women of the Cluster were standing, scattered all around, slowly turning and staring at us. At the center of it all, solemnly the Matriarch drifted a fresh bundle of leaves beneath her nose and inhaled deeply.
The only sound we could discern aside from Thunfir’s heavy breathing and our own footsteps was the crackling of embers snapping in the Matriarch’s hand. Then another sound, metal slid against metal and clattered to the floor. Crassus made a terrified yelp. I swear I could feel him trembling even three feet behind me.
The whole room began humming as a hundred voices tuned themselves to one another in cohesion. The sounds mingled, notes twisted, and finally they were filling our ears with a single sustained complex sound. I tried to read their faces. Nothing.
Whatever reverence they were showing, if any, was secret to us. We passed through the room and found no resistance from our new allies. At the end of the room a small group of men moved aside and let us pass by. We made the journey through the halls until we reached the elevators, and carried Thunfir’s unconscious body all the way to our apartment on floor 19.
There we cleaned his wounds and watched over him for a long night, awakening only occasionally to soothe his fevered ramblings. It was uncertain if he would live through the night.
But he did.
In the timid moments between the dead of night and dawn, Euclid visited us to announce that the Thakka Cluster had discovered one of our weapons caches and had descended on it with maddened avarice. He spoke slowly, solemnly, and seated himself at our dining table,
“It was insanity. Last night they were howling on the first level, wandering from shop to shop and just taking things - grabbing whole displays of useless items and destroying them. When they learned of the weapons cache in the eastern wing, they disappeared. Gunshots kept me up most of the night as I sat huddled in one of the shops and waited to die.”
“They haven’t moved to the other floors then?” I asked, noting an implausible wry smile crossing Crassus’ face.
“They don’t trust the elevators,” Euclid said, himself now sharing Crassus’ contagious grin, “But I don’t suspect that will last very long. At one point in the night the riot detectors mysteriously turned on and the Plexis closed the only connecting hallway between the Eastern Wing and the rest of the building. Elevators were likewise put under lockdown.”
“That’s a shame,” Crassus said, a look of mock concern crossing his face, “It could take weeks to tunnel through the wall adjacent to those doors.”
“Isn’t it, though?” Euclid said, “By the time they’re able to get out a lot can happen. Even our old Thunfir might be awake again.”
Shocked, I looked between Euclid and Crassus, not knowing whose brilliance to praise first. Once again these two miracle workers had found a way to deliver us from catastrophe. Certainly the delivery systems would continue to dump food from the botany levels, but it would buy us time to plot out our next move. With the Thakka Cluster quarantined in the Eastern Wing of the first floor, suddenly we once again had a fighting chance.
Something about that must have displeased the gods.
The PA system generally only served to play gentle music or occasionally make vague announcements to visitors. These had been largely ignored, as they were rarely useful. But there was something different about it as a gentle alarm broke our brief but glowing silence.
The voice that now spoke from the tiny holed plate in the ceiling was somehow familiar, though I couldn’t place where I’d heard it before.
“Warning,” the echoing voice said. It was a man’s voice - calm, soothing, “Fallout levels on floors 6, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 19 and 20 have exceeded safe levels. Please contact your supervisor for more information.”
Crassus and Euclid were both staring at me, looking to me to make sense of this sudden change. Still reeling from the sudden shift in the wheel of fortunes, I lowered my head to the table and ran my fingertips across my forehead.
I should have known then that it was no coincidence. I’m all the more foolish for not realizing how unlikely it was that this would all happen right when it did. The timing was too perfect for any rational individual not to notice. But then statistical analysis wasn’t my job. It was Euclid’s. He stared long at me, contemplating what to say, what our next course of action should be.
“They’ll be frightened now,” Euclid said, “We all know the meaning of that word. Archaic for the blight, still used in some regions. Fallout means the air and food around us may be slowly turning poisonous. What do we do?”
“That voice,” I said, taking off my glasses to wipe the dust from my eyelids, “So calm. Where have I heard it before?”
“There’s no reason to panic just yet,” Crassus said, getting up from the table to walk over to the sink and pour himself a glass of water, “The building’s sensors are calibrated to a time when fallout particles were feared and rarely understood. I’m surprised they weren’t tripped in the past with the amount of dust that blows through the entrance.”
“Background radiation has now reached 0.005 millisieverts per hour,” the voice chimed in once again, “Please consult your supervisor or a nearby security representative to guide you to the nearest exit. You are in no immediate danger, but prolonged exposure could have adverse health effects. For your own safety, and the safety of others, please...”
The voice continued, bleeding hope out of us like an open wound. We sat, staring at one another in silent, stoic despair. Crassus’ mouth was hanging open, his head was shaking slowly. Euclid started writing in his notebook.
“So that’s it,” Crassus said, “I guess we’ll have to leave after all.”
“The voice said 0.005 millisieverts per hour, correct?” Euclid said, punctuating the sentence by wildly circling one of his notes, “If that’s the case, then it isn’t something out there causing the rise. It must be something inside.”
The egg. The FNF style radioisotope generator. Why would we need to look into the surrounding countryside for the source of an ionizing radiation leak when the Plexis itself contained something so profoundly radioactive? It was clear to us all what the announcement meant. The FNF reactor must be malfunctioning. It must have breached, leaking dangerous radioactive particles into the ventilation systems.
Soon enough we would all be standing around a nearby information terminal as Crassus confirmed our fears. The diagram he pulled up showed the egg’s radiation levels climbing, reaching 0.82 mSv inside the reactor chamber. Eyes glued to the console, Crassus communicated with the terminal exclusively through touch now, saying to us,
“Temperatures are also increasing around the egg. Fires are expected to break out soon. If this leak isn’t contained...” he paused, something seemed caught in his throat, “it will begin melting through the floor. We have to tell everyone to grab what they can and leave. Someone has to tell them they have to go. Everyone.”
“Not everyone. We’ll stay behind,” Euclid said calmly, “Crassus and I will do what we can to contain the breach through the terminals. From these temperatures, it seems like the situation will gradually get out of control in a matter of days. We’ll find a way to let the Thakka Cluster out after giving our brothers and sisters a two day head start. Crassus and I will stay and do what we can. Maybe we’ll find some way to fix the reactor, and everyone can come back home.”
Everything was deteriorating so fast. We had earned a right to live in the Plexis. We were prepared to fight everyone who came to take it from us. And now the machine itself was turning against us, dooming us to live each day in the shadow of tragedy.
We had tasted our last meal, enjoyed our last song, slept our last soft night. The tribe of Plexis was now destined to be exiled by the very technology that we had come to depend on. And of course my brother had volunteered to stay behind, to shepherd the Thakka Cluster away days after our friends had disappeared over the horizon. He wouldn’t survive. His purpose would be gone without th
e Plexis, and my own purpose would be gone without someone worth protecting.
I elected to stay too. Crassus was pleased.
That night, as Euclid began organizing the exodus, I stayed behind watching over Thunfir. His fever had broken, but I suspect the delirium was the only thing keeping him from the intense pain he soon woke to. His face was still bloodied, his beard bleached a rare white by the copious amounts of antiseptics we had used to clean his wounds. Long lines cracked down the sides of his face by his eyes. They opened once again, but they weren’t focusing on anything. He blinked heavily, and breathed, whispering to me,
“Ebon. Still here?”
“Yes,” I said gripping his cracked and dry hand in mine, “I’m here.”
“It’s dark,” Thunfir said, “Blurry. Can’t see.”
“You might have damaged your eyes,” I said, “You took such a beating. It would have killed a lesser man.”
He tried to produce a chuckle, but only managed to choke out a cough, following it with an arid and painful sigh,
“Never wanted this.”
“Even a great man loses a battle if he’s outnumbered a hundred to one,” I said, “I wouldn’t worry about that. You spread around more hurt than they were able to place on you.”
“Didn’t want to be leader,” he said staring with unseeing eyes into the steel bars of