He clutched the walkie-talkie to his ear.
Hurry, he thought. Please hurry!
Sandra and the others raced back the way they’d come, moving as fast as they could in the heavy radiation suits. She prayed that was fast enough.
“You need to get out of there,” Joe urged via the walkie-talkie. “If there’s a reactor breach, you won’t last five minutes, suits or no suits.” She could hear the fear in his voice even through the static. “Do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” she responded, breathing hard. “We’re coming—”
A sonic pulse cut her off, thrumming louder than before. The floor quaked beneath her feet, causing her to miss a step. She threw out a hand to brace herself against a wall, and could feel the vibration even through her insulated gloves. The lights flickered and—
A massive jolt rocked the building to its foundations, as though it had been struck by a titanic sledge hammer. In the control room, Joe and the others were thrown to the floor. The exterior windows shattered, spraying broken fragments onto the floor, while a glass partition cracked down the middle. A file cabinet toppled over, spilling old paperwork over the floor tile. Empty desk chairs bounced and rolled about.
Sprawled on the floor, not far from the broken coffee mug, Joe rode out the tremor, keeping his face covered. Not until the shaking stopped did he cautiously lift his head and look around. Checking to make sure his glasses were still in one piece, he painfully peeled himself off the floor. His nerves were jangled, and he was bruised from the fall, but he was relieved to see that the control room was more or less intact. His eyes sought out the master control monitors, which, miraculously, were still running. Stan, Takashi, and the others began to clamber to their feet as well. Nobody seemed seriously injured, at least not here in the control room.
But what about Sandra and her team?
He peered up at a video monitor. Closed-circuit TV footage showed a crew in full radiation suits dashing though the reactor unit’s sub-levels. He didn’t need to make out Sandra’s face to know who was leading the team. He pointed anxiously at the screen.
“Sandra and her crew,” he exclaimed. “They’re in the containment area!”
Takashi looked aghast. “Why?”
Joe didn’t have time to explain. “Oh shit,” he muttered. What had that last shock had done to the reactor?. He dashed for the exit, shouting back over his shoulder at Takashi. “Put the safety doors on manual override!”
“I can’t do that!” the deputy engineer protested.
Joe didn’t want to hear it. He shouted back from the doorway.
“PUT THE DOORS ON MANUAL!”
Sandra and the others raced down a concrete corridor, which felt twice as long as she remembered. A stairway, leading to an upper level, finally appeared before them.
Thank God, she thought. Maybe we can still get out of here in—
Another jolt nearly threw her off her feet. Yamato stumbled, but she grabbed onto him and kept him from falling. The cumbersome radiation suits made every movement clumsier than it ought to be, and were unbearably hot as well; she was half-tempted to shuck the suit, but that would be insane. For all she knew, there could be a leak at any minute.
The team squeezed into the cramped, dimly lit stairwell. They were all panting now, weighed down by the heavy suits and breathing gear. Sandra’s muscles ached and her legs felt like they were made of lead, but adrenalin and panic kept her and the others climbing for their lives.
If they could just make it past the containment threshold…
An emergency stairwell led from the control room to the primary reactor unit. Joe rushed down, taking the steps two or three at a time. His heart pounded in his chest, going a mile a minute, while he prayed that Sandra was heading toward him from the opposite direction. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could count on Takashi to keep the containment doors open.
Don’t stop, he silently pleaded with her. Don’t slow down for a second. Please!
Reaching Level 5 in record time, he burst out of the stairwell and skidded to a stop right before the entrance to the containment area. A large button, surrounded by emergency instructions in both Japanese and English, was installed in the wall to one side of the entrance. Joe peered down the long corridor beyond, hoping desperately to see Sandra and the others running toward him, but the hallway was eerily silent and empty, as though it had already been evacuated. He was tempted to run into the corridor to find Sandra, but there was no time to suit up and somebody had to stand by to trigger the manual controls, just in case the worst-case scenario played out, which was looking more and more likely by the moment.
C’mon, Sandy, he thought. Where the hell are you?
A closed-circuit video camera was mounted in a corner where the walls met the ceiling. Joe hoped to God that Takashi was still watching this. He shouted up at the camera.
“Takashi! Tell me this door is on manual!”
The other man’s voice emerged from the comm system. “Manual, yes, but Joe — we’re starting to breach, you understand me?”
He understood all right. This was the nightmare that every nuclear engineer dreaded, the one that kept them up at nights, thinking about Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. He feared there was nothing he could to do to save one or all of the reactors.
But maybe he could still save his wife.
“I’m right here,” he told Takashi, as forcefully as he could. “As soon as they’re through, I’ll seal it!”
He hoped that would be enough to Takashi’s finger off the panic button, but he wouldn’t blame the other man for playing it safe. Takashi didn’t have the love of his life still in the danger zone.
“Sandra?” he said into the walkie-talkie. “Can you hear me? I’m here, honey. I’m at the door!”
She held on tightly to the walkie-talkie as she and the others sprinted breathlessly down yet another seemingly endless corridor. Steel-toed rubber boots pounded against the hard concrete floors. The crew had made it up the stairs, but they still had a ways to go before they were beyond the containment area. Joe’s voice, coming over the walkie-talkie, urged her on, even though his words were fragmented by harsh blasts of static:
“—ere — for you — checkpoin — aiting—”
Emergency klaxons started blaring behind them like angry foghorns. Flashing red annunciator lights turned the sterile white corridors incarnadine. Sandra glanced back behind her, as did the rest of her team. Panic gripped her heart. They all knew what the sirens and flashing lights meant and why the klaxons were getting louder and closer by the moment. The danger posed by the tremors was no longer just a terrifying possibility. The fiery genie inside the reactor had escaped its bottle and was chasing after them.
They were going to die, unless they made it to safety in time.
Takashi was alone in the control room. The rest of the staff had already deserted the premises, including Hayato. The older man had volunteered to stay behind, but Takashi had convinced him to take charge of the evacuation instead. Hayato was a family man, with a wife, children, and several grandchildren who needed him, while Takashi had put his career ahead of any serious relationships so far. The young engineer stared in horror at a hallway schematic of the lower levels. Blinking red icons indicated the rapid spread of radiation throughout the corridors. His eyes widened in dread as stayed at his post, torn between his duty to contain the disaster and his purely human concern for his friends and co-workers. He could only imagine how excruciating this must be for Joe Brody, even as Takashi worried whether the American engineer would really be able to do what was necessary, no matter the cost.