“Ah,” said Rad as the penny dropped. “Neat. And I assume Carson made his own adjustment when he fixed it, to make sure it sent us here and not into the hereafter.”
“Worked, didn’t it?”
Rad rubbed the back of his neck. The effort of talking was bringing his headache back.
“Yeah, worked all right. Don’t suppose you have an aspirin? How do you feel?”
Jennifer shrugged, and stepped back a little on her own bench. “Never better. I was out for the count, but I feel like I could take on an army right now.”
Rad frowned. He wondered what the King of 125th Street – the real king, her own brother, masquerading as the King’s robotic servant, the Corsair – had done to her that made her immune to the effects of being in an incompatible universe. He decided not to go there.
“Must be the mask,” he said.
Jennifer nodded. “Must be.” Then she turned quickly to face the door, and said in a low whisper: “Someone’s coming.”
Rad turned towards his own door.
“I don’t hear–”
There was a heavy clank as his cell door was unlocked, and then it swung open on big hinges, oiled and silent. Two uniformed police stood in the corridor outside. They glanced at Rad standing on the bench, then up at the grill that connected the two cells. Then one of them scowled – it might have been the bad-tempered one from Grand Central, Rad couldn’t be sure – and entered the cell.
“Time to talk, pal,” he said, lifting his hand to reveal a set of cuffs.
Rad sighed. He hopped off the bed, holding out his wrists.
“Take me to your leader,” he said, but the cop didn’t get the joke.
“What kind of a name,” asked the plainclothes cop, “is ‘Rad’, anyway?”
Rad sighed and drummed his fingers on the table. The interrogation was going nowhere and fast, for the both of them.
The cop took a drag on his cigarette and then squinted down at the paper on the table like he was changing a child’s diaper. Periodically his eyes flicked up to Rad’s, the expression unchanging. Another cop, also in a suit but without a cigarette, sat next to the first and didn’t take his eyes off Rad.
“It’s just a nickname,” said Rad.
Another drag. “Short for something?”
Rad nodded. “Bradley.”
A final suck of tobacco. “So let me get this straight,” said the first cop, pausing to grin sideways at his companion. “You’re telling me your name is Bradley Bradley?”
Rad sighed and stilled his restless fingers. “So now you see why I might chose to go by something a little shorter.”
The first cop seemed to hold his breath. Then one eyebrow slowly went up and he nodded.
“That so?” he said, with the air of someone who didn’t believe a word Rad was saying. Which, as far as Rad could tell, was the case.
Rad smiled sweetly. “Yes, that is so, officer.”
The other cop adjusted his tie and took a deep breath. At this, his colleague sat back, pushing his wooden chair on the hard floor and making it squeak. He reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out the pack of cigarettes. Rad eyed them, enjoying the smell of the smoke but not knowing whether he really used to have a habit or whether he’d never smoked in his life. Being from the Empire State, it was a little hard to tell.
“Your name is Bradley Bradley,” said the other cop, “and you’re a private detective in a city called the Empire State, which exists inside a Pocket dimension connected to New York by a gateway–”
Rad nodded. “The Fissure.”
The other cop smiled. “The Fissure, right. And this Empire State is being overrun with robots, and you and your friend were sent here by another version of a man from New York who you think is in charge here, to figure out whether there’s another army of robots being built to fight the first lot, because a friend of yours saw them in a dream, along with some broad with blue eyes.”
Rad’s eyebrow went up. He wasn’t sure whether that deserved an answer, but he said “Correct” anyway.
The first cop lit another cigarette, and Rad’s nostrils twitched at the curl of smoke as the cop waved the match out like his life depended on it.
“And then everyone will be ready for when the little green men arrive in their flying saucers?”
Rad sighed. “Look,” he said, slowly, carefully. “I’m not crazy. I