Gods of Manhattan

by Al Ewing

  The thought amused him as he allowed sleep to steal over him.

  In the hospital, Monk Olsen breathed through a tube. He would not die tonight, but his healing would be long and slow.

  In the basement of the hospital, Doctor Miles Hamilton gently carried a vial of blood - the bulk of Doc Thunder's generous donation to his friend - down to the cold room where such perishables were kept, placing it in a chilled metal box in which it could remain fresh - a box to which only he had the key.

  In the brownstone, Maya slept, and dreamt of a man in a red mask, and murder, and all the secrets of the past returning to haunt the future. Occasionally, she dreamt of home, and smiled.

  Doc Thunder did not sleep at all.

  Chapter Six

  Doc Thunder and The Omega Machine

  "I hate this thing."

  Maya scowled as she adjusted the copper headband so that the contacts - small discs of sponge soaked in brine - rested against Doc Thunder's temples. His hands were strapped down to the arms, and another strap ran across his chest, with still more securing his legs. "To prevent convulsions," he'd said, "from the effect of the galvanic stimulation on the body."

  The chair was linked up with copper wire to an odd device consisting of an array of magnets, which, when set to spinning in a certain configuration, would create an induction effect and charge the wires with pulses of pure galvanic force - 'omega energy', as the Doc had dubbed it. The shifting colours of the sunset streamed through the window, cascading over the massive, squat machine, reflecting from the shiny copper and burnished steel, making the apparatus look strange and otherworldly, like something out of a scientifiction chapbook.

  Monk had once asked him if the 'omega effect' could be used to power a machine, like a steam engine - power a car or a robot, maybe. "Too dangerous," the Doc had said. "Omega energy can kill a normal man, and that's the first thing they'd use it for. Executions. If I can make it safe, I'll give it to the world. Until then, the Omega Machine will be the only one of its kind on this planet."

  On Doc's signal, Maya would throw a switch mounted on the omega generator, closing the 'omega pathway' and sending pure omega energy from deep within the guts of the machine down the wire and through the chair. At which point, it would pass through the brine-soaked contacts and straight into the Doc's brain.

  On a lesser man, the effect would be fatal, but on Doc's enhanced body, the 'omega effect' charged his synapses, opening up new doors of perception and allowing his conscious mind access to the subliminal, unconscious parts of his brain. Essentially, it boosted the power of his mind by a factor of ten or more and allowed him to make intuitive leaps that previously would have been unthinkable even to him. There was only one drawback.

  If he was left too long in the Omega Machine, it would kill even him.

  And nobody knew how long 'too long' might be. It could be as short as a few seconds or as long as ten minutes. But once his mighty heart ceased to beat, it would be beyond Maya's power to compress his chest. If his breathing stopped, Maya would not be able to reinflate his lungs any more than she could have reinflated a crushed metal can. CPR just didn't work on Doc Thunder - that was an unpleasant truth he'd lived with all his life.

  "I hate it." Maya scowled, though it didn't mar her beauty. Then she laughed, without humour. "It's funny - when you risk Monk's life, I threaten you with death. So what do I threaten you with when you risk your own?"

  She looked at him for a long moment, then, a sudden, strange, considering look crossed her lovely features.

  Doc's voice was soft, gentle. "Don't go."

  Maya smiled, caught. "I was just thinking about the Forbidden Kingdom. My home." She smiled, sitting down on his lap, reaching around to gently stroke the back of his neck with a fingernail. "Intrigues and betrayals. An endless succession of high priests and viziers - either sinned against or sinning. The number of times I had to intervene to break up some conspiracy or other... goodness knows what they've done without me." She leant to kiss him, probing for a long, delicious moment with her catlike tongue, and when she finally let his lips go, her eyes were considering, as if the kiss was an evaluation.

  Doc tried to smile. "I'm sure they haven't done anything too..." He tailed off, the words sounding hollow and ridiculous in his own ears. She continued looking at him, head tilted to the side, and he stayed silent, not wanting to betray the sudden panic he was feeling. He'd nearly lost Monk - his best friend, his bedmate - and to lose Maya, too, to let her slip away from him, to be alone again, as he'd been before...

  Eventually, he spoke. "Would you... would you really go back to that? I know the danger didn't mean anything to you, but you were so... bored..."

  Don't let her be bored, he thought. Please. Don't let her be bored of me.

  She smiled, reaching down past his belly, stroking, teasing, like a cat toying with a wounded bird. His muscles flexed against the straps, and she laughed. "No. I'm not bored. But... there are dangers here I didn't have to worry about at home. Worse than death. Worse than boredom, even."

  She leaned in, her lips brushing his. "Are you going to break my heart, Doc Thunder?" Her lips blocked his reply, that tongue darting and delving in his mouth, her scent in his nostrils as the firm shape of her breasts and the weight of them pressed into him. She broke the kiss suddenly, looking at him with an air of cool consideration as she picked up the rubber bit-gag that would keep him from biting off his own tongue.

  "Must I break yours first?"

  He opened his mouth to speak, to tell her she was wrong, to ask her to stay with him, but she forced the gag in his mouth and secured it before he could. For the best, maybe. Maya Zor-Tura was not a woman who enjoyed the company of beggars. "Are you ready?" she said, crisply, padding over to the large switch mounted on the casing of the humming machine, the handle coated in rubber to prevent omega discharge.

  Doc looked at her for a moment, then nodded.

  She threw the switch and -

  head full of lightning

  sdrawkcab gninnips yromem

  something in the past

  - the flashes in his mind started to spark and crackle -

  clue to discover

  long-forgotten adventure

  buried connection

  - the first galvanised insights coming fast, in a rush -

  thinking so quickly

  that it becomes something new

  not thinking at all

  - a kaleidoscope of colour in his head, strange scents and audio hallucinations -

  thousand days ago

  something changed something went wrong

  why think remember

  - zoning in on a specific memory, something his subconscious had been screaming at him in the night for three years or more -

  lomax was involved

  lars lomax anti-scientist

  implacable foe

  - why Lomax? He hadn't thought of Lomax since he'd died -

  hamilton as well

  hamilton changed after that

  why think remember

  - Hamilton had been there, in the airship, over the Amazon, what was the meaning behind that -

  go into the past

  memory unlocks the clue

  think and remember

  - think and remember -

  Maya watched as Doc jerked and thrashed in the straps, teeth biting into the bit-gag, eyes bulging as the omega energy tore through his brain. When he was ready, when he had the answer he needed, he'd tap out, hammer the arm of the chair with his palm, signal her to turn off the omega field. If he could.

  She wondered if this was the time she'd watch him die.

  Think and remember.

  The insights, the flashes and sparks in his mind, had calmed as they always did, leaving him in a trance state, feeling the pain and strangeness of the electric current flowing through his synapses, and in that twilight world of semi-consciousness Doc Thunder remembered Lars Lomax, the most dangerous man in the world.

  T
he twisted bald super-genius who had sworn to kill him a thousand times, the evil scientist whose self-declared purpose was to burn the whole world and raise his own civilisation in its ruins, the ultimate foe, the one man who on his own had caused more trouble than Untergang and N.I.G.H.T.M.A.R.E. and E.R.A.M.T.H.G.I.N. and every other organisation he'd ever fought put together, bar the Hidden Empire. Lars Lomax - the enemy of Earth. The name that froze the blood in the veins of law enforcement agencies the world over.

  In some ways, Lomax had been a worse enemy over the years than even Heinrich Donner, the man Doc Thunder despised most in all the world. Strange, then, that they were so alike in their iron commitment to changing the world for the better. Lomax genuinely wanted to raise mankind to the stars, to make everyone in the world into a Doc Thunder, and if they'd only managed to work in unison, maybe that could have happened. Maybe they could have saved the world together.

  But Lomax hated him.

  Lars Lomax had hated him for his physical superiority, his perceived arrogance, his reluctance to destroy the status quo rather than change it slowly from within. Doc Thunder could never find it in him to hate Lomax back. He'd tried to save him, tried to bring him around, to persuade him that it didn't have to be that way, that there was a way that they could both get what they wanted without destroying each other. But that hatred had only grown, the terrible flaw in an otherwise brilliant personality. A single crack that turned this mirror-image of America's greatest hero into the world's greatest threat, that made Earth's would-be saviour believe that the only way to save the global village was to destroy it.

  More sparks, more flashes. He had to remember something. Their final confrontation. The zeppelin, flying over the rich jungles of the Amazon, the struggle for the pistol...

  No. That wasn't the important part. It was the part before, the part Maya had told him about. Something Lomax had said. How had it gone?

  What had Maya said?

  Think. Remember.

  "I always enjoy our talks..."

  "I always enjoy our talks, your Royal Highness. Tell me, what will you do when all this is over and your lover is dead? Go back to your forgotten kingdom? I can't imagine what the funeral service will be like."

  One thousand days previously - in the sparks and crackles of Doc Thunder's memory - Lars Lomax smiled, and his shaggy red eyebrows lifted in amusement. "I imagine it involves feeding the deceased to a giant cobra, or possibly having a death-duel with a panther. That's about your speed, isn't it? Am I close?" He idly reached out to move his bishop a single square.

  "Close." Maya smiled, readjusting herself on her seat. The ropes binding her arms and legs in place, securing her to the warm leather seat in front of the chessboard, were tight, but not so tight as to cut off her circulation. Lomax was considerate of his guests, as long as it suited him to be. "Actually the funeral service involves raising an army of my finest warriors to hunt you to the end of the world and flay the flesh from your living bones for daring to plot against my chosen consort. Never mind the temerity you've shown by daring to bind a Goddess... anyway, Queen's knight to queen five. Knight takes pawn. Mate in three moves."

  Lomax frowned as he made her move for her. "Well, I'm not going to leave you free, am I? I'm not stupid. You'd kill me in five seconds. Three moves, you say?" He concentrated for a moment, and then took his own knight and captured a pawn himself. Getting rid of that white rook was a priority - in addition to all the other priorities, of course. Like killing Doc Thunder once and for all. "Well, I'm concentrating on several things at once, you have to understand."

  Maya sneered. "King's knight to king four, knight takes knight, mate in two moves. And believe me, I understand. After all... you're no Doc Thunder, are you?"

  Lomax cursed. Now he'd lost his knight, his queen was locked in one corner of the board and his king was looking dangerously under threat. How had he missed that? He'd walked right into it. Too many variables, that was the problem. Hurriedly, he captured the original knight with a pawn. Perhaps he could outflank her somehow.

  For these few seconds of consideration, the game on the board was as important as the larger one taking place in the massive dirigible floating over the Amazon, towards his destiny. He'd rebuilt his Flying Fortress for the purpose, investing in hydrogen rather than cavorite to lift the structure - less expensive, and more suited to his purposes.

  Of course, it meant that he was flying in a gigantic firebomb that could go off at any moment, but what was life without a little risk?

  Whenever he had Ms. Zor-Tura as his guest - vastly preferable to leaving such a dangerous opponent free to provide aid and comfort to the accursed Thunder - he made a point of getting out the chessboard. Last time, he'd beaten her conclusively in one game and forced her to a stalemate in the second. No small feat, given that she'd been playing the game almost since its inception, and he was putting the final touches to his earthquake machine at the time.

  Having made his move, he snapped out of his brief trance and turned his attention back to Maya.

  "No Doc Thunder... well, I take that as a compliment. Anyway, pretty soon there'll be no Doc Thunder, just a moldy old corpse hanging off the front of my dirigible. Do you like it, by the way? After you broke the old one, I traded up. I particularly like the new furniture." He stood, walking across the metal flooring of the dirigible cabin towards the chair - his favourite chair, the one Doctor Hamilton was sitting in. "What do you think, Doctor Hamilton? How's my taste in antiques?"

  Hamilton seemed restrained, drugged almost - not his usual self. He'd been Doc Thunder's personal physician for over ten years, and in that time Maya had gotten to know him well. A man with a dry wit, a gentle grip and a fierce light in his eyes, always ready with a smile, who cried at the injustices of the world openly and without shame. A truly gentle man.

  The light in his eyes seemed gone now. The chair he was strapped in looked as if it would be most at home in one of the dungeons of the Spanish Inquisition. Hamilton's arms were strapped down to the arms of the chair, and there was a further studded metal strap wound around his temples and forehead, with a screw positioned at the back of the monstrous device that would tighten it as needed. Lomax had been slowly tightening the mechanism until it dug into Hamilton's flesh, and the agony must have been unendurable - the band was already visibly sunk into his forehead. Despite this, he remained still and calm, speaking through hitching breaths. "You can stop... stop asking questions. I'm never going to tell you what you want to know." The words held an edge of determination that struck Maya as almost out of character, and she felt shame at the thought. She'd misjudged him.

  "But I really don't want to know very much, Doctor. Can't we compromise? Long negotiations can be such a headache." He reached to tighten the screw again, and Hamilton winced and inhaled sharply, gritting his teeth. "I really think you should reconsider. If nothing else, when your head cracks open like an eggshell it's going to make a terrible mess of my lovely Flying Fortress."

  "I said no." Maya couldn't tell if that look of supernatural calm on Hamilton's face was despair, agony or something else. The words were low, almost rasping. "I'm not going to help you kill him. Good God, listen to yourself! You've tried shooting him, bombing him, stabbing him - now you want to find some ancient poison or radioactive metal that can kill him for you? You're a sick maaaagh!" His voice became a scream as Lomax tightened the band once more.

  "Excuse me while I turn this a small trifle... you're right, Doctor, I am a sick man. I'm a very sick man. Sick of him. That pompous intellectual midget. That over-inflated stuffed shirt. I want him out of my hair for a while, Hamilton. Him and his trained ape."

  "I beg your pardon?" hissed Maya, arching an eyebrow.

  Lomax rounded on her, his irritation boiling into a sudden rage. "Oh, I forgot, the ape-man's your boyfriend too. Well, of course he is! The monarchy always did get their playthings, didn't they, Princess? King Thunder the first's big happy family can do what they like! He can do what he
likes! Bend the ears of Presidents! God forbid the rest of us get the chance to make our voices heard! God forbid any real human beings ever go outside the stifling rules of this wretched, poisoned society, ever get to live their lives free from the taint of the status quo! Free from the rules! The ones he enforces!"

  Hamilton didn't blink. "You're mad, Lomax. You're completely mad."

  "Oh, I'm furious." Lomax was suddenly calm as he turned back to face the Doctor. "We have a superhuman being retarding our development. If humans had fought the Second Civil War alone, we'd have a paradise by now. My paradise. Instead, all we did was swap one flag for another. Well, I think it's about time we put the flags away with the rest of our childhood toys." He leaned in, close to the Doctor's ear.

  "Listen, Doctor. You're Thunder's personal physician. You must know his weaknesses. You see, I was thinking... Poison. We're on our way to my Amazon lab, I've got a number of interesting toxins stored there. We'll experiment, see what might work. I just want a little input from you, that's all." He slowly twisted the screw, very gently now, applying only the slightest pressure. Hamilton screamed. "A little co-operation. That's all I want, and then the pain can stop. What do you say?"

  "'First, do no harm.'" Hamilton gasped, his expression still unchanging as he gritted his teeth. "I took an oath. You can torture me all you want."

  "Good. I'll do that, then."