He stepped into the reactor room. It was hot and airless despite the vast, arching dome overhead. It was impossible not to be frightened by the reactor core itself, that too-blue swimming hole full of pent-up power. Impossible not to know what it represented.
He walked around it, poised, ready, alert. He came around the far side of the reactor, and there, waiting, was Drake Merwin, his whip hand waving lazily at his side. He was leaning calmly against an instrument panel.
“Hey, Sam,” Drake said.
“Drake,” Sam said.
“You know what’s cool, Sam? I never paid that much attention in school, but that’s because I never saw how I was going to use any of that stuff.” Drake pulled what looked like an oversized remote control from his pocket. He tapped a button.
An urgent alarm blared.
“Walk away, Drake,” Sam yelled over the sound of the klaxon.
“I’m going to hurt you, Sam. And you’re going to take it.”
“What are you doing, Drake?”
“Well, the way I understand it, Sam, there are these control rods. Stick them in, and the reactor goes dead. Pull a few out, and it starts up. Pull them all out at once, and you get a meltdown.”
Something was rising from the ominous blue of the pool. Dozens of narrow poles that hung from a glowing circular collar.
“You’re bluffing, Drake.”
Drake grinned. “Keep thinking that, Sam. What do you think pretty Astrid will look like after her hair starts falling out in clumps?”
He turned the remote around so that Sam could see. “This button right here? It drops the control rods back in. And everyone lives. If no one hits the button…well. According to Jack, we’ll die pretty quick. Everyone else in the FAYZ dies slow.”
“You’d die, too,” Sam said, knowing he was just stalling, mind whirring crazily, trying to figure out a way to stop this. Was Drake crazy enough to…Yes. Of course he was.
The alarm redoubled in volume and intensity. It was an electronic scream now.
“I’m not worried, Sam, because you won’t let it happen,” Drake shrieked to be heard over the alarm.
“Drake…” Sam raised his hands, palms facing Drake.
Drake held his hand out over the glowing, throbbing pool. Held the remote now with just two fingers.
“If I drop it…,” Drake warned.
Slowly Sam lowered his arms to his side.
The alarm filled his brain. How many minutes? How many seconds? The control rods rose with majestic inevitability. How long until it was too late?
One more failure, Sam thought dully.
“Don’t you want to know what I want, Sam?” Drake cried.
“Me,” Sam said dully. “You want me.”
“That’s the idea, Sam. And you’re going to stand there and take it. Because if you don’t…”
Astrid was with Little Pete, doing one of the long-neglected exercises. This one involved separating balls by color. There was a blue box, and a yellow box; blue balls, yellow balls. Any normal five-year-old could do it. But Little Pete was not any normal five-year-old.
“Can you put the ball where it belongs?” Astrid asked.
Little Pete stared at the ball. Then his eyes wandered.
Astrid took his hand and placed it on a yellow ball. Too hard. She was hurting him.