The crown of the building buckled around the impact, throwing a huge cloud of smoke and flame, brilliant against the night sky. People screamed and the drone of car horns from the stationary traffic died as car doors were thrown open, the vehicles’ occupants desperate to escape.
And then they ran, everyone, running for their lives as the crown of the Chrysler Building shattered, steel, stone, and glass exploding like fireworks. The sunrise spire bent and then toppled, taking out a huge chunk of the building as it fell nearly directly downwards.
The first pieces of rubble hit the street, bouncing cars like toys, and people screamed and ran from the great billowing cloud of dust and smoke that enveloped the street like a sandstorm claiming a desert city.
The remains of the Nimrod continued to travel through the upper floors of the building, sheering the crown completely from the skyscraper. The crown flopped and folded like wet paper and fell on the opposite side, and the ship, powered by gravity, plowed into Grand Central Terminal in a second mushroom cloud of flame and smoke.
FORTY-SEVEN
Nimrod opened his eyes to the light, and found himself standing in a familiar room, huge and empty save for a desk and a chair. On his left and right were two rows of columns like a Greek temple, and beyond, a wall painted with a vast mural of New York.
He was in the Cloud Club. The old faithful service revolver in his hand was pointed at Evelyn McHale.
The Ghost of Gotham floated in front of her desk; a desk spotless and dust-free. Nimrod could see it faintly through her. She smiled, and Nimrod felt slightly embarrassed, as though he’d caught her in her slip.
“I don’t mind, if that is what you are worried about,” she said.
Nimrod’s mustache bristled. “I didn’t used to be able to see through you. You used to be as substantial as the rest of us.”
The Director glided forward, towards the barrel of the gun.
“Yes,” she said, “I was. But it gets harder and harder. I’m being pulled down. It takes all my will and effort to stay tethered to this universe.”
“So why stay? You want New York – you want the Fissure – but if you can leave, then leave! You are not needed nor wanted here, and I dare say you have never seemed particularly enamored of your situation. Let yourself go.”
The Director shook her head, her eyes hidden slightly behind her spectral veil. “To leave is a fate worse than death.”
“Forgive me, my dear,” said Nimrod, “but I do believe that fate has already befallen you.”
“I cannot leave,” she said, her voice rising.
Nimrod adjusted his grip on the gun and raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was pointing the gun at her – it was a habit, perhaps even an instinct, and as such it made him feel better, so he kept his gun arm raised, ignoring the growing ache in his arm.
“If I let go of this world,” said the Director, “I will fall through the fabric of reality. There will be nothing to stop me, nothing to break that fall.”
“And?”
“An eternity of nothing but falling, of never-ending existence trapped inside… nothing. Nothing at all. Do you understand?”
Nimrod sighed, and lowered his gun. “A fate worse than death.”
“Indeed,” said the Director, inclining her head. “My grip is slipping, and the energy it takes to keep moving just to stay in this space and time is too much and is growing more and more with each passing moment.”
Nimrod glanced to the great windows of the Cloud Club. It was dark outside. Perhaps it was just the light from inside the room, and the blue glow of the Director herself blotting everything out, but he couldn’t see the familiar red and white sparkle of the city.
“I don’t understand. You don’t want to leave, but you can’t stay forever. What has this to do with usurping my authority? You want the Fissure, but why? Surely you, of all people, don’t need it.”
“Haven’t you heard me? I can’t leave. To move between here and the Empire State, and the worlds beyond, I would first have to let go here, and if I do that then the tide will catch me, ripping me away from reality. I’m trapped here, for as long as my grip will hold.”
Nimrod sighed, and looked around the Cloud Club. It was a magnificent room, even if the Director’s acquisition of it as an office didn’t make any sense.
“I used to come here,” she said, following his gaze. She turned away from her prisoner and floated slowly around the room, tracing the mural with her fingers, leaving a sparkling blue trail of dust that hung in the air.
“It was a beautiful place, full of life, and music, and dancing. Oh, the dancing!” she breathed, and spun on her toes a foot from the floor, her face alight with a smile as she remembered her old life.
“That life is no longer yours,” said Nimrod.
The Director’s smile dropped. Nimrod blinked and she was in front of him again, blue fire in her eyes. Nimrod recognized the light well, the light of the space between the universes. He backed away quickly, and raised the gun again.
“That day,” said Evelyn, spitting the words out like poison. “Do you know how I regret what happened that day? That day that trapped me, here, now, in a world I don’t know and don’t belong in.”
Nimrod ground his teeth together and aimed for the Director’s forehead. She drifted forward slowly, and Nimrod moved as well, keeping the distance even. Evelyn’s eyes shone a terrible blue.
“I wanted him to save me, like he had saved so many. But no, the Skyguard was gone. He’d died a long, long time ago. They all had – the Skyguard, the Science Pirate. And before them the New Yorker, the Scienceers. All of them. They betrayed and abandoned all of us. They abandoned me!”
She stopped moving as Nimrod felt his back hit the plate-glass window. Evelyn’s expression was a grimace of pain and sadness.
Nimrod gulped. “I can help you. Tell me what you need me to do, and I will help you.”
She shook her head, her sadness lifting from her.
“You need do nothing except what you already are. Events will conspire. I can see the past, the present, the future. Time passes for me, I can see it, and measure it, but linear time has no meaning. What has happened has already been. Events will run their course. There is no alternative.”
She pointed past Nimrod, to the window. Nimrod turned, her words casting a chill into his heart.
Nimrod looked down on New York, then blinked, trying to comprehend what he was seeing. The aerial view was just that – they were too high, the city too far away. Manhattan spread out below him, the Empire State Building small, toy-like. Nearby was a broken skyscraper, smoke pouring from its shattered crown.
“Impossible,” he said, his breath fogging the glass in front of his face as he recognized the damaged structure. “The Cloud Club is inside the Chrysler Building.”
“The Cloud Club is my domain,” said Evelyn, shaking her head. “The Chrysler Building has been hit by your counterpart’s airship. The original Cloud Club has been destroyed, and the building has been damaged down to its foundations.”
Nimrod gasped. “Where are we?”
“The Cloud Club is my domain,” she said. “It is wherever and whenever I need it to be.”
Nimrod watched the city below, now understanding the dust and faded glamor of the room he had visited before he had been black-bagged and dragged to Washington.
Evelyn met Nimrod’s eye in the reflection. “But our fate lies elsewhere.”
Nimrod swung around from the window, brandishing the gun. He braced himself, with no clue what would happen when he pulled the trigger.
Evelyn smiled, and Nimrod took aim, and everything went blue and bright.
FORTY-EIGHT
Mr Grieves led Rad, Jennifer, and the small group of agents through the police cordon on Lexington Avenue with barely a pause, only Jennifer sparking any interest from cops and onlookers alike.
“Doesn’t look like there’s a Cloud Club for us to visit anymore,” said Grieves, pointing
to the broken cap of the Chrysler Building.
The group came to a halt. It was carnage as they got closer, and Rad couldn’t even tell whether they were standing on the street or the sidewalk. Rubble the size of cars formed a maze around them, the air thick with dust and smoke. There were fires, too; Rad could feel the heat on his face from smoking piles of stone and metal, some lit from within by glowing red and orange.
“Come on,” said Rad. “Let’s find out what happened.”
They continued, the smoke and dust getting thicker the closer they got.
“Here!” Jennifer was ahead, apparently impervious to the acrid tang in the air. Rad squinted, and saw her golden face bobbing as she waved back at the group.
The rubble changed suddenly, and Rad realized they were on the other side of the building. Ahead, smoke rose from the shattered shell of Grand Central. Here there was stone and dull metal but glass and steel too, brilliant and electric, untarnished from its fall from the crown of the building – and a twisted framework, black and burnt, of something else.
Rad swore and leapt over the nearest pile of rubble. His coat sliced open as the tail caught on an Art Deco sliver from the roof of the building.
“What is it?” Grieves called from close behind.
Rad reached Jennifer just as she pulled a hulking panel to the side, revealing a large box-like structure with a conical front, the nose crushed. Rad realized with a start it was the front of the Nimrod, flight deck and all, separated and thrown from the primary crash site.
Rad and Jennifer paused, looking at each other. Then Rad turned back to the wreckage. “Carson?”
They began digging into the debris, pulling, bending the remains of the downed airship aside as they fought to get into the detached flight deck. Finally an open hatchway was cleared. Jennifer didn’t pause as she stepped in, Rad following her into the dark interior.
The flight deck was unrecognizable. It was merely a space, bent metal walls enclosing an obstacle course of twisted metal, wires, and shards of stone, steel and glass.
“Here!” Jennifer called from a few steps ahead, and she stepped back so the others could see. Rad swore again and rushed forward to help.
Under a cradle of riveted metal frames was a figure, kneeling on the floor, his body hunched over, protecting something. Jennifer yanked the heaviest pieces of debris away, and the figure rose up on its knees.
“Kane!” Rad pulled at his shoulder, and the figure uncurled. The Skyguard’s suit was battered and scraped, but it was intact.
The figure turned its head and Rad paused, unsure. The figure shook its head, and when it spoke it was with a different voice.
“Kane is safe, Mr Bradley. I am looking after him.”
Rad’s eyes went wide. “Byron?” But his train of thought was interrupted by coughing from the floor, long and labored, followed by a wheezy intake of breath.
“My dear detective, I am so very glad you made it.”
“Carson!” said Rad. He reached forward, then stopped, wondering whether he should touch him.
Captain Carson was on the floor, his great white beard matted with blood that looked too bright, too arterial. He smiled and the beard moved; then he coughed again and put a hand to his chest. His eye patch had been torn off, and set into the socket Rad saw what looked like a miniature camera lens.
The Captain closed his eyes and sighed, and in desperation Rad looked at Byron.
“What the hell happened?”
The Captain answered from the floor, his eye still closed, his voice quiet but strong enough. “I decided we should follow you. The Empire State was collapsing, and while I had utmost faith in your abilities, I felt it would be something of a waste if you were to encounter unforeseen circumstances only to have myself and Byron trapped, unable to provide any assistance.”
Carson coughed, and Rad’s eyes were drawn to the blood that covered his body. He turned back to Byron. “How badly is he hurt?”
“I fear I am unable to answer, sir.” Rad winced as the voice that didn’t belong to Kane came from somewhere inside the suit. “I believe I shielded him from the worst, but there was some violence to our collision with the building.”
“You took the top right off it,” said Jennifer. “It’s a scene out there, that’s for sure.”
“What happened?” asked Rad.
“We were Shanghaied, my dear detective,” said Carson from the floor.
Jennifer shook her head. “What?”
Carson opened his eye and fixed it on Jennifer. Rad watched the camera lens in the other socket rotate, focusing.
“Bushwhacked. Ambushed. Hijacked! We had a stowaway…” Carson collapsed into a fit of coughing.
Rad frowned. Carson needed help. He looked over his shoulder at Grieves and the agents, but Grieves was already on his feet, turning to his men.
“Get this man out and to the ambulances by the police cordon. Move.”
The agents moved in, and Rad gently pulled Byron to one side.
Jennifer looked at Rad, and Rad thought he could see her blink deep within the eyeholes of the golden mask. She turned to Byron. “A stowaway made you crash?”
Byron inclined his head.
Rad looked around. “He must be buried under this lot somewhere.” The stowaway’s chances didn’t look good.
“It was the robot commander, the one who called himself the King of 125th Street,” said Byron.
Jennifer jumped like she’d been given an electric shock. She whirled on Rad, the tails of her long coat flying.
“James,” she said, breathlessly. “James is here. He came through.”
Rad grabbed hold of Jennifer’s arm. “I don’t like to say it but I’m not sure he would have made it. Look at this. It’s a miracle that the Captain and Byron got out like they did.”
“Rad!”
The call came from outside the wreck. Rad and Jennifer looked at each other and raced to the exit, Byron close behind.
Mr Grieves was kneeling beside some torn debris that matched the metalwork of the crashed airship, his three agents carefully making their way towards the police cordon with Captain Carson carried between them.
Rad dropped to his knee, Jennifer by his side.
“What is it?” she asked.
Rad peered at the ground, then looked at her, his expression set. “Looks like… blood?”
“No,” she said as she trailed her gloved fingers in the substance. “Machine oil. Lubricant. From a robot.”
“There is more here,” said Byron. The trio moved, and Rad quickly caught sight of the oily spatter that formed a trail through the rubble, towards the husk of the Chrysler Building.
Rad and Grieves exchanged a look.
“He’s gone inside,” said Rad.
“If you’re going to say we need to follow the trail, I’m not sure the building meets city regulations right at the moment,” said Grieves. Rad stared at the man for a moment, then turned around.
But Jennifer had already left, walking at pace towards the shattered entrance.
“Yeah,” said Rad. “Good luck with that. Come on.”
Rad turned and jogged after Jennifer. After a moment, he heard Grieves follow.
FORTY-NINE
The gun kicked in Nimrod’s hand, the sound loud, reverberating off the thick plate glass behind him. He blinked the smoke away and his nostrils were filled with the smell of fireworks and dirt.
Evelyn McHale smiled, and Nimrod took a breath and fired again, and again, five more shots. Then he sighed, his arm dropping to his side. He stepped forward, until he was within touching distance of the Director’s rippling blue aura. Through her he could see the marks on the New York mural where the bullets had struck.
“Well?” he said, his eyes dark and narrow. “What do you want from me? You have what you want. You have the Fissure. Your organization has control of the city.” He waved at the cityscape below and behind them. “I must have a purpose. You said that everything does, that free will is an
illusion and that you can see into the future, down our predetermined paths. So what is to become of me, hmm?”
The Director tilted her head, and when she spoke it was with infinite patience. Nimrod had to control the rage burning inside him. He could already feel the heat in his cheeks, the tremble in his jaw as his anger grew. And all the while, she was calm, quiet. A ghost out of time.
“Is that a question you really want the answer to, Captain?”
Nimrod raised his head and stared at the Director down his nose.
“Do you want to know the future?” she asked “Do you die in bed, peacefully? Does cancer claim you, eating you from the inside out? Do you choke on a fishbone at a restaurant in Maine? Do you take a vacation to New Zealand and die in a car wreck? Does someone shoot you in Times Square, accidentally, perhaps the police chasing a dangerous felon as you are caught in the crossfire? Or do you die here now, with me, in my Cloud Club?”
Nimrod raised an eyebrow. “It hardly seems to matter, does it? You already know. You already know the outcome of this very conversation. How awful it must be for you, reading lines from a script as you do.”
“I can tell you what happens. Don’t you want to know?”
Nimrod laughed. “If that is supposed to be a threat, then it fails completely. It does not matter if I know. What will be, will be, and it appears I have little choice in the matter. If I am to meet my end here, then there is nothing I can do about it, because it is already written in the stars.”
The Director smiled. Nimrod viewed her warily, rolling his fingers along the grip of his seven-shot revolver.
There was one bullet left.
“I need you, Captain Nimrod.”
“Is that so?”
Nimrod raised the gun to his temple and pulled back the hammer. Perhaps he could cheat fate, disturb the universal harmony. Perhaps everything the Ghost of Gotham was saying was a lie, another of her games to pass the torment of eternity. He could understand that.
Nimrod pulled the trigger, and he heard the gun go off even as the floor dropped away from him. Surrounded by blue light, when he blinked he was somewhere else.
The Age Atomic Page 26