Empire State (15 page)

  Around the walls of the room were similar T-frames, flattened against the walls but obviously hinged so they could be flipped out as needed. Rad spun in a circle, counting the frames. As he reached the corner of the room and turned back to face his companions, he blanched. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kane nod, and as Rad stepped forward to examine the frames on the far side of the room, he felt the Captain at his shoulder.

  Some of the frames were not empty. In one corner of the room, maybe from a third of the way along the far wall down to the end, stood a row of humanoid shapes. There were nine, the first of which was upright and undisturbed. As Rad counted in from the end, the condition of the figures deteriorated. The second was intact, but crooked in its frame. The third was badly damaged and the frame was twisted around its neck.

  Robots. The ironclad sailors who crewed the ironclad ships. Nine of them, broken, hung like meat in the weird room. The fourth one along was in worse shape, tangled in the bent frame, metal armour drenched in a dark substance which glistened like honey. Rad had seen plenty of it over the years. The robot was covered in blood, and the next one along was missing half his head and a large portion of his torso. Even in the bright light of the room, the damage was nothing but a dark mess.

  Rad took a breath. "What is this place? What happened in here?"

  It was the Captain that spoke. He took a step backward and raised a hand to indicate the contents of the room.

  "Storage locker," he said, as if he were back giving a guided tour of his strange house again. "The ironclad only needs a skeleton crew to pilot. Most of the robots are kept in rooms like this, asleep, waiting for battle."

  "Asleep?"

  Carson shrugged. "In a manner of speaking."

  Rad indicated the blood-stained wreckage of the robots behind him with a jerk of his thumb. "I thought the crew were machines?"

  The Captain coughed and looked at the floor. He met Kane's eyes, then looked away.

  Rad felt Kane's hand on his shoulder and his friend's quiet voice in his ear. "So we've been told. But this is the evidence I've been looking for. We've been lied to about the war and about the ironclads we send off each year. The robots are only half machine."

  "And the other half?"

  Rad still had his back to the remains of the crew. Kane turned to stand in front of him, his eyes glancing around the room as he spoke.

  "The robots are sailors. Real men. Volunteers, we think. Nobody knows anything about any conscription programme. We do know that people disappear into the naval dockyard and aren't seen again."

  Rad tasted something hot and sharp in the back of his throat, and swallowed. He didn't want to turn around, but he knew he'd have to. He took a breath. The air was thick and stale this deep in the ship.

  "What do they do it for?"

  "Strength," said the Captain. "Stamina, intellect. A machine is harder to kill than a man. A machine is also better
at
killing. A sailor that is half machine, half man requires less food, less water, and less air." He looked away and fingered the straps hanging from one of the empty ceiling frames. "Makes sense really. Very efficient."

  Rad almost swore, but when he opened his mouth he tasted bile again. He blew out, long and hard, and turned around. The nine dead half-robots hung grotesquely from their frames.

  Kane stepped forward to take a better look. "Exposing the lies of Wartime is my next investigation." He laughed and looked back at Rad. "My ultimate investigation."

  Rad frowned. He wasn't in the mood for jokes. "You know 'ultimate' means final, right? The Empire State will never let you print anything about this. Dammit, we'll be lucky if we're not collected in the middle of the night with black bags over our heads after this."

  Kane seemed to pause, his eyes flicking over Rad's shoulder to Carson, then back to Rad. Then he relaxed. "You're right, Rad. But look, here's the proof connecting the ironclad to your murder."

  Rad raised an eyebrow, and followed to where Kane was pointing. One more frame, making a set of ten in total, but this one was empty. More importantly, the frame was bent outwards, as if the robot in it had forced the frame off as it struggled to get free.

  Rad wasn't convinced. "One robot missing? It went haywire, got free, taking out the others, and then... what? Swam to shore?"

  "It's possible." The Captain moved past the pair of them and experimentally tugged on the bent empty frame. It rattled and rocked on its hinges, but stayed in shape. "The naval robots are equipped for aquatic warfare. It could have walked to the shore, just as we walked to the boat."

  "And then," continued Rad. "Still haywire, killed Sam Saturn? Which means..."

  "Which means," said Kane, "It's still in the city."

  In the passageway outside there was a clomping of metal on metal. Carson spun around and jogged to the door, then called out to his servant.

  "Byron, stay in the passageway, please."

  Byron said, "Very good, sir. But port authorities are approaching the ship, sir. We should depart."

  Rad swore, for real this time. "I told you we made too much sound. You done here, Kane?"

  Kane nodded. "Back to the suits. Can you lead the way, Captain?"

  Carson nodded first at Kane, then at Byron, who turned to move off down the corridor.

  "Very good, sir. This way, please." Byron walked ahead, the Captain close behind with Kane following.

  Rad took a final look around the locker. They were in way, way over their heads. Maybe he should call it quits. His murder would be unsolvable and he'd have a disappointed client, but at least he'd still be alive. Kane's path was not one he wished to follow. If only he could convince his friend of this. Kane listened to Captain Carson, perhaps Rad should talk to him first.

  "Rad, come on!" Kane reappeared at the hatch, and Rad nodded and followed.

 

 
 

 
 

EARLIER THAT NIGHT.

  When Rex came to, his head was wet and there was a buzzing in his ears. No, not his ears, the sound was all around him, all over him. He blinked and coughed and wiped his chin, and discovered he was wet all over.

  He sat up on an elbow, and the alleyway swam, so he closed his eyes again. He felt like his head was stuffed with cotton wool – he'd never really known what that expression meant, but this seemed a fair approximation. It was still raining, and a wet city makes a fair amount of sound, but it was muffled, like it was all coming through a crack in a closed door. He screwed his eyes tighter before opening them again, and the world came into focus.

  Rex was lying against the side of the alleyway, and it was still night. He raised himself up again. He couldn't have been there too long, as he wasn't that wet and although the rain was no more than a misty drizzle, it was exactly the kind of misty drizzle that got you soaked to the skin in less time than you'd think.

  His head ached. He must have hit it on the way down. Rex sat up, ignoring the uncomfortable tug of his trousers on his crotch as he shuffled his behind on the hard ground. He gingerly fingered the back of his bald head, and when the expected spike of pain didn't arrive, he ran his hands over his scalp. Damp and prickly and needing a shave, but nothing, no cuts, no sore spots, no bumps.

  The buzzing kept up and his ears felt hot and gunked. An experimental pinkie in one ear brought a loud squelching. Rex sat up a bit more. It felt like he'd been lying in a hot bath for too long, but when he examined his little finger he found the tip a dark red almost to the first knuckle. It was too dark to see clearly, so he sniffed. The unmistakable aroma of earwax mixed with a cold familiar tang. Blood. He patted his cheeks and swore as his fingers traced the ooze of blood out of his ears and along the line of his jaw. What the hell happened?

  The broad. Rex spun on his backside, twisting left and right with sudden urgency. He saw an arm, bare and thin, poking out from behind a yellow dumpster. Rex got up carefully and took a look behind the bin.

  There she was. Unlike Rex, she wasn't getting up again. He coughed, five short dry bursts that made the fuzz in his head and the buzz in his ears pulsate. He rubbed the heels of his hands into his forehead, then stopped, realising that he was covering his face with his own blood. He looked down, suddenly aware that he was covered in the stuff, but that it surely couldn't all have been his.

  Rex looked around. The alley was damp and dark, but he was standing in regular rain water, thin and slightly slicked with the grease of the city. Other than that, the ground was clean.

  Rex was confused. No blood. But then, he'd only strangled her anyway. So what the hell was he covered in? He bent down to take a closer look at his victim.

  She was... bent. The body wasn't just lying there, it was curled over like a gymnast warming up for a routine. Arms and legs at not quite the right angle, same with the neck. The girl's head was exactly horizontal in a way that no vertebrae would ever allow.

  Rex blinked. He remembered punching the girl, then clamping her face when she screamed, and then dragging her backwards in a neck-lock and squeezing, squeezing, squeezing. He hadn't injured her, he didn't think. Maybe something popped? He didn't really know what happened when you strangled someone to death. And he was a very large man and she was a very small girl. Perhaps he was stronger than he'd thought.

  Rex rubbed his eyes, but the buzzing was beginning to smart, like his eyeballs were too big for their sockets and their every movement stung like Christ. He stopped rubbing and blinked again and again, trying to clear them. He'd never been that strong. He strangled her... OK, maybe he did the neck. But not the rest. And the blood! So much blood. His hands were covered in it, but the alley was clear and there was only a small amount beginning to pool out from underneath the body. The alley was wet from recent rain, and as Rex ducked down to a puddle to clean up, he glanced back at the body.

  Holy shit. What did you do next, after you murdered somebody? He didn't do this kind of thing himself. Bootlegging was dangerous but it didn't usually run to killing the opposition. Rex stood motionless for a moment. There was nobody around, not a sound except for the gentle noise of the light rain. His hearing was still woolly and there was that buzzing driving him mad, but looking down the end of the alley, the main street was dead. He squinted, and rubbed his eyes again. The streetlights were an odd colour, too yellow. He shook his head and ignored it. He needed to clean up and then drink a lot of strong alcohol.

  Was it murder? He looked down at the body. Squeezed behind the bin in a puddle of water and blood, the girl looked tiny, like a toy doll. How could someone so small and fragile be the world's greatest criminal mastermind?

  Rex held his breath and gripped the girl's fine chin between finger and thumb. He tilted the head slightly, but with no neck support the shifting weight caused it to loll horribly. Rex recoiled, withdrawing his hand quickly. He stood up and looked at the girl's face, now pointing to the sky.

  It was her. No doubt. The Science Pirate, the girl who had taken her mask off and revealed her identity to the world in some weird tantrum.

  So it wasn't murder, it was execution. He felt dizzy and laughed. A New York gangster performing his civic duty. He was pretty sure the authorities had wanted the Science Pirate alive or dead. Dead it would be.

  Rex released the breath he'd been holding for too long, and the horizon of the world flipped. He staggered up, supporting himself against the alley wall with one outstretched arm. The goddamn buzzing was murder. Stress, and excitement, and a bang on the head. Holy mackerel, did he need a drink.

  The body. He couldn't carry it, he could barely stay upright. It was well hidden, although he didn't remember hiding it. But OK. Leave it. Come back later.

  Rex pushed off the wall, but a headache the size of the Earth hit him like a rubber mallet and he stumbled, groping for the dumpster. The sharp rusted surface dug into his palms as he thudded into it, and it was twenty seconds before the buzzing died down enough for him to open his eyes.

  The dumpster was on wheels, and had rocked when Rex fell against it. He glanced at the body. The arm still stuck out. He needed to do a better job, tidy her up.

  Rad sucked in a cold, wet breath, ignored the noise in his head, and ducked around the bin. He flipped the protruding arm up, trying to ignore the way it flopped like a fillet of beef. Limb folded back, he gripped the dumpster and pushed the body with one foot. It slid with relative ease, lubricated by rainwater and spilled fluids. She didn't seem to have any intact bones and was easier to pack in behind the bin than he'd expected.

  Rex tried shifting the dumpster, just to check, but could only rock it back and forth a few inches. No problem.

  Rex patted his pockets down. No smokes, but his wallet was fat and he was thirsty. A drink or two would help his head, of that he was sure. And cigarettes, and another drink, and then sleep, and then he'd go straight to city hall. And then some kind of civil ceremony where he would get his medal and pose for photographs with the mayor and the Skyguard.

  Buoyed by these thoughts, Rex turned and walked down the alley and into the main street. The buzzing in his head had settled to a low hum, and a drink would wash that away, easy.

  The rain abated to a fine mist, and smiling, Rex turned left, down Soma Street, under yellow streetlamps.

 

 
 

 
 

THE PLACE DIDN'T HAVE A NAME, or a sign, and Rex supposed it was just plain luck that led him there. God knew where he was. He'd lived in New York his whole life, but didn't recognise any of it, and now the buzzing was back. It was OK. Shock, probably. A drink and a smoke and then blissful sleep. If he could work out which direction home was.