Thinking quickly, Lucas held the counter to a section of wall in the tunnel and confirmed that it showed low amounts of radiation. He then spread a small amount of the black liquid from his chest onto the wall with his free hand and held the Geiger counter up again. Where the readings had previously shown a nearly radiation-free section of the wall, the counter was spiking into the red zone again. Lucas stood up shakily and turned to Yuri.
“Did any of that black shit get on you?” He held his hand up to Yuri, showing him the black liquid he was referring to. Yuri shook his head as he glanced at the Geiger counter, then back at Lucas.
“How much is on me?” Lucas turned around in the hall as Yuri raised his flashlight. The look on Yuri’s face told Lucas the answer almost as soon as he said it.
“You’re covered, Lucas. It’s all over your arms, your legs and your chest. Your mask looks pretty much clear, but the rest of you is coated with it.”
Lucas nodded grimly and put his Geiger counter back into his vest. “Back up more. You don’t want to get this stuff on you.” Yuri quickly retreated back down the hall, away from Lucas and the passageway that was coated in the radioactive liquid. Lucas walked a few paces toward Yuri and stopped, leaning his SVD up against the wall of the passageway.
“You’re sure my mask is clean?” Lucas twisted his head again and Yuri nodded, too stunned to speak.
“Good.” Lucas unbuckled his right glove and pulled it off, raising his hand away from his sleeve to avoid coating it with the black liquid. He reached back to his mask and released the catch on the back, feeling it slide forward on his head as he loosened it up. Once he removed the straps, he pulled the mask off and tossed it toward Yuri, who instinctively caught it and then dropped it to the ground in surprise.
Lucas’s dark hair was glistening with sweat from exertion and he rubbed his face with his ungloved hand, glad to be free from the restrictive confinement. Yuri slowly picked up the mask again and looked it over, amazed by the amount of circuitry and wiring inside. Lucas stepped back from Yuri as he looked down at his body again, shaking his head at how much of the black liquid was present.
“Don’t you need this?” Yuri held out the mask for Lucas.
“No. Now it’s your turn to wear it. The mask won’t protect you from radioactive contamination on your skin, but most of the stuff in Prip’Yat is in the dirt and dust. This should keep you safe from most of the hotspots as you run back to your car.”
Yuri shook his head firmly. “We’ve had this conversation too many times already. I’m going with you.”
“Yuri, shut the hell up and listen to me.” Free of the mask, Lucas’s voice was louder than he had intended. Yuri stopped speaking and stared at him.
“This black stuff is killing me. I’m already dead. Even if I got to a decontamination chamber now, I’d die within a few weeks.” As if to purposefully emphasize this point, Lucas grimaced and gripped his head as another wave of pain washed over him. “I’m in the early stages of severe radiation poisoning. Whatever this is, it came from that thing when I shot it. I’m committed to this now.”
“So am I!” Yuri protested.
Lucas nodded and made a circular motion with his hand. “Yes you are, but not in the way you think. Turn over the mask and look on the side.” Yuri flipped the mask around in his hands until he was looking at the interior again.
“Now you see that little indent next to the left earpiece? If you push that in and twist, it’ll eject the memory chip for the mask’s monitoring system. Don’t do it now, though. Eject it once you’re clear of the city.”
Yuri brushed his finger over the indent and examined it as he spoke. “Monitoring system?”
“The mask has an integrated camera that looks out the front, along with an audio recorder. All of the data is saved to the mask’s memory chip for post-operational analysis.”
“I don’t understand… why did you give me this?”
Lucas smiled through another wave of pain. “Two men died here tonight and the bodies of hundreds more are in the lake outside this complex. I’d bet there are even more inside the reactor chamber or wherever this thing calls home around here.
“If both of us die tonight, no one will ever know about what happened here. Even if a recovery team finds the memory chip, they’ll just hide it away. The only way to make sure people know what happened is if you take the chip and distribute its contents.”
Yuri sputtered in response. “But my cousin! That thing killed him! I have to destroy it!”
“There are bigger things at stake here than your cousin’s death, Yuri.” Lucas’s voice was warm, though it cut straight to Yuri’s heart like a knife. “What about those other people? What about Iosif? Who’s going to make sure people know what happened to them? This isn’t something that can stay hidden. This is the second creature that we know about. If there are more out there, we can’t let our governments hide them from the world.”
Lucas was preparing to physically intimidate Yuri in order to convince him to leave until he heard Yuri’s next statement.
“Okay, I’ll do it. How do I get out of here?”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Lucas winced as he stepped into the reactor chamber. Without the benefit of his mask, he could feel and taste the radiation almost immediately. The flavor of heavy metals danced on his tongue as he tried not to think about the incredible amount of damage that his body was taking in addition to the damage already done by the black liquid. He moved as quickly as he could in the chamber, trying to stay one step ahead of the creature that pursued him. Venturing directly into the heart of reactor number four wasn’t Lucas’s original plan, but invading the creature’s inner sanctum was the best way he could think of to ensure that the beast came directly to him and left Yuri alone.
After he had convinced Yuri to leave, Lucas followed him for half a mile down through the passages and watched him running across the power plant construction yard toward Prip’Yat before descending back down into the tunnel system. He told Yuri that this was for his own protection, but in reality he wanted to make sure that the young man followed through on his commitment and didn’t try to come back and help him. Lucas removed the wheel from the hatch before moving back into the tunnel system, ensuring that Yuri wouldn’t be able to get back in even if he had a change of heart.
Before they parted ways, Lucas left Yuri with explicit instructions on what he should do. “Run through the city and don’t stop for anything until you reach your car. Remove the memory chip from the mask and then throw the mask and your shoes away before you get in the vehicle. If you’re interrogated by the military, tell them that you were going to meet a girl near the city but you heard an explosion and decided to call the whole thing off. Wait forty-eight hours and then get the information from that chip to every news source on the planet.”
Yuri had expressed significant concerns over whether or not he would be attacked by the creature, but Lucas assured him that the chances of that happening were extremely remote. Lucas wasn’t completely convinced of this himself, but given that he was the one covered in radiation and had hurt the beast, he hoped that it would hunt him instead of going after Yuri. Besides, he thought, that thing is probably nursing its wounds somewhere close by. If he could find the beast while it rested, he had high hopes of killing it before succumbing to the radiation poisoning that was ravaging his body. No better place to look than the reactor chamber full of delicious radiation.