The Age Atomic

FOURTEEN

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.”