Adam Christopher - The Age Atomic

Maybe there was something left of Evelyn McHale. In a way, she was like the room, a relic of another era. She had been plucked from time and then dumped in an alien world. She may as well have been taken to Mars.

Nimrod walked to the great glass wall and looked out over the city. The Empire State Building sparkled in the sun, and below the streets were filled with people and cars. Nimrod smiled. None of them knew they lived in just one universe out of… well, who knew. None of them knew about Atoms for Peace or the Director, although there would be plenty in the city who remembered Evelyn McHale. Many had even seen her ghost, glowing in the night.

Nimrod turned back to the empty room.

“Director?” His voice didn’t echo as much as he thought it would. “Evelyn, I need to talk to you,” he said to the ceiling.

There was nothing, not even an unusual breeze or a drop in temperature or a knock on the wall, one rap for yes, two for no.

Nothing. No one came, not the dead woman, not agent or guards. No staff at all; the Cloud Club was empty.

Nimrod frowned, and then wondered how far he could go before the orders from the Secretary of Defense circulated around the building.

Nimrod straightened his tie and brushed down the front of his safari jacket, and marched towards the door.

It was time to find out what Atoms for Peace were really doing.

In the elevator Nimrod punched the button for level B6, the last-but-one sub-level listed on the panel, and to his surprise the key lit around his thumb. If Atoms for Peace were hiding anything, it was going to be down there, under the city.

Level B6 was a series of plain corridors, lined with polished grey concrete and lit by functional utility lights. Nimrod’s footsteps echoed as he walked down one corridor after another, each intersection he came to presenting him with a choice of three equally featureless alternatives. He counted each as he passed through: First right, second straight, third straight, fourth left. There was no signage, no doors, no cameras, no mirrors. He had passed no security stations, no gateways or doors or screens. He was alone.

Was it normally like this? Or were Atoms for Peace otherwise engaged elsewhere, their Director included? Nimrod stroked his mustache as he walked, aware that his unimpeded progress was likely deliberate. They were letting him in, giving him free reign. Setting a trap.

After five minutes, Nimrod arrived at the first obstacle, a tall green door. Underground and despite counting the intersections, Nimrod had lost his sense of direction, though he knew he must be several blocks out from the Chrysler Building already. His own Department was just a floor of the Empire State building and some of its sub-levels. It was staffed and run more or less like any government field office, albeit one more covert.

This… this was something else. Atoms for Peace were building a web under the biggest city in the United States. How far the web crept, Nimrod was now determined to find out.

The green door opened at a touch, and led to a short corridor that ended in an identical door. Halfway along the corridor were two smaller doors, black iron with shuttered windows like the doors of a cell. One was locked, the other opened into a small, sparsely furnished office. Nimrod didn’t much like the idea of working underground, where you would never be able to keep track of the time. Standing in the doorway, Nimrod glanced around the office. There was no clock.

The other green door was also unlocked, and led into a laboratory-cum-workshop.

“Hello?”

Nothing. Nimrod’s voice echoed up to a high vaulted ceiling, much higher than the ceiling in the corridors outside. The concrete here was older, damp stains trailing down from the ceiling. The room was old, part of something else — the city’s water or sewage system, reclaimed by Atoms for Peace.

Against the opposite wall was a square metal cage. Its doors were open, and within was a frame with horizontal armrests, though it looked far too big for a man. The frame was connected to pieces of electrical equipment inside the cage and out. The main slab was shiny at the center and dark around the edges, like it had been recently cleaned. On the cement floor in front of it was a large, irregular dark patch that reminded Nimrod of spilled blood.

Nimrod stuffed his hands into his pockets and turned slowly on his heel, taking in the contents of the workshop. There was a regular oscilloscope, a rotometric signal dampener, and, against the wall, next to a small coat rack with six hooks to hold laboratory coats, a sequential field inverter, the device as big as a car, with modifications and upgrades Nimrod didn’t recognize.

He stopped, and found his heart rate was a little high. He had been hired by the US Government for a number of different skills, one of which was his expertise with electronics, cybernetics, and robotics. Although he was not as knowledgeable (or as pompous) as his Empire State counterpart, Captain Carson, he was expert enough to understand the purpose of the facility.

It was a robotics workshop, similar to the ones set up in the aftermath of the Empire State incident. As had happened at the end of World War II, when Nazi rocket technology had been stripped out of Germany and taken to the United States along with Germany’s scientists, so the Empire State had surrendered some of its robotics technology. There was a rumor that a scientist had been brought across as well, a Pocket universe version of someone who already existed in the Origin universe; Nimrod had dismissed the story, but now he wasn’t so sure. That would have explained the office, and the cell-like quarters. If a scientist had been brought across, to allow him the freedom of the city would have been far too dangerous.

Nimrod turned back to the stain on the floor. He was getting a very bad feeling about what Atoms for Peace were doing in their secret laboratory.

It was time to go lower.

The button lit, and the elevator descended. Nimrod knew now that his journey was being controlled from elsewhere, that he was being observed.

Level B7 — the last button on the elevator panel — appeared to be the same as the floor above: concrete corridors, utility lights, and not a soul. Nimrod decided to head in a straight line, and thought that he had, but soon found himself back at the elevator lobby. He shook his head, and rubbed his mustache, and checked his watch — he’d been stalking the underground portion of the Atoms for Peace base for nearly two hours, and he was tired and footsore.

The elevator was still open, and Nimrod walked into it, his eyes on the floor, his hands in his pockets as he considered his next move. He reached for the elevator controls and stopped, his hand in midair. The panels in the elevator were different — there were just two floor buttons: “1”, which was currently lit, and “2”, beneath.

Nimrod frowned. He was in a different elevator.

Nimrod punched “2” and the doors slid shut.

The descent to level 2 was longer than Nimrod expected, the elevator taking him deep underground. When the doors finally opened, the scene was very different from the floor above. The architecture was still bare concrete, but the elevator opened directly into a single corridor, lit in a deep, flickering orange from the opposite end. Raising his hand to shield his eyes against the light, Nimrod saw the corridor end in a black door with a square window, through which the fire-like light shone.

Reaching the door, Nimrod could see nothing through the window except a bright point of orange light and a lot of black space. The room beyond was clearly enormous.

The door opened onto a viewing platform, constructed out of metal grilling. Looking down, Nimrod could see through to the floor beneath, thirty feet below. To his left and right metal staircases headed down, weaving back and forth twice before they reached the bottom.