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.
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