The Age Atomic

FORTY-SEVEN

Nimrod opened his eyes to the light, and found himself standing in a familiar room, huge and empty save for a desk and a chair. On his left and right were two rows of columns like a Greek temple, and beyond, a wall painted with a vast mural of New York.

He was in the Cloud Club. The old faithful service revolver in his hand was pointed at Evelyn McHale.

The Ghost of Gotham floated in front of her desk; a desk spotless and dust-free. Nimrod could see it faintly through her. She smiled, and Nimrod felt slightly embarrassed, as though he’d caught her in her slip.

“I don’t mind, if that is what you are worried about,” she said.

Nimrod’s mustache bristled. “I didn’t used to be able to see through you. You used to be as substantial as the rest of us.”

The Director glided forward, towards the barrel of the gun.

“Yes,” she said, “I was. But it gets harder and harder. I’m being pulled down. It takes all my will and effort to stay tethered to this universe.”

“So why stay? You want New York — you want the Fissure — but if you can leave, then leave! You are not needed nor wanted here, and I dare say you have never seemed particularly enamored of your situation. Let yourself go.”

The Director shook her head, her eyes hidden slightly behind her spectral veil. “To leave is a fate worse than death.”

“Forgive me, my dear,” said Nimrod, “but I do believe that fate has already befallen you.”

“I cannot leave,” she said, her voice rising.

Nimrod adjusted his grip on the gun and raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was pointing the gun at her — it was a habit, perhaps even an instinct, and as such it made him feel better, so he kept his gun arm raised, ignoring the growing ache in his arm.

“If I let go of this world,” said the Director, “I will fall through the fabric of reality. There will be nothing to stop me, nothing to break that fall.”

“And?”

“An eternity of nothing but falling, of never-ending existence trapped inside… nothing. Nothing at all. Do you understand?”

Nimrod sighed, and lowered his gun. “A fate worse than death.”

“Indeed,” said the Director, inclining her head. “My grip is slipping, and the energy it takes to keep moving just to stay in this space and time is too much and is growing more and more with each passing moment.”

Nimrod glanced to the great windows of the Cloud Club. It was dark outside. Perhaps it was just the light from inside the room, and the blue glow of the Director herself blotting everything out, but he couldn’t see the familiar red and white sparkle of the city.

“I don’t understand. You don’t want to leave, but you can’t stay forever. What has this to do with usurping my authority? You want the Fissure, but why? Surely you, of all people, don’t need it.”

“Haven’t you heard me? I can’t leave. To move between here and the Empire State, and the worlds beyond, I would first have to let go here, and if I do that then the tide will catch me, ripping me away from reality. I’m trapped here, for as long as my grip will hold.”

Nimrod sighed, and looked around the Cloud Club. It was a magnificent room, even if the Director’s acquisition of it as an office didn’t make any sense.

“I used to come here,” she said, following his gaze. She turned away from her prisoner and floated slowly around the room, tracing the mural with her fingers, leaving a sparkling blue trail of dust that hung in the air.

“It was a beautiful place, full of life, and music, and dancing. Oh, the dancing!” she breathed, and spun on her toes a foot from the floor, her face alight with a smile as she remembered her old life.

“That life is no longer yours,” said Nimrod.

The Director’s smile dropped. Nimrod blinked and she was in front of him again, blue fire in her eyes. Nimrod recognized the light well, the light of the space between the universes. He backed away quickly, and raised the gun again.

“That day,” said Evelyn, spitting the words out like poison. “Do you know how I regret what happened that day? That day that trapped me, here, now, in a world I don’t know and don’t belong in.”

Nimrod ground his teeth together and aimed for the Director’s forehead. She drifted forward slowly, and Nimrod moved as well, keeping the distance even. Evelyn’s eyes shone a terrible blue.

“I wanted him to save me, like he had saved so many. But no, the Skyguard was gone. He’d died a long, long time ago. They all had — the Skyguard, the Science Pirate. And before them the New Yorker, the Scienceers. All of them. They betrayed and abandoned all of us. They abandoned me!”

She stopped moving as Nimrod felt his back hit the plate-glass window. Evelyn’s expression was a grimace of pain and sadness.

Nimrod gulped. “I can help you. Tell me what you need me to do, and I will help you.”

She shook her head, her sadness lifting from her.

“You need do nothing except what you already are. Events will conspire. I can see the past, the present, the future. Time passes for me, I can see it, and measure it, but linear time has no meaning. What has happened has already been. Events will run their course. There is no alternative.”

She pointed past Nimrod, to the window. Nimrod turned, her words casting a chill into his heart.

Nimrod looked down on New York, then blinked, trying to comprehend what he was seeing. The aerial view was just that — they were too high, the city too far away. Manhattan spread out below him, the Empire State Building small, toy-like. Nearby was a broken skyscraper, smoke pouring from its shattered crown.

“Impossible,” he said, his breath fogging the glass in front of his face as he recognized the damaged structure. “The Cloud Club is inside the Chrysler Building.”

“The Cloud Club is my domain,” said Evelyn, shaking her head. “The Chrysler Building has been hit by your counterpart’s airship. The original Cloud Club has been destroyed, and the building has been damaged down to its foundations.”

Nimrod gasped. “Where are we?”

“The Cloud Club is my domain,” she said. “It is wherever and whenever I need it to be.”

Nimrod watched the city below, now understanding the dust and faded glamor of the room he had visited before he had been black-bagged and dragged to Washington.

Evelyn met Nimrod’s eye in the reflection. “But our fate lies elsewhere.”

Nimrod swung around from the window, brandishing the gun. He braced himself, with no clue what would happen when he pulled the trigger.

Evelyn smiled, and Nimrod took aim, and everything went blue and bright.