They collided with a whump. De Klerx lurched backwards. He hit two of the soldiers, one in turn reeling into Nina and her guard. The redhead arrested her fall on a control panel, slapping a hand down on to it – and twisting the dial controlling the power flow.
It was only a tweak, as she didn’t want to risk drawing attention. She didn’t even know if it would be enough to make a difference. But as her guard recovered and pulled her away, she checked the large display. The numbers were still climbing, now well past four thousand . . . and rising faster than before.
Nobody else was watching the indicator, though. All eyes returned to the brawl as the soldiers forced the Yorkshireman back into the makeshift ring. De Klerx leapt after him, smashing another blow against his head. ‘You dyke-poking fuck!’ Eddie snarled, anger powering a new volley of punches against the Dutchman. De Klerx bobbed and jinked, blocking most – but then crying out as one cracked his nose. Blood squirted from his nostrils.
He drew away, huffing to clear his airways before wiping his face on his sleeve. Eddie circled to position his adversary between himself and Kang. The soldiers shifted, blocking any retreat. He glanced at the digital display – approaching the five thousand mark – but then locked his eyes back on De Klerx as the Dutchman rushed at him.
Eddie swept up one arm to knock away a punch – only for a second jab to catch him squarely in the face. It was not a fight-ender, but it jarred his senses enough that he was too late to block the next. He fell against the hooting soldiers behind him. They shoved him back into the arena—
De Klerx wound up for a brutal haymaker, Eddie stumbling right into its path. He tried to dodge, but had nowhere to go.
The punch hit his skull like a sledgehammer. He went down hard to the floor, the metallic tang of blood filling his mouth. His vision blurred, sounds suddenly echoing. He looked up, seeing howling faces whirl nightmarishly around him. Kang’s took on form, the little colonel pumping a fist in glee.
De Klerx stepped in front of him, anger joined by victorious exultation. He drew back a foot to smash his steel toecap into Eddie’s defenceless face—
Nina’s voice cut through the hubbub. ‘Fix the fusebox!’
The senior technician suddenly realised that nobody was monitoring the particle accelerator. He whirled to check the readings – as the display reached five thousand, sooner than he had expected—
The control room was plunged into darkness.
De Klerx hesitated before delivering his kick – but Eddie had already moved in instant response to Nina’s coded warning, twisting to dodge the attack and grabbing the Dutchman’s foot with both hands.
The technician scrambled for the control to activate the second-stage power supply as the accelerator drew greedily upon every erg of electricity from the rest of the base. The circuit closed with a bang, the lights coming back on.
Eddie forced himself up, still gripping De Klerx’s foot and driving the flailing Dutchman backwards. He hit Kang, sending the short man spinning into Mikkelsson and Sarah. Husband and wife both fell as the Yorkshireman threw De Klerx to the floor.
The soldiers recovered from their momentary blindness, guns snapping up – but their commander and chief of security were too close to their target. The only man with a clear line of fire was Nina’s guard. He fumbled to bring his rifle to bear—
Nina threw herself against him. The man stumbled – and tripped over Mikkelsson. His gun skidded across the floor . . .
To be snatched up by Eddie.
The Englishman whipped around and pulled the trigger. The Type 58, an AK-47 copy, was set on full auto, its thudding bark almost deafening as bullets ripped through the soldiers and technicians. They fell screaming, blood spouting from their wounds. Bok dived behind the desk, the bullets meant for him instead sending the senior technician flying against the control panels with gushing rosettes of blood across his white coat.
The rifle’s bolt clacked. It had only taken three seconds to empty the magazine, but that was all Eddie needed. The last rank-and-file soldier still alive was Nina’s guard, who lifted his head – only for it to slam back against the floor with a crimson spurt as the Yorkshireman used the empty gun as a club. ‘Nina, go!’ he shouted, dropping the Type 58 and looking for a replacement. None of the dead soldiers’ weapons were in immediate reach – and now Kang was fumbling for his holstered pistol, Bok doing the same.
Eddie ran for the stairs, stamping on De Klerx on the way. Nina was already heading for the exit, pulling a particular lever as she passed. He held back for a second to let her by, then clattered down the steps after her – as a bullet from Kang’s pistol blew a chunk out of the wall just behind his head. ‘What did you do?’ he asked as they reached the floor below.
‘Opened those!’ She gestured towards the radiation shields, which were slowly parting, exposing the Crucible within.
‘But we’ll get fucking zapped!’
‘Not if we get clear! We saw it in the Midas Cave. Radiation travels in straight lines, but the tunnels curve!’ She ran for the nearest circular entrance. ‘We’ve got about a minute before the neutron burst!’
‘A minute? But you sped up the fucking countdown!’
‘Oh. Yeah, I did, didn’t I? Oops.’ They reached the tunnel. It followed a sweeping arc into the distance, the gleaming steel tube of the accelerator and its pipework-entangled electromagnets disappearing around the bend a hundred metres distant. ‘Better run if you don’t want a glowing butt!’
They raced down the tunnel as the accelerator’s shrill grew ever louder.
Bok ran to the window. ‘They’re in the tunnel!’
Kang took in the strewn corpses of his men with shock. The translator was among them. ‘Get another squad down here! Go after them!’ Bok barked urgent commands into his radio.
Mikkelsson stood, helping Sarah up. ‘I think we should leave,’ he said in English as the few surviving technicians hastened to their workstations. ‘And I suggest you do too, Colonel. This area is not safe with Wilde and Chase on the loose.’
‘We will catch them,’ said the security chief.
‘I’ll catch them,’ snarled De Klerx. He grabbed a gun from the floor, looking back at Sarah. ‘I’ll make them pay for Anastasia.’ He hurried down the stairs.
Mikkelsson took his wife’s hand and started for the elevators, collecting the case holding the small Crucible. ‘Colonel,’ he said in Korean. ‘Are you coming?’
Kang stared at the container, caught between his desire for revenge and the prospect of riches. ‘Yes,’ he decided. ‘Bok, come with us. Until more men are down here, you’re our bodyguard.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Bok replied, also eyeing the case. Kang ordered the technicians to regain control of the huge machine below and complete the transmutation process, then the group quickly departed.
Fixated on their own readouts, conditioned by the secrecy and paranoia of North Korea to focus only on their own task and not question what was happening beyond it, none of the operators thought to look out of the window at the open radiation shields below . . .
‘How much further?’ asked Eddie as he followed Nina painfully along the curving tunnel.
‘Not far,’ she replied. ‘I think.’ She looked back to see if the shields were still visible beyond the tunnel’s mouth.
They were – but now so was De Klerx. He stopped to take aim—
‘Gun!’ she cried. Eddie ducked as the Dutchman opened fire. Bullets clanged off the accelerator’s casing. Its curvature meant that from De Klerx’s position they were partially protected by it, but he was already running again, unleashing single shots to force his targets to stay in cover.
Eddie tried to squeeze underneath the accelerator, but pipework and cabling beneath it blocked him. He swore, then scrambled to join Nina behind a support brace – the ring of powerful electromagnet
s immediately making their presence felt. ‘Bloody hell!’ he gasped, jerking his left arm away. ‘Feels like it’s trying to pull the pins out!’ The titanium rods that had been used to splint the bones of his forearm after a break several years earlier were weakly magnetic, and the effect was like invisible hands pawing at him.
‘Too bad they don’t work on bullets,’ Nina said grimly. ‘What do we do?’
‘If we stand up and run, he’ll have a clear shot at us.’ The accelerator was only chest-high at its tallest. ‘You stay low and keep going. I’ll try and jump him.’
‘Eddie, he’ll kill you!’ The brace and its pipework extended merely a foot outwards from the metal tube. ‘You can’t hide behind that!’
‘It’s all we’ve got! Go!’
De Klerx had already closed the gap as Nina reluctantly hurried away. He glimpsed the movement and fired. She shrieked as bullets cracked off the concrete beside her – and the impacts got closer as he came around the tunnel, bringing her into clear view—
He spotted Eddie’s shadow behind the brace.
The Dutchman switched targets to the greater threat – and his lover’s killer. He ran to the support, about to rush around it and spray Eddie with bullets—
The rifle was snatched from his hands.
It smacked against the electromagnets. Startled, De Klerx lunged to retrieve it – only to be tackled by Eddie, who drove a brutal punch into the mercenary’s stomach and threw him back against the tunnel wall. ‘Fuckin’ magnets, how do they work?’ Eddie growled, hitting him again.
But De Klerx was far from finished. He hurled himself at the Englishman, sending them both crashing against the shrilling accelerator. Eddie caught him under his chin with a flailing uppercut. The Dutchman spat out blood, only to retaliate by slamming a knee into his opponent’s side. Eddie fell. De Klerx whirled for his gun—
Nina leapt at him from behind. De Klerx hit the brace chest-first. Winded, he dropped to his knees.
She tried to pull the rifle free, but the magnets were too strong – all she managed was to turn it in place. But she couldn’t bring it to bear on De Klerx as he hauled himself back up, the muzzle wedged against the cables—
Not cables. Pipes.
She pulled the trigger.
The bullet blasted through the tubing – unleashing a steaming jet of liquid nitrogen.
It gushed over De Klerx’s legs, the supercooled liquid instantly freezing them solid. Nina flung herself clear with a shriek of pain as stray droplets hissed on her clothing.
But it was nothing compared to the Dutchman’s agony. He screamed, his howl echoing through the tunnel even over the noise of the particle accelerator.
Eddie dragged Nina clear as ice clogged the end of the ruptured pipe, cutting the flood to a spray – then sent a sweeping kick at De Klerx’s frozen knees. ‘Chill out!’
Both the wailing Dutchman’s legs exploded into blood-red shards. The rest of him dropped to the floor, his head falling straight through the still-escaping liquid nitrogen. His scream was instantly cut off, his skull flash-freezing before bursting apart into a million glittering fragments as it hit the concrete.
‘Did it get you?’ Eddie asked as he lifted Nina to her feet. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘I dunno, I dunno!’ She checked the backs of her legs. The splashes were tiny patches of pure white on her trousers, but they felt as if she had been burned by cigarettes. ‘I can still move.’
‘Great, ’cause we need to!’ He looked back through the swirling steam. The control room was still partially visible beyond the tunnel entrance. He saw a face appear at the window, staring down at the open radiation shields with first disbelief, then fear. ‘Come on!’
They both ran, leaving the smashed corpsicle behind. ‘Did you really just say “Chill out”?’ Nina panted.
‘Pretty sure I already used “Ice to see you” somewhere,’ he replied. Another glance over his shoulder as they continued around the tunnel. The chamber finally passed out of sight, blocked by concrete and solid rock, but he had absolutely no intention of stopping.
The technician looking down at the accelerator screamed a warning. Another operator scrambled to reach the unattended console with the radiation shield control, but too late—
A flash of indescribable colour from the Crucible – and the radiation alarm screeched, warning lights flashing.
Nobody in the control room was alive to pay heed. The neutron burst had penetrated the thin walls, and everything within. Neutrons were even more damaging to organic matter than gamma radiation, the technicians’ flesh almost liquefied as they collapsed dead over their instruments.
With no one to shut down the particle accelerator, it kept running at full power, temperature gauges rising as the liquid nitrogen systems struggled to cool the electromagnets. One readout in particular rocketed upwards as the vital fluid dribbled out over the remains of Rutger De Klerx . . .
The elevator was halfway back to the runway level when an alarm sounded. Kang and Bok both blanched, the security chief shouting into his walkie-talkie and getting no reply. ‘What’s happened?’ asked Sarah, seeing her husband’s concern.
‘Radiation!’ gasped Kang. ‘A radiation leak!’
‘What? But how—’
‘They must have sabotaged the shields,’ said Mikkelsson. ‘If there was an unprotected neutron burst down there, it will have killed everyone in the control room.’
‘What about Rutger?’ His silence gave Sarah her answer. ‘Oh my God! What about us, are we safe?’
‘We’re shielded by the rock. Even high-energy neutrons can only penetrate a short distance.’ He looked over the car’s side. ‘But there is a chance that contamination might be drawn upwards by the ventilation system. Colonel, you should evacuate the facility until a hazmat team can secure the accelerator.’ Kang nodded, then gestured for Bok to hand him the radio.
‘And . . . them?’ Sarah said, hesitating before saying the names. ‘Nina and her husband?’
‘I don’t know. If they got far enough around the tunnel, they might have survived.’
‘But they can’t get out, surely? The tunnel’s a loop – they can only go back to the control room, and that’ll kill them!’
Bok frowned in realisation. ‘There are ladders to the level above.’
Kang broke off from issuing the evacuation order to bark a new command: ‘All security forces! Find the Westerners – and kill them!’
40
Eddie looked back in the direction of the flash as he and Nina hurried around the tunnel. ‘What the fuck was that?’ he shouted over the accelerator’s wavering screech.
‘The neutron burst,’ she gasped in reply. ‘If we’d been any closer, we might have ended up like Lot’s wife!’ He gave her a blank look. ‘From the Bible? Turned into a pillar of salt?’
‘You remember that I skived out of Sunday school, right? But are we safe even if we weren’t in line of sight of it?’
‘We shouldn’t have been directly exposed. But I don’t think it’d be a good idea to go back.’
‘Hopefully we won’t need to.’ Eddie pointed ahead. There was an alcove set into the inner wall, a ladder leading upwards. Some of the accelerator’s cabling branched off and ran up the narrow shaft alongside it. ‘Must go to the next level.’
‘Anywhere’s better than here.’ They climbed over the gleaming tube—
A thudding jolt shook it. ‘What was that?’ Eddie said, jumping down on the other side.
‘I don’t know,’ said Nina, ‘but I doubt it was anything good . . .’
Confirmation came a moment later as the boom of an explosion echoed down the tunnel.
Without coolant, the electromagnets had overheated – and blown apart, the blast ripping through the pipework and cables around them. More liquid nitrogen erup
ted from the main feeder pipe. Without the magnetic field to guide the beam around the loop, the racing subatomic particles now wanted to travel in a straight line. They smashed into the wall of the metal tube, within seconds turning it red hot. The neighbouring electromagnets also overloaded as their coolant supply was cut off, a chain reaction tearing the enormous machine apart—
Eddie and Nina ran for the alcove as the blasts ripped towards them. A dense wall of swirling mist raced through the tunnel ahead of the explosions – not steam, but the air freezing as liquid nitrogen gushed along the floor. He practically flung her up to grab a higher rung before scrambling into the narrow shaft behind her. The icy wavefront gushed past below, detonations rattling the ladder as more magnets blew to pieces.
‘Keep climbing!’ Eddie yelled.
‘You think?’ Nina shot back sarcastically.
The top of the dimly lit shaft was a small dot a long way above. They continued their hurried ascent – as another, more violent explosion shook the walls.
The overload reached the accelerator’s particle source, on the opposite side of the huge loop from the control room. It exploded, sending one final surge of energy through the failing system. The electromagnets guiding the beam into the Crucible fluctuated, the stream of superfast particles burning into the crystalline sphere’s support frame. It melted like wax under a blowtorch, pitching its contents to the floor as more liquid nitrogen swilled from ruptured pipes—
Extreme heat met extreme cold as the Crucible hit the ground. There could only be one result. Not even the strange material of the Atlantean artefact could withstand such stresses. It burst apart, shimmering splinters scattering across the chamber.
Before they had even come to rest, a wall of fire tore through the room, obliterating everything.
A sudden rush of wind from the tunnel below warned Nina and Eddie that danger was coming their way. ‘Hang on!’ cried the Englishman.
A thunderous shock wave pounded the shaft, tearing away the ladder’s lowest section and jolting those above so hard that they both almost lost their grip. Smoke and embers surged upwards, blinding them in a hot, stinking haze. Then the noise faded, residual echoes of disintegrating machinery still rolling through the underground passage.