Her panic ebbed slightly upon realizing that the device only had what appeared to be one black plastic button. Two sharp-tipped, silver cones protruded from the camera’s side. Those must be the leads he’d mentioned.
Do not point those at yourself, she thought. Somehow, it’ll get out, and Rosie will tell everyone in the school. I’ll forever be “the girl who tazed herself in a nuclear reactor.”
“Allergy!” Shade gasped.
In the silence that followed, Alyssa assumed the two men were trading glances unsure what to do.
“Well,” said one, “should I get a medic?”
“No,” said the other. “We don’t split up, and we don’t deviate off route.”
“Should I check the SFP?”
SFP? Alyssa groped for a definition and didn’t have to think long. Spent fuel pool.
Apparently, Shade came to the same conclusion, because he redoubled his coughing. Alyssa wondered if it was possible to act so hard that he might spew up some blood. That would be wicked.
“Epi pen!” croaked Shade as he fell onto his side. “My pocket!”
Alyssa could just see his hand fluttering above his pocket, fumbling as if unable to navigate the flap.
“What’d he say,” asked the first soldier.
“I dunno. Heavy ten?”
“I thought he said any Ben.”
“Why would someone say any Ben?”
“Like heavy ten is better?”
“Help!” groaned Shade, clearly growing impatient.
Alyssa rolled her eyes. If this was the 1970s, nobody probably had a clue about epi pens. Brilliant ruse.
“Deckert, keep him covered,” said the second and more authoritative of the pair. “Kid, what do you want? And how’d you get in here?”
Shade made some choking noises to escalate the drama. “Po — pocket!”
“All right, hold on,” said the guard. A couple of seconds later, he exclaimed, “Ow! What the— Did you…? What’s in your hand?”
“What’s wrong?” asked the other as Shade continued to flail on the floor.
“Nothing. Just felt a pin prick or something. Kid, show me what…” He trailed off. “Show me…”
“Sir?” asked the first, the first hint of worry creeping into his voice.
In his mock distress, Shade began to back up along the floor, slowly creeping toward Alyssa.
“Hey, stay right where you are!”
The sound of a body collapsing onto the floor was unmistakable.
“Sir!” cried the guard, his voice now sounding exactly how Alyssa felt.
She heard the unmistakable sound of a rifle’s bolt action drawing back and slamming a round into its chamber. The man couldn’t be more than three paces beyond the corner.
“Must—” sputtered Shade, still edging more and more into view. “Must be contagious!”
“You need to stop right there!” said the guard in a half-panicked shout. “I’m calling this in!”
Miraculously, Shade’s coughing vanished, and his throat returned to excellent working order.
“But then you’d lose the other guy,” he said.
“What other guy?”
“The one who went that way.” Shade’s arm fluttered toward a closed door behind him and on the opposite side of the hall. “If you hurry, you might catch him. Right now.”
“But—” the guard started to protest.
“He could be heading anywhere!” Shade interjected. “Right…now!”
Alyssa took the hint. Holding the camera before her in a two-fisted grip, almost as if firing her grandpa’s Glock G29, she took two quick steps and rounded the corner. The guard caught her movement from the corner of his eye, but by the time he started to swing his rifle around, it was too late.
Alyssa kept walking, narrowing the distance between them to the last instant. She pressed the shutter button, and the two silver prongs ejected from the case, each trailing a thin, uncoiling wire. One lead struck the guard just under his upraised arm. The other landed on his flat belly. Instantly, the man’s body convulsed as silent electricity poured into him.
As the man’s knees buckled, his hands tightened with spasms. The rifle fired, explosive and deafening in the narrow hall. Reflexively, Alyssa let out a small yelp of terror and dropped the camera. The guard continued his descent, landing on his side, head thudding against the floor. Alyssa realized that the gun had fired harmlessly into the ceiling far down the hall.
She bent over to fetch the camera, but Shade interrupted her even as he scrambled to his feet. “Leave it! The shock won’t last for long. Batteries are almost out.” He lunged past her, grabbed his backpack off the floor, and pulled Alyssa behind him. “That shot is going to have people here any second. We gotta move.”
Alyssa started to run after him, then slowed. “Wait!” She looked up and down the hallway, thinking as fast as her freaked-out mind would allow. “We can’t disappear.”
“If they see us standing over that—” He pointed at the two guards. “—they’re gonna shoot us on sight. We’re in a super-restricted military—”
“I get it!” she interrupted. “But we can’t risk them checking the spent fuel room. We have to draw them away. They have to see us run.”
It was Alyssa’s turn to pull Shade along behind her. They would wait at the intersection at the hall’s end until someone spotted them.
“But they’ll catch us!” he objected. “We won’t last two minutes in here!”
She clenched her fist and ran harder. “Then we’ll split up and hope for three. Come on! Winston needs every second he can get!”
31
Action and Distraction
As the turquoise glow of the spent fuel canisters filled Winston’s field of vision, part of him wondered how much meaning was wrapped up in this choice for an Alpha Machine hiding place. He had always been curious about things that glowed blue, no doubt because of his strange reaction to bruises and cuts. Once he was old enough, his curiosity had led him to Cherenkov radiation, the famous blue glow found in underwater nuclear reactors. The glow was caused by charged radiation particles traveling faster than the light around them within the water. This skewed the emitted light emerging from the water toward shorter, or blue, wavelengths. Meanwhile, the radiation excited the water molecules, which gave off photons when they returned to their normal state.
Winston realized he was mulling over the science of the phenomenon before him as a means to distract and calm himself. There was nothing inherently menacing about the glow. It was just physics at work, electrons and photons doing their thing, making pretty colors.
Of course, the radiation responsible for those pretty colors was entirely lethal, and he was diving straight for it.
Trying his best to override and ignore the pain shooting through his head, Winston pulled and kicked through the water. Beyond ten feet or so, he noticed several things. The prickling sensation on his skin increased, as did the pressure in his ears. The water temperature grew warmer the deeper he went. His ability to see details on the spent fuel containers improved, but the buoyancy of his own body became harder to fight. Not surprisingly, the craving for air also climbed with every moment he spent submerged.
Winston was fairly sure that he knew in which canister his dad had placed the fifth piece. Each container was a twenty-foot-long tube containing five or six smaller, thicker tubes. These narrower cylinders would be the ones that contained the spent uranium pellets, each of which was about the size of a pencil eraser. Most canisters were open to the water, but a few seemed to have lids atop them. As he grew closer, Winston saw that these lids weren’t quite large enough to cover their canisters, and none of them were attached, so they must be markers.
Winston dove for the canister cluster that he guessed was directly below where his father had positioned the crane. And of the four canisters in that cluster that bore lids, only one was stamped with the fairly obvious characters WC AM5.
The trick now was to reach
that canister and pray that the Alpha Machine piece was inside it and within reach.
He pulled against the water over and over, and each effort delivered less progress. The lid came within three feet, then two. As he reached out, Winston fought his instinct to recoil from the rising temperature. It wasn’t scalding, and he wouldn’t be down here long. He just needed another few seconds…
But he didn’t have those seconds. He’d taken too long to get positioned above the cluster. Weariness was like lead in his muscles, making them stiff and unwilling to obey. His lungs screamed for air with a desperation he hadn’t felt even when fighting with Bledsoe in the river.
No, he couldn’t do it. He turned and kicked upward. When he broke the surface, he gasped for air an instant too soon and inhaled water. This led to a round of coughing and flailing that wracked him with additional blows of agony.
“Did you see it?” called Bledsoe.
Winston refused to look at him and only shook his head.
“Not yet! But I think—” Another wave of coughing swept through him as he struggled to dog paddle in place. “I think I know where it is!”
“Well, then go get it!”
“I can’t!” Winston gasped. “It’s too deep!”
Winston gazed down into the blue glow. With mounting alarm, he felt pain begin to blossom in his stomach. This made swimming even more difficult. He wanted to find the pool’s edge, pull himself out, and rest.
His mom’s voice appeared in his mind, soft and reassuring.
“Here!” called Bledsoe.
Before Winston could turn to investigate, his backpack splashed into the water right beside him. Winston’s outrage cut through his thoughts of pain and weakness.
“Hey, what are you—?”
“It’ll weigh you down!” Bledsoe hollered. “Put it on!”
Winston remembered too well how hard it was to swim loaded down with his pack, and that had been when he felt relatively strong.
“That’s too much weight! I’ll drown!”
Bledsoe put his hands to the sides of his head and looked up at the ceiling. “So, take it off if you have to! Good Lord, boy! Bring back the piece and I’ll buy you a new bag!”
Winston wanted to argue, but he knew Bledsoe’s thinking made sense. The pack was already taking in water and riding lower on the surface. He grabbed its top handle and tried to slip the pack on. Its straps chafed and snagged on his shirt’s fabric, and each time he tried to pull the backpack into place, he sank.
“Just hold on to it!” Bledsoe roared the next time Winston’s head popped up. “You don’t have to wear it!”
Winston obeyed them. He looped his left arm through the pack’s straps, keeping the bag before him, and looked up at the catwalk. The three of them stood in a row. Bledsoe’s face was flush with anticipation and frustration. Winston’s mom gripped the rail, face pale and streaked with tears. Bernie’s expression remained as impassive as ever, but his fingers gripped the metal rail no less tightly than Amanda’s.
Bledsoe made a brushing gesture with his hand, urging Winston to get on with it. Winston replied with a gesture of his own. Then, taking one last deep breath, Winston let the bag pull him down and kicked after it.
This time, descending was definitely easier. Winston did his best to angle his descent toward the desired canister, but his left leg screamed in protest with every kick. This forced Winston to try to pull harder with his right arm, which sent more shafts of pain shooting through his head. The pressure in his ears mounted as the discomfort in his stomach mounted into outright pain. He winced and grimaced, trying to divert more QVs into his gut to dampen the increasing trouble.
At last, Winston’s bag landed atop the canisters. Blue light surrounded him. The water felt like he had suddenly submerged into a hot spa tub. His eyes burned, and his skin felt as if thousands of fire ants were crawling over him, occasionally stopping to deliver excruciating pinpricks straight into his nerves.
The WC AM5 lid lay a few feet to Winston’s right. He extended his hand toward it, trying to angle his body to get closer. His fingertips brushed the metal but found nowhere to dig in for leverage. Winston started to pull back his hand and noticed a cloud of fine debris around his arm. At first, he thought his eyes were fooling him, or perhaps there was some residue on the pool’s bottom he had disturbed.
A second later, Winston refocused his eyes and realized that the debris was his own arm hair floating away.
His shock and revulsion momentarily outweighed his mounting need for air, and he let go of the backpack. By the time he could look away from his arms, he was at least three feet above the canisters. His lungs burned, and a wave of pain twisted through his guts. He considered trying to power through and attempt to force his way back to the bottom, but he couldn’t imagine summoning the energy necessary. Choking on his despair, Winston feebly kicked his way to the surface.
This time, he didn’t cough and splutter. Rather, he gasped for air as water streamed from his hair over his face. He wiped at his eyes and saw Bledsoe standing beside his mother. He had one gripped on her collar. The other held his gun pointed at the side of her head. She stood resolutely, nostrils flared and jaw clenched.
She didn’t answer him.
Winston switched mental frequencies.
Again, no answer.
Amanda’s brow crinkled as her eyes stared down on Winston, and suddenly he understood. Whatever communication mechanism was baked into his body had just been fried by the radiation.
Nausea flooded up from Winston’s belly, and he nearly retched into the pool.
“Need—” he gasped, reaching a hand toward the catwalk. “Rest!”
“Does this look like swimming laps to you, son?” Bledsoe bellowed. “This is do or die, and we’re out of time! So, either you do or she dies! Am I crystal clear?”
Winston didn’t reply. His stomach cramped, and the wrenching pain worked its way up, squeezing until it pushed acid into the back of his throat. For a moment, Winston thought he would vomit then and there, but he managed to pull in a couple of deep breaths while treading water. The sensation ebbed. He forced the viscous mass from the back of his throat and spat into the water. Winston only allowed himself the quickest realization that his expectoration was deep red before closing his eyes and turning away.
“Third time is the charm!” Amanda called. “Please, Winston!”
The memory of his father’s recollection of this place returned to Winston. Body squirming. Slowing. Dying.
Was there no other way?
Claude suddenly appeared at the railing to Bernie’s right. Winston thought it strange that he didn’t fight with Bledsoe or at least yell at him for threatening his wife. Or fiancée. Whatever.
“I know you have the strength, Winston!” he called. “One last dive! We all have to do what’s necessary, right?”
“Down you go, right now!” said Bledsoe, inching the gun closer to Amanda’s temple.
He recalled the video of himself.
Reaching.
Slowing.
Dead.
Unless he really could do it. Imagine how proud Alyssa and Shade would be.
Imagine Alyssa and Shade, he thought. For them. For my family.
Winston swallowed through the burning in his throat and took two more deep breaths as he fought down the pain. With a final glance at his parents, he jackknifed his body and dove back toward the glowing canisters.
***
They outran the first security guard without much effort. Alyssa had only seen him for an instant, just long enough to ensure that he had taken in the two fallen guards and then made eye contact with her and Shade. Then they ran down the corridor, with the man yelling after them, “Hey! Stop right there! Wait!” Fortunately, the gua
rd was build like an ox, with speed to match. They could hear his feet slapping down the hall after them, but by the time he reached the corner, red-faced and huffing, they were already far down the next corridor. By the time the guard caught up to them, they were hidden inside an office and heard him lumber past.
“Excuse me, do you need help?” someone asked.
Alyssa and Shade jumped and spun around. A young man seated in an office chair leaned out from beyond a bookshelf that doubled as a workspace partition. He was wide-eyed behind his thick glasses, with fluffy sideburns and a mustache to match.
Before either of them could come up with an answer, the door suddenly opened and banged into them. It struck Alyssa in the funny bone, sending a jolt of tingling pain through her arm. She cried out and backed away.
At first, Alyssa feared it was the portly guard, somehow returned to surprise them at their own game. Instead, it was a middle-aged woman in a puffy fuchsia sweater with three-quarter sleeves, an oversized collar, and brown leather buttons. Her arms wrapped around a stack of manila file folders. She had backed into the door butt first, trying to force it open while coping with her heavy load. When the door didn’t open as expected, she lost her footing and overbalanced, sending several of the top folders falling to the floor, where they spewed their paper contents in all directions.
“Hewett!” she yelled as she stabilized her remaining file stack. “What are you—?”
She turned far enough to see that Alyssa was not the accused Hewett. Her expression quickly shifted from surprise to anger.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “And who let kids in here? This isn’t a day care!”
Alyssa recoiled from her vehement attitude. “Excuse me? You hurt my arm, lady.”
She advanced a step toward Alyssa. “Well, I hope you’re not looking for an apology. Now, get out and go find your mommy and daddy so I can clean up this mess.”
Shade stepped out from behind the door. He might normally wear that angelic, world’s-best-friend smile ninety-eight percent of the time, but this was the exception. Brow wrinkled into trenches, face flush with worry and exertion, he opened the door wide and fixed her with a withering stare.
Winston Chase and the Omega Mesh Page 28