The Age Atomic

TWENTY-NINE

Rad retraced his steps at a run. He remembered a short journey from the underground workshop to the furnace room, but now it was confusing, with more doors and turns that he’d noticed coming the other way. All he could do was try not to think too much and hope his subconscious knew the way. He was too busy worrying about how long the locked door behind him would hold out against the King, however damaged the robot was.

Rad burst through the green door, into the workshop. He turned, but the corridor behind him was silent, with no indication the King had managed even to climb the stairs of the furnace room yet. Rad threw the door closed behind him.

“Kane, buddy, time to go.” Rad raced to Kane’s side. The former reporter blinked and squinted at Rad, and began to shake his head. Rad waved his hand and turned to scan the workshop.

“Oh no,” said Rad. “No, no, we’re going. That guy who calls himself a king? Turns out he’s just the same as the Corsair, one of our metal friends. Aha-” He spied a long crowbar-like metal rod among the robot parts and grabbed it. Then he returned to Kane’s machine and began trying to force the two seams of the machine apart.

“Rad, listen to me,” said Kane, his voice a dry, cracking croak. “We can’t leave, not without-” His voice dissolved into a dry cough.

The metal rod slid against the smooth surface of the machine, Rad almost connecting his chin with it as he fell forward. He swore, readjusted his grip, and tried again. This time he got purchase and forced the end of the rod into the seam. There was a click, and a small gap formed, from which shone a bright light. Rad frowned, gripped his hands together, and tried to leverage his weight. He puffed his cheeks out as he worked.

“We ain’t got much time,” said Rad, teeth clenched. “I did some damage to our robot friend and locked him in the other room, but he’ll get out eventually.” He heaved again. “Although a robot with a robot servant, now, there’s something. Seems like they’re building some kind of society of their own.”

“Rad!” Kane said. “There’s someone in the other machine!”

Rad paused, his eyes scanning the other machine. The robot’s head was turned away from him, and at the base of the neck he could see brown hair bunched under the edge of the metal.

Rad yanked the rod from Kane’s machine and it snapped shut again, cutting the light out. Rad felt the room spin a little but got to the other machine. The one holding Special Agent Jennifer Jones.

He carefully rolled her head so she was looking at the ceiling. What he’d thought was a robot head was actually a mask or helmet, hinged at the top, held together with simple pins. This close, he could see Jennifer’s eyes through the holes in the mask. She sighed, and Rad could see her teeth through the slot mouth.

“OK, OK…” said Rad, his hands moving over the mask, locating the pins holding the mask in place. There were four, and they came out easily. After dropping them to the floor, he lifted Jennifer’s head carefully and pulled at the front of the mask. It swung up, and the back panel loosened; within moments it was free. Rad tossed it to the floor, and then swore.

There was another mask, smaller, covering Jennifer’s face from hairline to chin. Rad ran his fingers around the edge, which stopped just short of her ears, trying to find a strap, but there was nothing. The mask was brilliant gold, shining, the front an elegant Art Deco sculpt of a woman’s face, with delicate eyebrows and full lips.

Rad pulled at the edge, but the mask didn’t shift. He pulled again, harder this time, but the mask was firmly attached. Rad merely lifted her entire head, making her to moan in discomfort. Jennifer was alive, at least. He could worry about the golden mask later.

Kane coughed. “The Corsair isn’t a robot… it’s a man. I saw his eyes.”

Rad nodded, processing the new information. “OK, OK… so the King is a robot and his robot is a man. Great. Let’s work out the why and the how and the who later. We’ve gotta get out of here, but it looks like I’m the only one up and moving.”

Rad swore and shook his head. It was time to think of something big and great that was going to work. There was something he was forgetting, he was sure of it.

“The King said I can’t leave the machine,” said Kane.

“The King said a lot of things.”

“Some of which were true.”

“Yeah,” said Rad, still holding Jennifer’s head. “But some of which was a little less so. Like the fact he was a robot, for a start. So who knows what else he’s been saying?”

“What reason would he have to lie about me? Why would he want to keep me here?”

“Ah, yeah, about that.”

Kane raised up his head. “About what?”

“Well,” said Rad, “seems the King wants to keep you around as his own personal power generator.”

Kane shook his head. “What?”

Rad shrugged. “Long story. You’ve got the Fissure inside you. Neat, right?”

“I… what?”

“Look,” said Rad, “we’re on the clock here. So let’s save it and work on this marvelous escape plan.”

“I’m glad you have one,” said Kane, resting his head back on the pillow.

“Ah, yeah, and it’s marvelous, believe me.”

There was a bang from somewhere beyond the green door. The blind King had climbed the stairs, then.

Rad looked around the workshop. They had to leave, and it wasn’t like he could wheel the two machines out. But the Corsair was absent, and the outer door was, as Rad had hoped, still open.

Jennifer coughed. Rad felt her pulse, under the edge of the mask. It felt fine, strong, and she was breathing normally and her eyes looked clear and were blinking as usual through the eyeholes.

“Rad?”

“We meet again, Special Agent. How do you feel? Can you move around inside this thing?”

Jennifer grunted with effort, and her head slid on her pillow as she struggled with something.

“I’m strapped down. I don’t think I’m hurt. At least I can’t feel any pain, and I can move my arms and legs.”

“OK,” said Rad, retrieving the metal rod from the floor. “Let’s just hope they didn’t have a chance to get started on you properly.” He felt along the seam of the machine, and began to work the rod into the gap.

Kane watched them from his table.

“What do you mean, get started?”

Rad huffed as he worked at the lid of Jennifer’s machine.

“It’s what we thought. The King isn’t turning robots back into people. He’s turning people into robots. This place is full of robot parts — new parts, not ones he’s taken from the refugees. He’s creating his own little machine army, and he’s using power from the Fissure to do it.”

“The power that’s inside me.”

Rad paused. His back was to Kane, and he was glad that Kane couldn’t see the expression on his face. “Seems so. But first things first.”

The rod slid home, and Jennifer jerked as Rad opened a two-inch crack between the machine’s lid and the base. No light flooded out, so Rad adjusted his grip and heaved. There was a loud crack, like he’d broken a catch, and then another, and then the rod moved easily, Rad levering the lid up.

Jennifer was held down to her slab with thick leather straps across her chest, her legs, each arm and ankle. Rad made short work of the buckles, and Jennifer only needed a little help to sit up. She stood, and Rad helped her step over the high lip of the machine and onto the floor. She looked down at herself and straightened her coat.

She seemed fine, just dandy, but Rad flinched when she looked up at him through the metal mask. She noticed, and laughed, her voice echoing behind the metal.

“It’s strange, it doesn’t feel like there’s anything there.” Her fingers ran over the mask, tracing the seams, feeling the contours. “It has no weight. It’s like it’s a part of me.”

Rad nodded. “Then it won’t slow you down. But Kane is the problem right now. We can’t get him out of the machine, but we can’t carry him out in it either.”

Rad clicked his fingers. Of course… he turned to Kane.

“When you landed, what happened to the suit?”

Kane coughed. “Landed?”

“Landed, crashed, fell on your ass, whatever,” said Rad. “When the great reporter fell from the sky, were you still dressed as the Skyguard?”

“Ah, yeah, I guess.”

“So what happened to the suit?”

Kane frowned. Then he looked around the workshop from his horizontal position.

“It must be here somewhere. I don’t remember.”

“Maybe the suit is part of this all?” said Jennifer. “Maybe they reverse-engineered it for the technology, used it to help build the robots?”

Rad nodded. “Maybe,” he said, picking up his coat, hat, and scarf off the third, empty machine. He began putting them on and then paused, one arm in his coat. “You’re one of Carson’s Special Agents, right?”

Jennifer nodded, but Rad noticed a pause before she did so.

“OK,” he said, “I’m going to ask about your significant pauses and whatever it is you’re not telling me later, but listen, if you worked for Carson, that means you know at least a little about the Fissure.”

“Yes, of course.”

Rad shrugged his coat on properly. He began pacing the workshop, casting his eyes over the shelves, tables, cabinets and stacks of equipment. There were enough robot parts in the room to build a dozen walking machines, but he couldn’t see what he was looking for.

“The Skyguard’s suit is really a machine, like a robot,” he said. “Last time I saw it, it was doing a pretty good job of channeling or absorbing the energy of the Fissure itself.” Rad turned to Kane. “That was the whole point of the plan, right?”

Kane nodded. “The Science Pirate made some changes to the suit so it could absorb ambient energy. The plan was to drain energy from the Fissure, and then feed it back by overloading the suit’s batteries.”

Rad held a hand up. “Stop right there,” he said. “Drain energy from the Fissure, right?”

“Right.”

Jennifer nodded. “I get it.”

“Exactly,” said Rad. “This machine Kane is in is containing the power, channeling it into a contraption in the other room.”

As if to emphasize the point, a distant bang sounded again as the King pounded on the furnace room door.

“So, find the suit,” said Rad, “and maybe we can get Kane out of the machine and into it before he blows the place sky-high.”

“If the suit is still in one piece,” said Kane. “Might’ve been wrecked when I came back.”

“Or maybe the King pulled it to pieces,” said Rad. “But have you got a better idea?”

He glanced around the workshop. “We have to find that suit before the Corsair comes back, even if we have to turn this place upside down.”

They’d been searching for what felt like hours. At first, fearful the Corsair would make a surprise return, Rad and Jennifer had stuck together — first turning over the downstairs workshop, and then cautiously moving out to examine the rest of the King’s domain. But when there was still no sign of it — of him — Rad suggested they split up to widen the search.

Jennifer headed up, telling Rad she was going to start at the top and work her way down. The former theater was huge, and the green light was mounted at the top of the building. The King was bound to be using rooms above the theater as well.

Jennifer paused in a dark corridor three levels up. The floorboards creaked and the place smelled musty and old, and aside from the rustling of her long coat and the odd echo of her breath inside the mask, the place was silent. The corridor in which she had stopped was short, no more than a stairwell landing before continuing up to the next level.

She moved forward, the floor creaking again. It was lighter here, thanks to a long, low window with an arched top. It was frosted with ice on the outside, which diffused the streetlight, bathing the landing in an eerie glow.

Jennifer moved to the window; it was set low, more like a decorative alcove on the landing than a window. It had a wide sill, and she sat and pressed her face against the glass to try to see out. She recoiled at the sharp tap her new metal face made as it came into contact with the glass, but then carefully rested it against the window. She could feel the cold through the glass, not just through her gloves as she rested her palms against the window but through the metal mask itself, like it was a part of her.

Strangely, that didn’t bother her, and she wondered whether that in itself should be a worry. But the thin metal mask was weightless, not so much comfortable as feeling like it wasn’t there at all. It didn’t impede her vision. She had no trouble breathing, or speaking. She hadn’t eaten yet, and she wondered what would happen then given there was no articulated jaw, just a narrow metal slot though which she could only poke the very tip of her tongue.

She pulled back and looked at her reflection in the glass. The mask — the metal face — was beautiful, not just a functional part of… what, a robot? Not like any robot she’d ever seen. Maybe the King was an artist, too, creating not just an army of robots but an army of machines formed to his exact specifications. Perhaps he was not only building soldiers but machine people too.

There was movement outside, breaking her reverie. She leaned forward and again touched her metal forehead to the glass.

The street outside was lit in a pinkish-red glow that seemed to hang in the ice-laden air like sugar syrup. There was plenty of movement too: there were robots, lots of them, huddled together at the far end of the street, the group getting narrower as it approached the building until Jennifer could see a queue of them, single-file. At the head of the line, almost directly beneath the window, stood the Corsair. He was facing the line of robots, and as each machine approached he handed something out like a priest at Sunday mass.

Jennifer squinted, and her breath caught in her throat as her vision zoomed forward. She felt like she was falling, the world spinning around her as vertigo threatened to take hold. She gritted her teeth and hissed as a wave of nausea spread over her, and reached out with her hands instinctively, her subconscious mind instructing her limbs to grab onto something, anything, to stop the fall. But her hands banged the glass of the window almost as soon as she moved them. Then her vision stabilized, the drunken sensation ceasing. She turned her head a little and her vision blurred and then refocused, all while her forehead touched the glass.

Her hands moved over the glass, then down, and found the sill and the sill’s edge. Jennifer sighed in relief. She was still sitting, looking through the window — and her vision was still fuzzy as she looked through the patches of frost — but somehow the scene below had been zoomed in like she was looking through a pair of binoculars. She realized, awestruck, that it was the mask, responding to her thoughts.

She concentrated, and her vision blurred, filled with nothing but rough white and black shapes. She let out her breath and relaxed her body, letting her shoulders drop and her hands rest on her lap, and the image resolved into pin-sharp clarity.

She had a perfect, close-up view of the street below. She watched the Corsair as he handed out small silver rectangles; they looked like pieces of metal, the size of a box of matches, until the next robot in the line — one that looked more or less completely human, except for one silver, articulated arm — took the item, bowed his head to the Corsair, and then tore off the silver wrapping with his teeth. He pressed whatever it was into his mouth, and his eyes closed as he rocked on his heels. There was movement behind him; Jennifer zoomed out and saw the two robots immediately behind become agitated, until one nudged the creature at the front. The robot-man jerked, then shuffled out of the way, and Jennifer zoomed in to his face. His chin and mouth were covered with something dark and liquid, though it was hard to tell what it was in the pinkish light.

There was a flash of white, and Jennifer’s vision swam before she regained control. She was now looking at the street below in what appeared to be normal light… no, not normal light, it was something else, the scene was so sharp, clearer than she had ever seen anything before, such incredible detail, from the pebbles on the road to the ice crystals drifting in the air outside, to the green mess on the man’s chin.

The green. The Corsair was handing out green, little rations of it.

Jennifer looked back at the Corsair, her miraculous new eyesight refocusing as she did. The Corsair was wearing his big black fur. There was a breeze in the street, catching the giant collar of the outfit, swirling the thick hairs. With her enhanced vision Jennifer thought she could count every single one as they swayed in the wind, the patterns of motion mesmerizing.

And then she saw it; she zoomed in further instantly, without conscious thought. Under the high collar, occasionally visible on the back of the Corsair’s helmet: a ridge, almost like the fin of a fish. It was triangular, the top edge coming out of the back at ninety degrees, and then angling down to the base of the helmet.

It was familiar, Jennifer knew it was — something from the Empire State Building. The ridge was an attachment point for something, something in particular. Jennifer ran her eyes over the back of the Corsair’s head, and finally the pieces came together in her mind. The black helmet was incomplete, missing a front-flanged section that would normally come together at an angle over the face, then curve out and up to form two fluted metal wings that stuck out on either side of the helmet.

The Corsair was wearing the Skyguard’s suit — what was left of it, anyway. Whether it was damaged in Kane’s return or altered by the King or modified by whoever was inside the suit now, Jennifer had no idea. But she’d found the suit. Now she had to get the Corsair out and Kane in.

Something played at the back of her mind, something important, something she’d discovered… but the thought was gone as she tried to grasp it.

Jennifer decided to find Rad before the Corsair had finished doling out the small parcels of green to the assembled robots. She moved a little, her metal face squeaking against the cold glass of the window.

Suddenly, the zoomed-in view of the Corsair blurred, the furs and black uniform caught in quick movement. Jennifer pulled her head back and her eyes adjusted, zooming out and refocusing.

Jennifer gasped behind her mask, and for a second it felt like she couldn’t move, couldn’t take her eyes away from… him.

The Corsair was looking up at her — not just at the window, but at her, into her eyes. Had he heard the noise? It seemed so unlikely, but if the Skyguard’s mask was operational he would have picked it up.

She watched and saw him blink behind the mask of the Skyguard; she zoomed in until his eyes, his human eyes, were the only thing filling her vision.

They were green, a bright, bright green, shot through with yellow like precious gems, two glittering crystals shining in her artificially enhanced view.

Eyes she recognized.

Jennifer gasped and almost fell off the sill as she scrambled backwards.

She remembered now. Remembered lying on the slab, inside the machine. Remembered the pain, remembered the green, remembered the voice whispering in her ear, the voice that called her Jen.

The Corsair was gone, the robots left to mill around. The queue was already beginning to break up as ones from further back moved forward to find out what was going on.

But of the Corsair — of her brother — there was no sign.

Jennifer pushed herself off the alcove and raced down the stairs.

It was getting colder, and not just because Rad was moving further and further away from the workshop and the furnace room. He’d found himself in an empty square room, devoid of anything at all except a light bulb hanging from a single cord, and a big door in one wall. The door was metal, and bulbous, with a large lever for a handle, looking very much like a walk-in refrigerator. Quite what such a device was doing inside an old theater was a question Rad didn’t expect he’d find the answer to, because he knew that maybe the building never had been a theater, despite the stage and the awning outside and the missing letters above the front door, despite the rooms he’d found full of props and costumes slowly moldering away. Because in the Empire State, a lot of things never were; for all he knew, this place had sprung into existence as was, derelict and unused and rotting, until the King and the Corsair had found it and taken it over.

His search had been so far unsuccessful. In one room, Rad thought he’d hit pay dirt, seeing the Skyguard’s voluminous cloak rolled up in a corner, only to find it was just extra curtain fabric for the main stage.

And the more Rad searched, the less confident he felt. He’d moved from the workshops and engineering areas with their robotic spare parts and components into the leftovers of the theater itself, and more than once Rad realized that if the King had taken the Skyguard’s suit to pieces, he might well have already seen most of it spread out across various workbenches and not know it.

He needed to get back to Kane. He was hoping that Jennifer could look after herself.

He was also looking for her gun. He’d seen it take out the crazy leader of the robot gangs, the one that had called itself Elektro, with a single shot. Even with the recharge time, he thought it would come in handy.

Now he was in an empty room with a freezer installed. The temperature outside was so cold the freezer seemed unnecessary. But… he’d better check it. He wrapped his scarf firmly around his face and reached for the freezer door.

The freezer hummed. Rad checked that there was a working handle on the inside of the door — he wasn’t going to fall for that one — and stepped inside.

The freezer was filled with shelves, making the place less a butcher’s meat locker and more a laboratory storage area. There were containers and boxes stacked everywhere, and large items wrapped in plastic sheeting. Everything was covered with frost.

Rad stepped forward. He didn’t know why the Skyguard’s suit might have been kept in a freezer, but he was here now and it would pay to check. Just a quick look in, and then he’d head back to the warmth of the workshop. Maybe Jennifer had had better luck, and…

Rad stopped, and squinted at one of the wrapped items on the nearest shelf. There was a pinkish color showing through the sheet. Rad peered closer, then reached out and tugged at the sheet. It slid easily, shedding frost onto Rad’s hands. He pulled hard, and began to unwrap the long, thin object, rolling it on the shelf as the plastic was pulled out from underneath it.

Rad swore, the plastic sheeting dropping to the floor. On the shelf was a human arm, intact, the terminal of the shoulder neatly trimmed, exposing the round joint, perfectly clean and white. The arm was male, and it was a little thin, like the arm of a young man.

Rad stepped back and looked at the rest of the shelf. There were many more wrapped objects, some the same size and some smaller. Rad puffed out a great lungful of steam and carefully peeled back another sheet to reveal a single hand. He rubbed the frost off one of the jars and saw it was filled to the brim with a frozen liquid, red, swirled with yellow.

Rad looked around him. The freezer was full of body parts.

He backed away, rubbing the frost from fingers now numb from the cold. He felt numb elsewhere, somewhere deep inside, where maybe he thought the King was trying to do something and maybe Rad didn’t quite understand it but that was OK, that was good, because someone was helping those in the city who couldn’t help themselves, who had been tossed out by the government and forgotten, completely and utterly, creatures destitute and desolate and not even considered to be people.

But this… this was something else. This was macabre, a horror show, the freezer of a loony tune doing something untoward in the unknown dark and empty places of the Empire State.

Rad shook his head, muttering under his breath. The sonovabitch. He was keeping the human parts removed during his procedures. Why, Rad didn’t know and couldn’t guess. That was for later, when he and Jennifer Jones and her friends at the Empire State Building came back to sort out the mess.

Rad’s back touched the shelf behind him, and he jumped in fright. He sighed, his breath clouding the air, and turned.

Something caught his eye. There was a large object on the shelf, square, wrapped in plastic sheeting that hadn’t yet frosted over. There was something pinkish within, and there were marks on the shelf where the frost had been scraped off. The object was new, placed there only hours ago.

Rad didn’t want to see what it was, but he had a feeling it was important.

He grabbed the trailing corner of sheeting, and pulled. It moved easily, the plastic cold but still pliable, silky. Three turns and the object was exposed.

Rad felt the bile rise in his throat. The object was a glass head, like the kind in a fancy hat store. Except this head was bare — but for the front. Spread across the sculpted glass features was a face, a real human face, made of flesh and skin, with eyebrows and lips and nose. The glass face underneath was a standard model, and the real face adhering to it didn’t match the structure, not completely, resulting in a strange, distorted visage.

But it was enough for Rad to recognize. He coughed, and felt a hot bitterness against the back of his throat. He turned away from it, and almost tripped out of the freezer. He slammed the door behind him, then crashed his back into it and closed his eyes, taking deep breaths of air that were cold but warmer than in the freezer.

That settled it. They’d walked into a house of horror, the likes of which Rad had never seen before. In the dark places of the city, the King of 125th Street was putting into motion an insane plan, a plan that had to be stopped before his army of robots was activated, unleashing who knew what hell on the city as the Empire State plunged into a war with New York.

Rad pushed off the door, determined to get back to the workshop and find Jennifer and get them all out of there.

He was equally determined not to tell Jennifer he’d found her surgically removed face on a glass head in the freezer.