Adam Christopher - The Age Atomic

The Corsair was wearing the Skyguard’s suit — what was left of it, anyway. Whether it was damaged in Kane’s return or altered by the King or modified by whoever was inside the suit now, Jennifer had no idea. But she’d found the suit. Now she had to get the Corsair out and Kane in.

Something played at the back of her mind, something important, something she’d discovered… but the thought was gone as she tried to grasp it.

Jennifer decided to find Rad before the Corsair had finished doling out the small parcels of green to the assembled robots. She moved a little, her metal face squeaking against the cold glass of the window.

Suddenly, the zoomed-in view of the Corsair blurred, the furs and black uniform caught in quick movement. Jennifer pulled her head back and her eyes adjusted, zooming out and refocusing.

Jennifer gasped behind her mask, and for a second it felt like she couldn’t move, couldn’t take her eyes away from… him.

The Corsair was looking up at her — not just at the window, but at her , into her eyes. Had he heard the noise? It seemed so unlikely, but if the Skyguard’s mask was operational he would have picked it up.

She watched and saw him blink behind the mask of the Skyguard; she zoomed in until his eyes, his human eyes, were the only thing filling her vision.

They were green, a bright, bright green, shot through with yellow like precious gems, two glittering crystals shining in her artificially enhanced view.

Eyes she recognized.

Jennifer gasped and almost fell off the sill as she scrambled backwards.

She remembered now. Remembered lying on the slab, inside the machine. Remembered the pain, remembered the green, remembered the voice whispering in her ear, the voice that called her Jen.

The Corsair was gone, the robots left to mill around. The queue was already beginning to break up as ones from further back moved forward to find out what was going on.

But of the Corsair — of her brother — there was no sign.

Jennifer pushed herself off the alcove and raced down the stairs.

It was getting colder, and not just because Rad was moving further and further away from the workshop and the furnace room. He’d found himself in an empty square room, devoid of anything at all except a light bulb hanging from a single cord, and a big door in one wall. The door was metal, and bulbous, with a large lever for a handle, looking very much like a walk-in refrigerator. Quite what such a device was doing inside an old theater was a question Rad didn’t expect he’d find the answer to, because he knew that maybe the building never had been a theater, despite the stage and the awning outside and the missing letters above the front door, despite the rooms he’d found full of props and costumes slowly moldering away. Because in the Empire State, a lot of things never were; for all he knew, this place had sprung into existence as was, derelict and unused and rotting, until the King and the Corsair had found it and taken it over.

His search had been so far unsuccessful. In one room, Rad thought he’d hit pay dirt, seeing the Skyguard’s voluminous cloak rolled up in a corner, only to find it was just extra curtain fabric for the main stage.

And the more Rad searched, the less confident he felt. He’d moved from the workshops and engineering areas with their robotic spare parts and components into the leftovers of the theater itself, and more than once Rad realized that if the King had taken the Skyguard’s suit to pieces, he might well have already seen most of it spread out across various workbenches and not know it.

He needed to get back to Kane. He was hoping that Jennifer could look after herself.

He was also looking for her gun. He’d seen it take out the crazy leader of the robot gangs, the one that had called itself Elektro, with a single shot. Even with the recharge time, he thought it would come in handy.

Now he was in an empty room with a freezer installed. The temperature outside was so cold the freezer seemed unnecessary. But… he’d better check it. He wrapped his scarf firmly around his face and reached for the freezer door.

The freezer hummed. Rad checked that there was a working handle on the inside of the door — he wasn’t going to fall for that one — and stepped inside.

The freezer was filled with shelves, making the place less a butcher’s meat locker and more a laboratory storage area. There were containers and boxes stacked everywhere, and large items wrapped in plastic sheeting. Everything was covered with frost.

Rad stepped forward. He didn’t know why the Skyguard’s suit might have been kept in a freezer, but he was here now and it would pay to check. Just a quick look in, and then he’d head back to the warmth of the workshop. Maybe Jennifer had had better luck, and…

Rad stopped, and squinted at one of the wrapped items on the nearest shelf. There was a pinkish color showing through the sheet. Rad peered closer, then reached out and tugged at the sheet. It slid easily, shedding frost onto Rad’s hands. He pulled hard, and began to unwrap the long, thin object, rolling it on the shelf as the plastic was pulled out from underneath it.

Rad swore, the plastic sheeting dropping to the floor. On the shelf was a human arm, intact, the terminal of the shoulder neatly trimmed, exposing the round joint, perfectly clean and white. The arm was male, and it was a little thin, like the arm of a young man.

Rad stepped back and looked at the rest of the shelf. There were many more wrapped objects, some the same size and some smaller. Rad puffed out a great lungful of steam and carefully peeled back another sheet to reveal a single hand. He rubbed the frost off one of the jars and saw it was filled to the brim with a frozen liquid, red, swirled with yellow.

Rad looked around him. The freezer was full of body parts.

He backed away, rubbing the frost from fingers now numb from the cold. He felt numb elsewhere, somewhere deep inside, where maybe he thought the King was trying to do something and maybe Rad didn’t quite understand it but that was OK, that was good, because someone was helping those in the city who couldn’t help themselves, who had been tossed out by the government and forgotten, completely and utterly, creatures destitute and desolate and not even considered to be people.

But this… this was something else. This was macabre, a horror show, the freezer of a loony tune doing something untoward in the unknown dark and empty places of the Empire State.

Rad shook his head, muttering under his breath. The sonovabitch . He was keeping the human parts removed during his procedures. Why, Rad didn’t know and couldn’t guess. That was for later, when he and Jennifer Jones and her friends at the Empire State Building came back to sort out the mess.

Rad’s back touched the shelf behind him, and he jumped in fright. He sighed, his breath clouding the air, and turned.

Something caught his eye. There was a large object on the shelf, square, wrapped in plastic sheeting that hadn’t yet frosted over. There was something pinkish within, and there were marks on the shelf where the frost had been scraped off. The object was new, placed there only hours ago.

Rad didn’t want to see what it was, but he had a feeling it was important.

He grabbed the trailing corner of sheeting, and pulled. It moved easily, the plastic cold but still pliable, silky. Three turns and the object was exposed.

Rad felt the bile rise in his throat. The object was a glass head, like the kind in a fancy hat store. Except this head was bare — but for the front. Spread across the sculpted glass features was a face, a real human face, made of flesh and skin, with eyebrows and lips and nose. The glass face underneath was a standard model, and the real face adhering to it didn’t match the structure, not completely, resulting in a strange, distorted visage.