his head was thrown back, then flopped forward.
Rad had hit the other eye. The robot was now blind.
The machine screeched, the sound inhuman and terrifying, enough to snap Rad back to reality. The robot lunged forward again but Rad pulled himself up the stairs and out of the way with ease. As the King fumbled on the bottom stairs, Rad braced himself against the railing and kicked out, sending the robot cartwheeling backwards. It hit the furnace door and shrieked again, like it had been burnt, and as it tried to pull itself back upright Rad saw its head was at a slight angle, like the neck was damaged. It moved forward, arms outstretched, but it was slow and awkward.
Rad saw the opportunity. He ducked back down the stairs and, pushing the King’s shoulder, spun the robot around, easily avoiding the outstretched hands. With the King’s back to him, Rad reached around and plucked the keys out of the robot’s jacket pocket. Then he gave the King a shove. The robot screeched and overbalanced, falling to the floor.
Keys in one hand, gun in the other, Rad took the stairs two at a time. He slammed the reinforced door of the furnace room shut and locked it. Then he took off back down the corridor.
TWENTY-FIVE
The lobby outside the doors of Tisiphone Realty was empty except for a man sitting in one of the two couches, silent but for the rustle of the newspaper he was holding. There was a coffee table, on which was scattered a few copies of Life and Time, and by the window a water cooler — the kind that came with those ridiculous paper cone cups that you couldn’t put down anywhere. The window itself looked out over West 34th Street. Today the sun was shining. It was a beautiful morning in New York City.
The man on the sofa recrossed his legs and flicked the center of the New York Times he wasn’t reading. His shift was due to end in fifteen minutes, when he’d be replaced by another man in another suit. The first man would fold the newspaper nosily and deposit it on the table and check his watch, complain about being late for an appointment he’d forgotten downtown, and dart off towards the elevators while his replacement grabbed a cone of water and took in the view.
This scene would be repeated every four hours.
The agent scanned the article on page five of the newspaper for the tenth time. His name was Jan Holzer, and he was looking forward to getting back to his apartment in Queens and getting some coffee and some sleep. Jan drank coffee for the taste — ten years with the Secret Service had made him immune to the effects of caffeine — and a cup of joe (milky, a habit he’d picked up from his German-English parents, to the horror of his friends) was the perfect nightcap after a shift at the Empire State Building.
Jan flicked the paper again and collapsed it in half, then half again. He uncrossed his legs, crossed them again in the opposite direction, and checked his watch.
His replacement was late. This wasn’t unusual in itself, nor any particular reason for concern. The security details had some leeway programmed into them, so agents could come a little early or a little late; a few minutes here and there didn’t make much difference, and it added to the cover, if anyone happened to be watching.
Although this time Jan’s replacement, Eddie Ellroy, was ten minutes late. This was, strictly speaking, against the rules, but Eddie was Eddie.
Jan sighed. He didn’t like Eddie. Eddie always cracked a joke about Jan’s German heritage and found it hilarious to call Jan “Einstein” because, as a security agent for a government scientific department, Jan was clearly working beneath his station and really should have been behind the door they guarded, working on the affairs of state with the other brainiacs.
Eddie Ellroy was a real jerk. And right now, he was a real late jerk.
The door of the Department opened. Jan tensed, ready for action, years of Secret Service training kicking in, preparing him for anything. Expect the unexpected. In Nimrod’s world, the unexpected was very often the case.
A young man in a grey suit emerged from the Department, his hair slick, his shoes shined. He let the door swing closed behind him and, without a glance at Jan, took off down the corridor.
Jan clicked his tongue. Things were in a real state in there, he imagined, since the whole Department had suddenly gone on alert. But as a security agent it paid to keep out of such things, keep his mind clear, focus on the job at hand. Departmental alert or not, his job didn’t change.
The elevator pinged, out of sight, and the lobby was silent again. Jan got back to reading the front page of the newspaper for the one-hundredth time.
A moment later the elevator sounded again. Finally. Jan braced himself for the one-way delivery of jokes at his expense, and stood to get another cup of water. All part of the act.
“The traffic today is the pits!”
Jan turned at the voice, cone of water halfway to his mouth. Eddie Ellroy was still absent. Standing in the lobby was a woman, dressed in expensive furs and high heels, a hat that was really a little too large for her balanced on top of a haircut Jan hadn’t seen outside the pages of Life magazine. The woman smiled, the movement of her chin making the veil in front of her face move.
Jan drained his cup and crushed the paper cone in his fist. “Excuse me?” he said, outwardly polite, inwardly wondering who the hell she was and where the hell Ellroy had got to. Jerk.
The woman sat on the edge of the sofa and began shuffling through the magazines on the coffee table. Selecting a
n issue of Time, she sat back and studied the cover intently.
Jan reached for the inside pocket of his jacket, sliding the fingers of his right hand between the buttons of his suit. In a hair under two seconds he could have his gun out and trained on the intruder. There was no reason for anyone who wasn’t involved with Nimrod’s Department to be on this floor, and his replacement security detail had failed to show, all of which was totally wrong. There was a telephone on the wall; all Jan had to do was keep the gun on the woman and call for more security.
“You’re a little premature there, Mr Holzer,” said the woman. She lowered the magazine just a little and peered over it at the agent. Holzer gulped, his hand moving further into his jacket, his fingertips caressing his concealed automatic. Time to drop the act.
“This is a restricted area, ma’am. I’m going to have to call security. They’ll want to ask you a few questions.”
The woman slapped the magazine down on the table and sighed, rolling her eyes as she reached for the handbag on the floor. Jan watched her and took a step forward, the gun that was once inside his jacket now out. He took another step and pointed the weapon at her.
The woman glanced up as she rifled through her bag, and shook her head with a smile. “Relax, agent. I’m standing in for Ellroy today.”
Jan raised the gun.
“Here we go,” said the woman. She pulled a folded card from her bag and offered it to Jan. Jan took it, keeping the gun aimed at her forehead, and flipped it open. He read the ID aloud. “Special Agent Irena Dubrovna?”
“Got it in one, agent.” It took Jan a second to realize she was holding her hand out, waiting for him to return the card. He did so, and he lowered his gun, but he didn’t replace it inside his jacket.
“I don’t know you,” said Jan.
Irena shrugged. “I don’t know Ellroy either, but I’ve heard he’s a real jerk. Anyway, get. I’m here.”
Jan frowned. Irena looked right, he had to admit, dressed well enough to pass as a potential client for the real estate company Nimrod’s Department pretended to be. Her manner was casual, but their very public exchange had blown any kind of cover. Not that anyone was watching. Jan rolled his shoulders and glanced around. The door to the Department was closed, and the corridors were silent.
Jan sniffed and nodded, slipping his gun out of sight. Irena ignored him, her attention back on the magazine.
Feeling uncomfortable, but looking forward to coffee and sleep, Agent Jan Holzer left.
Irena waited a moment, and then rested the magazine on her lap. After watching the Department door for a minute more, she stood and walked to the windows. She looked out across the city, towards the Chrysler Building, on the beautiful morning.
She reached up, sliding a gloved hand beneath her veil, and touched the earpiece buried deep in her right ear. It was new technology, advanced, but one of the advantages of her cover was that her hat was big enough to carry both the radio’s battery and transmitter.
“Alpha One, in position.”
She listened, nodded, and then helped herself to a cup of water.
TWENTY-SIX
Security agent Jan Holzter had been on the money. Behind the closed doors of Tisiphone Realty it was organized chaos.
Every desk on the floor was occupied, half by men, mostly in rolled-up shirt sleeves, cigarettes burning bright, filling the air with a thick fog of tobacco smoke. Some shuffled paper, a lot held telephones between shoulder and ear as they jotted down notes. The other half of the staff were women, most looking considerably less flustered than their male counterparts as they focused on typing and filing, filling the air with a machine gun clatter of keys striking paper. The cacophony that filled the office wasn’t loud, but it was constant and unending.
Nimrod watched the hubbub through the open door of his office. Behind him, the ticker tape machine sprang into life, slowly feeding paper onto the floor. Mr Grieves quickly picked up the tape and began to read.
Nimrod folded his arms and turned around. “Well?”
The agent pulled the tape through his fingers. “All departments acknowledge the alert and are awaiting further information. The Vice President has been taken to a secure location and the President is currently at the State Department in DC.”
“Very good.”
“Also the Secretary of Defense wants to speak with you, urgently.”
Nimrod sighed. He should have expected this, but it was exactly the kind of distraction with which he didn’t want to deal. Nimrod was keenly aware that it was Atoms for Peace, not his Department, in favor with the Secretary. “He can wait.”
Mr Grieves smirked as the phone on Nimrod’s desk rang. Nimrod nodded and Grieves picked it up. He listened a moment, and as Nimrod watched his smirk quickly faded.
Grieves held out the phone to his superior. “It’s the Secretary.”
Nimrod gritted his teeth and closed the door of his private office. Then he took the receiver.
“Mr Secretary, we were just talking about you.”
The Captain smiled at Mr Grieves and walked around his desk, phone pressed tight against his ear.
“Yes, Mr Secretary. I believe so.”
Nimrod sat heavily at his desk and listened a moment longer, then barked a laugh.
“Bad? My dear chap, ‘bad’ does not begin to describe it. What I am talking about is nothing less than the end of the world.”
The door to the Department opened, and Captain Nimrod stormed out. Irena lowered her newspaper, trying to keep the surprise from her face. But it wasn’t an issue, as the target wasn’t watching. Nimrod muttered under his breath and waved one hand in the air like he was arguing with someone who wasn’t there as he strode the short distance across the lobby and vanished into the corridor leading to the main elevators.
Irena listened until she heard the elevator ping and the doors open. A moment later the doors rattled shut and silence returned.
Irena leapt from the sofa and crossed to the window to get the best reception. She looked down, trying to get an angle on the street below, but the stepped shape of the Empire State Building hid the main entrance.
The radio clicked in her ear.
“Cloud Club, this is Alpha One,” she said. “We have a problem.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
The lobby of the Chrysler Building was deserted. Nimrod noted the fact, but didn’t pause as he strode across the marble floor and into the walnut and silver interior of the elevator.
She would know he was coming, of course. She saw everything in the city, some said, though Nimrod knew that if this was so, she ignored most things. Maybe she had heard the conversation between him and the Secretary of Defense, the conversation Nimrod cursed himself for not expecting. But that would have been like trying to pick a single conversation out of a stadium full of people; even the Ghost of Gotham had her limits. Besides which, he doubted she found it very interesting. For someone — something — with such power, she was remarkably single-minded. Perhaps that was not surprising. Nimrod had often tried to imagine what it was like, to die and be brought back, granted with all the power of the universe. If your mind didn’t break, then, with the universe at your fingertips, surely your perspective changed somewhat.
The Secretary’s decision was a disaster waiting to happen, Nimrod knew that now. The order to hand over all responsibility and duties to the Director of Atoms for Peace and allow her department to proceed with their operation was not just ridiculous, it was foolhardy, perhaps even suicidal.
There was no alternative. He had to see her, talk to her, convince her to change her mind, make her understand that they should be working together, not fighting. Nimrod just hoped there was enough left of a human being inside the Ghost of Gotham that he could make her see reason.
The elevator pinged, and the doors opened. Nimrod felt his mustache bristle as he stepped out into the lobby of the Cloud Club and found himself alone. Ahead of him, the giant doors of the Director’s personal domain, with their
silver sunray decoration and frosted glass, were closed.
Beyond, the former nightclub was quiet. The room was truly cavernous, and Nimrod had the odd sensation of walking through a cemetery, or into a mausoleum. The Cloud Club was a relic of another era, when New York City had been an entirely different world. Nimrod pondered this as he walked to the single desk, the one the director of Atoms for Peace had no need for. He noticed, for the first time, that the desk was dusty. His eyes moved over the murals on the wall. For some reason they looked dull, faded.
Maybe there was something left of Evelyn McHale. In a way, she was like the room, a relic of another era. She had been plucked from time and then dumped in an alien world. She may as well have been taken to Mars.
Nimrod walked to the great glass wall and looked out over the city. The Empire State Building sparkled in the sun, and below the streets were filled with people and cars. Nimrod smiled. None of them knew they lived in just one universe out of… well, who knew. None of them knew about Atoms for Peace or the Director, although there would be plenty in the city who remembered Evelyn McHale. Many had even seen her ghost, glowing in the night.
Nimrod turned back to the empty room.
“Director?” His voice didn’t echo as much as he thought it would. “Evelyn, I need to talk to you,” he said to the ceiling.
There was nothing, not even an unusual breeze or a drop in temperature or a knock on the wall, one rap for yes, two for no.
Nothing. No one came, not the dead woman, not agent or guards. No staff at all; the Cloud Club was empty.
Nimrod frowned, and then wondered how far he could go before the orders from the Secretary of Defense circulated around the building.
Nimrod straightened his tie and brushed down the front of his safari jacket, and marched towards the door.
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