The maintenance door on the plant’s north face had been locked from the inside, which frankly meant nothing to me at all.
I simply reached for the lock on the other side with my TK and got it open, before stepping through into the dark and pulling the door shut behind me, and Ferrow Point closed around me like a held breath.
"Ohh, spooky," I murmured.
"Mea," Tikki said against my neck, low, and I felt his whiskers move.
The building had the same rotten-fridge stink as every dead place, plus something underneath it, hot metal and ozone, the smell of a machine running with nobody minding it.
Somewhere far below my boots a pump throbbed in the concrete, slow and patient. That was the reactor, still going at it.
I just stood there a second and let Awareness roll out through the walls to feel the shape of the place.
Thirty meters in every direction. Corridors, stairwells, rooms, Infected, many dead with bullet wounds in them.
I didn’t have to walk much when I felt them.
Down, four floors down and off to the east, a knot of warm bodies moving together through the cold. Eighteen of them, tight, disciplined, funneling deeper toward the heart of the plant.
Right where I needed them to be, and right where I needed to be too.
"System," I said. "I need the tour. I want this plant in a full meltdown, fast as it’ll go..."
-Ding!
{
Consultation Request:
Category: Terrorism
Objective: Nuclear Reactor Failure
Facility: Ferrow Point Nuclear Generating Station
Available Service:
Real-Time Guided Consultation
Service Scope:
Facility assessment.
System identification.
Sequential procedural guidance.
Real-time condition monitoring.
Estimated Cost: 19,500 Credits
Confirm?
}
"Confirm," I said, glancing at the prompt with calm, emotionless eyes, not taking my mind to the word the System just called me.
And the very next second, the Credits walked out of my balance, and the panel bloomed into something larger, a schematic of the whole plant unfolding across the corner of my vision in soft blue lines, corridors and pipe runs and one red node buried deep in the middle of it.
-Ding!
{
Consultation Mode: Active
Facility Classification:
Pressurized Water Reactor
Primary Objective:
Induce catastrophic reactor failure.
Operational Requirement:
Sustained core heating combined with progressive loss of heat removal.
Primary Obstacles:
Reactor protection systems
Emergency cooling systems
Auxiliary cooling systems
Electrical safeguards
Automatic shutdown mechanisms
Containment systems
Advisory:
A reactor core will not detonate as a nuclear weapon.
Failure progression will instead depend upon the continued generation of decay heat following loss of effective cooling.
Procedural guidance will be provided sequentially.
Warning:
Personnel are actively attempting to restore safe operating conditions.
}
The schematic zoomed. That knot of eighteen warm bodies pulsed on it, right on top of the control room node.
-Ding!
{
Conflict Detected.
Conflict Objective:
Reactor stabilization and controlled shutdown.
Host Objective:
Catastrophic reactor failure.
Compatibility: 0%
Conclusion:
Concurrent completion of both objectives is impossible.
Recommendation:
Remove all personnel capable of restoring reactor safety before initiating reactor failure procedures.
}
"Yeah," I said quietly. "I know."
I stood in the dark and looked at that.
I’d known it on the pad with two pilots cooling at my feet.
But there’s knowing a thing, and there’s a machine laying it out in front of you in blue light, eighteen little markers, each one a person with a face and a chair somewhere they were trying to get back to.
[They came here to save the whole south of the country... And I came here to poison it... But even so, I’m the one who’s gonna win, because the woman in that tent thirty klicks west of here is worth more to me than every single one of them and everyone they’ve ever loved... I stopped lying to myself about that a lifetime ago.]
"Mea," Tikki said, and there was no judgment in it, because he doesn’t have any to give. He’s got exactly one rule, same as me. Ours first. Everyone else is weather.
"Alright..." I said, and the softness went out of my voice, because it had to, because I couldn’t do the next few hours with it in there. "Then let’s clear house..."
-Ding!
{
Tactical Consultation:
Host possesses three significant advantages.
Situational Awareness:
Host currently possesses continuous positional awareness of hostile personnel within a 30-meter radius.
Environmental Control:
Host possesses access to facility electrical systems and can selectively disable illumination.
Mobility and Stealth:
Host possesses superior mobility provided by the tandem of 1 Physiological Enhancer, 1 Cognition Enhancer, Telekinesis, and an Enhanced Universal Suppressor integrated weapon system.
Recommended Approach:
Disable nonessential illumination.
Preserve selected illuminated areas.
Restrict hostile movement toward controlled sectors.
Maintain separation from hostile groups.
Engage personnel individually or in small groups.
Avoid prolonged direct engagement.
Recommended Initial Action:
Primary Breaker Gallery.
Location:
One level above current position.
Western access corridor.
Proceed?
}
"You know," I said, already moving toward the stairwell, with a slow smile pulling at the tape on my cheek, "... for a passive-aggressive vending machine, you give great advice."
-Ding!
{
Statement Classification:
Non-actionable.
Response:
Acknowledged.
}
The breaker gallery was a long room full of grey steel cabinets, and the system walked me down the row of them, this bank, then this one, then this.
I opened each panel and threw the big handles inside, and one by one, section by section, I felt the plant go dark above and around and below the men in the middle of it, the emergency lights dying in whole corridors at a time, until the only lights left burning anywhere in Ferrow Point were the ones the system left me on purpose.
The control level. And the long primary loop corridor that ran out of it.
Two lit islands in an ocean of darkness, with eighteen people standing on them, thinking the dark around them was just a failing building.
And so I went to work, following the System consultation by the letter, turning on and off valves and flipping switches without knowing or paying attention to what they were.
And once I was done, I came out onto a catwalk high above the control room floor, silent, Tikki a still warm weight against my shoulder, and I looked down through the grating at all of them from above, small and lit and busy, and I watched the old man in the middle read his gauges and go still, and talking to the other about a valve I was pretty sure I closed.
"Okay, booger..." I breathed, and drew the M110 off my back, and its suppressor kissed the rail of the catwalk as I settled in. "Pucker up."
I watched the two soldiers peel off toward the dark corridor with him.
And just for a little chuckle, I keyed a radio I’d taken off a dead pilot, once, one soft click, just to see the woman’s head come up.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter