by Dan Willis
She looked as if she wanted to be angry, then changed her mind.
“Do you have your special bullets?” she asked. Alex wasn’t sure until that moment that she’d forgiven him for having spell-breakers, and he nodded.
“Of course,” he replied.
“All right then,” she said, taking his hand. “Let’s go.”
Alex felt as if his body had been pressed flat under some enormous weight, then rolled up and passed through a tube. It made him queasy, and bile rose in this throat. Just before he was sure he’d lose his breakfast, the feeling vanished, and he found himself kneeling on the sidewalk on a foggy street corner. Beside him, Agent Redhorn was struggling to stand and Agent Mendes was curled into a ball on the ground. Sorsha put a hand on his arm, and he turned to find her sitting beside him with her head bowed. All of them were breathing hard.
Pushing himself up, Alex got to his feet. Taking Sorsha’s hand, he pulled the sorceress to her feet and held on while she steadied herself.
“Are we in the right place?” Agent Mendes asked as Redhorn helped her rise.
Alex let go of Sorsha’s hand and pulled his battered compass from his pocket. The needle pointed steadily to a small, run-down building across the street. It looked like it might have been a warehouse or a garage in the city’s former days, but it was much too small to fill that role in the era of modern trucks.
“I think this is the right place,” Redhorn said. When Alex looked at him, he pointed up at the roof of the building. One look and Alex could see that the fog above the decrepit structure was definitely thicker than anywhere else.
“All right,” Sorsha said. “Agent Redhorn, take Mendes and go around to the back. Alex, you’re with me.”
“Don’t forget to put on the coat,” Alex said as Redhorn and Mendes headed out across the street.
“What coat?” Sorsha asked as the FBI agents vanished into the fog.
As they crossed the street to the front of the little stone building, Alex explained about the trench coat and his shield runes.
“If you’ve only got two runes left on your jacket,” Sorsha asked, “why didn’t you keep the coat and just give him your jacket?”
“I’m planning to stand behind you,” Alex whispered, letting her go up to the front door first.
“And they say chivalry is dead,” she said with a smirk.
“I’m not the one that can freeze bad guys solid,” Alex pointed out. He drew his 1911 and held it ready.
Sorsha put her hand on the door of the storage building and closed her eyes. Alex had no idea what magic she might be using or what it would tell her, so he just stood ready. After a moment, she looked back at him and nodded.
“Cover your eyes,” she whispered, then raised her hand and touched the door with her outstretched finger.
The door exploded, bursting as if it had been stuffed with gunpowder. Alex had seen her do this particular trick before and he waited until the sawdust and splinters stopped raining down on him before uncovering his face.
Sorsha strode boldly through the opening where the door had stood. At the same time, Alex could hear a door being kicked open from somewhere inside. He hurried after Sorsha, but ran right into the back of her when she stopped suddenly.
“What’s the idea?” Alex hissed, grabbing her to keep her from being knocked down.
Sorsha didn’t answer, but she didn’t have to. The room was blackened and charred as if a roaring blaze had swept every surface. In the center of the space stood a large device mounted on a trailer with two rubber wheels. It had a large tank on top and a brass funnel in the front. Undoubtedly this was Dr. Burnham’s machine.
As welcome a sight as the fog generator was, it was not what Alex noticed first. His eye was drawn to the two charred, motionless bodies on the floor.
21
The Machine
”Stay here,” Alex said, finally releasing Sorsha. “Have Redhorn and Mendes clear the building, then tell Redhorn to put my trench coat back in the bag.”
“Check the machine first,” she said as he stepped past her. “Specifically, find out how much fluid is left in the tank.”
Alex put down his kit while Sorsha moved around the edge of the charred room to where Redhorn and Mendes had just entered. He suppressed a grin at Redhorn, whose broad shoulders barely fit in a coat made for Alex.
Turning his attention to the room, Alex looked at the machine. A long, black wire ran from it to an electrical box mounted on a wooden support beam. The rubber coating on the wire was melted, and he could see shiny copper peeking through. Black soot clung to the beam and there were scorch marks on the wood lattice that held up the tile roof. Fortunately they were at least ten feet higher up or they’d have burned as well, sending the ceiling crashing down. There was a small hole in the roof with a pile of broken tile on the ground below it, but Alex couldn’t tell if it was recent or not without getting closer.
Returning his gaze to the machine, Alex observed that it wasn’t moving or making any noise. He supposed there must be a heating element of some kind inside and that it wouldn’t make noise, but the brass funnel on the end looked like it was where the fog was supposed to emerge, and that should need an electric fan to push the fog.
“Find anything?” Redhorn called. He had taken off Alex’s coat but still held his pistol.
“Not yet,” Alex said. “Look first, then move,” he continued, quoting an old maxim of Iggy’s.
Redhorn raised an eyebrow, but didn’t comment further.
From his current angle, Alex couldn’t see anything more, so he began to slowly circle the machine until he came to one of the bodies on the floor. The rough boards that made up the floor of the building were scorched and black, obscuring any evidence of a struggle or even footprints. All that Alex could see was that the man had fallen face down when he died.
Moving on, Alex came to the second man. He was lying face up and his face and hands were burned beyond recognition. He was dressed in a standard business suit, though most of what Alex could see had been burned too badly to tell its quality.
“I don’t see any signs of physical injury on these two,” he said as Sorsha moved around the scene, toward him. She was walking just beyond the marks Alex’s shoes made in the soot covering the floor.
“What do you think happened?” she asked.
Alex looked around at the evidence of fire.
“I’d say the machine flared up right after they turned it on,” Alex guessed. He pointed to the second man. “This one caught the blast right in the face, while that one was done in by the smoke.”
“Why didn’t the fire spread?” Redhorn asked, looking up at the charred beams still holding up the roof.
“ The walls are brick and the roof is tile,” Alex said. “The only wood in here are the beams and the planks on the floor, and they’re all really thick.”
“So?” Mendes said.
“You ever try to catch a thick piece of wood on fire?” Redhorn asked her. “It takes a while.”
Sorsha folded her arms, watching Alex as he made his way toward the fog machine. Her posture was relaxed, but he got the impression she wanted him to hurry.
“Give me a minute to look this over, then I’ll check it with my lamp,” he said before she could ask. “You might want to have Agent Mendes call this in to the police. Ask for a detective named Hawkins and tell him to alert the coroner.”
Mendes looked to Sorsha, who simply nodded.
As she hurried out to find a phone, Alex turned his attention to the machine. Its metal surfaces were covered in the same soot as the rest of the room, but it seemed largely unharmed. He reached out and carefully knocked on the large metal tank that occupied the top of the machine, and it answered with a hollow ring.
There wasn’t much of the Genesis Water left.
He was about to continue circling the machine, stepping carefully over the melted wire, when he stopped.
“Uh, oh,” he said, looking down.
&
nbsp; “What is it?” Sorsha and Redhorn said together.
“I know what happened,” he said, putting his foot down. “Whoever these guys were, they turned the machine off.”
“How do you know that?” Sorsha asked.
“Because,” Alex said, bending down to pick up the melted wire with his thumb and forefinger. “It’s still off.”
He held it up so that the others could see that while one end was plugged in to the outlet box, the other end wasn’t connected to anything.
Sorsha looked up at the fog hovering over the dilapidated building, clearly visible through the hole in the roof.
“Then what’s causing that?” she asked.
“I’m pretty sure it’s this,” Alex said, rapping on the nearly empty tank again.
“How?” Redhorn asked. “I may not be the brightest guy in the world, but even I know that things that need electricity to work, don’t work so well when they’re unplugged.”
Alex looked up at the hole in the roof, then, stepping carefully, made his way over to the pile of broken tiles beneath it. Crouching down, he moved one of the tile fragments.
“The floor under these tiles is scorched,” he reported.
“What does that mean?” Sorsha asked.
“It means the ceiling broke after the fire started,” Redhorn supplied.
“I get that,” Sorsha said with exaggerated patience. “But why does that matter?”
Alex didn’t answer, moving instead to the spot where he left his kit. He took out a silverlight burner, clipped it into the bottom of the multi-lamp, and lit it. Strapping on his oculus, he moved to the pile of tiles and went over them meticulously with the silverlight.
Small spots lit up on two of the tiles along with another tiny one, glowing faintly beneath the soot between the debris and the face-down man.
Moving on, Alex swept the lamp over the two bodies and then the machine. As he expected, there wasn’t much to be seen. A few smudged prints remained, but most had been obliterated by the fire.
“Well?” Sorsha said as Alex took off his oculus.
“Help me roll this one over,” he said to Redhorn.
Together they rolled over the face down corpse, revealing an Asian man of middle years. A long gash was open on his forehead, caked with sludgy dried blood.
“Can I go through his pockets?” Redhorn asked.
Alex nodded, then stood.
“Okay,” he said, walking over to where Sorsha was tapping her foot impatiently. “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”
She eyed him warily.
“What’s the good news?”
“I’m pretty sure I know what happened,” Alex said.
“And the bad news?”
“I’m pretty sure I know what happened,” Alex repeated.
Sorsha’s eyes narrowed and Alex hurried on.
“Whoever stole the machine brought it here, presumably to sell it to these two,” he indicated the bodies. “He turned it on to demonstrate that it worked.”
“Why can’t these men be the thieves?” Sorsha asked.
“Because of what’s missing,” Alex said. “If these were the thieves and they just wanted to test the machine, then Dr. Burnham’s notebooks would be here somewhere, and they’re not. There’s no way they’d try to test the machine without those notes.”
“That doesn’t rule out one of these men being the thief,” Sorsha said. “He might have left the notebooks at his house while he met with the buyer.”
“A buyer who came here without any money?” Alex asked. “Nobody uses a check to buy a stolen fog machine, they need cash. So where’s the bag full of cash or gold or precious stones or whatever?”
Sorsha thought about that for a moment, then nodded.
“Go on.”
Alex pointed at the face up man. “Once they paid off the thief, that one tried to turn the machine off using the switch on the machine. When the reaction didn’t stop right away, he panicked and pulled the wires out.”
“Then the fog started burning,” Sorsha said, following the narrative.
“The flash catches him in the face, and he falls down,” Alex went on, “The pressure from the blast knocks those tiles off the roof and they hit our second man in the face on their way down. He manages to stagger away but everything is on fire by now and he’s overcome and collapses there.” Alex pointed to the second body.
Sorsha looked up at the ceiling, then around at the room.
“Your story fits,” she said. “But it doesn’t explain how the fog spread if the hole in the roof happened after the machine was shut off.”
“That’s the bad news,” Alex said. “We know from experience that the flash from the fog is extremely hot. I think it vaporized the top layer of Genesis Water in that tank.” He pointed to the big metal tank on top of the machine.
“Okay, but where did the electricity come from?”
“This building is less than a mile from Empire Tower,” Alex pointed out. “Normally this would be in the outer ring, but Andrew Barton has been testing his new generators. They’re much more powerful than the previous ones. I’d be willing to bet that this spot now has as much power in the air as the inner ring.”
Sorsha flicked her wrist and her cigarette holder appeared.
“So the vaporized chemical became fog from the electricity in the air,” she said, pulling a silver cigarette case out of thin air. “But why did the reaction keep going after the vaporized fuel became fog?”
Alex motioned for Sorsha to follow him and he crossed the floor to Burnham’s machine, taking out his handkerchief as he went. When he reached it, Alex wiped the soot off of a section of the tank, then pressed his palm against it.
“Feel that,” he said, moving back so Sorsha could touch the tank.
“It’s hot,” she said.
“I don’t know why,” Alex said. “Maybe something inside is made out of the same metal as Barton’s power receivers, or maybe it has something to do with the contents of the Genesis Water, maybe both. But whatever it is, something is heating up the tank, and that’s caused the liquid to vaporize.”
“How much is left?” she asked, tapping the tank and eliciting the same hollow note Alex had.
“The real question is, what happens when it runs out,” Alex said. “The only person who knows that is Burnham.”
“What about his notebooks?” Sorsha asked. “Is there any way for you to find them?”
Alex shrugged.
“Only if we get lucky.” He turned to where Redhorn had just finished examining the second man. “Find anything interesting, Agent Redhorn?”
“Keys, cash, a folding knife, and this,” he said, holding up a black booklet. “They each had one.” He stood as Alex and Sorsha came over.
“What are they?” the Sorceress asked.
“Identity cards,” Redhorn said, opening them to reveal an official-looking paper with a picture on it. “Both these men are foreign nationals. They’re required to carry their identity cards at all times.”
“Li Yang Zin and Bao Bin Cheng,” Sorsha read. “Both Chinese.”
“This one worked at the consulate,” Redhorn said, turning the page in the booklet to reveal another official-looking photograph.
“Why would two Chinese men want to buy a fog machine?” Alex asked.
“China is at war with the Empire of Japan,” Sorsha said, as if that explained it.
“A war they’re currently losing,” Redhorn added.
“I know,” Alex said, “but this machine isn’t a new weapon, it’s designed to hide convoy ships from armed zeppelins. How does that help the Chinese?”
Sorsha shrugged.
“I suppose they could use it to make the Sea of Japan unnavigable,” she said. “It doesn’t matter though. If you’re right, and I think you are, these men came here to buy Burnham’s machine from our missing thief. A thief we absolutely must find.”
“Don’t we need to figure out a way to stop this thing from bur
ning the city to the ground?” Redhorn asked, nodding at the fog generator.
“The thief has Burnham’s notebooks,” Sorsha said. “With Burnham’s memory still gone, that might be our only chance of preventing disaster.” She turned to Alex as police sirens began to wail in the distance. “So how do we find the thief?”
Alex shook his head. There wasn’t an obvious answer. The fire had obliterated any trace of him, and there weren’t any other real clues.
“I don’t think whoever did this was a pro,” Alex said, rubbing his chin. “If he steals government secrets for a living, he would have sold it to some other country, one who could pay more.”
“You’re thinking he picked the Chinese because he knew them?” Redhorn said.
“How does that help?” Sorsha asked.
“How many consulate workers do you know?” Alex said.
“A few,” she replied. “But I see your point. We need to find out who knew these men. They aren’t diplomats, so they probably don’t have a lot of American contacts. Who would know that kind of thing?”
“The American Ambassador to China,” Alex said.
“You want me to call over to China?” Sorsha said.
Alex shook his head.
“America’s Ambassador to China is a man named William Henderson and he’s here, in New York,” Alex said. “The President recalled him because of the war. It was in the papers.”
Sorsha raised an eyebrow at that.
“So our Ambassador returns from China during a war that they’re losing, and suddenly American military secrets are stolen and sold to the Chinese,” she observed, exchanging a knowing look with Redhorn. “Does that sound like a coincidence to you?”
Redhorn shook his head.
“No, ma’am, it does not.”
At that moment the back door opened, and Agent Mendes came in.
“The police are here,” she said.
“Good,” Alex said, putting away his gear.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Sorsha asked.
“You needed me to find the source of the fog,” he said, picking up his kit. “I did that, and now I have a two-bit thug to find.”
