Linkage: The Narrows of Time (18 page)

“I should have the building’s schematics on
my iPad. Let me see if I can locate it,” Rapp said, using the
device’s touch screen. “What was that horrible sound earlier? It
made my ear bleed.”

“I’ve heard it a few times now,” Lucas said.
“At first, I thought it was being generated by the dome’s energy
matrix and only extended out in front of the dome. Now I’m starting
to think its more like ground-penetrating sonar. Like the anomaly
is searching for something.”

“Searching for what?” Larson asked.

“Probably you,” Kleezebee said with an
annoyed look on his face.

Lucas laughed. Drew didn’t.

“It looks like the reactor’s two floors up,”
Rapp said.

“Do you have the plans for it, too?”
Kleezebee replied.

“Yeah, it’s all right here.”

“Then I might be able to get it working
again.”

“Excuse me, Professor,” Lucas said, “but if
the science lab was destroyed, then I doubt the elevator’s going to
work, even if it has power. There’s nothing at the top of the
elevator shaft.”

“Are there stairs we could take?” Drew
asked.

“Yes, they’re just on the other side of the
elevator,” Rapp said.

“Are you nuts? It’s twenty floors up,” Larson
whined.

“The rest of you should go. I’ll never make
it with this ankle,” Kleezebee said. “I’ll stay behind and see if I
can get the reactor going. We’re going to need it for the
ventilation system. We could be here for a while.”

“I agree. We don’t want to suffocate before
we’re rescued,” Larson said.

“I’ll assist you. I can’t climb all those
steps, either,” the elderly Rosenbaum said to Kleezebee.

“I’m staying, too. Someone has to look after
Dr. Suki,” Rapp said, staring at Kleezebee’s injured leg. “We
should see about getting your ankle into a splint. You really need
to sit down.”

“Then I guess it’s just the three of us,”
Lucas said to Drew and Larson, picking up the theory notebook from
the table. He blew off several layers of dust from its cover, in
the direction of Larson—unintentionally, sort of.

Larson coughed and waved his hands in front
of his face. “If there’s this much damage down here, do you really
think the stairwell is clear all the way to the top? I think not.
It’s nothing but a goddamn waste of time and energy.” He folded his
arms and wrinkled his nose and lips together. “No, I’m going to
wait right here until help arrives.”

Lucas was more than happy that Larson was
staying behind. He held up the notebook in Kleezebee’s direction.
“Professor, this contains a few theories that Drew and I have put
together regarding the energy fields. You might want to review them
while we’re gone?”

“Why don’t you keep them for now? I can’t do
anything with ‘em down here.”

Lucas slipped the notebook into the zippered
section of his brother’s backpack. “Do you remember the way back to
the elevator, brother?”

Drew shook his head. “You should go
alone.”

“No chance. I’m not leaving you behind,”
Lucas said, looking at the others in the room. He knew with
Rosenbaum and Rapp staying behind to help Kleezebee and Dr. Suki,
that would leave only Larson to look out for Drew’s safety. Larson
was the last person he would choose to watch his brother.

Drew looked down at his wheelchair. “If the
elevator’s disabled, how am I supposed to get up the stairs?”

“I’ll carry you on my back if I have to. But
there’s no way in hell I leaving you here. We’re going
together.”

“You two need to get moving. Once you let the
emergency crews know where we’re at, find Trevor. He’ll get you
someplace safe,” Kleezebee said.

“Sure, but what if we can’t find him?” Lucas
replied.

“Then get as far away from Tucson as you
can,” Kleezebee said, tossing a set of keys to Lucas. “My car’s in
the rear parking lot of the apartment complex.”

Lucas didn’t know Kleezebee owned a car. The
professor always seemed to travel around campus on foot. “How will
I know which one it is?”

“It’s a yellow ’eighty-two Volvo. You can’t
miss it. There’s a three-foot crack across the windshield. You can
drive a stick, right?”

“Sure, Professor, no problem,” Lucas replied.
He remembered seeing a faded, piss-yellow four-door sedan parked
next to the dumpster whenever he took out the trash. It had
numerous spider webs stretching from its undercarriage to the
pavement, and a year’s worth of bird crap all over its hood. He
doubted whether the Volvo would start—its battery was probably
dead.

He slid a chunk of cement out of the way and
pushed his brother out the conference room door. There was much
less debris in the hallway as they made their way back to the
elevator through the maze of connecting corridors. When they
arrived, the elevator doors were compacted to half their normal
height and bent outward into the hallway.

“Looks like the elevator is out. I guess that
confirms there’s nothing up top,” Lucas said.

“I wonder if anyone was in it?”

“Let me check,” Lucas said, peeking into the
partially separated elevator doors. He cupped his hands around his
face to block out the hallway light. “It’s too dark in there to
see.” He pressed his right ear against the crack in the doors and
listened. “I don’t hear anything, either. We should keep moving.
Got a long way to go.”

“Do you think Bruno was at his station when
the energy field hit?”

“Jesus, I hope not,” Lucas answered, thinking
about Kleezebee’s note to Trevor right before the meeting started.
“I wonder where Kleezebee sent Trevor and Mary?”

“You don’t think they were in the science
lab, do you?”

Lucas shrugged. “If they were, they’re sushi
by now.” He opened the doorway to the stairs and walked inside.
Above him was a seemingly endless series of switchback metal
stairways that stretched as far as he could see. “Fuck me,” Lucas
said, hearing his voice echo. Light in the stairwell came from
emergency lights installed above each level’s entry door.

“Are you sure you wanna to do this?” Drew
asked.

Lucas bent down with his back to Drew. “Hop
on, like when we were kids. Just don’t squeeze my neck too
tight.”

“Don’t forget my backpack,” Drew said,
climbing up onto Lucas’ back, piggyback-style.

Lucas removed the knapsack from the
wheelchair and handed it to Drew. “Can you put this on, or do I
need to put you down first?”

Drew slung the pack over his right shoulder.
“Nope, I got it.”

Lucas went up six flights of stairs before
his leg muscles screamed at him to stop. He did. “Where’s Trevor
when you need him?” he asked, gasping for air. Stenciled on the
entry door in front of him was the number 14. “For a little guy,
you weigh a shitload. It’s probably all those push-ups every
morning. Or maybe it was all those fucking burritos.”

“You can put me down for a minute if you need
to.”

“No, I wanna keep moving. Just give me a
second.” Lucas took a few deep breaths before resuming the climb.
He used the handrail to balance himself with his brother’s arms
wrapped around his neck. He pressed on, floor-by-floor, ignoring
the occasional twinge of pain in his lower back. When he needed to
rest, he stopped for a few minutes before continuing the
journey.

* * *

Kleezebee and Rosenbaum huddled in the
control room on Sublevel 18, sitting in front of the
twenty-foot-wide operator’s control panel for NASA’s underground
power reactor. The front half of the room was crammed full of
screens, gauges, switches, knobs, and instruments, surrounding
Kleezebee on three sides. It reminded him of NASA’s launch control
room in Houston, which he had seen in person several years
before.

Kleezebee’s injured ankle was resting on top
of an upside-down trashcan while he reviewed the control station’s
instruments. A homemade crutch, fashioned from an old janitor’s mop
and duct tape, leaned against the control desk.

“Can you tell what happened?” Judith
asked.

“Looks like the Reactor scrammed on its own.
The Boron control rods dropped into the core to stop the
reaction.”

“Can you get it restarted?”

“I think so. The coolant pumps are running on
backup power, so the water is still circulating through the core.
All we should need to do is reset the trip condition, and then pull
out the control rods sequentially to restart the reactor.”

“Do you know what order to pull them
out?”

“Luckily, it’s all computerized.” He showed
her the schematics on Rapp’s touch-screen computer. “All I have to
do is tell the computer to initialize the power-up sequence, and
it’ll pull the rods out in the correct order. Then the reaction
should resume automatically and start superheating the water.”

“How hot does the water need to be?”

Kleezebee looked at the schematics and then
pulled up a saturated steam table on the iPad device. “The
reactor’s coolant system is pressurized to 1600 PSI, which means
the water temperature will need to reach 480 degrees Fahrenheit.
Otherwise, it won’t be sufficient for the steam pressure to power
the turbine.”

“How long will it take?”

“It’s a controlled buildup in temperature, so
I’d say about an hour or so.”

Dr. Rosenbaum looked around the room and
asked, “Where exactly
is
this reactor?”

Kleezebee checked the schematics again. “It’s
a hundred feet down the hall, in a separate room.”

“Is it safe to be in here while the reactor’s
powering up?”

“We’ll be fine. The reactor’s surrounded by a
thick, reinforced wall of concrete and there’s a three-quarter-inch
metal plate lining the inside of the room. There’s virtually no
risk of being irradiated.”

Kleezebee used the touch screen interface
embedded into the reactor’s control station to change the computer
display until it read
REACTOR FAST RESTART
. “Trip condition
reset. I’m ready to power-up. We’ll know shortly if this is going
to work,” he said before pressing three different button icons on
the touch screen. The phrase
REACTOR INITIALIZING
started
blinking in center of the screen.

Kleezebee waited a minute. “Looks good. The
control rods are retracting.”

“Should we head back to the others now?”
Rosenbaum asked. She seemed to be in a hurry.

“Not quite yet. Let’s wait here for a bit to
make sure there are no surprises.”

* * *

Lucas carried Drew past the access door to
the third sublevel. Lucas looked up and realized the path above
them was much too dark. “That’s not a good sign,” he said, pointing
up. “There should be more light.” He hated to admit it, but it
looked like Larson was right.

They were able to climb two more sections
before they were forced to stop. The stairwell was almost
completely blocked by twenty-foot-high mound of cement, dirt,
gravel, and other debris that had caved in from above, but it was
not completely solid. A steady stream of light was shining through
a gap at the very top of the pile. He pointed at the opening. “That
may be our only way out.”

Lucas leaned down to allow Drew to slide off
him, welcoming the chance to straighten up his sore lower back. He
rubbed the area just above the back of his belt, kneading it with
both hands to see if he could loosen up the knot that had formed.
If he had to carry Drew much farther, he might never walk upright
again.

There was a twisted section of metal stairway
sticking out of the wreckage at a downward angle. The lowest part
of it was about ten feet off the ground. He thought they might be
able to use it as a ladder, if they could reach it. “The stairs
must have broken loose from above,” he said, scooping up a handful
of loose dirt and gravel. “All this must have come from up
top.”

“You’d think it would’ve been sucked up by
the dome.”

“It might’ve been just beyond the reach of
the energy field. The dome probably shook it loose and it fell down
the stairwell. There’s no telling what’s piled up, up there.”

“Maybe we should go back?”

“Hell, no. I just hauled your butt up
seventeen floors. Let’s just take a minute and think.”

Lucas looked up and studied the opening where
the light was shining through. It appeared to be about two feet in
diameter and might be big enough for someone to crawl through
it.

“Drew, if I can get you up there, do you
think you can squeeze your ass through that opening?”

“Me?”

The brothers both had thirty-two inch waists,
but Lucas’ shoulders were wider despite Drew’s powerful biceps. He
wore a large shirt and Drew a medium. “Yes, you. I’ll never
fit.”

Drew wrinkled his forehead and shook his
head. “I don’t know. Looks awfully small to me.”

“Well, you need to try. I don’t see any other
option, do you?”

“Let’s assume for a moment I can get through,
what about you?”

“I’m hoping you can crawl up a couple more
flights and yell for help. We’re not that far from the surface. The
dirt and stairs had to fall in from somewhere. It should be open,
up top.”

“And, if it’s not?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,”
Lucas said, bending down to let Drew shimmy up on his back.

Lucas worked his way up the wreckage by using
the fallen cement blocks as footholds. It was difficult to maintain
his balance with Drew hanging off him, but he managed to climb up
to within a foot of the metal framework he intended to use as a
ladder. “It’s time to put all the pushups to good use. See if you
can reach it.”

Chapter
15

Extrication

Drew reached up with his left hand and
clutched the lowest part of the fallen metal. He let go of his
brother’s shoulder with the other hand and hung free from the
framework using both hands. He pulled himself up three rungs before
wedging his right elbow between two V-shaped sections of the metal
scaffolding to catch his breath and plan his next move. A flat
section of metal was to his left, which he could use as a resting
platform. He just needed to figure out a way to get his body onto
it.