Before Tomorrowland (16 page)

T
HE SUICIDE
doors of Duquesne’s vehicle swung open and Rotwang stepped out, pulling his fedora down low over his
eyes. Duquesne’s men from the other car immediately surrounded him. He didn’t know what Plus Ultra would do if they found him at their little coming out party, but he could imagine it
would not end in success. He had to stay hidden.

There were eight of them headed into the lobby: Hagen, himself, and six of Duquesne’s agents, all young men and all disguised as a film crew laden with duffel bags and recording equipment.
Duquesne and his “wife” had arrived at the hotel before them to make sure their path was clear of obstacles. Through the tall shoulders and the bags surrounding him, Rotwang glimpsed
the woman at the front desk, chatting with a few men. One of them was a Faustus robot dressed as a bellhop. Rotwang suppressed a laugh. He spied Duquesne in the smoking lounge drinking brown liquor
and carrying on his typical animated conversation with a man and a woman. Between them, the mole and the moll had all the human variables in the lobby engaged and distracted.

Just before their little faux film crew reached the elevator, a stout hotel clerk approached. “Can I be of any help to you gentlemen?”

One of Duquesne’s men, Carver, stepped forward. He wore glasses and held a clipboard. “We’re here to interview Ms. Joan Crawford. You know her room number?”

“Oh!” said the clerk, squishing his head back into the folds of his neck as he beamed at them. “We’re so very proud to be hosting Ms. Crawford. You’ll find her up
on twenty-five. It’s the suite at the end of the hall. Would you like an escort?”

The agent shook his head and hit the elevator button. “Thanks, we got it. Much appreciated!” The doors slid open. Rotwang and company pressed into the elevator.

“Just call the front desk if you need any help—”

The closing doors cut the clerk off. As they rose, the Nazis let out a collective sigh, but Rotwang remained coiled with tension.

He hated this plan.

There was the easy way, and then there was the hard, and they had been forced to choose the latter. The easy way would have been to wait until the HS1 was alone and isolated and could be taken
by surprise. But when Lohman learned of the existence of the other world from Hagen’s report, the easy way went out the window. He wanted the HS1 captured now. He wanted his mind transferred
into the machine immediately. He wanted to fulfill his “heroic destiny” by leading a conquering charge into the other world and claiming its treasure as soon as humanly possible.
(“Or inhumanly, at the case may be,” Lohman had said, trying to be funny.) What Lohman wanted threatened Rotwang in many ways, not the least of which was that he wanted the exact same
thing: seizing the other world was the end game of his own plan for transcendence. When Rotwang tracked the HS1’s movements to the New Yorker Hotel, a soft target space with few exits and
light security, Lohman ordered them to move. Rotwang had tried to object, had tried to appeal to common sense. “We left that realm a long time ago, Doctor Frankenstein,” Hagen had
quipped. Once again, Rotwang had no choice but to go along with a plan that was not his, and to look for an opportunity to take control of his destiny once more.

Hagen stopped the lift on the second floor, where Duquesne had run up to meet them. “Always pays to do your homework, huh, Carver? Nice work. Everybody gear up.” His men threw down
the duffel bags. Six hands dug into one sack for EMP shotguns while another agent unzipped the other and distributed particle grenades and gas masks. Rotwang put his mask on to test the fit,
cinching it down tight over his aching jowls, then pulled it off. He hoped he wouldn’t have to wear it, but he was prepared to do so if he couldn’t bend the HS1 to his will. If he
failed to make the machine listen, then they’d have to use more extreme measures.

“The room’s sixty feet across by forty feet deep,” said Rotwang, consulting the remote viewing device that allowed him to see through the HS1’s eyes. “We’re
coming in dead-center. There’s no security, but there are civilians. Two of them. A woman and a teenage boy. Interesting. He seems to know them. Or he’s acting like it.”

“Do we take them out?” asked Duquesne.

“Not immediately. Let me see if I can use them to our advantage first. Remember to wait for my signal before going full tactical.”

Duquesne held up a grenade, spinning it. One of Rotwang’s own creations, the particle grenade created a cloud of ionized dust designed to obscure vision and subvert electrical systems.
He’d designed it for use against robots, but it was still highly toxic to humans. “Use these near the exits, but don’t fog up the whole room so we can’t see to shoot. Hagen,
Edgars, you hold up with Doctor Rotwang by the double doors and get him away if this turns into a real Western. Everyone clear?”

“What is a vestuhn?” asked Hagen.

Everyone stopped what they were doing. Duquesne raised his gas mask and squinted at Hagen. “Come again?”

“Western,”
said Rotwang. “John Ford.”

Hagen shrugged as he lazily applied his gas mask. Rotwang got the feeling that the commander had been completely broken by his increasingly bizarre life. He had even ceded authority over
tactical operations to Duquesne, a pretend Nazi and unseasoned warrior. “Our target is dangerous, but we are more so,” said the doctor with a calm voice. “We only need one clean
shot to the head. You could do that with your eyes closed, couldn’t you, commander?”

“Every night in my dreams. Especially the past week.”

Rotwang knew he wasn’t speaking of the HS1.

The elevator dinged. The doors opened. “Here we go,” whispered Duquesnse. He held up a hand for silence and took a casual stride down the hall toward room 3227. The rest of them
followed suit and took positions on either side of the door, leaving room for Rotwang. All eyes were on him. Rotwang put his hand on the doorknob, breathed slow to calm his beating heart, and
prepared his best sympathetic smile. He remembered that he had been a great actor in his youth, and opened the door.

L
EE SAW
something frightening in Henry’s eyes as the hunched man spoke.

“Henry, my boy! Enjoying your holiday?”

Lee hadn’t seen the man come into the salon, but he was standing there between them and the double doors with a gas mask tucked under one arm. He was short and twisted, with a black eye
and thin gray hair, a pitiable creature. He smiled at Henry like they were old friends, but Henry didn’t seem to share the sentiment.

“Step away from me,” Henry ordered Clara, not taking his eyes off the hunched man. When she didn’t obey right away, Henry pushed both her and Lee to the side with a strong
sweep of his arm.

“I’m just here to talk, Henry. I don’t want to fight.”

“No, Rotwang, you don’t.”

The man called Rotwang took a step closer. “Henry, I do not know what you saw in my safe that made you want to run away. But I want you to consider the possibility that you may have come
to the wrong conclusions about me.”

“I heard you and Lohman talking. I know you were planning to give him this body. I’m pretty sure I have the right idea about you and your Nazi friends.”

Nazis?
Lee was lost. Was this part of the experience? What did all this have to do with the “world of the future?” Then Lee realized that Henry didn’t seem to be
breathing. The big man stood absolutely motionless as he listened to his friend, or whoever he was.

“You don’t know the whole story. Yes, giving him your vessel was always part of my arrangement with him. But I have a new body for you, my boy. A better one. Real flesh and blood,
cloned from your own cells. Henry, I can give you what you want most: I can make you human again.”

“I share your qualms about the Nazis,” said Rotwang, “but they are a means to very righteous end. They will win the war that is soon to engulf the planet, and when they do,
they will abolish Plus Ultra once and for all. They will choose the next steps for mankind. You and I might help direct those steps. I swear on my life, I will not only let you build the future you
want, I will help you build it.”

Henry finally responded. “Your heart’s beating pretty fast right now, Werner. Not quite as fast as the ones belonging to the men outside the door, but fast enough to be considered a
liar. Why is that?”

The hunched man blinked nervously, then took his gas mask from under his arm, put it on, and cleared his throat. Lee jumped as a half dozen men in suits and gas masks stormed into the room with
shotguns. Lee instinctively threw himself to the floor. Clicking filled his ears, triggers clicking, clicking, clicking, and then silence. When Lee raised his head, the gunmen were staring at
Henry. “We have you surrounded!” said a tall man with blond hair and a German accent.

“Yes,” replied the big man, “and your guns don’t work.”

The armed men looked at each other, panic in their eyes. Lee glanced over at his mom. She was laying on her stomach with her chin propped up on one hand, enjoying the show like it was the best
adventure movie of her life.

“Doctor Rotwang, you have forgotten how I eat,” said Henry, leaning against a display like he was a lecturing teacher. “While you were insulting my intelligence with your lies,
I was wirelessly draining the batteries from your weapons. You lost this battle before it even began.”

The hunched man cried out
“No!”
as one of the masked men dropped his shotgun and pulled out an automatic pistol. Clara yelped as the man fired it into Henry’s chest.
Shell casings bounced across the floor, one of them off Lee’s shoulder. He grabbed his mom tightly as the sound of gunfire filled the room. Then he screamed as more bullets sparked off
Henry’s chest. The big man’s suit was now in tatters, but he had not budged.

One of the shooters yelled, “Cease fire!” His mom stood up before Lee could stop her and started clapping. “
Wooo!
Nice. Nice display, but really loud.
Really
loud. You almost scared my son to death and I’m lucky I don’t have a broken rib.” She smiled at the men with the guns, until one of them aimed his pistol at Clara.
“We’ll kill the woman and the boy!”

“Oh, can’t we just skip this part?” she said calmly. “I’m not opposed to violence in my drama, but using women and children to manipulate the protagonist is cheap
and cliché, don’t you think?”

As soon as she said that, Henry leapt thirty feet across the room and landed on one of the armed men, crushing him into the floorboards.

Lee grabbed his mom by the sides of his her head and stared into her eyes. “Mom! This is not make-believe! This is for real! We have to—”

The room erupted anew. The masked men blasted away, bellowing obscenities. A grenade was thrown. A cloud of gas bloomed, crackling with orange light. The smoke reached Lee and he could feel his
throat tighten and panic rise within him. He pulled his mom by the arm and felt his way along the wall, desperate to find a door handle...

And then he was being pulled by a strong hand that gripped him by the collar, then pushed by that same hand through an open door. His mom, too. They tumbled into a stairwell and both landed on
their hands and knees. A woman, tall and lean, with a wild mop of blond hair, pulled them both to their feet.