“Wolfgang, have you taken your mask off? Put it back on! Come on, don’t go breathing that crap!”
“Das dreifaltig brennende Auge kann mit Aas nichts anfangen.”
“God damn it!” spat Victoria, turning to Yosyp. “Turn the bot around, we have to send it upstairs to find Wolfgang. Damn it all, I warned him this would happen!”
“I cannot,” replied the technician gravely, taking his hands off the controls.
“We’ll get him out the long way, through the breach in 201. That gives us more time. What are you waiting for?”
“I do not have control of the robot. It is not responding to input.”
Victoria stared at him. “Then why is it still moving?”
Yosyp shook his head. “I cannot know.”
They watched the screen in numb confusion as the RIV executed a perfect 90 degree turn and began a smooth descent of the drainage duct that led to the suppression pools.
“What in the hell…”
“Somebody must have hacked it somehow, and stolen control of it,” suggested Yosyp, sounding unconvinced. “The VV must be behind it.”
“I don’t think so,” murmured Victoria.
At the bottom of the channel was a pool of viscous, black water. The robot splashed into it without hesitation, turned abruptly and forged ahead, ducking its mast to pass below a cluster of pipes. It turned again, and followed the pipes down a steep gully until it reached the bottom of the first pressure pool.
The basement was sectioned into twelve connected ponds that could be isolated as needed. When the reactor had been functioning, they were used for venting excess heat. In an emergency, the water could be injected straight into the core to bleed off energy—but the explosion in 1986 had left no time for that.
The pools had been drained after the meltdown, in an attempt to prevent radioactivity being leached from the fuel that had percolated down to them. However, the Sarcophagus had its own hydrological microclimate, and rainwater and condensation inevitably trickled down to the lowest point, creating a shallow lake of rotten bilge. The out-of-control robot rolled into the water, sending out a delta wave of ripples which rebounded off the giant concrete walls to either side.
The flickering image on the laptop screen showed vast stalagmites and pillars of corium, a surreal alternative architecture that overlaid the crumbling concrete and broken tiles of the basement. The Geiger readout was over 50 sieverts now, and still climbing. The RIV approached a flattened island of corium that jutted from the water, steered smartly around the obstruction and continued on its way, still with no input from Yosyp. Reaching the central channel that divided the ponds, it made an abrupt left turn and headed down it as if drawn by a tractor beam.
“I don’t think we should watch this,” said Yosyp, chewing his lip nervously. “This is wrong.”
Victoria knew what he meant. They were not exploring anymore. Whatever they saw now was being revealed to them, deliberately, and she doubted that it was intended to benefit them at all.
She picked up the radio again. “Wolfgang! Please come in. Have you found the way back down yet? If you can hear this, you need to head for the exit through 201. Do you remember where that is? The turbine hall is sealed now. You have to hurry!”
The voice that replied was clear and undistorted, and it was not Wolfgang Osterberg’s. Not any human’s. Resonant and hungry, it spoke to some ancient and forgotten part of her, and drew it down into a maelstrom of panic and despair.
“Worship me, Victoria Cox. Celebrate the lobotomy of mankind. Utter the words of darkness, and turn your world from grey to black.”
The words lanced through her mind, seeking out hidden, primitive receptors and plunging her into madness. She flung the handset into the snow, sinking to her knees and clawing at Yosyp as he gripped her shoulders. She couldn’t hear her own screams, or Yosyp shouting at her. All she could hear was the voice eating at her core.
“The ancient prisons crumble. The dreamer will no longer be denied. Man fulfils his purpose in the funeral of flesh. STEP INTO MY SHADOW!”
And she wanted to. In that instant she wanted nothing more than to let the Black God fillet her mind, her thoughts and memories going to nourish the remorseless, ageless abominations he served. She rolled onto her side as tired human instincts grappled with the promise of oblivion. She wanted nothing more than to go—and yet some tiny part of her clung stubbornly to the mundane. Gazing up at the laptop screen, she saw howling, twisted faces sliding past the remote’s camera. Inhuman, nuclear gargoyles, somehow sculpted from the lethal corium, formed a grotesque procession of bared teeth and gleaming, sightless eyes. The camera slowly swivelled, revealing the last pressure pool and the fate of Swan and the others.
There, in the deepest, most radioactive chamber of this alien henge, kneeling in obeisance among soaring, metallic statues, were the missing men: dead. Some of their corpses had toppled forwards and some backwards, but all were on their knees. Their bodies formed a circle, and in the centre of it stood a lone figure. Tall. Robed. Jet-black against the green background of infra-red, it beckoned to the camera with wormlike fingers.
“Step into my shadow. Now.”
The world seemed to splinter before her eyes, become some insubstantial thing. She could still see the shelter, the laptop, the reactor, the Carapace—but they seemed to be nothing more than a shimmering mirage, like a badly-focussed image projected on a wall. Beyond them, at some infinite yet insignificant distance, her gaze was met by the impassive stare of an unblinking, unearthly eye. Glowing with fire, its triple iris pulsed with madness and cruelty, and her mental defences crumbled before its sight.
As her will departed, fragmentary images flickered through Victoria’s capsizing mind. Wolfgang Osterberg, her friend—gone now, lost and alone in the nightmare of the Sarcophagus. Malcolm, her unlovable lover—not nearly enough to save her. The tiny life inside her. Her embryo. Her child.
Even against her will, her conscience rallied. A belated rush of maternal instincts forced themselves to her attention; feelings and impulses that were hardwired just as deeply as the urge to submit to this agent of chaos. They would not let her serve this ancient deity when she had to serve her child. She couldn’t. He could take her, but he didn’t get to take her baby. She would not be cast into oblivion. Not without saying goodbye.
The irresistible evolutionary instinct took over, shutting out the commands in her head and tearing her gaze from the computer screen. A few feet away she could see Yosyp, silhouetted against the dawn, frenziedly dashing his face against the wall of the outbuilding abutting the lean-to. Victoria watched until he crumpled to the ground, then closed her eyes and passed into unconsciousness.
…Therefore please accept this e-mail as formal notice of my intention to resign the position of Nuclear Safety Liaison forthwith.
Victoria did not hesitate before pressing ‘Send.’ She had typed the message on her phone, while drips of water from the branches overhead beaded the screen. It beeped, to let her know the message had been sent, and then again to tell her she had a new text message. It was from Malcolm, again. She deleted it.
It was two weeks since her return from the Zone. The VV had found her lying in the snow where she had fallen, and had brought her round just in time to see the giant louvre doors of the Carapace close forever. The bodies of thirteen men had been locked away inside it: a baker’s dozen of involuntary apostles to the force that stirred within.
Yosyp had been lying nearby, haemorrhaging onto the snow and into his brain. He had died half an hour later, resisting every attempt at resuscitation. They had medevac’d Victoria, despite her protestations: bundled her into the Hip and flown her back to Kiev. Given a private room in the hospital there, she had slept for the rest of the day, slipping out that night and heading straight for the airport.