Adam Christopher - The Age Atomic

“Holy shit , this is from-”

“Yep,” said Sachs, snatching the delicate document back again without much care.

“So that stuff about the government?”

“Yep,” said Sachs. He pulled the typewriter on his desk towards him, adjusted the paper he’d carefully loaded just moments before, and selected a single key on the keyboard. There was a clack, and he leaned forward. “Ah, shit,” he said, adjusting the paper again.

“Detective Sachs?”

“The one and only.” Sachs didn’t move, but when Bryson sat up straight in his chair with a clatter, he sighed, sucked on his cigarette, and turned around.

Three men were in the office, dressed in black suits and black ties. They were young, clean-shaved, and each wore a black hat. Sachs thought they looked like a trio of advertising copywriters from Madison Avenue. He looked them up and down and sighed.

“Can I help you?”

The first man in black smiled. “We’re here to collect the fugitives.”

Sachs sniffed. “Bradley Bradley and the girl with the party mask she refuses to take off? Be my guest, buddy.”

The man’s smile tightened a little. “Thank you.”

“You’re too well dressed to be FBI,” said Sachs. “You CIA or NSA?”

“No,” said the first man. “Now, if you would be so kind?”

Sachs and Bryson stood. The agents looked at Bryson, who smiled self-consciously and straightened his tie. Sachs coughed, long and hard, and pulled his jacket from the back of his chair.

“OK,” he said. “Follow me.”

Sachs slipped into his jacket as they walked. After a few steps he saw the desk sergeant walking towards them.

“Sergeant Ross,” he said, the sergeant touching the brim of his hat and coming to a halt, expectant. Sachs indicated the three agents with him. “Those two in the cells, from Grand Central. We’re handing them over to…” He frowned as he glanced at the first agent.

The first agent smiled and gave a small nod.

“…these guys,” Sachs concluded.

“Sir?” The Sergeant switched the clipboard he was holding from one hand to another.

“We’re handing them over to another authority. They ready to move?”

The sergeant looked at Sachs and pursed his lips. He glanced at the trio of agents, and peeled the top sheet on the clipboard back and folded it over.

“Something wrong, Sergeant?”

“They’ve already gone,” said Ross, turning the clipboard around to show his superior. Sachs grabbed it and starting flipping through pages like he was a doctor surveying the chart of a dying man. “They were collected just fifteen minutes ago. An agent signed for them already.”

The men in black crowded Sachs; he could feel their breath, smell their aftershave. He continued to scramble through the paperwork until the clipboard was snatched out of his hand by the first agent. The detective didn’t protest, but in the silence that followed as the agent read the sheet he fixed Sergeant Ross with an angry glare.

“A Federal agent signed for it?” said the agent, turning the clipboard around, his finger next to the signature line on the release form.

Sergeant Ross peered closer, the color draining from his face as Sachs watched.

Sachs grabbed the clipboard back and read the line. “Agent…” he peered closer, deciphering the spider scrawl. “Shit. Agent ‘Kissmyass’? What are you, a moron?”

He slapped the clipboard against the Sergeant’s chest. Then he turned to Bryson, who was standing with his hands in his pockets, looking at the floor. “And don’t think you can squeeze out of this either. They only left fifteen minutes ago, we gotta be able to-”

A hand was on his chest, the fingertips only brushing his shirt but somehow there was strength and purpose there. Sachs looked up and the first agent shook his head.

“We’ll handle this,” he said. He nodded to his colleagues, already drawing guns from holsters beneath their jackets. The first agent looked at Sergeant Ross. “Take my agents to the cells. Follow their directions. Move. Now. ”

The sergeant turned on his heel, the two agents on his tail.

Sachs sighed.

“Who would have come in to take them?” asked Bryson.

“Enemy operatives,” said the first agent. “Don’t worry, detective, you will be fully exonerated. I need a phone.”

Sachs led the way back to his own desk, then stood smartly to one side as the agent lifted the black phone off it. He tried to see what the agent was dialing, but he lost track of the turns. It didn’t seem to be any kind of regular phone number.

“Enemy agents?” asked Sachs. He shook his head. “What, like… Communists? Spies?”

“Morrison,” said the agent into the receiver. “Cloud Club.”

Sachs raised an eyebrow. Wasn’t that an old nightclub at the top of the Chrysler Building? Perhaps it was a code.

“Morrison,” said the agent again, and then he nodded as he listened to something. “Nimrod is out?” A pause. “Understood.” he said.

Sachs clicked his tongue. Nimrod? The name mentioned by the black guy. So, who were they, really? Spies? Communists? Secret agents from the government? This was exciting. And the agent — Morrison? — had already said that no blame would fall on Sachs.

Sachs puffed his chest out a little. Here he was, in the middle of a spy thriller like the kind he was so fond of reading.

“Confirmed,” said Morrison. He replaced the receiver and lowered the phone back to the desk.

Sachs was on tenterhooks.

“The fugitives who escaped are the two most wanted criminals in the United States of America,” said Morrison.

Sachs couldn’t help but gulp.

“We need to put out an APB, and inform the FBI that there are felons loose in Manhattan. Armed and dangerous. They are spies who are acting against the government of the Western Hemisphere. Do you understand me, detective?”

Sachs nodded. He now understood that the statement Bradley had given him and Bryson — and the one taken by Mortimer and Zapf from the girl — were all part of a cover-up, a clever disinformation plan to confuse the police, to buy time to let someone else — an inside man — come and get them. Sachs’s brow knitted as he tried to untangle it all inside his own mind. “They’re really that dangerous?”

Morrison’s expression was firm. “And as of right now,” he said, “Rad Bradley and Jennifer Jones are both public enemy number one.”

They kept coming, and coming. Wave after wave, the King’s hidden army now fully active, pouring from their hiding places around the city, following a single order: reclaim the Fissure, reclaim Kane.

Kane had another thing on his mind. It was likely that only Carson could solve the problem of the Empire State’s impending demise, and it was up to Kane to protect him, buy him time.

He knew that now, as he hovered in front of the colonnades of Grand Central. He was powerful — he was the Fissure now — but the power had its limits. He’d felt it already, a small tug at the base of his spine — hardly anything at first but getting stronger the more he worked, and occasionally giving a real wrench, sending a cascade of blue-hot pain right down the center of his back. It did that when he opened up the tank, letting the Fissure’s power leak out of the gaps he’d made in his suit at the wrists.

Keeping the robots at bay was hard work. They didn’t carry weapons — they didn’t need to. Their glowing eyes spat rays of energy, wide cones of heat and death crisscrossing in the air as they attempted to knock Kane out of the sky. It was hard work avoiding the rays, but at least it kept the robots occupied, the front ranks coming to a halt as they took aim at their target.