"I just don't know what they expect of us!" Dick McShay said frustratedly. He threw his pen at the desk, then realised how pathetic that was. At 41, he had expected a nice, easy career with BNFL, overseeing the decommissioning of the plant that would stretch long beyond his life span; a holding job, no pressures apart from preventing the media discovering information about the decades of contamination, leaks and near-disasters. Definitely no crises. He fixed his grey eyes on his second-in-command, Nelson, who looked distinctly uncomfortable. "I have no desire to shoot the messenger, William, but really, give me an answer."
Nelson, who was four years McShay's junior, a little more stylish, but without any of his charisma, sucked on his bottom lip for a second; an irritating habit. "What they want to do," he began cautiously, "is make sure most of Scotland isn't irradiated in the next few weeks. I don't mean to sound glib," he added hastily, "but that's the bottom line. It's these power failures-"
McShay sighed, shook his head. "Not just power, William, technology. There's no point denying it. Mechanical processes have been hit just as much. I mean, who can explain something like that? If I were superstitious…" He paused. "… I'd still have a hard time explaining it. The near-misses we've had over the last few weeks…" He didn't need to go into detail; Nelson had been there too during the crazed panics when they all thought they were going to die, the cooling system shut-downs, the fail-safe failures that were beyond anyone's comprehension; yet every time it had stopped just before the whole place had gone sky-high. He couldn't tell if they were jinxed or lucky, but it was making an old man of him.
"So we shut down-"
"Yes, but don't they realise it's not like flicking off a switch? That schedule is just crazy. Even cutting corners, we couldn't do it."
"They're desperate."
"And I don't like them being around either." He glanced aggressively through the glass walls that surrounded his office. Positioned around the room beyond were Special Forces operatives, faces masked by smoked Plexiglas visors, guns held at the ready across their chests; their immobility and impersonality made them seem inhuman, mystical statues waiting to be brought to life by sorcery. They had arrived with the dawn, slipping into the vital areas as if they knew the station intimately-which, of course, they did, although they had never been there before. For support, they said. Not, To guard. Not, To enforce.
"All vital installations are under guard, Dick. So they say. It's all supposed to be hush-hush-"
"Then how do you know?"
Nelson smirked in reply. Then: "We might as well just ignore them. It's their job, all that Defence of the Realm stuff."
"What are they going to do if we don't meet the deadline? Shoot us?"
Nelson's expression suggested he thought this wasn't beyond the bounds of possibility.
"I just never expected to be doing my job at gunpoint. If the powers that be don't trust us, why should we trust them?"
"Desperate times, Dick."
McShay looked at Nelson suspiciously. "I hope you're on our side, William."
"There aren't any sides, are there?"
A rotating red light suddenly began whirling in the room outside, intermittently bathing them in a hellish glow. A droning alarm pitched at an irritating level filled the complex. The Special Forces troops were instantly on the move.
"Shit!" McShay closed his eyes in irritation; it was a breach of a security zone. "What the fuck is it now?"
Nelson was already on the phone. As he listened, McShay watched incomprehension flicker across his face.
"Give me the damage," McShay said wearily when Nelson replaced the phone.
Nelson stared at him blankly for a moment before he said, "There's an intruder-"
"I know! It's the fucking intruder alarm!"
"— in the reactor core."
McShay returned the blank stare and then replied, "You're insane." He picked up the phone and listened to the stuttering report before running out of the room, Nelson close behind him.
The inherent farcical nature of a group of over-armed troops pointing their guns at the door to an area where no human could possibly survive wasn't lost on McShay, but the techies remained convinced someone was inside. He pushed his way past the troops on the perimeter to the control array where Rex Moulding looked about as uncomfortable as any man could get.
Moulding motioned to the soldiers as McShay approached. "What are this lot doing here? This isn't a military establishment."
McShay brushed his question aside with an irritated flap of his hand. "You're a month late for practical jokes, Rex."
"It's no joke. Look here." Moulding pointed to the bank of monitors.
McShay examined each screen in turn. They showed various views of the most secure and dangerous areas around the reactor. "There's nothing there," he said eventually.
"Keep watching."
McShay sighed and attempted to maintain his vigilance. A second later a blur flashed across one of the screens. "What's that?"
The fogginess flickered on one of the other screens. "It's almost like the cameras can't get a lock on it," Moulding noted.
"What do you mean?"
There was a long pause. "I don't know what I mean."
"Is it a glitch?"
"No, there's definitely someone in there. You can hear the noises it makes through the walls."
McShay's expression dared Moulding not to say the wrong thing. "It?"
Moulding winced. "Bob Pruett claims to have seen it before it went in there-"
"Where is he?" McShay snapped.
As he glanced around, a thickset man in his fifties wearing a sheepish expression pushed his way through the military.
"Well?" McShay said uncompromisingly.
"I saw it," Pruett replied in a thick Scots drawl. He looked at Moulding for support.
"You better tell him," Moulding said.
"Look, I know this sounds bloody ridiculous, but it's what I saw. It had antlers coming out like this." He spread his fingers on either side of his head; McShay looked at him as if he had gone insane. "But it was a man. I mean, it walked like a man. It looked like a man-two arms, two legs. But its face didn't look human, know what I mean? It had red eyes. And fur, or leaves-"
"Which one?"
"What do you mean?"
"Fur, or leaves. Which one?"
"Well, both. They looked like they were growing out of each other, all over its body."
McShay searched Pruett's face, feeling uncomfortable when he saw no sign of contrition; in fact, there was shock and disbelief there, and that made him feel worse. Moulding suddenly grew tense, his gaze fixed on the monitors. "It's coming this way," he said quietly.
Unconsciously, McShay turned towards the security door. Through it he could hear a distant sound, growing louder, like the roaring of a beast, like a wind in the high trees.
"The temperature's rising in the reactor core," Nelson called out from the other side of the room. The second tonal emergency warning began, intermingling discordantly with the intruder alarm; McShay's head began to hurt. "The fail-safes haven't kicked in," Nelson continued. He pulled out his mobile phone and punched in a number; McShay wondered obliquely who he could be calling.
"It's nearly here," Moulding said. McShay couldn't take his eyes off the security door; he was paralysed by incomprehension. That horrible noise was louder now, reverberating even through the shielding. He couldn't understand how the troops could remain immobile with all the confusion raging around them; their guns were still raised to the door, barrels unwavering.
The one in charge glanced briefly at McShay, then said, "If it comes through, fire the moment you see it."
What's the point? McShay thought. It's been in the reactor core and its still alive! He was overcome with a terrible feeling of foreboding.
There was a sudden thundering at the door and it began to buckle like tinfoil; McShay thought he could see the imprints of hands in it. Despite their training, some of the troops took a step back. The roaring which sounded like nothing he had ever heard before was now drowning out the alarms.