Jennifer moved to the window; it was set low, more like a decorative alcove on the landing than a window. It had a wide sill, and she sat and pressed her face against the glass to try to see out. She recoiled at the sharp tap her new metal face made as it came into contact with the glass, but then carefully rested it against the window. She could feel the cold through the glass, not just through her gloves as she rested her palms against the window but through the metal mask itself, like it was a part of her.
Strangely, that didn’t bother her, and she wondered whether that in itself should be a worry. But the thin metal mask was weightless, not so much comfortable as feeling like it wasn’t there at all. It didn’t impede her vision. She had no trouble breathing, or speaking. She hadn’t eaten yet, and she wondered what would happen then given there was no articulated jaw, just a narrow metal slot though which she could only poke the very tip of her tongue.
She pulled back and looked at her reflection in the glass. The mask — the metal face — was beautiful, not just a functional part of… what, a robot? Not like any robot she’d ever seen. Maybe the King was an artist, too, creating not just an army of robots but an army of machines formed to his exact specifications. Perhaps he was not only building soldiers but machine people too.
There was movement outside, breaking her reverie. She leaned forward and again touched her metal forehead to the glass.
The street outside was lit in a pinkish-red glow that seemed to hang in the ice-laden air like sugar syrup. There was plenty of movement too: there were robots, lots of them, huddled together at the far end of the street, the group getting narrower as it approached the building until Jennifer could see a queue of them, single-file. At the head of the line, almost directly beneath the window, stood the Corsair. He was facing the line of robots, and as each machine approached he handed something out like a priest at Sunday mass.
Jennifer squinted, and her breath caught in her throat as her vision zoomed forward. She felt like she was falling, the world spinning around her as vertigo threatened to take hold. She gritted her teeth and hissed as a wave of nausea spread over her, and reached out with her hands instinctively, her subconscious mind instructing her limbs to grab onto something, anything, to stop the fall. But her hands banged the glass of the window almost as soon as she moved them. Then her vision stabilized, the drunken sensation ceasing. She turned her head a little and her vision blurred and then refocused, all while her forehead touched the glass.
Her hands moved over the glass, then down, and found the sill and the sill’s edge. Jennifer sighed in relief. She was still sitting, looking through the window — and her vision was still fuzzy as she looked through the patches of frost — but somehow the scene below had been zoomed in like she was looking through a pair of binoculars. She realized, awestruck, that it was the mask, responding to her thoughts.
She concentrated, and her vision blurred, filled with nothing but rough white and black shapes. She let out her breath and relaxed her body, letting her shoulders drop and her hands rest on her lap, and the image resolved into pin-sharp clarity.
She had a perfect, close-up view of the street below. She watched the Corsair as he handed out small silver rectangles; they looked like pieces of metal, the size of a box of matches, until the next robot in the line — one that looked more or less completely human, except for one silver, articulated arm — took the item, bowed his head to the Corsair, and then tore off the silver wrapping with his teeth. He pressed whatever it was into his mouth, and his eyes closed as he rocked on his heels. There was movement behind him; Jennifer zoomed out and saw the two robots immediately behind become agitated, until one nudged the creature at the front. The robot-man jerked, then shuffled out of the way, and Jennifer zoomed in to his face. His chin and mouth were covered with something dark and liquid, though it was hard to tell what it was in the pinkish light.
There was a flash of white, and Jennifer’s vision swam before she regained control. She was now looking at the street below in what appeared to be normal light… no, not normal light, it was something else, the scene was so sharp, clearer than she had ever seen anything before, such incredible detail, from the pebbles on the road to the ice crystals drifting in the air outside, to the green mess on the man’s chin.
The green. The Corsair was handing out green, little rations of it.
Jennifer looked back at the Corsair, her miraculous new eyesight refocusing as she did. The Corsair was wearing his big black fur. There was a breeze in the street, catching the giant collar of the outfit, swirling the thick hairs. With her enhanced vision Jennifer thought she could count every single one as they swayed in the wind, the patterns of motion mesmerizing.
And then she saw it; she zoomed in further instantly, without conscious thought. Under the high collar, occasionally visible on the back of the Corsair’s helmet: a ridge, almost like the fin of a fish. It was triangular, the top edge coming out of the back at ninety degrees, and then angling down to the base of the helmet.
It was familiar, Jennifer knew it was — something from the Empire State Building. The ridge was an attachment point for something, something in particular. Jennifer ran her eyes over the back of the Corsair’s head, and finally the pieces came together in her mind. The black helmet was incomplete, missing a front-flanged section that would normally come together at an angle over the face, then curve out and up to form two fluted metal wings that stuck out on either side of the helmet.
The Corsair was wearing the Skyguard’s suit — what was left of it, anyway. Whether it was damaged in Kane’s return or altered by the King or modified by whoever was inside the suit now, Jennifer had no idea. But she’d found the suit. Now she had to get the Corsair out and Kane in.
Something played at the back of her mind, something important, something she’d discovered… but the thought was gone as she tried to grasp it.
Jennifer decided to find Rad before the Corsair had finished doling out the small parcels of green to the assembled robots. She moved a little, her metal face squeaking against the cold glass of the window.
Suddenly, the zoomed-in view of the Corsair blurred, the furs and black uniform caught in quick movement. Jennifer pulled her head back and her eyes adjusted, zooming out and refocusing.
Jennifer gasped behind her mask, and for a second it felt like she couldn’t move, couldn’t take her eyes away from… him.
The Corsair was looking up at her — not just at the window, but at her, into her eyes. Had he heard the noise? It seemed so unlikely, but if the Skyguard’s mask was operational he would have picked it up.
She watched and saw him blink behind the mask of the Skyguard; she zoomed in until his eyes, his human eyes, were the only thing filling her vision.
They were green, a bright, bright green, shot through with yellow like precious gems, two glittering crystals shining in her artificially enhanced view.
Eyes she recognized.
Jennifer gasped and almost fell off the sill as she scrambled backwards.
She remembered now. Remembered lying on the slab, inside the machine. Remembered the pain, remembered the green, remembered the voice whispering in her ear, the voice that called her Jen.
The Corsair was gone, the robots left to mill around. The queue was already beginning to break up as ones from further back moved forward to find out what was going on.
But of the Corsair — of her brother — there was no sign.
Jennifer pushed herself off the alcove and raced down the stairs.
It was getting colder, and not just because Rad was moving further and further away from the workshop and the furnace room. He’d found himself in an empty square room, devoid of anything at all except a light bulb hanging from a single cord, and a big door in one wall. The door was metal, and bulbous, with a large lever for a handle, looking very much like a walk-in refrigerator. Quite what such a device was doing inside an old theater was a question Rad didn’t expect he’d find the answer to, because he knew that maybe the building never had been a theater, despite the stage and the awning outside and the missing letters above the front door, despite the rooms he’d found full of props and costumes slowly moldering away. Because in the Empire State, a lot of things never were; for all he knew, this place had sprung into existence as was, derelict and unused and rotting, until the King and the Corsair had found it and taken it over.