Empire State (31 page)

  "You're kinda assumin' a lot here, preacher."

  "Am I?"

  Rex felt his face flush hotly, his hair-trigger temper set off.

  "What do you think I am, some kinda hatchet man? I'm a bootlegger, sir. I don't go in for murder usually. If I need someone knocked off, I hire a gun. Why get me to do it? Why wait all this time for me to arrive to take out this guy?" He flicked the photograph on the desk. It skidded across the top and spun towards the Pastor, landing the right way up for him to regard the portrait quite by chance. This coincidence seemed to galvanise Rex, who sat back with an alarming creak and folded his arms so tightly the seams of his jacket parted just a little.

  The Pastor's eyes, the only features visible through his hood, roved up and down, between Rex, squeezed into the chair in front of him, and the photograph of Rad Bradley on the desk. He clacked his tongue.

  "The likeness is remarkable," he said quietly, paused, then added: "But you
are
the same person. Still, remarkable."

  Rex huffed. "I still don't get it. You want me to do it because we look the same? Like I said, I don't usually get my hands dirty."

  "Ah, Rex," the Pastor began. "Perhaps a gun is not your style. But strangulation is? Bare hands are more satisfying. You really know you've got the job done when you can feel the bones grinding under your fingers."

  Rex blanched. Goddamn. The Pastor knew. Rex feigned ignorance, barking a "What?" that was too loud, too quick, redolent of guilt.

  "You killed Sam Saturn," said the Pastor. He shrugged as he spoke, as if he was disregarding a minor misdemeanour. "That very act brought you here, because you and she, and she and Rad, are connected to this place."

  The Pastor stuck his elbows out at ninety degrees, holding his forearms horizontal in front of him. He interlocked the fingers of each hand to emphasise his explanation, and made a show of a one-man tug o' war.

  "You killed Saturn. You must kill Bradley. It is not so much my decision as a preordained event. It is inevitable. You must kill him. As the death of Saturn pulled you here, so the death of Bradley will pull you back. It is your path to New York City. Home. And my path too."

  Rex sighed and felt hot pinpricks on his forehead. He rubbed his fingers on his scalp, and found it slick with greasy sweat. The Pastor was a nut, a loon in a white hood living in a white house, he was sure of that. But something in what he said made sense. Little else did about the whole situation, although Rex had long since given up on the idea that he'd wake up, or snap out of it, finding himself back home in his own bed, the Empire State a fading dream. Then he thought of the girl's body breaking in his hands, so easily, and the blood, and the smell of the blood, and the buzzing in his head.

  No, it was real. The Empire State was real. And what he wanted now, more than anything, was to escape, to go home. If the Pastor knew what he was talking about – and why wouldn't he? He'd been here longer than Rex, he knew how it worked, he knew about the girl, knew how to get home – then all it would take is one simple job and they'd be back in Manhattan. And this Rad, he wasn't real anyway, he was just some stooge, a lookalike, a pale shadow of himself. Rex wasn't anyone's schmuck. Give him a job, he'd do it. He reached into the pocket with the gun, and ran his fingers over its machined surface. The metal wasn't cold as he'd expected. It was warm, smooth.

  "Do you understand me, Rex?"

  Rex nodded.

  "Do you want to go home, Rex?"

  Rex nodded again.

  "Then play your part. Eliminating the detective is but the first step. Relax, I'll have some coffee brought up while I tell you the rest."

  Rex nodded a third time. He wanted to say something else, but wasn't sure what, so closed his mouth as the Pastor headed for the open door. Rex turned and watched, noticing one of the Pastor's zealots sitting on the stairs, a surprisingly elegant woman in porcelain makeup and a royal blue dress, apparently having heard the entire discussion. But the woman just smiled at Rex before turning her attention to the Pastor as he approached. The two shared a brief, whispered conversation, then the Pastor turned and walked back towards the desk. The woman at the stairs looked again at Rex. She smiled, then delicately and carefully headed downstairs on very high heels.

  The Pastor sat.

  "To business."

 

Dawn was just a handful of hours away by the time the Pastor left the brownstone with Rex trailing close behind. The pair stopped at the base of the stairs that led back up to the front door. Almost the whole street was illuminated by the white lights inside the house, and Rex didn't like to dawdle in what was practically a spotlight. He fidgeted, and shifted his weight from one foot to another, and the Pastor asked again whether the instructions were clear.

  "I got it, dammit," Rex snapped. Then he sighed and apologised, but not without looking over his shoulder towards the darker part of the street, which he could barely see outside of the glow of the Pastor's house. His new employer tilted his head at the outburst, the hood hanging in a straight edge towards the man's shoulder.

  "I am trusting you, Rex," the Pastor whispered. "I do hope you can fulfil your appointed task."

  Rex held a hand up. The Pastor nodded and rested a hand on his shoulder.

  "Go."

  Rex nodded and departed at a trot, relieved to be out of the Pastor's company and out of the light. The damn city was strangely quiet, but he wasn't going to take any chances, so he hit the shadows as soon as he could.

 

The Pastor stood and arched his shoulders like a weightlifter stretching out before the snatch and grab. Straightening the hem of his jacket, he slid out of the light and headed down the street in the opposite direction from Rex.

  He stopped around the corner, in a shadow cast by a raised set of stairs leading into one of the many anonymous dead buildings.

  He stood in the dark for a while, watching the street. There was nobody there and as he stared ahead, the yellow streetlight opposite seemed to flicker and blur. The Pastor tried to blink it away, but it just got worse. After thirty more seconds his vision split almost completely into two overlapping images, the yellow streetlight beginning to slide and spin in his mind.

  The Pastor sucked in a breath, bringing his hands to his face. When he pulled them away, the white hood came with them, which he folded neatly like a large handkerchief and placed in his inside jacket pocket.

  Stepping out of the shadow, the man from under the hood straightened his hair, adjusted his tie, and headed north, towards the Empire State Building.

 

 
 

 
 

SPREAD OUT BENEATH THEIR FEET, the Empire State was a glittering jewel in the night, the perpetual misty haze blurring the city lights, turning the city into a black and grey canvas studded with a million multi-pointed stars.

  It was beautiful, peaceful, and even romantic, and before he'd even realised it, Kane had composed a poetic – if purple – chunk of copy perfect for an op-ed piece in the
Sentinel
. He shook his head. That was his past life. Kane Fortuna, star reporter, had ceased to exist.

  "Something wrong?"

  His companion's rockets flared as their burn was adjusted. The Science Pirate bounced a little in the air; Kane watched the blue jets flash orange momentarily as they stabilised.

  "No," said Kane. "Just nostalgia for a past life. How's the suit?"

  The Science Pirate bounced in the air again and made some further adjustments to a set of manual controls hidden under a cover on one gauntlet. After a moment the Science Pirate closed the cover, but it didn't quite sit flat. Something slightly too large blinked with a blue light underneath it.

  "Power flow is still erratic, but that might just be the new levels. I could tune it a little if we had time, but we're good to go." The Science Pirate flexed the gauntlet. "Thanks for the actuator. I could never have got the suit working again without it. Make it yourself?"

  Kane raised his own hand and flicked open a similar panel on his wrist. Another actuator, blue light glowing, was wired into the suit. It was inelegant, a cradle of wires that looked confused and fragile, but clearly a similar component.

  "No, that one I… acquired from a boat, shall we say. Electricity has slightly different properties here. I'm lucky I had a friend to help with my suit, otherwise it would have been as dead as yours. The actuators are a weak point for us now, but it's only a temporary fix. We won't need them where we are going."

  The Science Pirate looked down at the city far below. The wind picked up and tugged noisily at the huge cloak streaming out behind. Kane watched, impressed by the rocketeer next to him, also aware that from the ground, he would look exactly the same. He began to run more newspaper copy through his head, then wondered if he'd ever be able to kick the habit.

  "It's like a prison," said his companion.

  Kane opened his eyes, suddenly aware that he'd been lost in a dream. The Skyguard's helmet picked up the Science Pirate's words over the wind.

  "What is?" Kane asked.

  The Science Pirate pointed down at the city. "This. The Empire State. You're trapped in one city, that's all you have." The rocketeer paused, and the helmet shook slowly. "Poor bastards."

  Kane smiled. His ally was right. It was a prison. A tiny, inescapable world. The Empire State.

  "Your Empire State Building is pretty fancy." The Science Pirate pointed at the tall structure a mile away. It dominated the city. "Ours isn't finished yet."

  "I think it might be done by the time we get back. Don't forget time passes differently between here and there."

  "Yeah, you said. Thank Christ," said the Science Pirate. "Maybe I can make a home in a more enlightened time."

  The pair floated in the light breeze for a few minutes. Lights winked below, stars slowly rotating through the fine mist that clung to the concrete and glass and steel of the place.

  Finally Kane spoke: "A more enlightened time?"

  "Forget it," said the Science Pirate. "I'm just looking forward to going home."

  Kane folded his arms. As he raised the heavy gauntlets, he noted the tempo of the actuator's blinking indicator had slowed slightly. Suit power was down a notch, but no problem. They had plenty of time.

  "So what happened?" he asked.

  The Science Pirate drifted a few inches away from Kane and turned towards him. The Pirate's helmet tilted to the left slightly as the response was pondered. "I was hoping you could tell me."

  Kane clacked his tongue, the mask turning it into the sound of someone trying to open a particularly stubborn can of beans with a wrench. He shrugged.

  "I don't understand the how and the why. But I was just curious."

  The Science Pirate rotated back around slowly, and looked down at the Empire State.

  "Not much to tell. There was a… fight, with you. The Skyguard." The Science Pirate paused, and looked Kane up and down. "The
real
Skyguard. I thought I had him, but there was an explosion. Light and sound, and colours…
weird
colours, y'know? Anyway, when the fireworks stopped I was at the bottom of a hole, alone. There was no sign of him, and suddenly the place was crawling with cops. A real scene."

  The Science Pirate stopped, and Kane waited, but no more came. They hovered for a minute or two, then the Science Pirate shifted in the air and spoke again.

  "Maybe I did something stupid then, I don't know, but I panicked. It was some kind of trap, I was sure, so I took off. Up, up and away.

  "It must have been only a couple of seconds later. I was over the Brooklyn Bridge, and I lost everything. All power, all rocket burn. But it wasn't just running out of juice, or some system failure. It was like flying into a brick wall, or maybe flying straight into the heart of a tornado. Everything died and I fell – or, rather, was
thrown
– back to the ground. Ditched into the Hudson. I made it to the shore but it was nowhere I recognised. I thought maybe it was concussion, or perhaps I'd been thrown further than I thought and washed up in Hoboken or somewhere. Nothing worked, so I hid. A few days in empty warehouse. I worked on the suit, but it was dead. I couldn't even get out of it. But finally I got the emergency line on. God knows why that was the only thing that had any juice. Then I got your signal, loud and clear." The Science Pirate tapped the side of the flanged helmet. "And here we are."

  Kane nodded, understanding a little more. He reached down and pulled his flapping cloak aside to reveal a small, flat box attached to the belt above his right hip. He squeezed something and a light flicked on and started blinking.

  The Science Pirate made a huffing sound, which might have been a laugh, and nodded.

  "Receiving. So how do we get out of here, exactly?"

  Kane paused and turned off the signal box. He pointed at the Empire State Building.

  "You fell out of the sky in New York nineteen years ago. It might only have been yesterday for you, but it's nearly two decades for everyone else. You understand that, don't you?"

  The stony huffing sound came again. "Like I said," said the Science Pirate, "maybe it'll be a more enlightened time. So what's the secret?"

  Kane lowered his arm, then folded his arms again.

  "The Empire State is linked to New York by something called the Fissure. It's a gateway, like a corridor connecting our two worlds."

  The Science Pirate nodded. "OK. So we go through the gate. Easy."

  Kane shook his head. "Not that easy. You're not the only prisoner here. Down there, in the city, are others from New York. We have to return them all home."