buckles, and Jennifer only needed a little help to sit up. She stood, and Rad helped her step over the high lip of the machine and onto the floor. She looked down at herself and straightened her coat.
She seemed fine, just dandy, but Rad flinched when she looked up at him through the metal mask. She noticed, and laughed, her voice echoing behind the metal.
“It’s strange, it doesn’t feel like there’s anything there.” Her fingers ran over the mask, tracing the seams, feeling the contours. “It has no weight. It’s like it’s a part of me.”
Rad nodded. “Then it won’t slow you down. But Kane is the problem right now. We can’t get him out of the machine, but we can’t carry him out in it either.”
Rad clicked his fingers. Of course… he turned to Kane.
“When you landed, what happened to the suit?”
Kane coughed. “Landed?”
“Landed, crashed, fell on your ass, whatever,” said Rad. “When the great reporter fell from the sky, were you still dressed as the Skyguard?”
“Ah, yeah, I guess.”
“So what happened to the suit?”
Kane frowned. Then he looked around the workshop from his horizontal position.
“It must be here somewhere. I don’t remember.”
“Maybe the suit is part of this all?” said Jennifer. “Maybe they reverse-engineered it for the technology, used it to help build the robots?”
Rad nodded. “Maybe,” he said, picking up his coat, hat, and scarf off the third, empty machine. He began putting them on and then paused, one arm in his coat. “You’re one of Carson’s Special Agents, right?”
Jennifer nodded, but Rad noticed a pause before she did so.
“OK,” he said, “I’m going to ask about your significant pauses and whatever it is you’re not telling me later, but listen, if you worked for Carson, that means you know at least a little about the Fissure.”
“Yes, of course.”
Rad shrugged his coat on properly. He began pacing the workshop, casting his eyes over the shelves, tables, cabinets and stacks of equipment. There were enough robot parts in the room to build a dozen walking machines, but he couldn’t see what he was looking for.
“The Skyguard’s suit is really a machine, like a robot,” he said. “Last time I saw it, it was doing a pretty good job of channeling or absorbing the energy of the Fissure itself.” Rad turned to Kane. “That was the whole point of the plan, right?”
Kane nodded. “The Science Pirate made some changes to the suit so it could absorb ambient energy. The plan was to drain energy from the Fissure, and then feed it back by overloading the suit’s batteries.”
Rad held a hand up. “Stop right there,” he said. “Drain energy from the Fissure, right?”
“Right.”
Jennifer nodded. “I get it.”
“Exactly,” said Rad. “This machine Kane is in is containing the power, channeling it into a contraption in the other room.”
As if to emphasize the point, a distant bang sounded again as the King pounded on the furnace room door.
“So, find the suit,” said Rad, “and maybe we can get Kane out of the machine and into it before he blows the place sky-high.”
“If the suit is still in one piece,” said Kane. “Might’ve been wrecked when I came back.”
“Or maybe the King pulled it to pieces,” said Rad. “But have you got a better idea?”
He glanced around the workshop. “We have to find that suit before the Corsair comes back, even if we have to turn this place upside down.”
They’d been searching for what felt like hours. At first, fearful the Corsair would make a surprise return, Rad and Jennifer had stuck together – first turning over the downstairs workshop, and then cautiously moving out to examine the rest of the King’s domain. But when there was still no sign of it – of him – Rad suggested they split up to widen the search.
Jennifer headed up, telling Rad she was going to start at the top and work her way down. The former theater was huge, and the green light was mounted at the top of the building. The King was bound to be using rooms above the theater as well.
Jennifer paused in a dark corridor three levels up. The floorboards creaked and the place smelled musty and old, and aside from the rustling of her long coat and the odd echo of her breath inside the mask, the place was silent. The corridor in which she had stopped was short, no more than a stairwell landing before continuing up to the next level.
She moved forward, the floor creaking again. It was