The Age Atomic (10 page)

 

NINETEEN

 

The laboratory was empty when Laura arrived for work. That wasn't unusual, although she did worry for Doctor X's health. He didn't get enough –
any
– natural sunlight living underground, which would play havoc with anyone's circadian rhythms. She only hoped he was given vitamin D tablets with his food. He'd taken to working at night too, when she wasn't there, appearing late in the afternoon. It was almost like he didn't want to work with her, which was a shame. She knew she was the only person Doctor X ever really saw, apart from a few auxiliary staff and the silent, black-hatted agents that accompanied them. And the Director of course, but she didn't count as a person, not really.

Laura shrugged off her jacket and slipped on her white lab coat, glancing around as she did so. He'd been busy during the night. Very busy. Laura allowed herself a little smile; at least his scientific curiosity hadn't left him.

“Good morning, Laura.”

Laura jumped, her hand clutching her chest. She spun around, recognizing the voice.

“What–” Her hand found her mouth.

The Project stood next to the cage, its left arm replaced with the new limb she'd built just a few days ago. Its eyes glowed brightly, as did the circular window in its chest. Laura found her gaze drawn to the red light pulsing and spinning like a radar screen.

The fusor… the Project had a
fusor
installed: an operational, functioning portable fusion reactor. She blinked, her surprise fading as her professional interest took over. She took a step forward, wanting to see the work, and then she screamed.

The Project was standing next to the cage, but the frame within was not empty. Wired to the cradle around it, cables and wires dangling, connected to banks of dead equipment, was Doctor X. His eyes and mouth were open. His head lolled to one side.

His lab coat was a brilliant pinkish red. It took Laura a moment to realize that the heavy fabric had acted as a sponge, absorbing the blood from the cavernous chest wound. There was a smell too, the smell of meat at a butcher's counter. Laura felt the bile rise in her throat – hot, sticky, making her choke.

The doctor's chest had been opened down the middle, the two front halves of the ribcage removed entirely. Laura glanced down, and saw on a small trolley near the cage a mound of black and red material, oily and wet. Doctor X's eviscerated insides.

The hollowed-out torso was filled with wires, all connected to the apparatus inside the cage like they had been when it had been the Project occupying the frame.

Laura doubled over and closed her eyes. She spat her breakfast onto the floor, and sucked in a breath, determined to stay conscious as the world spun around her.

It was fine, it was fine. She just needed to call for help and the workshop would be filled with agents. And the Director… she could
see
what was going on, right? All Laura had to do was to call out, get her attention, and everything would be fine. Maybe the Director could even put Doctor X back together again.

“Anyone ever tell you you're a pretty girl?”

Laura jumped. The Project was nearer now, moving with remarkable silence. The circular swirl of red light from its chest was almost hypnotic.

“Things didn't go so well with me and the Prof, see,” said the machine. “But I think I got it fixed. Know where I went wrong. I'm good now.”

Laura backed away, feeling around the bench behind her. The workshop was large and there was plenty of room to run. She just had to judge her moment. There were agents near, there always were. She just needed to get to the door and–

“He was a great guy, you know.”

Laura froze. She didn't want to die, not today. Not like Doctor X.

The Project stepped forward.

“Your boss, I mean. The Prof. What a guy. Fixed me up too, real swell.” It raised its new arm and flexed it like a circus weightlifter before tapping the index finger against the glass window in its chest. The sound was loud but dull. “All systems go. Course, I told him what to do, but nobody's perfect.”

Laura spun on her heel, but came face to face with a computer cabinet, not the exit she had expected. She cried out in surprise and turned back around. The Project was closer, within touching distance. She looked around, looking for an escape, for a clear route out.

“It's a shame about the Prof. But, y'know, sometimes you just make an honest mistake. I mean, c'mon, what can you do, huh?”

“What can you do?” Laura repeated. It sounded like someone else speaking, like her ears were stuffed with cotton wool.

The robot continued to creep forward. “But never mind. Let's talk about you and me, Laura. We're gonna do great things, you and I. Oh boy, you'd better believe it.”

Laura nodded. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see it: one of the claw-like clamps that were used to install the fusor reactor in the robot. Install… and
remove
. If she could get to the clamp, all she would need to do was jam it into the robot's chest and turn, just once, to unlock the fusor. The power would be disconnected instantly, and without the external power supply provided by the cage, the Project would drop where it stood.

It sounded easy. The Project was up and moving and unrestrained, but it seemed slow, like a drunk person concentrating very hard on not being drunk. Even so, the machine would pull her to pieces like tissue paper if she tried to get the clamp in place… unless she was quick, quicker than it was. And all it would take was a twist. A single twist.

Laura sidled to the right. The robot didn't move, just followed her with its eyes. The clamp was on the bench, just there, almost in touching distance, next to the back-up prototype fusor. The reactor looked different somehow.

Eyes fixed on the Project, Laura moved again, one step, then another, then another. The robot didn't move. She glanced to her right, to make sure the clamp was really there, then looked back at the robot.

She reached out, not looking. Her fingers found the clamp. The metal was cold.

“Not so fast, honey pie.” The Project jerked to life. Laura jumped back to her left, clamp in her grasp. She pulled it off the bench and it fell downward, yanking her shoulder painfully. The clamp was much heavier than she remembered.

She backed away, knowing that she was out of room and out of time. She raised the clamp in front of her. It had a handle like a gun, complete with a trigger to lock and unlock the three articulated fingers.

The robot ignored her, turning its attention to the other fusor reactor on the bench. It lifted it with one hand like it weighed nothing at all, and turned to the doctor.

“Ta-da,” it said. “Neat, right? We got them fixed. Portable nuclear fusion. Virtually unlimited power.” The robot shook its head; Laura almost imagined it was in quiet appreciation of the technology. The Project was right. Each reactor could power a city. Laura had hoped they would be used for good, of course. They would change the world. Unlimited power, so cheap as to be virtually free, inexhaustible, safe. First every city would have a fusor, one single cylinder replacing a dozen conventional power stations. And who knew what was possible with such power? That was the whole point, the whole thing about
science
. It wasn't what you could imagine now; it was what you could imagine five, ten, twenty years from now. What possibilities would the power offered by the fusor reactor unlock in the future? Every city would have one – how about every home? What if every single human being in the United States of America had
one each
? Their own personal spark of creation, a flame captured from the embers of the Big Bang itself. Contained, nurtured,
tamed
.

It made the mind reel.

But it was too much. She knew that. Atoms for Peace were going to put one into each of a thousand machine soldiers. That was too much power, a recipe for disaster. If anything went wrong…

Laura watched the fusor reactor swing in the robot's hand. A portable power source. A portable Little Boy or Fat Man, or worse. A whole army equipped with fusors would have enough power to knock the Earth off its axis.

“Now,” said the Project. “I'm gonna try a different approach.”

Laura squeezed the clamp's trigger, making the three fingers flex, making a clicking noise that was as loud as an atom bomb. The robot took a step forward, and she took a step back and hit something tall and hard. She was up against the computer cabinet with nowhere to go.

“Me and the doctor,” said the robot as it walked slowly forward, “we had this thing going on. Quite a plan, see. But, you know, things the way they is, it's down to you and me now. I mean, I wouldn't say no, right? Right. So here I am thinking, hell, we got a whole bundle of these babies, so why not, right?”

The robot raised the fusor in front of it, pointing the flat end of the cylinder directly at Laura. It took another step forward.

“Sure, why not,” said Laura, her voice barely a mumble.

Didn't the Director see everything that was happening in the city? Was she watching now, from the Cloud Club, as her precious Project ran amok in the laboratory?

Of course she was. Laura felt her heart kick. This was part of it. A test of the fusor reactor. An experiment to be observed.

Laura shook her head. The robot took another step towards her.

“Screw you, bitch,” said Laura under her breath, and she powered forward, using the cabinet behind her as a springboard. Squeezing the trigger, she pushed the clamp forward as she moved, hoping that after dozens of installations she could estimate automatically the mating point of the clamp and the reactor in the robot's chest. All it would take is one turn, just one turn to the left, not even a five-degree rotation, and the reactor would disconnect and she would save herself and maybe she would save the whole damn world.

The Project threw its arms up and leaned back – as though surprised – as she flew at it, and Laura wondered what the noise was, the sound that reverberated around the workshop. She looked up into the eyes of the robot, their red lights rocking back and forth in the sockets like a child's broken toy, and she realized the sound was her, screaming in anger. She was up against the robot, its metal casing cold and hard, her fingernails trailing silently across the chest. She screamed and screamed again, raising her arm up, her yanked shoulder protesting at the weight of the clamp. Why was it so damn heavy?

The clamp slipped, and Laura tried again, this time tearing her eyes away from the robot's pretend face to look and align the clamp. There wasn't much time; any second now she'd be tossed like a sack of wheat clean across the laboratory.

A twist of the wrist, and the clamp still wouldn't lock. The metal fingers slid across the glass port of the reactor, failing to find any slots at all. She twisted the other way, yelling in frustration.

Her cry died in her throat and she almost coughed. The fusor reactor, it was different. There were no slots in the rim for the clamp, nothing to grip on around the edge, no way of removing it, not by her. The clamp was redundant.

“Lady, please,” said the robot. “Have a little patience.”

Laura pushed away and let the clamp drop to the floor. She turned, desperate to make a getaway. There was no other option.

“It's OK, I understand.” The robot grabbed Laura by the collar of her lab coat, lifting her until her feet left the floor. “Don't worry about a thing. I got this honey. Power, I get it, I understand. And trust me, you wouldn't believe what this thing can do.”

“What are you doing?” Laura struggled, but the robot's grip was firm, her lab coat cutting into her armpits.

“You need an upgrade, that's for sure. I tried it on old Philo but it didn't take. But it's OK – I know what I did wrong now.”

Laura shook her head, her eyes wide. Couldn't the robot distinguish between living creatures and machines like itself?

“I can't use the fusor,” she said, “I don't need it!”

The robot almost tutted. Then it lowered her to the floor and pushed her hard against the computer cabinet with the end of the fusor reactor, squeezing the air out of her lungs. With the other hand it tore open the front of her coat, then her blouse underneath, then snapped the front of her bra off, exposing the pale skin over Laura's sternum. The robot tilted its head, and moved the reactor, lining up the flat end between her breasts. Laura gulped in air, each breath pushing her skin against the end of the cylinder. The metal was cold.

Laura cried out again – not a scream of fear, but of anger, screaming at the goddamn robot that was going to kill everyone, including her, as the robot pushed, breaking bone, breaking flesh, as it tried to upgrade her.

 

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.