The Age Atomic

TWENTY

Rad woke in a hot sweat, his mouth filled with a foul, chemical taste. He coughed and rolled over, banging into the side of something hard. Looking up, he saw through watering eyes that it was one of the slab tables in the downstairs workshop.

He sat up, yanking the scarf from his neck and awkwardly pulling himself out of his trench coat. It was hot in the workshop, the chloroform-induced headache giving Rad a sudden rush of claustrophobia down on the floor. He grabbed the lip of the table and stood, leaning against it as his coat fell to the ground, where it hit with a dull thud. Rad bent down and picked it up, slipping the gun out of the coat pocket and into the back of his waistband. It was careless of his captors not to have searched him, but he was grateful.

He stood, leaned against the left-side slab and took long, deep breaths as he oriented himself. A breath caught in his throat and he coughed as he saw the machine on the slab, empty earlier, was now occupied. There was a robot lying it in, a flat, unfinished metal head sticking out of the dark green box. Rad watched it as the thumping in his head subsided. The face was crude, nearly featureless save for two short slots for the eyes and a longer one for the mouth. The robot didn’t move.

Rad turned and, leaning his back against the machine, began rolling his shirtsleeves up. He laughed, remembering what it was like up top, in the city, with its ice and darkness. Then his laugh turned into another cough and he was suddenly desperate for a drink. He glanced around, but there didn’t seem to be a faucet in the workshop.

“Rad?”

Kane. His voice was weak. Rad moved over to the head of the machine and looked down at his old friend. Kane was sick, there was no doubt about it.

“I’m here, buddy,” said Rad, pulling the stool closer and perching himself on it.

Kane smiled, and closed his eyes.

Rad sighed. He’d known Kane for… well, for as long as he could remember. He was older than Kane by a fair margin, but he remembered those first jobs, hiring the teenage Kane first as a runner and messenger around town, but then, as his charisma and prowess became apparent — the uncanny way in which he seemed to be in the right place at the right time, his knack for talking to people in just the right way — Kane had become more than a messenger boy. They became friends, and Kane helped more and more, particularly after he got a job at The Sentinel, the Empire State’s first, foremost — and only — newspaper. Kane used that charisma to build up a network of contacts that stretched right across the city, and his work with Rad not only got Rad’s cases solved a lot quicker but provided the material — sometimes sensationalized, of course — for Kane’s newspaper.

Rad scratched his chin and coughed again. He was feeling a little better, more awake, despite his thirst and the oppressive heat of the workshop.

Kane Fortuna. Rad knew that wasn’t his real name, but he had never known any other. Sometimes it didn’t pay to think too much about the past in a place like the Empire State.

Rad’s last memory of Kane was burned into his mind’s eye, so much so that it was the last thing he saw when he closed his eyes and went to sleep, and the first memory he had when he woke up each morning. Kane Fortuna, wearing the powered armor that used to belong to the Skyguard, one of the two protectors of New York City — whose very actions had led to the creation of the Empire State itself. Kane, in the armor, pulling against the energy of the Fissure as he stood across the threshold between one universe and the next, caught like a fly in honey.

Rad rubbed his face, and watched his friend sleep. He’d tried to help him, done his best, his very desperate best, but Kane had been confused, mistaking Rad for… well, for someone else.

But the image was there, in Rad’s mind, as bright and fiery as the rippling blue corona of the Fissure itself. Kane had realized, all too late. Realized who Rad was, but more, realized what he’d done, how he’d been tricked and manipulated by others. And it had been too late. Kane had fallen into the Fissure in the Empire State and had not come out the other side in New York.

Then a year of rebuilding the city, with Captain Carson taking charge, walking into the role of the City Commissioner like it was his destiny, a year that now felt like some ridiculous golden age. Things were getting better. There was cooperation between both sides of the Fissure, Carson and his equivalent in New York, Nimrod, working together. It was secret still, of course. The existence of the two universes was known only to a select few on each side.

And then the Fissure had vanished. Rad had been busy with his detective agency. It was a distraction, and a welcome one, especially after he and Claudia had finally given up on their marriage that never was.

Rad had also been busy with Carson. The old man seemed like he needed the company, despite his high office. And, looking back, Rad knew that there had been something lurking, a black cloud over Carson that had culminated in his apparent suicide shortly after the Fissure vanished and the city entered a winter that got colder every day.

Rad watched Kane. He looked older, but then he imagined he did as well. He had no idea what Kane’s injuries were or what the machine was, but it occurred to him that Kane might be stuck in it forever, unable to survive without the King’s treatment.

Kane had nearly destroyed not only the Empire State, not only New York, but the whole of both universes. The Fissure was more than a doorway, it was a tether, a connection that both universes needed, lest they unravel.

The irony was the Fissure had closed anyway. The tether was severed, the Pocket cut off from the Origin and slowly dying. It would have been better, Rad thought, if they’d just popped out of existence, zip! And then nothing would have mattered anyway. But a slow death by a long cold worried him. How long could they survive? How bad would it get before the end?

“Rad?”

Rad jerked his head up. Kane was awake, smacking his lips and trying to look up at his friend.

“You’re the last person I expected to see again, buddy.” Rad gave him a broad smile. Kane managed one in return, and Rad saw his teeth were stained yellowy green. Rad frowned, and thought back to the barman out in Harlem.

“Rad Bradley saves the day again,” said Kane. His voice was quiet and raspy but seemed strong. “So, you here to get me out of this joint?”

Rad laughed and held up his hands. “Let me work on that. What the hell happened to you anyway? Where did you go?”

Kane narrowed his eyes, like he was thinking very hard or hadn’t understood the question. Maybe a little of both.

Kane licked his lips. “I remember falling,” he said. “I was going backwards, falling down, like I was being pulled.” Kane managed a small smile. “I don’t know, maybe I was going upwards. Up, down, didn’t really feel like anything.”

Rad leaned in. “Then what?”

“Then…” Kane frowned and winced again.

“You OK, buddy?”

Kane nodded. “Yeah. My head’s a bit sore. Happens, it’s OK. The guy in the suit will be here with the medicine soon.”

Rad chewed the inside of his cheek. He put that nugget of information to one side, and pressed on with his questions. “Where did you end up, after you fell through the Fissure?”

Kane rolled his lips, and shook his head. “I hit the floor. Hit it bad, felt like every bone in my body had broken. I remember… I remember lying on the ground, and there were all these people around me. Then there was this noise and this light, I don’t know, and then all the people were gone, and there was this guy standing there. Everything looked green. Maybe that’s just the way I imagine it. But I could see this guy standing there, standing over me. I was saying something, but… I don’t remember what. Then I was here, in this place.”

“You were here?” Rad clicked his tongue.

“Yeah. I knew you’d find me, Mr Super-detective.”

Rad shook his head. “Kane, you fell through the Fissure eighteen months ago. It swallowed you up, and you didn’t end up in New York.”

“Huh,” said Kane. “Guess it’s the Fissure’s thing with time, right? Guess the Fissure threw me forward.”

The room shook, rattling the equipment. Rad looked at the ceiling and grabbed the edge of the machine to keep his balance on the stool. The tremor stopped after a long ten seconds, and Rad let out his breath.

“What was that?” Kane’s eyes were wide open. “An earthquake?”

Rad frowned, but Kane had already closed his eyes, his head resting back against the pillow. “Something like that,” said Rad. “You picked a crummy time to make your glorious return, buddy.”

But Kane was asleep already.

Kane slept for hours. Rad had been around the workshop several times. There was plenty he didn’t understand, lots of equipment and gadgets and junk that obviously were to do with the construction — or deconstruction — of robots. Rad wasn’t entirely sure what went on underneath the hood of a car let alone the inside of a robot, but the way the parts in the room were all shiny and new made Rad think the King hadn’t quite given him the full picture. Finding lost robots, bringing them back to the workshop, turning them back into men. It was a fine idea, a great one even, a real service, if it was possible. But with no more robots being made down at the dockyards, the King’s workshop should be filled with old parts, not new ones. Either the King was reclaiming new parts from the old robot factories at the bottom of the island, near the Battery, or he was making his own. Whichever it was, Rad didn’t much like it. But stuck in the workshop with the heat turned up to eleven, he didn’t see that there was much he could do.

The workshop had two doors. One was hot to the touch and presumably led further down into the bowels of the building, to a furnace or boiler room — unlikely to be the most useful route of escape.

Which left the other door. It was wood painted green, the wood itself ancient and as solid as iron, reinforced with black iron bands. It was locked with a bolt on the outside, and when Rad banged his fists on it it was like pounding on the brick wall that surrounded it, the door carrying no vibration, no movement at all.

No, Rad couldn’t open this door. He’d have to wait until the door was opened for him. Which, according to Kane, would be soon, because the “man in the suit” was going to deliver the medicine.

Rad turned and scratched his chin, surveying the workshop as he ran that particular piece of data around his brain.

Rad eyed the stack of apparently new robot head shells on a nearby bench, and shuddered. He might have been a little less in shape that he would have liked, but he was attached to his body and he didn’t feel like switching any part of it for something made of metal.

“They’re coming… marching. Them… the red… red lights. They’re coming…”

Rad darted back to Kane’s side. His friend’s face was slick with sweat, his hair damp across his forehead, as he twisted his head from side to side, his eyes screwed up in pain. Rad placed a hand on Kane’s forehead. He was burning up.

“Hey, Kane old buddy, hang in there,” said Rad.

“Machines… it’s her… it’s her… blue… her eyes are blue… her eyes are blue… cold and fire and cold and cold… machines… blue…”

Rad raised an eyebrow. Some kind of flashback to falling through the Fissure? Wouldn’t be a surprise. He’d been between universes twice himself, and that was shock enough.

But whatever Kane was dreaming about, Rad didn’t like the way he mentioned machines.

“Easy, buddy, easy,” said Rad, his voice a whisper, his eyes flicking up to the workshop door. Come on, you spooky son of a bitch, he thought. Come on with the damn green potion.

“Soon, soon, soon, soon…”

“Soon what?”

“Soon, soon…” Kane said, and said again, faster and faster.

Rad shook his head and looked up. Maybe Kane needed the green stuff after all. “Hey! Your majesty!” he yelled. “Get your ass in here with the medicine!”

“They’re marching… the machines are marching… she’s coming… no! No!” Kane shook his head violently. Rad grabbed Kane’s head between both hands and tried to keep it still, but Kane’s strength was surprising. Rad gritted his teeth, hoping this wasn’t some kind of seizure.

“No!” Kane cried out, so loud Rad flinched. “She’s coming, her machines are coming here… she’s going to end it all… they’ll destroy everything… everything!” Kane’s eyes snapped open, and he looked at Rad. Rad swore that he saw a light in the eyes of his friend, a distant blue and white spark dancing in his pupils, spinning like the stars, flaring like the Fissure that had once stood in the middle of the Battery.

“Soon,” said Kane, “they’re coming soon.”

“What? Who are? Kane, speak to me, buddy. What’s going to happen?”

Kane shuddered in Rad’s grip and then he blinked, licked his lips, and slumped. Rad realized that his whole body had been thrashing inside the machine.

“OK,” said the detective, sliding off the stool and pushing his fist into his open palm as he surveyed the laboratory again. Time was running out, fast. He had to get them out and find Jennifer. “Hang in there, buddy. I gotta do some thinking here.”

Kane muttered something, but when Rad looked at his friend he was asleep.