Before Tomorrowland (3 page)

Clara playfully punched him in the arm, one of her signature expressions of endearment. “That sounds terrible! I want three better names by the end of the weekend.” She tucked the
toy into her purse and picked up one of her suitcases. That left him with three, but he could just manage. “I want to freshen up before the convention. Shall we to the hotel, Jeeves?”
she quipped in a bad English accent. She was weird, no getting around that, but she could be charmingly weird. “Turns out it’s just around the corner, so we won’t even need to pay
for a cab. Isn’t that great?”

Lee just pursed his lips and decided to let her lead the way. This was her adventure, after all. But even as he thought that very generous thought, she was off like a shot and Lee was once again
yelling in public and feeling like a fool.

He had the feeling it was going to be a long three days.

W
ERNER ROTWANG
walked the ocean floor, silently cursing the men who dared to call themselves sharks. They were the best of
the best of the Germany Navy, members of an elite unit known as
Haifisch
, but at the moment, as they trudged the deep in glowing metal suits, they reminded Rotwang of slugs. He didn’t
know if they moved slow out of fear or incompetence, or if the apocalypse jumpers he had built for them were really that difficult to operate. The men dragged their feet instead of lifting them,
kicking up clouds of silt that obscured their vision and further slowed their advance. The engineer could hear hints of panic in their sighs and complaints over the intercom. He shook his head. If
Rotwang, a fifty-year-old whelp with a crooked spine could pilot these machines, why not the supermen of the Nazi war machine?

“Gentlemen, please. Stop,” said Rotwang.

The squad stumbled to a halt. The muck that surrounded them subsided. When they weren’t making a hash of his genius, they looked impressive, these sixteen men girded in gleaming magnesium
and helmets crowned with floodlights. “Try this,” said Rotwang. “Bend at the knees, then rise quickly while tapping once on the thruster.” He demonstrated. The jets of air
expelled from the small portholes in the soles of his boots helped launch him over the heads of the squad. He landed and turned back. “This way, you always stay ahead of the crud you kick up.
We also move faster.”

Rotwang looked to the commanding officer for approval. He didn’t get it. The cruel face of the man nearest him, squad commander Ernst Hagen, fumed behind the hard plastic window in his
helmet. He clearly didn’t appreciate Rotwang giving orders to his men. He didn’t appreciate much of anything that came out of Rotwang’s mouth. Hagen had always distrusted him, and
never more so than in the past week. Rotwang watched the commander will himself to squelch his resentment. “Do as he says,” the soldier ordered.

Soon they were all advancing in synchronized fashion, with sets of four jumping the other eight like a game of deep sea leapfrog. Rotwang allowed himself a moment to delight in the exercise, and
more so to delight in the realization of his unique genius. The AJ2 was part atmospheric diving suit, part high-tech coat of arms. Each time he locked himself within the pressurized chamber of the
suit, the oxygen-rich atmosphere took him back to his childhood in Vienna with the clean spring air and the strength of his young legs as they raced over miles of cobblestones. Wearing it made him
feel safe, strong, and whole, but only for a moment. It was a teasing taste of the dream that drove him, a dream that just days earlier was within his grasp. Until it quite literally ran away.

He called it the HS1. It was a near indestructible anthropomorphic vehicle for human consciousness, and it was, in his proud opinion, a work worthy of the artisans of myth. Rotwang had forged
the HS1 during his last days as member of a secret society devoted to developing new ideas and new technologies to improve human civilization. Rotwang had leveraged their learnings and tools to
make the HS1, though he’d had to do it secretly: Rotwang’s pursuit of practical immortality violated Plus Ultra’s code of ethics. His illicit endeavor was discovered the same day
he’d put the mind of a test subject into the meticulously designed automaton he’d had made for himself. He’d had to flee with his creation before he could replace his test
subject’s consciousness with his own. After five years underground, Rotwang had found a patron willing to finance the difficult labor of replicating the transfer mechanism, a man with deep
pockets and deeper wickedness.

The radio crackled. A transmission was coming through from the U-boat, now ten kilometers away.

“Haifisch 22, this is SS
Dunkelstar
. Do you copy?”

“This is Haifisch 22. Go ahead,” answered Commander Hagen.

“Do you have visual on the
Watt
yet? Please report.”

It had been forty minutes since their descent from the U-boat, and so far, there was no sign of the sunken freighter that served as the HS1’s last known location.

“Haifisch 22! Please report!”

“No visual to confirm,
Dunkelstar
,” Hagen finally replied. “Stand by.”

The quiver of fear in the commander’s tone was reasonable. Failure to find the HS1 would bring a reprimand no man would want, one from Rotwang’s patron, Hugo Lohman. A legendary
warrior who had ruled his own corner of the German military for decades without interference or accountability, Lohman not only believed in strict discipline, but in savage sadism, too.

Rotwang had become intimately familiar with Lohman’s brutality while struggling to uphold his bargain with the man. In exchange for his sponsorship and protection, Lohman had demanded the
HS1 for himself. Unbeknownst to Lohman, Rotwang had planned to put Lohman’s mind in another body. The HS1 was his, after all. Replicating the transfer mechanism was the work of many years and
many failures, followed by many punishments. Then, only ten days earlier, as Rotwang had stood on the precipice of success, the HS1 turned on him and ran.

They’d been chasing it ever since.

The squad’s leaping had brought them to the base of a steep slope. Rotwang’s sensors began to
PING!

There was something at the summit.

Hagen motioned for Rotwang to lead the ascent. The climb winded him despite the hydraulic joints doing most of the work; Rotwang was a middle-aged smoker with a wimp-thin frame and a potbelly
from too much late night snacking. The once crisp atmosphere within his containment suit was foul with the stink of his breath and must of his sweat. Rotwang was repulsed by his body. He would be
glad to be rid of it, so long as he could provide another working vessel.

They reached a broad field of kelp beds littered with shards of steel, curled and jagged. In the distance, they saw it: a steam freighter, nose down to the earth, hung over the field like a
giant tombstone. When Rotwang and the
Haifisch
squad closed the distance to the grim monolith, he saw the situation with greater clarity. The vessel was perched in a mass of corral and rock
on the edge of an underwater canyon.

“
Dunkelstar
,” said Hagen, “we have a visual on the HMS
Watt.
Transmitting picture now.”

“Copy that, Haifisch. We are ready to receive signal.”

The soldiers fanned out and surrounded the
Watt
, lighting it up with the lamps mounted on their helmets and filming it with the cameras embedded in their shoulders. Hagen stared at a
large hole near the stern, far from any other apparent points of impact. The perfectly round sheared edge of the breach told a clear story to Rotwang. He wondered if Hagen was smart enough to
recognize it, too. “What do you think, Commander?”

Hagen again stiffened at the sound of Rotwang’s voice. “It appears,” replied Hagen, speaking through his slit of a mouth, “that the wound was not inflicted from an
explosion or puncture. No scarring or melt.” Hagen turned back to Rotwang, impatient with being tested. “What is
your
assessment, Doctor?”

“I’m not certain, but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that a mechanical man of extraordinary ability decided it would be best to disembark in his own special
way.”

Hagen glowered at Rotwang. “I hope that you are wrong. For your sake.”

“I am touched by your concern. Fortunately, for all our sakes, I am correct.” Rotwang turned to leave. “We should go—”

“No.”

The order did not come from Hagen, nor was it issued by the bass-throated executive officer of the
Dunkelstar
. The voice crackling over the radio was a sickly male soprano and it stopped
Rotwang in his tracks.

“Hagen, have your men search the boat,” said Lohman. “If there is Plus Ultra
treasure
aboard, I would have it.”

Hagen didn’t hesitate. “Yes, sir!” He motioned to his squad and they responded in unison. They removed their weapons from their holsters and sprung toward the
Watt
.
Rotwang watched them disappear into the ship, one by one.

“With all due respect, Herr Lohman, I believe entering this ship is a mistake—”

Lohman cut him off. “Doctor, you and your rogue pet have become more trouble than you’re worth. I shall take my compensation where I can find it. And Rotwang? Challenge me again, and
I’ll have Hagen shoot you on sight.”

Hagen smirked and cocked his gauntlet machine gun.

“Understood, Herr Lohman. Please forgive me.”

Reports from the
Watt
crackled over the intercom.

“Engine room—clear. Machinery dismantled.”

“Crew cabin—clear.”

“Laboratory Alpha—gutted.”

“Laboratory Beta—gutted, but the shelves are stocked with journals. There’s one labeled ‘Green Fog.’ Another labeled ‘Misc. UFT
Experiments’…”

Lohman’s voice came through, impatient: “Open them up. Read them to me. Now.”

“Copy that. Removing—”

Rotwang gestured towards Hagen’s gun. “Why not rest your arm, Commander? The jumpers’ shells are too strong anyway—”

The world around Rotwang went bright as something shoved him head over heels. For a second he thought Hagen had hit him, but then he saw the commander tumbling in the sand to his left. There was
a great lurching sound and as Rotwang found a handhold on the sea floor, he saw the
Watt
’s broken frame blossoming with explosions. Debris shot by as the floor shook and the
Watt
slid down the canyon wall and out of sight.

Rotwang, capsized, winced in pain as one of the suit’s metal rings pressed on the bumpy curve of his spine. Yet he was distracted from his own agony by the screams of the
Haifisch
squad members blaring on his intercom. The farther they fell into the trench, the more broken their screams became, but their volume did not diminish.

The silt settled upon him, a shower of dirty snow. Hagen was shouting hopeless orders for his sinking squad, then bloody curses at Rotwang. Because of the strength of his metal suits,
Hagen’s men had survived the point-blank explosions. Would they survive the pressures of the trench? Not likely. But a small victory was better than no victory at all. They hurtled toward
death with time to prepare their souls for whatever came next. And they had him to thank.

That sick soprano filled his ears. “Are you alive, Doctor Rotwang?”

“Yes, sir. I am.”

“Oh. How very unfortunate for you.”

H
E SURFACED
on the west end of Luna Beach, far from the music and laughter that carried from the boardwalk. There were
thousands of voices, even in the middle of the night. Ten thousand, eight hundred and three voices to be exact. The nearest was half a kilometer away, but it was unintelligible, breathy murmuring.
Lovebirds, maybe. He scanned the beach for hidden voyeurs. There were none.

He stood up in the break and took a moment to check his equipment. The skin was gone from his knuckles, but the damage was cosmetic and could be easily remedied later. He unzipped the backpack
and took stock of his equipment. Five sticky bombs remained, sealed in plastic, along with three radio pins and a satchel of American currency. All the items were undamaged from his swim and his
encounter with a shark. Good.