Free The Age Atomic by Adam Christopher Page A

drew breath to answer, but the King reappeared through the doors.
    â€œHey, friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your feet and walk this way!” He vanished back into the theater.
    Jennifer looked at Rad and Rad gestured for her to lead the way. She sighed, gripped her silver gun, and headed for the doors.
    Rad watched her back, and then as she went out of sight, turned to the driver. “Why do I get the feeling this is going to be a long night?”
    The driver said nothing. Rad huffed, and followed Jennifer.
    Â 
    Alone in the lobby, the driver turned its head towards the double doors that were still swinging from Rad’s exit. Something flashed behind the driver’s round glass eyes, and there was a sound from behind the grating that formed the robot’s mouth. It was quiet, and low: the sound of chuckling.
    The driver watched the doors for a second or two, then jerked into life, heading towards the nearest staircase and jogging up them two at a time.
    There were things to be done.

 
    ELEVEN
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    It was cold, and getting colder.
    The man on the bridge frowned, his breath steaming in a huge cloud before him as he peered ahead. Behind him, the wall of fog was as dense and impenetrable as ever, but ahead the view was clear.
    But… he wasn’t sure.
    The night was quiet, like it wasn’t just the bridge and the water beneath it that was frozen solid. It was like the air itself was too cold even to allow sound to pass.
    A moment later the ice beneath the bridge cracked, the sound like a muffled gunshot echoing around and around. The man shuffled, the knob of his wooden leg scraping the roadway, as the bridge shook, the tremor strong enough to knock him over. The man grabbed the rail next to him and clung on, pressing his chest against it, ignoring the way the cold of the metal cut through his thick jacket. The tremor stopped, but the man held on a moment longer, just to be sure. He glanced over the edge. The ice had cracked, a great zigzag fissure opening directly below the bridge.
    The tremors worried him. They were getting stronger and more frequent, far more so than when he had left the city.
    He straightened up. And how long ago had that been? How many years had he been traveling, lost in the fog? Too many, and somehow far more than had apparently passed here.
    If this was the same place, the right place.
    He had to admit, he wasn’t sure. The buildings on the other side of the bridge were dark and apparently empty. The sky was clear but completely black. The fog bank behind the man cast a dirty orange glow over the bridge.
    The bridge was the problem. The city was alone, isolated, surrounded by a wall of fog. Beyond the fog was nothing but the lands of the Enemy.
    Or so he had thought. He knew, now, that his knowledge of the universe was incomplete. There was plenty beyond the fog. The Pocket was larger than he had ever dreamed, stretching far beyond the reach of his instruments.
    But the bridge, that was different. He hadn’t known about it before. But as the cold had gotten worse the fog had receded, exposing the structure at the very northern tip of the island. It provided the perfect watch point, the airship anchored to it quite securely, hidden just behind the fog bank. It wouldn’t pay to take any chances and leave themselves exposed, if the city was the wrong place.
    And the bridge was the one thing that made him pause to consider whether this really was the right place.
    He dared not go any further across it. Not yet. There were still tests to do and measurements to make. He stared ahead, trying to judge distance, to recognize any part of the cityscape before him.
    There, perhaps, due south, where the air was a little misty, where the glow was captured, the lights of something big, the lights of civilizations, of something more substantial than the collection of empty shells that crowded the end of the island, on the other side of the bridge.
    Perhaps it was the right