First a red line flashed above the airlock, then a second. A brief message in Danish appeared on the terminal, followed by English, French and Russian. Claudia read only the first part, as the rest was already clear.
SECURITY ACCESS AUTHORISED.
“Too late,” said Anya.
Shane was still standing next to Ilya, his protective coat half-slid down, his face pale from the frost of the temporal eruption. Ilya still had his hand on Shane’s arm, as if he needed to remind himself that Shane hadn’t vanished into the Pleistocene.
Claudia quickly slipped the puck into the inside pocket of her protective cloak and reached for the spanner, which now looked almost like a scientific instrument.
The outer airlock door opened. Through the pane, Ravn could be seen.
She was still wearing the ice-white gown from the gala evening, but the courtly veneer had grown thinner. Behind her stood three guards in ice-white protective jackets. No drawn weapons. Not yet. Ravn held a card up to the reader, its blue strip accepted immediately.
“Universal card,” murmured Claudia.
“Of course she has one,” said Anya. “People like her are always given doors.”
The inner airlock door slid open.
Cold air poured out. Ravn stepped inside, and for a single moment her face lost control.
She didn’t see the four intruders at first.
She saw the Neptunium rings.
The six dark circles stood in an emergency configuration, offset, dull, covered in frost. Between them there was neither a white window, nor a storm, nor any trace of the Pleistocene. Only an empty space hung in the air. Ravn’s horror was brief, but it was real.
“What have you done?” she asked.
Claudia raised an eyebrow. “I suppose this isn’t the official technical presentation.”
Ravn ignored her. Her gaze shifted to the rings, then to the terminal, then to Shane and Ilya on the frozen floor.
“You deactivated the portal?”
“It tried to swallow me,” said Shane.
“Then you were standing in the wrong place.”
Ilya took a step forward. “Careful!”
Ravn looked at him as if he were a very sporty stain on an expensive carpet.
“Mr Rozanow, you are not in a position here where your tone matters.”
At Ravn’s nod, the three guards drew their weapons. Anya then raised her pistol.
“Back off,” she said.
The three guards reacted immediately. One reached for his hip. The second shifted his weight. The third looked at the reactor, as if he didn’t know whether to be more afraid of Anya or the plant.
Anya wasn’t aiming at Ravn.
She was aiming at the micro-spherical cluster generator.
Claudia spun round to face her. “Are you mad? That’s a reactor.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t aim at it.”
“That’s why it works. I can only shoot one of the three armed men quickly enough before the others react. But none of them would fire a shot now, as long as there’s a risk that I might hit the reactor first.”
Ravn slowly raised a hand. The guards froze.
“Ms Amasowa,” said Ravn, “you won’t shoot the reactor. It’s multi-layered and stabilised. Your bullet wouldn’t do any harm. The reactor withstands pressures of over 4000 bar inside – what do you think you could possibly do to it?”
“Do you really want to try that?”
“We all want to live, don’t we?” Ravn tried a more diplomatic approach. Her ice-white high heels looked completely out of place in this setting.
“I want many things. Right now, I want you and your men to go back into the airlock.”
Ravn looked at Anya. Then at Claudia, then back at the stabilised rings.
“The device isn’t your property.”
“Which one?” asked Claudia. “The illegal reactor or the cold time portal in the basement in the middle of Copenhagen?”
Ravn didn’t smile.
“You don’t understand what you’ve damaged.”
“Yes, I do,” said Claudia. “Just not why you thought you were allowed to build it.”
A warning signal flashed on a side console. The generator was running steadily, but the collapsed portal mechanism had forced several backup systems into standby mode. Streaks of frost were thawing on the transparent shields and dripping as meltwater onto the concrete floor. The room was working against itself.
Ravn signalled her guards with two fingers to step back.
One of them wanted to object. She looked at him. He left.
The three guards stepped back into the airlock.
Anya kept the pistol pointed at the generator.
“Now you,” she said.
Ravn moved backwards in her high heels; just one step. Then she took advantage of Claudia’s gaze on the pistol.
Her hand shot towards the wall console next to the airlock. No large switch. No red lever with a warning sign. Just a yellow control knob, half hidden behind a protective cover. Ravn yanked it down.
Deep beneath the floor, a motor sprang to life.
Claudia turned around.
“What…?”
At the far end of the reactor room, by the spent fuel pool, which was illuminated underwater by its own light: a crane moved overhead, slowly, automatically, with the eerie patience of technology that knew no fear.
Two cylindrical drums rose out of the water and broke through the thin layer of ice from before, not without being slightly scratched by the edges of the ice sheets.
They weren’t large. That made them worse. When Claudia saw the yellow paintwork, she knew what was in the drums: vitrified nuclear waste. Water ran down them, forming thin veins as soon as it touched the cold air.
Claudia’s dosimeter began to click louder.
“What is that?” asked Shane.
“A treacherous attempt on our lives,” said Claudia.
Ravn now stepped right back into the airlock. Her voice remained calm.
“You wanted evidence. Here it is. Have fun transporting it.” With that, she closed the airlock door and swiped her universal card over the reader. The brief red beam of light around the doorframe made it clear to the four remaining people that there was no way out now. The room itself was changing too. A reinforced protective dome descended from a recess in the ceiling to cover the reactor. Four yellow warning lights began to flash in rotation.
“Warning! Increase in radiation levels. Perform decontamination.”
Claudia was already by the barrels. She held out the dosimeter, looked at the display and fell very, very silent.
“Everyone back.”
Ilya grabbed Shane and pulled him a step back.
Anya looked at Claudia. “How bad is it?”
“Significantly higher than the surrounding area. Not immediately lethal as long as we keep our distance, but I don’t want to stand around here for long.”
She went to the equipment cupboard, flung it open and pulled out masks.
“Everyone put on masks now and fasten your gloves properly. No arguments!”
Anya tore open a packet of iodine tablets and handed one to Claudia before swallowing one herself. She also held out one of the small pills to Shane and Ilya.
Shane took a mask. “I’m not taking anything!”
Claudia looked at him briefly, surprised. Anya held the tablets firmly out towards him.
“It’s just a precaution.”
“A Russian spy is making me swallow a tablet in a reactor room with a flashing yellow light? You don’t really think I’m going to do that, do you?”
Ilya took the tablet and swallowed it whole. “Disgusting without vodka. And don’t make a fuss—you’ve already swallowed other Russian things today.”
Shane flushed red immediately despite the cold, but Claudia remained impassive as she took a reading with the dosimeter, whilst Anya put on her mask and tightened her gloves. Had no one noticed Ilya’s suggestive joke? Or were there more important matters at hand than questions of personal prestige?
“We should get as far away from the barrels as possible. The glass helps us, but the duration of exposure is harmful. Let’s hope the alarm here is connected to the public fire brigade.”
Suddenly, a commotion erupted from the airlock.
A dull thud. A stifled scream. The short, sharp crackle of a stun gun. Then again. Something clanged against metal. A voice cursed in Danish, but broke off mid-word.
All four looked towards the airlock.
Anya raised her pistol.
Shane said, “That doesn’t sound like Ravn.”
The outer door opened.
Someone swiped a card through the reader.
The inner airlock unlocked after the red light went out. Only the yellow rotating lamps continued to emit their unsettling message.
Paloma stepped inside. She was wearing the hotel staff’s ice-white uniform, but her blouse was cut far more revealingly than the other maids’. In one hand she held Ravn’s universal card, in the other a stun gun. A second one hung from her hip. Her hair was pulled back tightly, and her smile had the radiant friendliness of a woman who had just incapacitated four people and considered the evening improved for it.
“Buenas noches,” she said. “Did anyone call room service?”
Anya stared at her. “You?”
Claudia looked at the card. “You killed Ravn?”
“Ravn and his bear-like companions have been subdued for about thirty minutes. One of them went down harder than expected. Denmark should let its staff dance more.”
Shane blinked. “Who are you?”
Paloma looked at him. “The saviour, if you cooperate. A problem, if you don’t.”
Ilya muttered: “That’s a popular profession tonight.”
Paloma walked towards the Neptunium rings. Her expression immediately turned serious.
“I want the rings.”
Anya gave a cold laugh. “For whom?”
“Cuba.”
“Of course.”
“Why ‘of course’?”
“Because in this cellar, every power in the world has apparently just decided to take home a souvenir from the Ice Age.”
Claudia stepped between Paloma and the rings. “No one takes anything until these radioactive barrels are secured.”
Paloma looked at the cooling pond. Then at the two barrels.
“Ah. Ravn was in a bad mood.”
“Ravn put a radioactive clock in our room,” said Shane.
Ilya nodded. “And we’re the hands.”
Claudia pointed at the barrels. “Sports commentary later.”
“I found him helpful,” said Shane.
“I didn’t.”
Paloma slipped Ravn’s card into her pocket. “I’ve prepared two vehicles in the underground car park. Lead-lined boots. A hotel delivery van and a service vehicle from the refrigeration company. Both in the underground car park, ready to go.”
Anya gave her a sharp look. “You knew about this.”
“I knew Stromberg was hiding something. I didn’t know that, alongside six cartwheel-sized rings, there were also two very unfriendly rubbish bins. But I’m flexible.”
“The rings aren’t going to Cuba,” said Anya.
“Yes, they are!” said Paloma.
Claudia laughed dryly. “How generous. So we’re splitting the apocalypse into travel-sized portions?”
Paloma turned to her. “You want to give them to Hesse?”
“I want to stop them ending up in secret service briefcases.”
Anya said, “And I want to stop them disappearing into a Hessian power station that buys waste because it can’t pay for its future.”
Claudia gave her a venomous look. “Winden doesn’t need time portals.”
“But it needs materials.”
“Winden needs refurbishment.”
“That’s what all plants say just before they close.”
Paloma raised her hand. “Ladies! The radiation levels won’t go down just because we argue more politely.”
Shane looked at Ilya. “That was surprisingly sensible.”
Ilya nodded. “I hate it when armed people are sensible.”
Claudia checked the dosimeter on the barrels again.
“We need distance, shielding and movement. No long discussions. The barrels mustn’t stay here, and certainly not the rings. When Ravn wakes up, she’ll lock down the whole system and call in more men. And if the barrels are left standing open here, all of us will end up marvelling at plastic waste and efficiency presentations up there.”
Anya said, “The data first.”
“I’ll take the data,” said Claudia.
“The data is going to the Soviet Union,” said Anya.
“Copies? You don’t have to copy data by hand; you can just email the data to each other later. Then everyone will have a complete copy!” said Shane.
Everyone looked at him.
He raised his hands. “What? There are copies, aren’t there? Even I know that.”
Ilya looked at Anya. “He’s really clever sometimes.”
“I’ve heard that,” said Shane.
Claudia shook her head reluctantly. “You don’t seriously believe that the KGB is going to send a mass email to every interested party from Havana to Wiesbaden containing top-secret reactor blueprints. Francine de la Motte gets the reactor. Or at least enough to get the WEO involved here.”
“And Cuba gets?” asked Paloma.
“Not the reactor,” said Claudia.
“Not all the rings,” said Anya.
Paloma smiled. “Then three.”
“Two,” said Anya.
“Three,” said Paloma. “I’ve got the vehicles.”
“Three,” said Claudia suddenly.
Anya turned to her. “You’re a poor negotiator.”
“No. I’m calculating. Six rings make a system. Three and three are two incomplete half-disasters. Better than a full one.”
Paloma nodded. “I like her.”
“I don’t like you yet,” said Claudia.
“That might change in the underground car park.”
“Unlikely.”
Ilya pointed at the barrels. “And the glowing fish pots?”
Claudia sighed. “They’re coming with us. If we leave them here, Ravn will use them as an excuse to keep the room hidden or to have to kill people to protect them from radiation.”
Shane looked at the two barrels. “Who’s taking them?”
“All of us,” said Claudia. “With trolleys.”
Paloma went to the back wall and pulled away a cover. Behind it stood three flat trolleys with metal sides, apparently for heavy technical parts. She was right: she was flexible.
“First trolley: three rings,” said Paloma. “I’ll take that one. I’ll lead the way and get the vehicles ready.”
Anya said immediately, “You’re going alone with three neptunium rings?”
“No. I’m going with three neptunium rings, a universal map and a head start. That’s different.”
“I could stop you.”
“Then Ravn will wake up, and soon we’ll all be wearing nothing but handcuffs and radiation protection. Or she’ll sink us into the cooling pond and close the lid.”
Claudia was already pushing the first trolley towards the rings. “Enough. Loosen the ring mountings. Don’t touch the inner surfaces. No jolts. The neptunium itself is relatively harmless. But you shouldn’t let any splinters get in or bite them off. We’ll cover the barrels with the remaining lead jackets.”
Ilya helped Shane lift the first ring out of its mount. The metal was heavier than it looked, and cold enough that a pain crept into his fingers even through the gloves.
“It feels like a trophy nobody was meant to win,” said Shane.
“Then don’t drop it,” said Ilya.
“That was my plan.”
They placed the ring on Paloma’s trolley. Then the second. Then the third. Paloma secured them with metal straps, checked the wheels and looked towards the airlock.
“Thirty minutes was optimistic,” she said. “We should settle on twenty.”
“You’re worse than a coach,” said Shane.
“I’m more effective.”
Paloma started the car. She stopped in front of the airlock.
“The underground car park is two levels up. We need to go left through the service corridor and then to the goods lift.”
Anya asked, “And the card?”
Paloma tapped her bag. “I’ll go first. You won’t need it because I’ve got the vehicles ready to go.”
Claudia looked at her. “We need the card to lock the airlock from the outside and trap Ravn inside.”
Paloma tossed it to her.
“But don’t do anything stupid. Kuba isn’t naive.”
Claudia caught it. Paloma disappeared into the airlock with the first vehicle. She was struggling with the heavy vehicle, but tried not to show it. The doors closed behind her. Three neptunium rings rolled out of the reactor room with her towards the underground car park.
Left behind were three rings, two barrels and four people who trusted each other too little to work slowly.
Claudia slipped the spare card into the slot and walked over to the terminal.
“Shane, you hold the vehicle. Ilya, load rings four to six and secure them.”
Anya stepped up to the console and inserted the data stick she’d brought with her into the slot. “You’ll get a copy; you can give that to the princess or la Motte, but only for the reactor.”
“That’s almost likeable.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
The data transfer began.
After Ilya had huffed and puffed his way into hoisting the rings into the vehicle, Claudia directed him to the two barrels.
The third trolley was loaded with these two barrels. Claudia wouldn’t let anyone near until she’d attached additional shielding plates to the sides. The dosimeter was still clicking, but more slowly.
“It doesn’t look good,” she said. “But it should help for the short journey to the underground car park.”
“We’re good at short bursts in ice hockey,” said Ilya.
“That’s not a line change.”
“Everything’s a line change when you’re desperate enough.”
Shane grabbed the trolley. “I wish that were less plausible.”
A distant sound came from the airlock.
Someone groaned. Ravn or a guard. Everyone paused.
“Time,” said Anya.
They pulled the trolleys towards the airlock. Claudia went last, glancing back once more into the reactor room: the generator beneath the concrete dome, the yellow rotating light, the ticking dosimeter in her hand, the empty portal frame, frost on metal, the spent fuel pool open like an eye that had seen too much.
Then she stepped into the airlock.
Outside, Ravn and the three guards were indeed lying on the ground. Not looking good, but breathing. Paloma had worked with precision. Claudia bent briefly over Ravn and removed her white-gold necklace and, above all, her communication bracelet, and pocketed both.
“She won’t be phoning from down here any time soon.”
Anya nodded approvingly. “Better to be thorough.” She went to the landline phone on the wall and ripped the receiver off with a sharp tug, then stamped it into two pieces.
Shane looked at the unconscious Ravn. “Are we locking her in?”
“Yes,” said Claudia.
“Is that legal?”
Anya, Claudia and Ilya looked at him simultaneously.
Shane raised a hand. “Never mind. I just wanted to check if anyone else was going to act like that tonight.”
They dragged Ravn and the guards into the inner airlock, far enough away from the barrels but safely behind two doors. Claudia placed masks and iodine tablets visibly on the floor for them.
“I’m not cruel,” she said. “Just busy.”
Ilya looked at Ravn. “How long until they wake up?”
“Sooner than we’d like,” Anya feared.
Claudia stepped out, closed the door and held Ravn’s universal card to the reader. The airlock locked from the outside. Red light. Bolts. Silence.
“Now,” she said, “quickly, but as smoothly as possible to the underground car park.”
Shane pushed the trolley with the barrels up. Ilya helped him immediately, without being asked. Anya took the trolley with the three rings. Claudia walked between them, the card in her pocket, the puck strapped to her body, the dosimeter on her lapel, and the wrath of a woman on her face who had just decided that no one was to touch a machine that evening without first being judged by her.
The service corridor lay before them, low-ceilinged, cold and bright.
Somewhere further up, Paloma was waiting with two vehicles and Cuban expectations.
Somewhere even further up, guests were probably still applauding marine conservation.
And behind them, the micro-spherical cluster generator continued to hum alone in the reactor room, as if it hadn’t understood that its secret was now rolling into the underground car park on three trolleys.