Adam Christopher - The Age Atomic

Rad pulled the metal rod from his pocket. The King’s eyes lit up and he smiled before holding out his hand. Rad pulled his own away and shook his head. “I met a guy earlier who didn’t like the look of this little thing one bit. Was scared of it even. You care to explain why?”

The King raised an eyebrow and slipped his hands into the pockets of his velvet jacket. “Oh, probably thought it was some bad hoodoo. My work here makes some people nervous, although I can’t think why.”

Rad sighed and held the object out. “OK, fine, knock yourself out,” he said.

The King took it slowly, his fingers wrapping around the cylinder. Then it quickly disappeared into a pocket.

“Kane Fortuna,” said Rad. “Now.”

The King nodded. “Come.”

The King walked toward the backstage door. Rad followed, but when Jennifer moved after him the King stopped, turning on his heel and holding up a hand.

“Ah, Ms Jones. Please make yourself comfortable here. Mr Bradley and I won’t be long.”

Jennifer met Rad’s eye. Rad frowned.

“Where are we going?” he asked. “Why can’t she come?”

“Trust me,” said the King. Then he smiled the infuriating smile and turned away, vanishing through the door.

Jennifer sighed. “I don’t like this.”

Rad adjusted his hat. Neither did he. He glanced around the theater, his fingers playing over the pistol in his coat pocket. He was armed… but so was Jennifer. The big silver gun still hung from her hand.

“We’ll be fine,” he said, drawing in close, his voice low. “If I can keep his majesty busy, you can take a look around, see what you can find.”

“OK. But be careful.”

Rad flashed a smile and knocked the brim of his hat with a knuckle. “You too,” he said. Then he followed the King through the door, wondering what he was going to say to Kane Fortuna.

They came to a large door, unlike any Rad had yet seen in the building, studded with rivets and reinforced with bolted metal plates. As they paused, Rad could hear a sound close by, what sounded like bellows, or machinery. Heat wafted off the door. There must have been a boiler or a furnace beyond it, providing the King with his own prodigious power source.

The King placed a hand on the door’s handle and turned to Rad.

“We are here.”

The room beyond was large and low: another workshop, almost identical to the one on the theater stage upstairs, although crowded, messy. The walls were lined with electrical equipment in more of the tall cabinets, and there were workbenches, toolboxes, and stacks of robot parts. The difference here was that these parts looked new, freshly fabricated, their metal surfaces unblemished and shining.

The King gestured for Rad to enter first. The detective raised an eyebrow and stepped across the threshold.

There were three slab-like tables here, as on the stage upstairs, but they were occupied by long metal boxes that fitted their tops nearly perfectly, leaving just an edge two inches deep on all side. The boxes hummed and ticked: machines rather than just containers. Rad stood still, listening, as the unmistakable sound of someone breathing heavily, as though in sleep, filled the air. Rad threaded his way between the workshop benches until he was at the head of the slabs.

Two of the three machines were empty. He gave them only a cursory glance. The middle slab had his attention.

The man was young, brown hair greased and damp with sweat, big eyes closed, their lids and surrounds dull red. His chin was covered with a green encrustation that, along with the faint tang in the air, reminded Rad of the barkeep he’d met in Harlem what felt like a million years ago.

Rad swore under his breath, and took off his hat to rub his head. His scalp was crawling with beaded sweat, the adrenaline-fuelled fight-or-flight response that had kicked in somewhere in the theater upstairs now threatening to make his heart leap out of his ribcage.

The man in the machine rolled his head, and his eyes flickered open. Rad’s own were wide, his jaw was loose, and he couldn’t find anything to say.

“Rad? Is that you?”

Rad remembered how his tongue worked. “Kane Fortuna. All my days.”

Kane smiled and closed his eyes. “Nice to see you too, partner.”

Jennifer traced her fingers along the painted brickwork as she explored the corridors of the King’s bizarre theater complex. She’d retraced her steps back to the former lobby and had then taken one of several plain doors that clearly led into what would have been the hidden workings of the theater, the areas not meant for public view. Behind the tattered but still decorative facade of the theater, the corridors were plain and the rooms she had found so far functional and mostly empty.

She was surprised to find herself alone, left to her own devices, the King apparently confident that she would be a good little woman and sit in the main workshop like she’d been told. Like the fact that she was a Special Agent operating on behalf of the City Commissioners somehow didn’t matter.

Jennifer stopped in the corridor, and smiled to herself. Of course, that had been a little lie. But sometimes little lies got you places a lot quicker than otherwise. And besides, it wasn’t entirely incorrect; it was just… well, just a little out of date. But the King was a crook and a crazy person who was going to help her, had to help her , so what did it matter.

And Rad was right — with the King otherwise occupied, it was the perfect opportunity to search the place.

Rad Bradley, private detective extraordinaire. He was a nice guy. He was going to be disappointed when he found out who she really was, but that didn’t matter. Because when that time came, Jennifer hoped to have solved the little mystery at the heart of Harlem and to have found her brother, James, and that was all that mattered. And the answer lay somewhere inside the King’s theater, she was sure of it.

Jennifer took a breath and ventured onwards.

She’d been working on her own for a long time, too long. She still remembered the day of chaos, the day the Empire State Building had been torn apart from the inside-out. In the aftermath there had been no one to stop her borrowing one or two things, like the experimental silver gun that swung heavily from her right hand. That, and as much of the surveillance data on the robot gangs as she could stuff into an old briefcase without anyone noticing what was missing. And the logs from the naval robot yards, the ones indicating that James had gone in but that his section hadn’t begun processing before a halt was called to the operation.

The risk was worth it, as had been calling Rad. That had paid off in spades, because he had led her to the King, which would lead her to her brother, she was sure of it. And once she’d found him and got him to safety, she and the detective would be able to clear up the little problem of the robots and the wacko calling himself the King of 125th Street. And then she could go back to the Empire State Building and maybe take charge herself. After all, she would be the city’s savior, and she had a very big gun.

Jennifer rounded a corner. Ahead was a large, low space, with a set of wide sliding doors forming most of the far wall. In the center of the room was the car, vast and black and silent. She’d managed to get herself back to the garage. She’d lost track of time, and she was now far enough away from the main workshop that she wouldn’t be able to hear the others return. She also knew that she shouldn’t be here, not really, and it occurred to her that she’d entered the domain of the King’s robot driver.

Jennifer waited in the doorway a moment, but the garage was quiet except for the slow ticking of the car’s engine as it cooled.