Chapter Thirty-Five

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

COUNTDOWN TO ZERO HOUR 31 MINUTES

IT WAS ORGANIZED chaos in the control room. No one knew what had gone wrong in the basement or why the pump hadn’t started. Manuals were out as they frantically tried to troubleshoot. Questions were yelled, answers shouted back. Gauges were read, monitors checked.

“Did the power go out completely?” Ethan asked.

“No,” Maggie said, scanning the panel. “We’re nearly fully operational.”

“ Nearly ? Coolant pumps? What about inflow to the pool?”

“Both still functional.”

“Then why the hell did that pump not start?” Ethan said.

“Got it,” Dwight said, one hand holding an open three-ring binder, the other raised high in the air. “‘Emergency-backup generator allocation of power priorities to support critical load. Reactor and pool coolant pumps are number one…’” He read to himself for a few seconds before looking up. “Dead last on the priority list is the subbasement emergency-pump system.”

“Shit,” Joss said, leaning forward and putting her face in her hands.

In the event of a rolling power loss, there were priorities for which systems remained operational the longest. The pump system—a fourth-level redundancy that would most likely never be used—was at the bottom of the list. With only two of the three EDGs working, there wasn’t enough power to run everything, so the pump was one of the first functions to go.

“Which means,” said Vikram, “if we lose another generator, we lose even more system functions.”

“Correct,” Joss said. “And once we lose all three, we lose the whole plant.”

“We need more power,” said Ethan.

There was a second of silence, and in that moment Ethan and Joss and Steve all looked at each other.

They needed more power, and they had more power.

“Get a team,” Steve said to George. “Get to the batteries the National Guard choppers—”

“Go with the firefighters,” Joss said to Vikram. “The batteries need to move to R2—”

“Let us know the second you’re ready to connect,” Ethan said, passing Vikram a radio.

The room was a flurry of activity as people ran out the door. Joss and Ethan watched them go before exchanging a look. Joss began to say something to him, but Ethan clapped his hands for attention.

“All right, people. Let’s be ready when they are. Maggie, Dwight, let’s walk through connection procedures.”

With that, Ethan turned his back to Joss and huddled up with the controllers.

As Ethan led the team through the steps over and over, Joss leaned back against a desk, arms crossed, staring unblinkingly at the floor. She heard them troubleshooting potential hiccups that might arise, making sure everything was ready to connect the batteries as quickly and seamlessly as possible—but her mind was elsewhere. Once they finished, Joss hopped up to meet Ethan.

She spoke low enough that only he could hear. “Ethan—”

“No,” he said, cutting her off with an emphatic head shake.

“But we need to be ready for—”

“I said no . This will work.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“We’re not having that conversation now.”

“Then when are we?” she hissed. A few people looked over. She dropped her voice back down. “You want to wait until it’s too late?”

“Joss, we are not having that conversation now.” His tone was final. The two stared each other down until the radio squawked.

“We got a problem, boss.”

Everyone turned to Steve, Matt included, because he was on comms. Wincing, he pressed down the talk button and held the radio up to his mouth with a bandaged hand.

“What is it?” he asked George.

“Debris,” George said. “Damage from the crash. It’s blocking every possible way to get the backup batteries to R2.”

“Are you using the forklift or the tow?” Steve asked.

“Both. We’re clearing debris as fast as we can. But until we get this stuff out of here, there’s no way to get the batteries over there.”

“How long until we lose the second generator?” Joss asked Maggie, who was bent over one of the manuals. The engineer answered but avoided eye contact as she hedged.

“Goddamn it.” Joss cut her off. “No one’s quoting you. What do you think?”

Maggie looked up. “I’m shocked it hasn’t gone out already.”

Joss spun. “We have to. There’s no other way.”

Ethan hesitated.

“Ethan!” Joss stepped around the desk to face him directly. “This is the hard call. This is the tough choice. We can’t risk it. We have to move now.”

“What does she mean?” Matt whispered to his dad. Steve shook his head, not understanding either.

“We wait until we lose the second generator,” Ethan said. “We make no decisions until we lose two.”

“If we wait, there won’t be enough time,” Joss said. “Damn it, Ethan. Find a backbone!”

“The priority is getting the batteries there! We work that problem first. If the second generator goes before that, then—”

“You’re stalling. You don’t want to make the call. You know it has to be done—”

“Maybe. Maybe not. And if—”

“Ethan, goddamn it! Why are you at the controls? This, right now— this is the job.”

Everyone in the room watched Ethan and Joss stare at each other in their stalemate—as a loud alarm suddenly went off.

A split second later, the lights went out.

The second generator was dead.

You could feel the collective heartbeat rise as they all looked at one another in the ghostly glow of the emergency lighting and blinking red and white lights on the panels while the alarms blared.

There was only one generator left, the third backup generator. Once it blew, the whole plant would go dark. The pool, the reactor. Total station blackout. Everything would fall into runaway heating until it ignited. And once it did, everything burned.

Ethan shut off the alarms. His ears rang in the sudden silence. Joss waited.

“Okay,” he said finally.

She hung her head. Not satisfied but, rather, devastated to be getting her way.

“We start the pump system manually,” he said.

Someone was going to have to go into the water.