The Age Atomic

FIFTY-FIVE

Rad cried out. He rolled on his side and remembered the woman with blue eyes falling from a tall building. Then he looked up. The ground was cold, freezing, and the sign that shone in the icy air said Soma Street.

He jerked up, his head pounding. Someone said “Easy, tiger,” and a hand pressed down on his chest. He blinked, clearing his vision, and saw Mr Grieves looking down at him, standing in a sea of silver men.

Rad cried out again, and spun around on the floor. Soma Street was to his left, close enough to touch. The army of robots was on his right, impossibly tall from his position on the floor. Lying next to him was Jennifer, face down and very still. Of Kane and the woman with blue eyes there was no sign, but when he blinked he saw their outlines moving, right on the border between the two universes. It looked like they were dancing, dancing until the end of the world, but Rad blinked again and they were gone and maybe it had been his imagination anyway.

Rad winced. He hurt all over. His head felt like it was going to explode. He turned his attention to Jennifer, his hands on her shoulders. She didn’t respond, but Rad felt her body gently move. She was breathing, at least.

“What in the hell?” he asked of no one in particular, but Grieves moved away as a familiar laugh barked out.

“Welcome back, Mr Bradley,” said Nimrod. He was standing by the torus reactor, now dark, silent. He looked tired, his face slick with sweat and his safari jacket a little crooked, but he was alive and standing with his hands clasped behind his back.

“Son of a bitch,” said Rad, pulling himself to his feet with a little help from Mr Grieves. “What happened? Where’s Kane and the blue lady? And why aren’t we dead?”

He turned to look into the Empire State. The portal that formed the wall of the factory was as large as ever but different somehow; the edge of it, where one universe cut into another, was not torn and flickering as it had been before, but a solid blue outline, curved and bold. It was still cold, standing so close to the winter city, but the wind was gone. Soma Street was still, quiet, like the robots surrounding Rad.

“The portal is quite stable. We have Mr Fortuna to thank for that, and Evelyn, of course. But I think you and Jennifer saved us all.”

Rad looked at Mr Grieves, but the agent just shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck like he’d just gone two rounds with someone a little bigger than he was.

“I remember,” said Rad, turning on his heel to survey the factory. “The robots were counting down to the end of the world. Kane stopped them but it was too much for him. Said he was locked to McHale and couldn’t do a thing.”

“You spoke to him?” asked Nimrod. “Fascinating.”

Rad nodded. “Said he needed my help. He gave me a little touch of the power he carried, but… I guess it was too much. He asked me to take out Elektro, but I couldn’t. The robot was too strong.”

Nimrod walked forward, and Rad jumped back as the two robots immediately behind him stepped with him in time. Nimrod clapped his hands, rubbing them together like he was starting a fire between his palms.

“Fret not, detective. While you two were out for the count I had a look at the master control circuit.” Nimrod gestured to the control panel underneath the torus reactor. “This army is now mine.”

“Uh-huh,” said Rad. He eyed the robots. There was something about the way Nimrod seemed so pleased to be in command that he didn’t like, not this time. There was a hardness in the old man’s eyes when he said it.

Jennifer moaned. Rad dropped to his knee and helped her sit up.

“Kane was the key,” Nimrod said, watching the pair. “Evelyn couldn’t see his timeline because, like her, he existed outside of the world. They were two sides of the same space-time event.”

Grieves loosened his tie. “The Fissure?”

“Precisely,” said Nimrod. “Polar opposites, perfectly balanced. They fed off each other.”

“But the Fissure was inside Kane,” said Rad. He pointed to the portal to Soma Street. “How could both sides be here, in New York?”

“They couldn’t,” said Nimrod. “He pushed Evelyn off her axis, and she began to fall, dragging him down. He realized this, from what you say, which is why he needed your help to tap into another power source. The injection of energy from the fusor reactor was enough to pull them both back up so the convergence could be complete. Two became one, the opposite sides of the Fissure balancing once more. Et, voila.”

Nimrod spread his arms open like a showman as he stood in front of the giant portal to the Empire State. Rad moved forward, expecting to feel the buzz-saw vibration, but there was nothing. Nimrod glanced sideways at him and chuckled.

“It’s quite stable. The Pocket and the Origin are not merely tethered, they are tightly bound together.”

Jennifer sighed and rubbed the back of her head.

“That was quite a punch you threw,” said Rad.

“I followed your lead on that one,” she said with a small laugh.

“Are you OK? You tore up Elektro but then collapsed.”

Jennifer nodded and rolled her neck. “I think so. I heard you from outside. Sounded like you needed help, so… I just ran.” She flexed the fingers of her right hand. “I guess I’m stronger than I look. But that was all I had in me and it was lights out.” She looked around. “I take it it worked.”

Rad nodded. “We wouldn’t be here without you, so thanks. With your brother out there…”

“Stop,” Jennifer waved Rad off. “Didn’t seem much point wishing I could get James fixed if the world ended, right?”

“True enough,” said Rad. Then he saw his hat on the floor. He scooped it up and put it on. The band was cold against his skin. “And Kane?” He turned to Nimrod. “He’s dead, I take it?”

Nimrod’s mustache rolled under his nose as he surveyed the blue boundary of the portal. “I don’t think he was ever alive, not really.”

“Never alive?”

“Well,” said Nimrod, waving his hands. “Alive, in a sense, the same as the Fissure is alive. But like Evelyn, it wasn’t him. He was an echo, an afterimage.”

Rad nodded. “A ghost. Like her?”

“Indeed. Evelyn McHale died in 1947 at the bottom of the Empire State Building. The Director of Atoms for Peace was not the same woman, not really.”

Rad pondered this, but it all seemed too big, too dreamlike. He wasn’t really sure Nimrod knew as much as he claimed, and while there was an empty sadness at the thought that Kane had never come back to the Empire State, not really, there was a calmness too, melancholic and cool but one that filled Rad with a kind of nervous hope.

He turned to Soma Street, to the Empire State. To his home.

“Sir!”

Rad turned as two of Nimrod’s agents rushed in, the same men Grieves had left to help up top. Nimrod frowned.

“Yes?”

“It’s Carson, sir,” said the agent in front.

Rad froze. “What about him?”

“He’s in a bad way. He said to get Captain Nimrod.”

Rad turned to Nimrod. Nimrod brushed his mustache with the back of a thick finger.