The Age Atomic

FIFTY-ONE

James Jones — formerly the Corsair, the real King of 125th Street — staggered down the corridor, reeling. He came to rest against the wall and leaned back, one hand pressed firmly to his side where it was soft and pliable. He grimaced, or at least he thought he did, the phantom memory of his flesh-and-blood face twisting in agony as he stopped for breath. It took him a moment to remember he didn’t need to breathe, not anymore.

There was a large hole in his side. He reached in, not looking, and felt something thin and slippery move. Somewhere, buried in his mind, he felt nausea and pain and he felt dizzy. But it was distant, abstract. He wondered how much of him was left inside, how far the processing had gone before his blind servant had released him from the machine. Not every part of the process was automated; his complete conversion needed someone else to finish the job.

James pushed off the wall, leaving a rectangular smudge of black, thick fluid. He caught sight of it out of the corner of his optics and turned, surprised at how much of the substance he was leaking. He was leaving a trail easy enough for anyone to follow, he knew that, but it wouldn’t matter, not now. He turned back around, the memory of a smile playing across his frozen metal face.

He recognized the place. He was home, in his underground lair, the network of tunnels and basements built underneath Harlem, the subterranean train system that had lain dormant underneath the Empire State since the beginning of time.

His brothers, his family, were near. He knew it. He could feel it in his lubricant oil and in the coolant that bathed his rubber-sided heart. The army that he had built would be waiting for their creator, and he could lead them and they would march to victory against the evil ones who had been sent through the fog to wage terrible war against the Empire State. And their victory would be glorious.

Logic gates tripping madly, feeding the artificial part of James’s mind false data, he fell over. The ground met his face with surprising speed, the collision at just the right angle to crack the remains of the nasal septum that existed behind the metal mask. He registered the sensation, the sliding of bone, but again the pain was somewhere else, academic. He reached down and tried to push himself upright, like a solider doing pushups, only after a thousand hours (or was it more? Or maybe it was less?) he found he was still on the floor, his hands sliding hopelessly on the polished cement in something that was thick and warm and red and black and smelled of old coins and gasoline.

“James!”

There were people here, in his domain: there was big man in a hat and a thin man in a hat and someone else who looked familiar and a woman with a green coat and a golden face. She was on the floor with him, her fingers trailing over his face and coming away sticky with oil. James smiled, or thought he did, as he strained and scraped along the floor, trying to get up.

The big man was standing over him now. His skin was dark, and when he took his hat off James could see he was bald. The thin man kept his hat on and he said something but James couldn’t hear it over the music that filled the air, music he could see and touch, the air pulsing, shimmering to the beat. He knew this number. It was one of his favorites.

James found his voice, and new strength. He grabbed the woman’s arm and pulled her close. The big man shouted and pulled on her shoulders but she shrugged him off.

“It’s OK,” she was saying. “It’s fine, it’s fine,” and her long brown hair fell around her face and tickled James.

“We’re home,” said James, his voice the hiss of a punctured tire. “Where are my brothers, my family?”

“I’m here,” said the woman with the golden face but that didn’t make any sense at all. James shook his head, hitting it on the wall behind him.

The big man was rolling his hat between his hands and then James’s vision went grey and fuzzy and tore at the edges.

“It’s OK,” said the woman again, and then she kept saying, “It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine,” like that meant something, but James could hardly hear it over the music.

“What’s he saying?” asked the thin man who was standing away, arms folded, in the electric fog that seemed to fill the corridor.

The big man sighed. “Something about jazz.”

“Sounds like he’s bought the farm.”

The woman with the golden mask pulled back, oil on the front of her green coat, black and thick and shining. “He can be fixed.”

“Jennifer, look…” said the big man, but she was shaking her head.

“He’s a machine, Rad. He can’t die. He can be fixed.”

The thin man tapped his foot. “There’s going to be nothing to fix if we don’t get moving.”

The big man nodded and pulled at the woman’s arm again. This time she didn’t resist, and she stood.

“Then go. End this,” she said. “And then we can fix my brother. I’ll wait with him.” And she knelt on the floor again, her metal face looming large in James’s crumbling vision.

The last thing James Jones heard was the big man’s voice, nearly buried under the jazz. He was asking where Kane was, and the others didn’t look like they had a clue, but then the corridor broke up into static and all James knew was the music and the darkness.