Chapter 7 - The Lower Core
Mark shoved Sterling back into the wheelchair, his chest heaving, his mind spinning like a compass near a magnet. "Where is the core? Tell me what to do!"
Sterling adjusted his oxygen prongs with shaking hands. "Beneath this platform. Level Four. The access hatch is flooded with two feet of cooling runoff. You have to descend into the drainage chamber, manual-release the jammed cooling valve, and insert the secondary isotope cell into the reactor housing."
"Reactor?" Mark froze. "You have a nuclear reactor under a residential neighborhood?"
"A micro-isotopic thermal battery," Sterling corrected impatiently. "Clean, contained, and completely harmless unless the containment seal breaches. Which it will, if the water level rises another six inches. If that happens, the failsafe floods the entire sub-level with high-density nitrogen gas to extinguish any thermal runaway."
"Which kills you," Mark realized.
"And cuts the power instantly," Sterling added coldly. "Killing Lily. You have thirty-nine minutes, Mr. Vance. The hazmat suit is in the wall locker behind you. The manual valve requires sixty foot-pounds of torque to turn. Take the breaker bar."
Mark didn't stop to debate. He ripped open the steel wall locker. Inside hung a heavy, reinforced rubberized drysuit with an integrated air regulator and helmet. Beside it, on a rack, was a four-foot steel breaker bar and an industrial waterproof headlamp.
As he yanked the heavy suit over his clothes, pulling the airtight zippers shut, the intercom on the desk crackled. It was Elena.
"Mark... I'm in the living room," she sobbed. "Lily is on the couch. She stopped shaking, but she won't wake up. Her skin is so cold... Mark, her lips are turning blue. What is happening to our baby?"
Mark slammed the faceplate down, clicking the radio into the intercom frequency. "Elena, hold her hand. Keep her warm. I am fixing it. I'm right below you. Do not leave her side, do you hear me? I will fix this!"
He grabbed the steel bar, hoisted the spare battery cell—a heavy, lead-lined cylinder about the size of a fire extinguisher—and kicked open the heavy yellow floor hatch marked LEVEL 4 – SUB-SUMP.
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A blast of freezing, chemically treated water vapor billowed into his face. Below him lay a sheer vertical shaft with a ladder disappearing into murky, dark water that rippled with an unnatural, luminescent green sheen.
Mark slung the isotope cylinder over his back via its canvas harness, gripped the slippery rungs of the ladder, and began his descent into the flooded dark.
