Adam Christopher - The Age Atomic

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.