PART FOUR

THE EMPIRE STATE FISSURE was similar to the one in New York City, except that the concrete disc was in the centre of a large hangar instead of outdoors. Rad knew the building as the Battery, part of the restricted naval zone that occupied all of the southern tip of the island. As far as he could remember – and he knew how reliable his memory was concerning his home town – this place had always been called the Battery, and now he knew why. He had no idea of the origin of the name of the New York City equivalent – Battery Park – but here, the Battery held the Fissure, and the Fissure powered the Empire State. Not the city itself, but the entire Pocket. Close the Fissure, close the Pocket. The Empire State would snap out of existence in an instant, pulling New York City along with it thanks to the transdimensional tether. The Battery was, literally, powering the very realm in which the Empire State existed.

That was the flaw in Crater's plan, and Rad suspected he knew it. Close the Fissure and erase the abhorrence to nature that the Pocket represented. He'd fooled Kane and Rex into thinking he could take them to New York City, using this as leverage to get them to do his bidding. But they'd vanish along with their insane employer.

Rad wondered how many people had been switched between the Pocket and the Origin, exactly. Rex and Lisa were here by accident. So was the Skyguard, the original, but he was dead. Crater had been the first to arrive, assuming control of the newborn city. But who else? How many people had walked down one street at home and turned into a street in the other place? How many missing persons in New York City and the Empire State did transference across the two universes represent? Sam Saturn had walked into New York City and ended up dead. There must have been others. Perhaps those who had found themselves in New York were the lucky ones. They'd found the escape route into the Origin, into a universe of possibilities. For those who found themselves in the Pocket, it would have been like going to prison, trapped forever in a tiny, wet, fog-shrouded city in the grip of Wartime restrictions. Poor bastards.

The Lost Souls. Rad pondered Crater's alter ego as the Pastor, and thought back to his visit to the old brownstone. Was everyone in the Pastor's "church" a refugee from New York? Sam Saturn wasn't, and yet she'd been drawn there. Maybe Crater preyed on those who thought they were refugees, those lost in the Empire State not because they were from New York, but because they knew, deep in their very being, that something was not right about their world, about the Pocket. And perhaps at night, when they dreamed and saw through the eyes of their counterparts in the Origin, they felt they didn't belong.

Rad sighed to himself. Nice theory. Might fit. New York was nice, but... but it wasn't the Empire State, no matter how much it looked like it. The Empire State was full of people and life – it might have been created as a poor copy of New York, but it was real, and he was real, and the people in it were real, and it was worth saving. Rad smiled. What was this? Patriotism for his damp home town? Well, hot dang.

Rad felt a touch on his shoulder and twisted around. He was down on his haunches behind a scalloped concrete wall, one of several that stood freely at the periphery of the central Battery disc. His injured leg was smarting, as were his ribs, and as he looked at Carson, he couldn't stop himself from wincing at the movement.

Carson ignored the question, and looked into Rad's face for a moment. The detective bristled. His mouth was dry. He needed a drink. In fact, he needed to go back two weeks. What he wouldn't give for drinking moonshine out of a teacup at Jerry's, listening as Kane gassed about his day at the Sentinel. Other times. Happy ones.

Carson smiled and pointed at the eggshell around the Fissure. To Rad it looked the same, although the blue light leaking from the joins wasn't as bright as it was in the Origin, it was still enough to turn the white floodlights that lined the hangar a faint baby blue. Rad looked over his shoulder at the Fissure, and then glanced around the Battery itself. Unlike New York, there were no guards here, and the Captain had led the group in unimpeded. It seemed that despite his retirement he had kept all the right keys.

"The Origin, detective," said Captain Carson, his face lit by the faint flicker of the Fissure. "A whole world lies just on the other side of that, Mr Bradley. New York is just the beginning of the journey. Think of it!"

In all honesty, Rad was surprised that Rex and Lisa were as quiet as they were. He could see the deep dejection in Rex's face and the dull resignation in Lisa's. They had to help, or face extinction. Jail time in New York sounded like a good deal, all things considered.

Rex was a puzzle. The man was a killer and a gangster by his own admission. He'd killed Sam and wasn't bothered. And now he was sitting on the ground next to Lisa, his actual intended victim. Yet he ignored her. He sat on the ground, his face empty, staring around the side of the wall at the Fissure. Lisa ignored her would-be assassin as well. Rad wondered what trick she was planning to pull on his double once they were through the Fissure and home. Revenge? Justice? Maybe Rex deserved it. She'd been one of the good guys once, apparently. Rad turned back to Rex.

"Rex is afraid. He's also a simple man – you and he share much less in common than you may suspect. He's simple, and he's afraid, and he wants to go home. He wants to run into the Fissure and disappear. He's waiting for us to help him."

Carson inhaled, sucking the air through his teeth, the sound sharp enough to make Rad jump again. Lisa had folded her arms now, and was looking out around the hangar, her eyes flicking here and there.

"She's waiting too," said the Captain. "Waiting for the Skyguard to come and get her. The unpowered armour makes an effective pair of handcuffs, as it were. She can't get out of it without our help, and she can't fight against us very effectively without power."

Rad shuffled around. Carson had stood up. Behind him, hidden in the shadow cast by the concrete wall, stood a tall, wide, black silhouette. Something metallic flashed as Kane moved his head, his white eyes blue in the glow of the Fissure.

The Captain smiled. The Skyguard stepped around the old man, and stood by his side. Rad took a step back, looked down, and saw the Captain holding Jones's fat-barrelled revolver. It was held low, and pointed at him.

Rad swore, then felt a blinding pain shoot from the base of his neck, out across his shoulders and down each arm. He yelled and fell to his knees. As he toppled over, he managed to turn. The last thing he saw, before the night sky closed in like a curtain over his vision, was his own face – Rex's face – leering over him, a wet Cheshire cat grin splitting it from ear to ear, shaking the fist that had just whacked the back of Rad's neck.

When Rad opened his eyes, he saw blue-tinged shapes. He blinked, a lot, each flutter of his lids changing the shapes and shadows into new forms. The eggshell barrier had been folded down and the light from the Fissure was dull and washed out, but still felt wrong, like it was part of a spectrum of colour that wasn't supposed to be seen by human eyes. The Fissure in the Origin had been powerful, awe-inspiring. In the Pocket it was weaker, angry. Yin and yang. Whatever that was. Rad thought he should know, but he didn't.

He moved, and winced. He was lying on his back, on the concrete disc not far from the Fissure itself. His hands were tied or cuffed behind his back, and had been completely numb until he moved. Now pins and needles, combined with a scrape against the rough concrete, seared along the fatty edge of both hands. Rad focussed on the unpleasant sensation to help wake himself up.

A new shape now. Blocking out the blue glow of the Fissure it was just a lumpy blackness, but as his eyes adjusted, he saw Rex standing over him in the cheap copy of his own suit. He stood, legs astride Rad's body, both hands clamped on the fatbarrelled revolver which was pointed at his head. His white teeth shone electric blue in the light of the Fissure.

Someone said something Rad couldn't quite hear – and Rex looked up, his body language at first tense, then disappointed. He switched the gun to just one hand, and still aiming it at Rad's face, he swung one leg over Rad so he was just standing beside the detective rather than over him.

Might be, if Carson hadn't been a traitor all along. Rad shook his head. How could he have been so stupid? Events moved from point A to point B so cleanly that they had to have been controlled by someone. Carson, at the centre of his web, was the one with the knowledge and the technical expertise to get everyone back to New York City and to close the Fissure. So, had everything he'd been told – about how the closure of the Fissure would snuff out both cities – been a lie? What about Nimrod? Perhaps he'd been in on it too, a conspiracy that crossed two dimensions.

Rad looked around. Rex had the gun on him. Carson and the Science Pirate were hunched over stacks of equipment which, like the equipment in New York, spilled cables that snaked away in every direction around the concrete disc. The Empire State was, quite literally, plugged in.

Rad laughed. "How else would you get access to the prison and to Gardner Gray, huh? You needed someone on the inside, but not just anyone. Someone high up. Someone with the ear of the Chairman. Because the Skyguard – the real Skyguard – was a very special prisoner. Solitary confinement, no visitors."

"Not obvious, but careless," said Rad. "The suit was the clincher. Of course it would be kept somewhere in storage, but it didn't work in the Pocket, did it? Something to do with the incompatibility. But Carson could fix it, even though he'd never seen it, because Nimrod had helped make it back in the Origin. What Nimrod knows, Carson knows."

Kane walked around Rad, who was still sitting, facing away. As Kane's boots moved into view, Rad looked up. He didn't want to give Kane the satisfaction of stubbornness. Rad could face his enemies and look them in the eye.

"Carson? Sure. But he doesn't just have Nimrod's knowledge, does he? He has his memories. Nimrod was an explorer. Carson's house is full of Nimrod's life. I've seen New York – I've been there, and just for a few minutes, I got a glimpse of that world. It's a wonderful thing, Kane. It's hard to resist. For Carson, the temptation is too much. A whole world to explore, to see with his own eyes what he only knows from the second-hand memories of someone else."

"Thanks. But I'm a little disappointed you had to fall in with murderers to do it. These lugs might just be stooges who have only killed a few people while following their orders. But the Chairman? He's nuts. He thought the way to return home was to blow up the Empire State. Remember that?"

Kane looked at Carson, who smiled at him with that perpetual, infuriatingly smug grin. Carson knew more than anybody about, well, everything in the Pocket, and he clearly liked to show it.

"Ah," said Rad. He smiled. "Well, don't forget to raise a glass to us once in a while, as you're cruising the world in the Nimrod. Oh, I mean the Carson. Say, won't that get confusing?"

Carson ignored the jibe and turned away, perhaps bored by the conversation. He rejoined Lisa at the pile of equipment, and resumed his tinkering. Kane stood still, arms folded, alternating his watch between the pair at the Fissure and Rad on the ground.

Rad nodded into the darkness around the Fissure. Although he'd never seen the Battery, he knew it was in the heart of the military establishment down near the naval dockyards. Not surprisingly, it would have been the most highly defended piece of land on the whole island. The city, quite literally, depended on the Battery and the Fissure within it. Rad didn't know anything about how the navy ran the joint, but the absence of guards surely wasn't normal. He took a bet and hoped he was right.

"You'd be surprised how much of a fuss the attack on the Empire State Building caused. Not just for the police, either. Everyone was called over there. Nothing but a skeleton guard left here. Easy enough to eliminate."

He looked out at the periphery of the circle, Rex and Rad following his gaze. What Rad had previously ignored, taken to be bundles of cable or more bits of mysterious equipment sucking power out of the Fissure, were actually long low mounds, the edges uneven. Bodies. Several, spread around the circle, hidden in the dark behind the lamps.

Rex turned back to Rad, gun now steady but aimed not quite as well as it had been. His face was shiny with sweat, reflecting the blue of the Fissure brightly. Rad tried to make eye contact with his Origin counterpart, tried to make some connection with someone who was, ostensibly, himself. But Rex wasn't looking at Rad. Rex's eyes were unfocussed, looking somewhere past him. Rad knew he was a gangster, yes, but he thought it was unlikely Rex was accustomed to killing on such a scale and to situations so complex. Everyone had their limits.

Rex's mouth opened in silent surprise and the gun moved from Rad's face to the empty air over his shoulder. Behind Rex, Kane turned and then whistled at Carson and Lisa, who turned away from their work with some complaint.

Rad heard a sound behind him. A rustling rumble, low and complex, consisting of many parts. He struggled to remember where he'd heard that kind of sound before, and then realised it was the last time he'd been up during the day. When the city was busy and full of people going about their business. It was people. Lots and lots of people.

He turned. At the edge of the concrete disc nearest the hangar doors, coming into the light of the Fissure, was a crowd of people. Young men and women, their features and clothes bleached blue with the alien, electric light. In front, a man in a brown suit, his white hood glowing as bright a blue as the New York side of the Fissure.

"Your boss Crater was cracked in more ways than one, eh, Kane? Seems we each have a double. Me and Rex. Sam and Lisa. Carson and Nimrod. Maybe even you and Gardner Gray, eh? But what if the two people, the original and the copy, were forced together into the same time and space? Two minds – the same, but different – in the same body." Rad whistled. "That's quite a condition. Must be crowded in there, Crater. Sorry, Pastor. I mean Chairman."

Kane turned. Rex had taken a step further forward, the muscles in his gun arm so tense they shook. Kane raised his hands slowly, clearly recognising that any sudden movement, no matter how inconsequential, would give Rex's frightened mind all the excuse it needed.

The Pastor laughed, or at least Rad thought it was a laugh. It was long, high and harsh, like he was gasping for breath. Rad figured his throat must have felt like hell afterwards, but also figured that the madman wouldn't even notice.

Carson's split personality theory explained a lot. Judge Crater vanished from New York, but he didn't switch with his counterpart in the Empire State. He merged with him somehow, walking into the mantle of the Chairman of the City Commissioners because that was how it always had been in the Empire State. The two minds fought each other for control, creating the Chairman and the Pastor, two sides to the same coin. One trying to run the city and bring peace, thinking that would enable him to go home. The other driven to religious insanity, thinking that he'd been banished, punished. The solution? Atonement. Sterilise the wound with fire, and return to the old life.

The Chairman wanted peace. The Pastor wanted destruction. With neither in full control, stalemate, for nineteen years. Until Kane took the Skyguard's suit and Rex arrived. Kane, working for the Chairman, finally providing the power he needed to take action. Rex, working for the Pastor, providing the impetus to eliminate any opposition.

"Don't give me that crap!" Spittle flew from Rex's mouth. He waved the gun between Kane and the Pastor, gesticulating with every word. "The preacher and I had a plan. He explained it all to me. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, ain't that right? That's how it works. He told me. There's only one way back. I gotta do the opposite, cancel it out." Rex moved the gun to settle on Rad, and thumbed back the revolver's hammer.

The light changed. The blue flared to white, then altered, still blue, but darker, and tinged with orange. The same orange perpetually reflected in the clouds which surrounded the Empire State on all sides.

Rad spun around as quickly as he could while sitting on hard concrete with his hands tied. Rex turned as well. Kane took the advantage and kicked forward, knocking the gun clean out of Rex's hand and felling the man with a punch to the jaw. Rad saw it out of the corner of his eye, but his attention was on the Fissure.

Lisa Saturn walked backwards, away from the Fissure. With both hands, she was holding a dark cable as thick as her forearm and capped with a pronged metal ring. She kept backing away, letting the cable drop from her hands.

The Fissure had changed colour. It hadn't changed in size or shape, at least as far as Rad could tell. The pointed ellipse, perpendicular to the ground, still rippled and fizzed, the edges curling and glowing blue. But perhaps it was rippling a little more than it had been a moment ago. The orange light was weird, artificial, but not as alien as the electric blue. It was a colour that belonged to the Empire State and to the Pocket itself. Whatever the Science Pirate and Carson had done, the Fissure was turning inside out, destabilising, just a little.

"Well, hasn't this been a jolly outing? My friend and I will be leaving now. See you in New York!" Carson paused, and put a finger to his lips as if he'd just thought of something. "Oh, actually, no – I won't." He drew the finger away from his mouth and pointed at Kane, and then back over his shoulder at the Fissure. Kane nodded and jogged over. When he reached the Captain, Kane held his wrist out.

The old man bent over the armoured gauntlet for a moment. Kane's back blocked Rad's view, but after a couple of seconds a beeping started, before Carson clapped a hand on Kane's shoulder and stood to one side. Kane nodded again and skipped up onto the platform and stood before the Fissure, arms extended outwards. On his left wrist, Rad could see an open panel and a blue light winking in time with the beeping. Unless it was his imagination, the beep's tempo was steadily increasing, the tone of it heading slowly up the musical scale.

Rad shuffled on the ground, making a desperate attempt to free his hands. But it was no good, the knot was too tight. He rocked on his behind and managed to get himself standing without falling on his face.

Kane turned. As he did, tendrils of energy curled out from the lip of the Fissure, attracted to the suit like lightning to a conductor. The fingers of power were smoke-like but bright. Kane stumbled slightly, and took a step backwards. When he spoke, it was with some effort and through a grimace of pain.

Rad took a hesitant step forward, but the movement sent a static shock up his leg. He stopped and became aware of a peculiar sensation, like walking face-first into hot cotton candy. Whatever was happening to the Fissure, it didn't feel healthy.

Kane stepped back again. The energy tendrils flared an angry red and seemed to wrap around his outstretched arms like a neon octopus. Kane's head snapped back and he was pulled back further, until he stood across the Fissure's horizon itself. The Skyguard's cloak was yanked violently backward, sucked into the void behind him by an alien wind. When he managed to pull his head back, his face was plastered with a vicious grin. He pulled an arm out of the Fissure's fluctuating corona like it had been stuck there with molasses, and pointed. Kane laughed.

Rad turned his head quickly. The light streaming out of the unstable Fissure threw shadows long behind him, the high contrast making it difficult to see. But something had changed. The Pastor stood at the edge of the concrete disc, illuminated in blue, alone. His followers were gone.

Rad looked, tracing the edge of the disc. There was nothing around them but a total blackness. And then the blackness lightened, greying up and then turning a dirty orange over the course of a few seconds. It was the fog, the damned, cold, perpetual fog. The borders of the Empire State had collapsed onto the circle, surrounding them.

Someone called out. Too late, Rad saw Rex roll on the ground. Rex scrabbled on the concrete, scraping nails against the rough surface, until the dropped gun was within his grasp. He then tore forwards on all fours, slipping and striking his knees, even his chest, against the ground as he crawled towards the Pastor.

Rad nodded, not turning, mind racing as the Captain lightly patted his back. Rad pulled on his wrists, and the bindings unraveled the last few threads. With the pressure relieved and his wrists free, Rad slowly flexed his fingers, getting the feeling back into them.

Crater knelt on the ground, unmoving. He had both arms outstretched, and his hood was pointed up at the orange, cloudy ceiling. Rex crawled closer and pawed at his jacket. Crater didn't move, but his eyes, wide through the holes the hood, moved to look at Rex.

Saliva dribbled down Rex's chin. "You promised me. You said we could go home, that all I had to do was kill the detective. You lied, didn't you? You were going to go home, but not me, right? Am I right?"

Crater moved his head slowly from side to side, but Rex also shook his head at the same speed. He pushed off the ground and stood in front of the Pastor. Rex raised the gun up and pressed the barrel against the white cloth-covered forehead. The hammer was pulled back again.

Rad turned around, back to the Fissure. Kane was still stuck like a fly in jam, a Vitruvian Man in a superhero costume and cape. Rad gasped in desperation. He turned to Carson. The Captain was watching Crater and Rex, his face blank. Beside him, Lisa Saturn stood, arms folded. She was smirking, like she was enjoying a night at the theatre.

Rad was cut off as the air cracked. A second later Crater, the Pastor of Lost Souls, toppled backwards, his white hood no longer white. Rex stood where he was, shaking, the gun still smoking in the air before him.

Rex let the gun drop with a clatter onto the concrete. He turned around on his heel, slowly, looking at his feet. He glanced at Rad, at Lisa, at Carson. Then he stepped forward and looked up at Kane.

"You sonovabitch, liar!" Rex yelled, his voice echoing off the hard ground. He pushed Carson to one side and ran at the Skyguard, bent down into a football tackle. Rex's right shoulder collided with Kane's chest, but Kane barely moved. Whether it was the Skyguard's armour or the energy from the Fissure keeping him upright, Rad couldn't tell.

Rex was pushing at Kane, but Kane was in the way, blocking the portal. The beeping from his wrist had become almost a steady whine. Rex slid back, and brought his fists down on Kane's chest. Finally Kane pulled his arms down, and grabbed Rex by the neck. The Fissure protested, rippling with a thundercrack as the tendrils of light whipped around the pair.

It was the Science Pirate who answered. She'd taken a step or two back, and had unfolded her arms, holding them instead at her sides. The palms were facing back and her hands tilted slightly out, like she was ready to take off on her dead rockets.

"Energy input." He turned to Rad and pointed at the struggling figures silhouetted against the transdimensional maelstrom. "There is more energy in the Skyguard's power cells than in the whole fuel tank of the Enemy airship. By overloading the suit on the threshold, the Fissure will absorb the leaking energy. A much more efficient solution."

"Not destroyed, no. Overloading the suit is far more controlled. The Fissure will feed off the energy and stabilise even further. The Empire State is quite safe, as is New York. In fact, the tether between the Pocket and the Origin will be stronger than ever."

Rad relaxed his grip. He stared at the Captain's face, as if he was trying to read the old man's wrinkles like a street map. His mouth opened but his brain wasn't quite done processing the information, so he just stood there for a while, slack-jawed.

Kane and Rex were still wrestling, almost in slow motion in the rippling chasm. Tendrils of energy tore themselves off the portal, wrapping around the pair before shifting and evaporating. They were becoming more and more obscured by the light, apparently oblivious to anything happening down on the concrete disc.

Kane turned his head, and looked into the heart of the abyss behind him. The centre of the portal was black, and when Rad blinked, it flashed violet. Kane turned back, his eyes wide in fright. He pushed back against Rex, harder now, grunting with the effort as his arms locked onto Rex's shoulders. The two stood, balanced at the threshold between one universe and another.

The Science Pirate was on them in a second, although as she ran closer to the Fissure her movement seemed to slow. Rad wondered whether this was an effect of the time dilation, as Carson and Nimrod had called it, spilling out from the Fissure as it reshaped and rebuilt itself from the Skyguard's energy. Rad almost made to ask, when he felt Carson's hand on his shoulder and his hot breath in his ear.

Rad turned to run, and saw Carson do likewise, before the both of them were knocked to the ground by a shock wave that pulsed from the Fissure as its border stretched and snapped back like tight elastic. Rad's shoulder hit the concrete and he shouted in surprise and pain. Ahead, he saw the orange fog convulse as the shock wave hit it and continued through into the nothingness that, apparently, now filled the Pocket. It seemed to Rad that the Empire State, the whole Pocket itself, was being eaten by the Fissure rather than strengthened. He hoped Carson had got his calculations correct.

Rad shuffled backwards quickly, pushing the ground with his palms. The air vibrated, filled with a buzzing that drilled into his skull. He remembered the feeling well. It was the feeling of incompatibility he'd experienced in New York. The Origin was reabsorbing the Pocket. The Empire State was crumbling. Carson had got it wrong.

Another shock wave, enough to push Rad and Carson down for a second time. Rad saw Kane and Rex framed in the Fissure, still wrestling, a third form clinging to Rex's back, arms locked around his neck, trying to pull him free of Kane. The Science Pirate's suit was unpowered but the weight of it on Rex's frame was just enough. The combined strength of Kane and Lisa were succeeding, and freed slightly from Rex's grip, Kane pulled his fist back, ready to launch an uppercut at his assailant, probably with enough power to kill.

There was a flash, blinding blue. Rad felt himself sliding back, the rough concrete biting through his suit and into the fat of his buttocks and legs as he was pushed backwards by a colossal gust of wind. The Fissure crackled and buckled, and someone cried out. Shielding his eyes against the flare, he saw the three struggling figures silhouetted against the portal, now a brilliant white. Then more movement as the Fissure flickered. Two shadows appeared, solidifying until they became opaque, moving shapes, gradually increasing in size until they resolved.

Agents Grieves and Jones ran out of the Fissure at a sprint. They collided with the Science Pirate, one on each side, collected her by the arms and carried her forward as they shot out of the Fissure and onto the concrete disc. The Science Pirate screamed and struggled, but Grieves and Jones had her firmly. They slid to a halt and turned, holding the squirming Science Pirate between them.

Kane and Rex stopped fighting, just for a moment, and looked out into the Pocket. The white light flared around them, blinding Rad and melting their silhouettes into indistinct shapes. Then the white light flickered, changing to a deep orange.

Kane made his move, dropping his fist and instead kicking Rex's feet out from under him. Rex cried out and began to fall backwards, and Kane raised his leg and again and pushed with his foot, sending the gangster tumbling backwards, down the short stairs and onto the concrete.

The Fissure growled, and licked at Kane with a tongue of electric blue light. Still balancing on one leg, Kane wobbled. The energy played around him, regaining its grip. Kane's eyes were wide as he tried to rotate his arms to get his balance. He was going to fall.

Rad didn't think, he just acted. He got up and ran in one clean and fast movement, fuelled by adrenaline and chaos and desperation. He practically jumped two stairs to the top of the dais, and pushed forwards through the storm of energy with Kane at the centre. The Fissure spat and fizzed and Rad felt his goatee prickle and get hot. He ignored it, and ignored the sharp tug on his unbuttoned trench coat as the Fissure reached for it and pulled the flapping ends towards the portal like the Skyguard's cloak.

"Kane!" Rad reached out, fingers stretched wide, grasping for something – anything – on the Skyguard's suit to grab hold of. His fingers skidded across Kane's chest until he made another step forward, enough to get both hands on a bicep. He hung on and pulled backwards with all his weight, attempting to arrest Kane's slow-motion fall into the void.

Kane screamed something Rad couldn't make out, and with a colossal effort dragged his head around. Kane's face was wild, his eyes wide and mouth pulled into nasty, tooth-filled crescent.

Rad ducked as Kane dragged his free arm out of the Fissure's suck and swung it in an attempt to clip Rad's head. The movement loosened Rad's grip on Kane's arm; sensing this, Kane flicked it outwards with a yell, throwing Rad off and backwards.

The beeping from Kane's wrist finally became a single tone. Rad could hear something else too. The Captain, shouting something from behind him. But behind the curtain of energy pushed out by the Fissure, Carson may as well have been shouting in New York.

Kane's expression collapsed. Rad didn't look behind him, but wasn't sure whether his former friend was able to see past the pyrotechnics and out into the hangar. He hoped he'd seen Rex lying on the ground near Carson.

"The world's greatest detective, here to help." The recognition was all the motivation Rad needed. He moved forward easily, and grabbed the offered hand. At his touch, Kane's fingers hugged Rad's forearm below the elbow, and Rad pulled. As Rad rotated his arm to get a better grip, his fingers nudged the half-open panel. Something inside the gauntlet felt hot.

Kane's hand slipped and suddenly their hold was precarious. The Fissure was alive and jealous, greedily drinking the energy leaking from the Skyguard's suit, grabbing and grasping at its prize, unwilling to surrender it so easily. Kane's body moved back another half-foot. Rad managed to crawl his hand up Kane's wrist a little more, but he realised this tug-of-war could not be won.

Rad understood. He ground his teeth and pulled on the arm, succeeding only in dragging himself closer to the Fissure rather than Kane away from it, but that was his intention. Holding Kane's forearm so hard his fingers felt like they would snap like dry twigs, Rad grabbed at the cabling with his free hand and pulled. Some gave, the blue blinking light went out, and the whining stopped instantly.

Then the portal convulsed. It was a liquid, organic motion, as the glowing, fizzing ellipse turned inside-out for a fraction of second, then rebounded. The wind buffeted and the buzzing in his head was agony. The whole world was a nauseating mix of blue light, orange fog, and sound. Rad squinted, trying to see more clearly, but was lifted off the platform entirely. He caught himself on his hands and rocked forward onto his knees.

The Fissure had stabilised, back to the vertical ellipse, faintly glowing blue. The air felt lighter, somehow, and Rad sucked on his tongue as his mouth was filled with the sharp tang of vinegar.

Kane stood in the centre of the Fissure. His cloak was slack and its torn edges dangled gently around his ankles. He looked exhausted and as Rad stood and stepped forward, Kane's eyes unfocussed and he fell backwards into the blackness. In a second, he was gone.

"Kane!" Rad stumbled forward, but there was a weight on his shoulder. He pushed against it, not knowing or caring what it was, but it pushed back, and he fell sideways onto the concrete.

FORTY-TWO