The Age Atomic

by Adam Christopher

  Rad looked Kane up and down. “You seem to be OK.”

  Kane nodded, still pacing, restless. “It’s the suit. It’s even better than the machine. If anything, it was the machine that was making me sick. Draining off the power of the Fissure.”

  “Not to mention the sweet little something they were feeding you.”

  At this Kane stopped again, looked at Rad. “Some kind of drug? A sedative?”

  Rad nodded. “Dope of some kind, could be. Keep you docile, cooperative. The fever and delirium are probably just side effects. Maybe he thought if you knew the power you had inside you, you would have caused problems. You could just have blown yourself out, without my help.” Rad looked around, at the walls of the alley and the buildings around them. They were at the side of the theater; looking up, silhouetted against the sky, he could see the branches of the King’s lucky tree as they stretched up through the roof at the back of the theater. The tree was in full leaf, untouched by the winter outside.

  “Huh,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The tree. The King said it brought luck. Seems he was right.” Rad turned back to Kane. “So… suit working OK?”

  Kane laughed, then placed both hands on his chin. Using his thumbs for leverage, he lifted the edge of the mask. Immediately a brilliant white-blue light shone out, forcing Rad to look away, shielding his face with his hands.

  “Neat,” he said. “We’re gonna have to figure out how to get all that back where it should be and get the city plugged in again.”

  “First things first,” said Kane.

  Rad nodded and looked down at Jennifer just as she groaned. For a moment it sounded like the mechanical voice of a robot, but then she mumbled something and it was her, albeit muffled behind her golden mask. Rad offered his hand.

  “You OK, agent?”

  Jennifer pulled herself up, and dusted her coat down. As Rad watched, her hands went to her face, and she trailed her gloved fingertips over the contours of the mask. Then she nodded, and looked at Kane. “Where’s the Corsair?”

  “He’s fine,” said Kane. “Secure. The police can collect him.”

  Jennifer took a step forward. “No! We’re going back to get him. Now.”

  Rad reached out for her arm, but she shook him off and spun around. Rad jerked back from the mask. “She’s right,” he said. “We should bring him in now, not wait.”

  “And what about the robots, Rad? This whole place is crawling with them.”

  Rad shook his head. “We’re safe out here so long as the green light is on.” He pointed, and immediately the green light went out, leaving the alley in darkness.

  Kane sighed. “You were saying?”

  There was a sound from the other end of the alley, from 125th Street itself – a shuffling, metallic, meshed with the organic rustling of ordinary people. The robots were moving.

  “There,” said Jennifer, pointing. Rad turned and saw long shadows dancing on the street, thrown from around the corner of the alley. Lots of shapes, people – robots – moving in their direction.

  “Kane, can you fly in the suit?”

  Kane shook his head. “No. Jets are all missing. Whole system has been stripped out.”

  “You got anything that can hold them back?”

  “Not sure.” Kane examined the watch-like panel on his wrist.

  The sounds from the alley increased.

  “We gotta get out of here.”

  “Here we go,” said Kane, and his wrist panel began emitting a faint pulsing sound that Rad thought was more than a little ominous. “No,” said Kane. “Wait a minute–”

  “That thing going to blow up now?” said Rad, not sure if he was joking.

  “No, it’s the communicator. Hold on…”

  Rad turned back to the street. As he watched, the shadows cast by the robots came to a halt and stood swaying in the streetlight. Then they resumed their march, changing direction. They were heading straight for them.

  “Dammit, Kane, those things are homing in on the signal.” Rad spun around, scanning the alleyway. “Hey, where’s Jennifer?”

  The alley was filled with a roaring sound, so loud Rad ducked instinctively. From the other end of the alley, a brilliant green light flooded the road. Rad stumbled in surprise and turned towards it, but could see nothing except a green light speeding closer. He shielded his eyes from the glare and saw two lights, mounted on the front of something.

  The King’s car.

  Rad and Kane jumped to opposite sides of the alley as the huge machine came to a halt between them, the rear end snaking on the icy roadway. The passenger door was flung open, Jennifer leaning over the wheel.

  “Get in!”

  Rad didn’t argue. He practically fell into the passenger seat and scrambled to close the door behind him, while Kane did the same in the rear.

  Jennifer released the brake and the car fishtailed again. Then it propelled forward fast enough to push Rad back into his seat.

  “What the hell? How did you find the car?” he managed, glancing sideways at Jennifer. She had one hand on the wheel, one hand on the shifter, and her golden mask was staring dead ahead, tinged green by the car’s headlamps.

  “Found my way back to the garage when I was looking around the theater,” she said as the car cleared the alleyway and she pulled a sharp right. “It opens into the alley just back there. Now shut up, and let me drive.”

  Jennifer pulled around another corner, and swore.

  Dead ahead was the robot gang, so large it filled the street as far as Rad could see. The robots in front recoiled from the green light, and Rad was sure they were screaming in pain and in fright, but he couldn’t hear anything over the roar of the engine.

  “Hold onto something,” said Jennifer as she floored the accelerator and aimed the car directly for the center of the group.

  THIRTY-THREE

  In the ruins of the King’s workshop, the Corsair lay unmoving, his body bloody and broken, partially covered by twisted metal still hot from the explosion of energy and movement that was Kane Fortuna.

  Something clattered to the floor; the Corsair groaned, but the sound didn’t carry past the ruin of his mouth. He coughed, and nearly choked on the blood and broken teeth, and then felt a slicing sensation of pain travel along his jawline, where the bone beneath was fractured in seven places.

  He blinked, then realized his eyes had been open all along; they were just filled with viscous dark blood. He blinked again and some of it cleared, leaving his view of the workshop floor fuzzy and dark but unobstructed enough to see the carnage.

  The slab on which Kane’s machine had lain was split in two, collapsed in the middle of the room. The slab behind had been shifted out of position, but the third, which had so recently housed Jennifer Jones, was intact and untouched, save for half of a new robot’s torso shell, the metal bright and unblemished, lying on its top.

  More movement, out of the corner of his eye. The Corsair tried to move his head but the sudden pain was too much and when he opened his eyes again he was moving, sliding along the floor, leaving a trail of debris and thick blood.

  “Master, I, Master, I…” said a metallic voice from somewhere above him. The Corsair let himself be dragged across the floor. Then he was pulled into a sitting position, his back to the wall.

  There was a man above him, a short man in a blue suit that was torn and smoking. The man was standing by the intact machine, but was fumbling, moving his hands over the slab and the box on it like he couldn’t see. As the Corsair watched, the hands finally found the lid and lifted.

  The Corsair blinked, and when he opened his eyes he was inside the machine. He was in pain now, his whole body alive with it, brilliant and sharp and fiery. He looked up, seeing the blackened walls of the workshop. There was a fire, somewhere, lighting the otherwise dark room in a flickering light that threw long shadows. Then the Corsair realized the light was not orange and yellow but white and blue, and was coming from the door that
led to the power room.

  The Corsair cried out in pain, screamed as loud as he could.

  The man who had saved him – why couldn’t he remember who that was? He knew him, he was sure of it – was busy at the controls. The Corsair could just see the dark blue velvet over the lip of the machine. The man was hunched over, like he was in pain, like there was something wrong, like–

  He turned around, and the Corsair screamed again. The man was the King of 125th Street, he remembered now, his faithful robot, the first one he’d made from a homeless person who had stumbled from the naval robot yard, not yet converted into an Ironclad sailor but put through the mental processing and then left, abandoned as Wartime ended suddenly.

  The man’s face was hanging in strips from a silver skull, the artificial flesh quivering as the machine man rocked slightly on its heels, the scalp peeled over to the left. The robot’s eyes were two blackened, burnt-out holes, a liquid, thick and black and oozing, streaming out like syrup. The robot’s jaw, still clad in fake skin, moved up and down as the blind machine struggled to help its master.

  “Master, I, master, I…” said the robot. It shuddered as it spoke, its hands moving over the edge of the machine, fingers flexing, searching.

  The Corsair tried to shake his head, but there was a thick leather strap over his forehead. He tried to move his body, but he couldn’t even feel it. It was like it wasn’t there at all or it didn’t belong to him.

  “Master, I, master, I… I will get them back. They. Can. Not. Escape.” Each forced syllable made the King rock. “Master, I, master, I… I will repair you save you make you well. Army the army the army has been activated. They. Can. Not. Escape.”

  The Corsair screamed until his mouth filled with blood and his throat felt like it was being flayed with knives, as the blind robot King of 125th Street threw a lever and the lid of the machine slammed shut.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  The man stirred in his bunk. How long he’d been asleep, he wasn’t sure. Time passed strangely where he was, although maybe that was his imagination. Years of solitude, years of travel had taken their toll.

  The signal was a constant pulsing tone, not loud enough to have woken him, just loud enough to have entered his dreams, the signal becoming a flashing blue light, the light of the gap between one universe and the next.

  The man rubbed his good eye and pulled thick fingers through his white beard, and then he lay on his bunk and stared at the ceiling of the ship as the tone continued.

  Maybe this was a dream too. Maybe the signal was his imagination, an auditory hallucination. Maybe it was the outside tricking him. It had a habit of doing that; he’d discovered many places on his travels, some of which were cities, whole countries where life went on. Others were places that seemed to be alive themselves.

  And they liked to trick him, make him see things, make him hear things. After years of this the man wasn’t sure what was real, not anymore. Maybe he’d died a long time ago, on that day when the ice was thick and the fog was deep, the day he’d stepped into it and left the world.

  “Sir?”

  The man jolted on the bunk, suddenly wide awake. He sat up too quickly, his hand pressing his forehead as the room spun. He waited a moment, then swallowed and glanced at the door to the flight deck. On the control panel in front of the pilot’s seat he could see one of the row of orange lights flashing in time with the tone.

  A shadow moved around the flight deck.

  “I have located the source,” said the voice.

  “A signal? From the city?”

  “I believe this is what you have been waiting for, sir.”

  The man heart raced as he listened to the tone. He blinked. The signal was… wait, the signal was…

  He looked back to the ceiling. “That’s not a regular transmission.”

  The shadow moved, but the other voice said nothing.

  The man swung himself from his bunk, the end of his wooden leg loud against the floor of the ship. He reached for his walking stick, and went to heave himself to a standing position, but then he paused, head cocked, looking at the floor and listening, listening.

  “I recognize it. The signal, it’s–”

  “I quite agree,” said the other voice.

  The man pulled himself up and stumbled into the cockpit, using the pilot’s chair to kill his momentum as he dropped his walking stick and stared through the main window. Outside the fog was thinning; the lights of the city were faintly visible as a multicolored smudge of twinkling stars. The frame of the bridge was barely there, a smudge dissolving into the orangey-grey world.

  The man gripped the top of the pilot’s seat and licked his lips. He was alone in the cockpit. He was alone in the entire ship.

  He allowed himself a small smile.

  “It’s him, isn’t it?”

  There was a pause, and then a second voice sounded from somewhere behind him. “I believe so.”

  “So, he found his way back.”

  “As you once predicted, sir. The arc of his transit returned him to the Empire State.”

  The man nodded. “Like a comet in orbit around the sun.” Then he laughed, and swung himself around into the pilot’s seat. He smoothed down his mustache and beard, and glanced across the controls with his one good eye. He frowned, and lifted the eye patch that covered the other, and squinted. Satisfied, he let the eye patch flip back into place, and he clapped his hands and rubbed them together.

  “I do believe we shall be in time for tea. Byron?”

  “Yes, Captain Carson?”

  “Trace the signal, and get a lock on its position. We shall collect them en route to Grand Central.”

  “Confirmed. Tether release in five seconds.”

  Captain Carson clapped his hands again and laughed. After all this time, they were going home.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  It was no good, and Rad knew it.

  They’d charged the main group of robots in the car, and Rad was glad that Jennifer was driving because she was unwavering, fearless, as she accelerated and plowed straight into them. The robots had tried to part, to get out of the way as the car hurtled towards them, but there were a lot of them, and several went flying over the long hood of the car, some rolling up over the windshield before sliding down the side. Rad was amazed the car could stand the punishment, but looking down the length of the hood he saw it hadn’t even been scratched.

  But the numbers were against them. Jennifer slowed, the car losing momentum and power. The robots still trying to get out of the green headlights that seemed to cause them so much pain were now pushed against the hood, rocking the car.

  Jennifer threw the vehicle into reverse, turning to look out the back as she tried to find an exit. Rad turned as well. It didn’t look good.

  “We need to head south,” said Kane, lying in the backseat. “Downtown!”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” said Jennifer, expertly threading the car backwards through the closing mass of robots behind them, then swinging back around as they returned to 125th Street. She shifted gears, and without hardly a pause at all, they shot off down the empty street. As they sped onwards, Rad noticed the cone of green light in front of them was off-center: one of the headlamps had been smashed. So, the car wasn’t indestructible after all.

  “Dammit.”

  Rad looked up. On their left, another group of robots came out of a side alley, another ragtag bunch of shapes and sizes and in varying stages of deconstruction. Jennifer dodged them as they stepped out into the road, but looking back Rad could see more coming out of a street opposite. Perhaps they were attracted to the sound of the car, knowing that it meant the King was out and about, saying hello to his loyal subjects, maybe choosing the lucky ones who would come back to the theater and be saved.

  Kane righted himself in the back, and grabbed the top of Rad’s seat to pull himself forward. “They’re coming out of everywhere. How many are there?”

  Jennifer kept her eyes on the road
, but she shook her head as she drove. “Who knows how many the King had waiting. My guess is Harlem is full of them.”

  Rad frowned. “And that’s not counting the warehouses downtown. The King has thousands of robots – a whole army – hidden across the city.”

  Jennifer turned her golden face to him, and Rad raised an eyebrow. He could see her eyes through the slots in the mask.

  Rad said, “The Harlem robots, they’re the refugees, gathering around the King of 125th Street, waiting for him to get to work, turning them back into people.”

  “Yes,” said Jennifer. “Only he isn’t. He’s finishing the job, converting them fully into robots.”

  “Then shipping them downtown, putting them in storage–”

  “But keeping a few active, like Cliff, to look after them until they’re ready.”

  Rad whistled. “And in the meantime, Cliff and the others like him, they’re organized, working to a plan. They pull crimes, stealing equipment, materials, that the King needs to keep working. The robot gangs. Now it makes sense.”

  Kane shook his head. “Robot gangs? Sorry, I’ve been out of town.”

  Rad grimaced. “Don’t sweat it. We just need to get out of here first.” He turned to Jennifer. “What happened to that gun of yours?”

  She glanced over her shoulder, into the backseat. “Actually, it might be in here.”

  Kane ducked down. “Bingo,” he said after a moment. Then he bobbed back up and passed the weapon to Rad.

  Rad turned it over in his hands. “How do I check the ammo?”

  “You don’t,” said Jennifer. “But it should be charged. It’s good for one shot and one shot only, remember?”

  “OK,” said Rad, adjusting his grip on the gun, getting used to the awkward weight of it. “Last resort only.” He turned around to Kane. “You remember anything about your dreams?”

  Kane sighed and sat back. “A little. There’s a woman, a woman with blue eyes. And movement, lots of movement.”