His search had been so far unsuccessful. In one room, Rad thought he’d hit pay dirt, seeing the Skyguard’s voluminous cloak rolled up in a corner, only to find it was just extra curtain fabric for the main stage.
And the more Rad searched, the less confident he felt. He’d moved from the workshops and engineering areas with their robotic spare parts and components into the leftovers of the theater itself, and more than once Rad realized that if the King had taken the Skyguard’s suit to pieces, he might well have already seen most of it spread out across various workbenches and not know it.
He needed to get back to Kane. He was hoping that Jennifer could look after herself.
He was also looking for her gun. He’d seen it take out the crazy leader of the robot gangs, the one that had called itself Elektro, with a single shot. Even with the recharge time, he thought it would come in handy.
Now he was in an empty room with a freezer installed. The temperature outside was so cold the freezer seemed unnecessary. But… he’d better check it. He wrapped his scarf firmly around his face and reached for the freezer door.
The freezer hummed. Rad checked that there was a working handle on the inside of the door — he wasn’t going to fall for that one — and stepped inside.
The freezer was filled with shelves, making the place less a butcher’s meat locker and more a laboratory storage area. There were containers and boxes stacked everywhere, and large items wrapped in plastic sheeting. Everything was covered with frost.
Rad stepped forward. He didn’t know why the Skyguard’s suit might have been kept in a freezer, but he was here now and it would pay to check. Just a quick look in, and then he’d head back to the warmth of the workshop. Maybe Jennifer had had better luck, and…
Rad stopped, and squinted at one of the wrapped items on the nearest shelf. There was a pinkish color showing through the sheet. Rad peered closer, then reached out and tugged at the sheet. It slid easily, shedding frost onto Rad’s hands. He pulled hard, and began to unwrap the long, thin object, rolling it on the shelf as the plastic was pulled out from underneath it.
Rad swore, the plastic sheeting dropping to the floor. On the shelf was a human arm, intact, the terminal of the shoulder neatly trimmed, exposing the round joint, perfectly clean and white. The arm was male, and it was a little thin, like the arm of a young man.
Rad stepped back and looked at the rest of the shelf. There were many more wrapped objects, some the same size and some smaller. Rad puffed out a great lungful of steam and carefully peeled back another sheet to reveal a single hand. He rubbed the frost off one of the jars and saw it was filled to the brim with a frozen liquid, red, swirled with yellow.
Rad looked around him. The freezer was full of body parts.
He backed away, rubbing the frost from fingers now numb from the cold. He felt numb elsewhere, somewhere deep inside, where maybe he thought the King was trying to do something and maybe Rad didn’t quite understand it but that was OK, that was good, because someone was helping those in the city who couldn’t help themselves, who had been tossed out by the government and forgotten, completely and utterly, creatures destitute and desolate and not even considered to be people.
But this… this was something else. This was macabre, a horror show, the freezer of a loony tune doing something untoward in the unknown dark and empty places of the Empire State.
Rad shook his head, muttering under his breath. The sonovabitch. He was keeping the human parts removed during his procedures. Why, Rad didn’t know and couldn’t guess. That was for later, when he and Jennifer Jones and her friends at the Empire State Building came back to sort out the mess.
Rad’s back touched the shelf behind him, and he jumped in fright. He sighed, his breath clouding the air, and turned.
Something caught his eye. There was a large object on the shelf, square, wrapped in plastic sheeting that hadn’t yet frosted over. There was something pinkish within, and there were marks on the shelf where the frost had been scraped off. The object was new, placed there only hours ago.
Rad didn’t want to see what it was, but he had a feeling it was important.
He grabbed the trailing corner of sheeting, and pulled. It moved easily, the plastic cold but still pliable, silky. Three turns and the object was exposed.
Rad felt the bile rise in his throat. The object was a glass head, like the kind in a fancy hat store. Except this head was bare — but for the front. Spread across the sculpted glass features was a face, a real human face, made of flesh and skin, with eyebrows and lips and nose. The glass face underneath was a standard model, and the real face adhering to it didn’t match the structure, not completely, resulting in a strange, distorted visage.
But it was enough for Rad to recognize. He coughed, and felt a hot bitterness against the back of his throat. He turned away from it, and almost tripped out of the freezer. He slammed the door behind him, then crashed his back into it and closed his eyes, taking deep breaths of air that were cold but warmer than in the freezer.
That settled it. They’d walked into a house of horror, the likes of which Rad had never seen before. In the dark places of the city, the King of 125th Street was putting into motion an insane plan, a plan that had to be stopped before his army of robots was activated, unleashing who knew what hell on the city as the Empire State plunged into a war with New York.
Rad pushed off the door, determined to get back to the workshop and find Jennifer and get them all out of there.
He was equally determined not to tell Jennifer he’d found her surgically removed face on a glass head in the freezer.
THIRTY
Rad found Jennifer in the workshop, and felt a surge of relief that she hadn’t run into the Corsair.
“The Corsair saw me.”
Scratch that. Rad nodded as he caught his breath. As he stood in the doorway, one hand on the frame, he couldn’t help but stare at the agent’s golden face. It was a beautiful piece of work, like a fine sculpture. He’d have to tell her about what was in the freezer, have to.
Jennifer took a step forward and Rad jerked back in surprise.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” said Rad quickly. He darted to the door on the opposite side of the workshop and opened it. He listened a moment, but the corridor was empty and there was no sound from the furnace room. Rad closed the door and turned back to Jennifer. “So the Corsair’s coming?”
“He was outside,” said Jennifer. “He saw me. Then I think he came back in, but he’s not here. But-”
“Did you have any luck?”
Jennifer held up her hand. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. The Corsair is wearing the Skyguard’s suit. What’s left of it, anyway.”
Rad swore and swept the hat off his head. He knew there was something familiar about the face, and now he could picture exactly what it was. Take away the wings and the square grille that should have been in front of the face like the visor of a medieval helmet, and you were left with the austere features of the Corsair, just the vertical slots of the mouth and the round eyes of the Skyguard recognizable. Small details, but enough.