"What's the matter?" Robert7 asked when he noted her distraction.
"This is way too much coolant fluid to be missing from the reactors. Something's gone wrong—and I mean very wrong."
"How do you mean? Have you worked with these reactors before?"
"No, but in my bunker, they drilled us in emergency procedures that had to be implemented if there was ever a reactor meltdown. The first problem that always arose was when the coolant fluid evaporated too quickly or leaked out. That led to the containment starting to melt."
"You would think they would know about it," Robert7 said, but his eyebrows raised in full realization after a few seconds. "Unless a whole group of them were arrested during the coup and left unqualified people to simply keep pouring more liquid in."
Jessica13 shrugged. "I guess the bright side to that is they don't have anyone guarding these tunnels. On the downside—"
"We can expect there to be far more radiation here."
She knew for a fact that she preferred dealing with guards than the radiation, but there was no way to change anything.
They continued through the underground labyrinth and to confirm her misgivings, the fluid beneath their feet grew noticeably deeper. She was reluctant to complain about it yet and possibly stir the others to panic, but the counters grew noisier with every step forward. Her feeling was that they now approached one of the cores, and she wasn’t sure it was a place where they wanted to be.
Mini stopped suddenly and raised a hand to make sure everyone could see him in the mist that thickened around them.
"There is a cave-in ahead," the AI alerted them. "We must find an alternate route. Calculating now."
Jessica13 approached the mech and placed her hand on the armor. "How are you doing in there, Mini? Is the radiation affecting any of your core functions?"
"Not as yet, and your concern is appreciated. All my core functions have been thoroughly shielded from radiation and other calamities that might damage them. There is always room for error, of course."
"We’d better not stick around and wait for that to happen. Let's find our alternate route."
Chapter Seventy-Four
The radiation spiked even higher as they pushed on and Jessica13 couldn't help the rising feeling of anxiety with every click from the counters. Sweat traced rivulets down her spine, rather like an insect crawling down her back with every step.
"Mini, are you sure this is the right way to go?" she asked as he led them forward and the team waded cautiously through pools of the coolant.
"It is the only path I can detect that gets us into the city at the assigned location, but we might face difficulties as we get in closer."
"You mean we'll be swimming through this fucking liquid before the end?"
"That is unlikely. But we do appear to be approaching the source of the radiation in these tunnels and the reason why it appears to be spreading."
She wanted to know more but assumed Mini probably didn't know more than what he had told her. They would have to find out personally.
They reached the end of the tunnels but instead of a cave-in, the section was intentionally walled off with a solid concrete slab blocking their path. Thankfully, there was a steel stepladder that led them to a small yet heavy steel door. They needed the Minato to pull it open, and she noticed that rust had begun to form on the hinges.
When the Minato opened it, they stepped cautiously into a small control room. She could make out more than a few different control features, all of them antiquated by well over a hundred years. The reactor and the control room had likely been put in place many, many years before the Invaders—probably before their first attack.
"Well, that explains why they haven't maintained this place," she commented and moved closer to the controls. They were a little beyond the mechanical engineering she understood, but the basics were the same. From there, it wasn't difficult to tell what the controls were for and what the gauges measured. They had all been made by the same hands, after all.
"What are you looking at?" Robert7 asked and peered through the sealed and laminated windows of the control room. The steam outside made it difficult to see anything in particular, but a deep blue light source remained out there and cut through the mist.
"Temperature measures," she replied, cleaned a few of the gauges, and tapped them to loosen the needles from the dust that had collected inside. "And I think there are some old-fashioned Geiger counters to measure what's going on inside."
"Do you know what's happening?"
Jessica13 scowled at him. Maybe his Athena genes had been more focused on giving him ecological knowledge than mechanical. Or maybe that wasn't how it worked at all.
"The temperatures in there are too high for safe passage. That light you can see is the core already exposed from the coolant fluid. The container has melted away on the top part and it's heating the rest of the room. Right now, it’s almost a hundred and fifty degrees."
"Shit."
"These suits we're wearing aren't designed to take that kind of heat. If we stay in there too long, it'll damage the containment material and we'll be flooded with radiation. Mini, is there any other way into the city?"
"Sadly, this is the only way I can find. We'll have to get across that walkway to the other side of the chamber."
"How long would our suits be able to be in that room before they lose their containment?" Robert7 asked.
She turned to face the mech.
"The suits will maintain containment for about eight seconds while in the chamber. It should be enough time if you move across quickly," the AI explained. He was better at running the calculations than she was.
"About eight
