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 erupted 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.