Empire State

by Adam Christopher

  Rad stopped rubbing his head. He missed his hat, badly.

  "Crater doesn't make any sense." Rad knocked the toe of his shoe into Rex's side. "You said he was a judge, and he disappeared?"

  Rex huffed and folded his arms, but he was getting the hang of the confession gig. "A couple of days before the fight. Vanished into thin air, big news."

  Rad crouched on his haunches. "He vanished before the fight?" He looked at Carson, who just shrugged.

  "Time dilation," Carson said, not very convincingly. Rad frowned. It was the same term Nimrod has used in New York, but it was clear that nobody knew what the hell the Fissure was or how the two parallel worlds worked in relation to each other.

  Rad hrmmed loudly. "And he arrived here, walking into the role of the Chairman without so much as a how-d'ya-do?"

  "The Empire State was created with a vacuum at the heart of it," said Carson. He interlocked his fingers and flexed them as he considered. "It was made for him, I suppose. Together with the House of Lost Souls, I imagine." He pulled his hands, the locked fingers tugging at the knuckles but not separated. "Interlocked."

  "If Crater is here, where is his double in New York? Nimrod said he could trace people somehow."

  Carson met Rad's eye, and let his hands drop. "I'm not sure he has a double."

  Rad raised an eyebrow, then it came to him. He puffed his cheeks, held his breath for just a second, then exhaled.

  "Is that possible?"

  Captain Carson's eyes widened, but he said nothing. Rad gave a low whistle.

  "Crater is the Chairman, and the Pastor. And one is the original, and one is the… copy, double, whatever. Except they're not doubles…" Rad struggled with the concept, then shook his head after a few moments. Carson watched, and nodded.

  "It may be possible. Who knows. It would explain a great deal. The Chairman and the Pastor as doubles, but forced together into a single existence. He and his Empire State reflection did not switch places, they merged."

  "Giving him one hell of a headache."

  "Giving him," said Carson, with a tight smile, "a dual personality. Two minds, one body. Crater, the original, and the reflection. Trapped in the same body, fighting for control."

  Rad shook his head. "Poor bastard." He turned back to Rex and the Science Pirate. Both sat on the damp grass, silent but both watching.

  "So how did Kane get the Skyguard's gear?" Rad asked.

  The Captain coughed. "Ah, I'm afraid I may have something to do with that."

  Rad looked up at Carson, and then back at Lisa, who was now smiling. She held the tip of her tongue between her teeth, her grin showing the spark of arrogance.

  Rad stood, eyes wide. He backed away from Lisa and turned to the old man, stomach doing a loop-the-loop.

  In the dark Rad saw the Captain smile again, but it was a nervous look that wasn't pretty.

  "I encouraged him," he said. "I was able to influence the Chairman, get him access to the prison. It was no different than the usual tricks he asked me to pull. I'm a reflection of Nimrod, I was fashioned with the Pocket and have influence here as he does in the Origin. And then when I heard about who the prisoner was, where he was from, I was able to find the suit. I gave it to Kane and helped to fix it."

  Captain Carson held his hands out in a gesture of apology.

  "I didn't know then what I know now, and for that I am sorry. Whatever my role, the important thing is that it revealed the plans of the Chairman."

  Rad kept silent and kept looking at the Captain. He was waiting to hear the good reasons. So far, he'd only heard the excuses of an old man.

  "Rad," said Carson, quietly. "Crater would have found someone else. And if he had, we might never have found out about the Origin and the Pocket, and we might not be standing here now, debating it. The Fissure might already be closed. New York and the Empire State might not even exist anymore."

  Carson was right, and Rad knew it, but after having his world turned upside down, and inside out, after finding out that they were some kind of shadow of the 'real' world, like that meant they weren't important or something, to find out that his best friend – his only friend – was the enemy, his week was getting long and old. Rad was tired. He needed a drink and to forget about everything he knew.

  Rad turned away from Carson, leaving the old man's jaw working as he tried to think of something else to argue his point.

  "Kane's lost the airship, so he'll be at the Fissure, trying to do some damage another way."

  Rad walked to Lisa, and kicked her in the leg, hard. Her armour protected her thigh, but she swore anyway.

  "Get up," he said. "We've got to stop Kane destroying the world. Yours and mine."

  FORTY-ONE

  THE CHAIRMAN, THE PASTOR of Lost Souls, the Missingest Man in New York, Judge Crater, opened his eyes. He'd had them closed so long and clamped shut with such force that the brightness of the room was almost painful. He flinched, and blinked, untangling eyelashes that had adhered together with dried tears and other secretions. He rubbed at his left eye, but this made purple spots dance in his vision, so he stopped.

  He looked around the room from where he was sitting, behind a dark wooden desk, practically the only thing with colour he could see. The lights overhead fizzed, the bulb wattage higher than the fitting recommended. They bounced a harsh white light over the spotless painted walls.

  He looked around, and blinked, as his pupils contracted and the features of the room came into focus. There was no doubt, no doubt about it at all.

  He was still in the Empire State.

  He sat for a few minutes, slowing his breathing down, not because he was angry but because he'd been holding it for as long as he'd had his eyes closed. His chest popped with each breath, and dizziness came and went.

  The room's door was open as it always was. From where he sat, Crater could see a girl's hand curling around the old twisted banister rod of the stairs. Someone was standing, waiting to enter. The hand shifted a little as its owner bounced on the balls of her feet.

  Crater licked his lips under the hood. Maybe it was the warmth of the night, or maybe it was the naked bulbs burning against the white walls. The room was hot, he was hot. Maybe it was fear and panic threatening to crush out all rational thought from his mind.

  He was still in the goddamned Pocket. Perhaps this was his destiny. Perhaps he'd got it all wrong, everything about the Pocket and the Origin and the Fissure and how to get back home. Perhaps he was dead, and this was some kind of Hell. Hell with a capital "H".

  He coughed, and saw the hand on the stair move again.

  "Come in!"

  There was a sigh from beyond the door, and this time the hand slid down the rod as the girl took one step backwards down the stairs. Crater felt his throat tighten as he shouted. He hadn't meant to. He couldn't help it.

  "I said, come in, damn it!"

  Whatever the girl said, he couldn't hear. He yelled again, at the top of his lungs. Loud enough for the whole house to hear his rage.

  "Your face," said the girl from the stair. "I must not enter."

  The Pastor of Lost Souls sat still behind the desk in the white room, staring ahead, his palms flat on the blotter before him. He felt hot, his face burned, and there was pain in his temples. The purple spots hadn't quite gone from his eyes.

  And then, of course! What was he thinking! He smiled, relaxed, and casually reached forward, taking the hood from the desk and slipping it over his head. He caressed his cloth-covered face lightly with his fingertips, and closed his eyes, drawing in a deep breath. The room seemed to stop spinning, and when he opened his eyes, everything he saw was suddenly sharper, clearer.

  The Pastor stood, calling to the girl to enter. She came in quickly, glanced at his hooded face, then stared at the ground. Her blue suit as immaculate as her flawless white skin, Katherine Kopek knelt before the desk.

  The Pastor laughed, and walked around the desk. He ignored the girl, and stopped at the open window. The room was so
brightly lit that everything beyond the frame was an inky blackness, but a warm breeze swept past. He closed his eyes, feeling the air play at the front of the hood.

  No, this wasn't Hell. It was Purgatory, with a capital 'P'. And he well knew that there was an escape from Purgatory. It was nothing more than a holding cell for those who needed to expiate their sins.

  "What is it, my child?"

  Katherine turned on her knees towards Crater standing at the window, but she did not raise her eyes from the floor.

  "Father, we heard... we heard shouting. We were afraid."

  "Ah, my child," said Crater. He turned from the window and walked up to her, reaching down to pull her head up by the chin until she was looking at his hooded face. "There is nothing to fear. Tell the others. Tonight we will cleanse our souls and those of this new Babylon. Tonight I will show you all Heaven. Go."

  Katherine's eyes widened, and she smiled.

  It was good. It was exactly as he wanted. He controlled their minds. He had almost one hundred followers who would obey his orders or die trying.

  The Fissure was going to close. The Skyguard had failed, clearly. Rex too, otherwise Crater would have opened his eyes in New York City. But he didn't need the Skyguard. He had all he needed in the house.

  "Go," he said. The girl almost curtseyed, then ran from the room.

  The Pastor of Lost Souls turned back to the window, closed his eyes, and laughed.

  "Alpha and omega, I am the beginning and the ending," he whispered to no one.

  "This city shall fall."

  FORTY-TWO

  THE EMPIRE STATE FISSURE was similar to the one in New York City, except that the concrete disc was in the centre of a large hangar instead of outdoors. Rad knew the building as the Battery, part of the restricted naval zone that occupied all of the southern tip of the island. As far as he could remember – and he knew how reliable his memory was concerning his home town – this place had always been called the Battery, and now he knew why. He had no idea of the origin of the name of the New York City equivalent – Battery Park – but here, the Battery held the Fissure, and the Fissure powered the Empire State. Not the city itself, but the entire Pocket. Close the Fissure, close the Pocket. The Empire State would snap out of existence in an instant, pulling New York City along with it thanks to the transdimensional tether. The Battery was, literally, powering the very realm in which the Empire State existed.

  That was the flaw in Crater's plan, and Rad suspected he knew it. Close the Fissure and erase the abhorrence to nature that the Pocket represented. He'd fooled Kane and Rex into thinking he could take them to New York City, using this as leverage to get them to do his bidding. But they'd vanish along with their insane employer.

  Rad wondered how many people had been switched between the Pocket and the Origin, exactly. Rex and Lisa were here by accident. So was the Skyguard, the original, but he was dead. Crater had been the first to arrive, assuming control of the newborn city. But who else? How many people had walked down one street at home and turned into a street in the other place? How many missing persons in New York City and the Empire State did transference across the two universes represent? Sam Saturn had walked into New York City and ended up dead. There must have been others. Perhaps those who had found themselves in New York were the lucky ones. They'd found the escape route into the Origin, into a universe of possibilities. For those who found themselves in the Pocket, it would have been like going to prison, trapped forever in a tiny, wet, fog-shrouded city in the grip of Wartime restrictions. Poor bastards.

  The Lost Souls. Rad pondered Crater's alter ego as the Pastor, and thought back to his visit to the old brownstone. Was everyone in the Pastor's "church" a refugee from New York? Sam Saturn wasn't, and yet she'd been drawn there. Maybe Crater preyed on those who thought they were refugees, those lost in the Empire State not because they were from New York, but because they knew, deep in their very being, that something was not right about their world, about the Pocket. And perhaps at night, when they dreamed and saw through the eyes of their counterparts in the Origin, they felt they didn't belong.

  Rad sighed to himself. Nice theory. Might fit. New York was nice, but... but it wasn't the Empire State, no matter how much it looked like it. The Empire State was full of people and life – it might have been created as a poor copy of New York, but it was real, and he was real, and the people in it were real, and it was worth saving. Rad smiled. What was this? Patriotism for his damp home town? Well, hot dang.

  Rad felt a touch on his shoulder and twisted around. He was down on his haunches behind a scalloped concrete wall, one of several that stood freely at the periphery of the central Battery disc. His injured leg was smarting, as were his ribs, and as he looked at Carson, he couldn't stop himself from wincing at the movement.

  "We ready to go?" Rad asked.

  Carson ignored the question, and looked into Rad's face for a moment. The detective bristled. His mouth was dry. He needed a drink. In fact, he needed to go back two weeks. What he wouldn't give for drinking moonshine out of a teacup at Jerry's, listening as Kane gassed about his day at the Sentinel. Other times. Happy ones.

  "You're thinking about the Origin, aren't you?" said Carson.

  "What?"

  Carson smiled and pointed at the eggshell around the Fissure. To Rad it looked the same, although the blue light leaking from the joins wasn't as bright as it was in the Origin, it was still enough to turn the white floodlights that lined the hangar a faint baby blue. Rad looked over his shoulder at the Fissure, and then glanced around the Battery itself. Unlike New York, there were no guards here, and the Captain had led the group in unimpeded. It seemed that despite his retirement he had kept all the right keys.

  "The Origin, detective," said Captain Carson, his face lit by the faint flicker of the Fissure. "A whole world lies just on the other side of that, Mr Bradley. New York is just the beginning of the journey. Think of it!"

  Carson dropped his voice to a whisper. Rad felt his forehead crease as he listened.

  "A whole world to explore. People and places, life writ large. Think of it."

  Rad frowned. He was trying not to.

  "And wars and disease and death, and crime, and pollution, and waste. Cruelty, tyranny, pain and hate," he said.

  Carson stiffened his back, drawing himself up behind Rad.

  "Indeed. A world of good, but of evil also."

  Rad laughed. "Just like here then." He turned and looked over his shoulder, up at the Captain. "Come on, we've got two cities to save."

  The Captain chuckled and slapped Rad's shoulder.

  "Good man."

  In all honesty, Rad was surprised that Rex and Lisa were as quiet as they were. He could see the deep dejection in Rex's face and the dull resignation in Lisa's. They had to help, or face extinction. Jail time in New York sounded like a good deal, all things considered.

  Rex was a puzzle. The man was a killer and a gangster by his own admission. He'd killed Sam and wasn't bothered. And now he was sitting on the ground next to Lisa, his actual intended victim. Yet he ignored her. He sat on the ground, his face empty, staring around the side of the wall at the Fissure. Lisa ignored her would-be assassin as well. Rad wondered what trick she was planning to pull on his double once they were through the Fissure and home. Revenge? Justice? Maybe Rex deserved it. She'd been one of the good guys once, apparently. Rad turned back to Rex.

  Rad jumped as Carson spoke, his voice right in Rad's ear.

  "Rex is afraid. He's also a simple man – you and he share much less in common than you may suspect. He's simple, and he's afraid, and he wants to go home. He wants to run into the Fissure and disappear. He's waiting for us to help him."

  "Huh," said Rad. He rubbed his goatee. Carson sure had a gift for reading people, a gift Rad had no doubt the Captain shared with his counterpart in New York.

  "And her?" Rad asked.

  Carson inhaled, sucking the air through his teeth, the sound sharp enough to mak
e Rad jump again. Lisa had folded her arms now, and was looking out around the hangar, her eyes flicking here and there.

  "She's waiting too," said the Captain. "Waiting for the Skyguard to come and get her. The unpowered armour makes an effective pair of handcuffs, as it were. She can't get out of it without our help, and she can't fight against us very effectively without power."

  "So what do we do? They just gonna sit there? When Kane shows, something's going to happen."

  "You're right. But he's here already."

  "What?"

  Rad shuffled around. Carson had stood up. Behind him, hidden in the shadow cast by the concrete wall, stood a tall, wide, black silhouette. Something metallic flashed as Kane moved his head, his white eyes blue in the glow of the Fissure.