4.26.86

Meetings are always a drag.

That’s what Ryan Bergara, Professor and Nuclear Science Expert, thinks as he waits to be called on. Usually the Comrade General Secretary doesn’t call on people like Ryan for their perspective, so this must be something big. For a moment Ryan allows himself to be pleased that a man in such high standing, or at least one of the men that attends these meetings as a general rule, thought him worthy enough. 

For but a moment he’s proud. Then a receptionist with a blond up-do and a false smile hands him a dossier. She’s motioning that the meeting will let him into the room shortly, but she also motions to the typed pages. As Ryan takes them, he gives her almost no second glance. There’s something to read, some information to soak in. Ryan is hungry for this, has been for the last hour and a half in this chair.

‘Chernobyl Incident - 4.26.86’

Incident. Ryan blinks for a moment. He thinks back to the many many pages he requested about the power plant when it was under construction. He thinks back to the RBMK-1000, the four reactor cores within the plant itself. They’re indestructible, he’s told. Ryan is sure the incident has to do with something else. Maybe an understaffed graveyard shift blew a pipeline, and this is all just paperwork for him to advise on. 

‘Casualties.’ That’s the section that stands out to Ryan. Not because it’s simply there. Casualties come with the territory when there’s so many people working in one place. No, what gives him pause is what is underneath that. ‘A fireman was severely burned on his hand by a chunk of smooth black mineral on the ground outside the reactor buildings.’

Smooth black mineral. Outside the reactor buildings?

Ryan flicks back a page. He’s gone too far, skipped ahead to the twist in the story before getting any context. That has to be it. He flicks back to the first page of text and scans through it. No. No, he didn’t need much context for this. None of it makes sense, and the twist explains everything. Ryan feels the back of his neck prickle. Surely the hairs are standing up back there, standing to attention at the thought of… 

“Sir?” The receptionist still wears a fake smile. Ryan looks up to her, then back down to the dossier, then back up to her one last time. She motions to a door. Ryan nods and through his shock he manages to utter a ‘thank you’ to her, though he doesn’t know what he’s thanking her for exactly. 

Ryan is in awe for most of the meeting’s introductions. He gives his own only briefly, and everyone else seems more than happy about that. Ryan has the distinct feeling that he’s only here for the sake of numbers, or perhaps as a scapegoat. ‘We had a Nuclear Science Professor there, if we had said anything out of the ordinary he would have corrected us! He agreed with everything we said.’

But then someone else starts to speak. Comrade General Secretary obviously thinks highly of him, because when Ryan gives him a glance at the end of the table he’s not frowning. He’s not smiling either, but not frowning is a good sign. Great, even.

Ryan looks at the man speaking. He’s tall, thin, and speaks with the confidence of a man who either hasn’t received the dossier Ryan got… or he’s an idiot. His name is unknown, Which gives Ryan cause to listen closer. Maybe someone else will interrupt with a name, and this man will pause in recognition. 

“Thank you, Comrade General Secretary. I’m pleased to report that the incident at Chernobyl Power Plant is stable and under control. We’ve secured the entire region with patrols, both civilian and military. We have a Specialised General - Pikalov - on route to deal with the chemical burn.”

Ryan looks back down to the dossier. He did see several mentions of a fire, but what about the ‘mineral burn’?

“I’ve been told,” Says the thin yet confident man, “That the radiation in the area close to the buildings is three point six Roentgens. Now, I’m no expert, but I’ve been told that’s the same as a chest x-ray so… if any of you need a check up you’re welcome to head on over.”

Chuckles disperse through the room. Ryan frowns again, but says nothing. He’s a stranger here. Strangers don’t speak up, especially not in a meeting full of superiors. But still, the confident man is sitting back down in his chair. He’s looking around the room and settling on the General Secretary. He’s finished with his report, like that’s all that needs to be said. 

Comrade General Secretary nods once and shows his shiny bald head in the process. It’s like an omen to Ryan, as he hears a closing speech from the man. Everyone at the table begins to stand. 

“Well, it sounds like you have everything under control. I’d like to call this meeting to a close and-”

Ryan slams his hands onto the table. “No!” He calls out suddenly. As soon as the words are out of his mouth, and several burning pairs of eyes are on him, he falls silent… but he has to say something now. Not just because of the outburst but out of principle.

“No.” Ryan’s fingers twitch as he flips open the dossier. “On page three, under ‘Casualties’ it says a firefighter was burned by a smooth black mineral outside the building at the site of the incident. Graphite. That mineral is graphite. There’s graphite on the ground. ”

What follows is silence. Complete and utter silence. Not a single person refutes what he says, or agrees with him, or even nods his way. They all stare. A few flip to page three and stare at it as if it were a picture book, and Ryan was some sort of child that read a simple word wrong.

“Well,” The confident man starts. He doesn’t look at Ryan though, but instead straight at the head of the table. Straight to the Comrade General Secretary. “There was an explosion at the site, sir, but the word ‘explosion really makes it seem more disastrous than it actually is. It was from a water tank within the facility-”

Once again Ryan finds himself interrupting when he absolutely shouldn’t be. Hell, under no other circumstances would he have even kept this meeting any longer. But now? Now he’s got to, for the sake of everyone here. Everyone at Chernobyl.

“There’s only one place in the entire facility that graphite is used, and that’s in the reactor core.” Ryan finishes his sentence as he prods the dossier in front of him. Everyone still stares, so Ryan continues on. “If the graphite is outside the building on the ground, then it’s not a water tank that’s exploded. It’s the reactor core. It’s open! ”

Silence.

The General Secretary hums a little to break the silence. He drops his dossier to the table, and turns. “Comrade Madej.” He addressed the confident man. For a moment Ryan is elated that he knows this man’s name.

Then Comrade Madej opens his mouth. 

“Comrade General Secretary I can assure you that Professor Bergara is mistaken. Officers I spoke to - respectable people who are there at the site - report a control system tank explosion. And as for the radiation-”

“Yes, three point six.” Ryan rolls his eyes. He holds up his dossier. “I read that too, Comrade Madej, but there’s something bothering me about that as well. On top of the fact that you’re wrong about it being ‘equivalent to one chest x-ray’, there’s something else.” Ryan pauses. Madej is staring at him, jaw tight and eyes narrowed. Ryan Bergara strives forward in his speech. “Three point six is the max limit of their reading equipment on hand at the plant. They gave you the number they had, but I suspect it is much higher than that.”

“What are you suggesting?” Madej asks.

His jaw looks so sharp that Ryan feels his knees weaken just a little. He straightens his tie some, loosens it just a tad, then prods his dossier again. “If I’m right this fireman was holding the equivalent of four million chest x-rays, right in the palm of his hand.”

“Mister Bergara, there is no place here for hysterics!”

“It’s not hysterics if it’s true! ” Ryan refutes. He feels like a caged Siberian Tiger with all these men proding him and staring at him from the safety of their higher standings.

For a moment Ryan is proud of this moment. He’s proud of standing up for what he believes and knows is right, despite everything. But that moment passes rather quickly when the General Secretary cuts in. Everyone may as well be watching a tennis match, because their eyes go from Ryan at the lowly end of the table to the General Secretary and the socially higher end. 

Game. Set. Match.

“Comrade Ryan Steven Bergara! All I see is a man who was invited here spreading misinformation and alarmist ‘facts’ despite what military officials report! I advise you watch your tongue.”

Now Ryan feels like a kicked dog. The man is right, even if Ryan knows he’s also right. “Um,” Ryan swallows. He looks up as if silently begging forgiveness, and doesn’t dare look at Comrade Madej’s face. The man is smug for sure. “I apologize. Please, sir, let me present to you what I believe is a misunderstanding of the information presented-”

“Professor Bergara.” Comrade Madej interjects. But he’s then interrupted by the General Secretary who waves him back into his seat. The man gestured for Ryan to continue.

Ryan nods graciously. He’s been given a second chance, so he re-tightens his tie and stands up a little straighter. “Well, an RMBK reactor uses Uranium-235 as fuel. I’m sure we all know that, so I won’t explain what we’re already acquainted with any further. But… but a single gram of this fuel contains one billion trillion atoms. In every single gram. They’re like bullets, sir. They can travel through anything. Wood, concrete, metal… even flesh. If the reactor core is open, as I believe the information indicates, then three million grams of this fuel is being sucked into the air by winds and smoke from the fire.”

The only person standing at the table is Ryan Bergara. For the first time since the meeting started he feels like everyone is listening to him. Comrade Madej is silent. He looks angry, but he’s not about to create another scene. Ryan stares at him.

“Most of these bullets won’t stop firing for one hundred years. Some of them for thousands. They will be in everything; in the air we breathe, in the food we eat, even the water. Millions of people will die, if not now then in ten years from now.”

Comrade General Secretary looks down to his dossier. “And all of this,” He picks up the stapled thing. “All of this stems from a description of a rock. Is that right?”

Ryan nods.

“Right.” For a moment he seems unphased by what was said. Ryan sits back down in that silent moment, but then the General Secretary speaks up again. “Comrade Shane Madej, I want you to go to Chernobyl to confirm the reports we’ve gotten.”

“Excellent choice, Comrade General-”

“And Professor Bergara is going with you.”

Shane pauses with his mouth open. He looks over to Ryan, and scowls. Ryan scowls right back. Shane speaks up in the boss’ direction. “Sir, I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“Do you know how a nuclear reactor works, Madej?”

Ryan smiles a little. He looks between the two men, then settles on Shane Madej as he mutters a ‘no, sir’, directed at his dossier. Shame. Anger. Ryan revels in it all as he sees it glint across Shane Madej’s face. 

“Then how will you know what you’re looking at? Professor Bergara goes with you. Both of you get home, you leave by tonight. Meeting adjourned.”

“How does a nuclear reactor work?”

Ryan startles. He looks up and frowns. Did Shane Madej just ask him how a nuclear reactor works, or is Ryan simply delusional from anxiety? For a moment Ryan simply looks at the Bureaucrat opposite him, which to Shane must look like a questioning expression because he speaks again.

“Let me put it this way,” Shane Madej leans forward, “Tell me how a nuclear reactor works, or I’ll have one of these guards shoot you before we land this helicopter. I asked a simple question.”

There are two guards. One on each side of Ryan. Neither of them look at Ryan as he throws glances their way, but he feels no hesitation or shock from them at all. No eyebrow twitches. Nothing. They’re more than prepared to follow Comrade Madej’s orders. They’ve probably been told to favor them over all others.

“Well, it’s hardly a simple answer.” Ryan throws a weak comeback Shane’s way, but ends up following the threatening order anyway. “A nuclear reactor makes electricity by creating steam, which turns a turbine that creates electricity.”

Shane raises an eyebrow. Go on.

Ryan sighs a little, and starts to pat his coat pockets. “Where a normal power plant would make electricity by burning coal, a nuclear power plant uses something we call fission. Um.” Ryan can’t find what he was looking for but Shane once again swoops in to stop his pause. Comrade Madej offers a pen, then flips over a piece of paper so he may use it to write on. “First we need an unstable element, in this case it’s Uranium-235. It has too many neutrons, that’s what makes it unstable. A neutron is a, uh-”

“It’s the bullet.” Shane says.

“The bullet.” Ryan agrees. He’s surprised Shane Madej even remembers what Ryan was saying. Surprised that Shane was listening at all, considering how they had been at odds. Perhaps this man isn’t the arrogant fool Ryan thinks he is. They maintain eye contact; for once it isn’t hostile. Ryan breaks it so he can concentrate.“You’re right. So these bullets are flying off of the Uranium, and if we put enough atoms close together these bullets will hit another atom eventually. The force from that impact splits the atom apart and creates energy; that’s fission.”

Shane nods. He’s staring at the diagrams Ryan is drawing. The fact that they’re in a helicopter means Ryan isn’t going to win any awards for the artistry of his diagrams, but they make sense. That’s all that matters.

“What about the graphite?” Shane asks. He tilts his head so he can look at the diagrams better, then his eyes flicker up to catch Ryan’s briefly. They lock eyes again.

“Ah,” Ryan says, “Right. The neutrons are travelling so fast - that’s called a ‘flux’ - that the likelihood of this collision is… well, low. With RBMK reactors, to combat this, we surround the fuel rods with graphite. What this does is moderate the speed of the neutron flux.” Shane blinks hard. Ryan simplifies, but keeps his tone out of the range of condescending. “We slow down the atoms so collision is more likely, and more electricity is created as a result.”

For a moment they stare at each other again. Both of them are silent while Ryan fiddles with Shane’s pen, then realises it isn’t his and places it atop the paper. Shane grabs both and stares at the paper. 

“Good.” He says. Shane folds the paper, pockets the pen, and unceremoniously scrunches up the piece of paper. “Now I know how a nuclear reactor works. Now I don’t need you. ”

Professor Ryan Bergara and Comrade Shane Madej exit the helicopter into a hastily built military command center. There are tents set up that flap with the force of the helicopter, even as it powers down. Trucks are being parked, and Ryan marvels as the trucks are simply left unwashed where they are parked. Military personnel get out of said trucks in ordinary uniforms. Nothing protective. Not even a boot-washing station. Nothing. He gulps. For what feels like the thousandth time since the meeting Ryan hopes that Shane Madej is right. Ryan hopes he’s wrong.

The acrid smell of smoke is in the air as Shane Madej introduces himself to three men Ryan has never seen before. They look at him like he’s a bug under their boot. Ryan looks to the sky to avoid their eyes, and gulps at the sight. Particles of ash float down to the earth. Ash coming from the fire at Chernobyl. Ryan tries to hold his breath like a child going through a tunnel on a road trip. It’s not going to work, he has to breathe. 

“This is Professor Ryan Bergara from the Koruchev Institute. He’ll be accompanying me on the tour.” Shane’s voice shakes Ryan from his staring contest with the ashen sky. He merely nods. Ryan doesn’t see a need to draw out the introductions too much, and he hadn’t been listening to who they were anyway. Anything he said might be out of line for all he knew. 

“Oh, I’ve heard about you.” A man with curly hair and a sly sneer says. Ryan blinks. His eyebrows furrow. “You’re the man who’s been spreading misinformation about graphite and such, isn’t that right Professor?”

Ryan opens his mouth to say something to the effect of ‘it isn’t misinformation if millions of lives are at risk’ but the words never make it out of his brain. 

Because Shane Madej is interrupting him yet again, but in a way that has Ryan stunned. Awestruck. Maybe a little proud, in a way that confuses him.

“Why did I see graphite on the roof when we arrived then, Comrade?” Shane is at least a full head above the rest of the men there, and his rank above them only serves to emphasise that fact. Ryan looks up at him and for a split second their eyes meet. Shane looks impassive. Ryan’s top lip twitches as he tries not to smile. Shane Madej actually learned something from something Ryan told him. Sure, stealing the spotlight wasn’t exactly kind or supportive, but there was a silver lining here and it was benefitting Ryan.

The curly-haired man made a face. Ryan tries to get a handle on what exactly he might be thinking… but the man is a good actor. The expression is gone in the blink of an eye. Replaced with an incredulous scoff. “Graphite? No, Comrade Madej. You’re mistaken, what you likely saw from the roof was burnt concrete. It’s an easy mistake to make-”

“No, that wasn’t burnt concrete. Absolutely not.” Shane says. His eyes are steely as he stands firmly beside Ryan. They almost look like a team, although Ryan feels more like an accessory than a partner.

Ryan once again stares at the unwashed trucks and military personnel. Unwashed. Contaminated. Spreading radiation to their teammates that maybe haven’t seen the fire yet. Everyone here is on borrowed time now. Ryan forces himself to look back to Shane, and then toe three men who all roll their eyes damn near simultaneously.

“Comrade Madej, I can assure you that this visit will turn out in our favor. There’s no reactor exposure, we’ve been told there’s water flowing through it as we speak. It’s stable.”

“How are you measuring the Roentgen output at the site? If you’re right about it being a water tank explosion, then we measure to prove it.” Ryan asks. Shane throws him a glance, but keeps his oppressive gaze locked onto the curly-haired man.

Another to that man’s left speaks up. He’s in military garb, but his face speaks more than the leagues of medals on his coat ever could. “We’re getting a high-range dosimeter brought in.”

Ryan nods. “One of the men here can measure at the site then. Mount the car they drive with the dosimeter. Protect it with lead plating, do anything you can to protect them.” Ryan pauses, glances to Shane, then adds. “But there’s still no guarantee for safety, even then.”

The military man nods. “I’ll go myself, in that case.”

Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej are sent to a mostly vacant tent to wait until the dosimeter reading comes back. It’s at least an hour, maybe two, until they hear something. In that time each of them has done only one thing. Ryan has sat in a corner and ruminated. Shane has paced endlessly, back straight as an iron rod and pace fast. Then, the words they had been waiting for from a guard who peeks his head into the tent.

“The readings are back!”

Ryan almost falls over when he and Shane exit the tent and see what has come back from the Chernobyl plant. There, at the edge of the military compound away from all other personnel, is the military man who volunteered to go by himself to the site. 

Getting hosed down by two men. 

Standing in front of the vehicle that was getting scrubbed, hosed down, and double checked by men in full protection gear. 

Shane must sense the gravity of the situation, because he too stops in his tracks when Ryan does. They both watch side by side as the man waves away those with hoses, and takes off his gloves. He takes off his protection gear and leave it crumpled where it falls. Only then does he approach Shane and Ryan. The other men who met them at the helicopter join too, eager to hear the long awaited news. 

“It’s not three point six Roetgen.” The military man says.

Ryan knows what the number will be, he thinks he at least knows the ballpark figure. That doesn’t stop his chest from constricting as the military man says the number they would all come to remember and dread. 

“It’s fifteen thousand Roetgen.”

It’s been hours since the blast before Ryan Bergara figures out what he thinks is the only quick fix they have. All of the water has been drained from the tanks before they even got to the site, so the only logical way to contain any unescaped radiation would be to dump Boron and Sand into the open wound that used to be Reactor Number Four. It makes sense, but there’s a catch.

No one can get too close to the open core. No one can fly over it without dying within the week. They need tons upon tons of Boron and Sand in order to make any sort of impact on the radiation levels, so what Shane suggests next makes sense. They bring in every single helicopter on standby, load them up with Boron and Sand, and drop it as close as they could.

Drop it and hope the winds carry some into the exposed reactor core.

Hope. 

Ryan Bergara agrees. They set a limit, enlist a radio relay and a person to be in charge of it. They both stand on top of a building nearby, right at the edge, with nothing but the radio relay man and their own company. Ten helicopters whirr in the distance. Below each and every single one was a gigantic box of Boron and Sand. Ryan looks up to Shane as the helicopters close in, then turns to the radio operator.

“Remind them not to get too close to the core.”

Shane stars down Ryan. Ryan stares unblinking back at him. They’re in a brief and wordless battle for leadership. Shane breaks the battle by nodding to the operator.

“Teams One through Ten, come in. Reminder that the minimum distance from the core is ten meters.”

“Copy. Ten meters. Team One, moving in to drop.”

Team One, the helicopter in the start of the conga line of dumping, moves in closer to the core. The smoke billowing from the crash site is thick and black. It looks like it could choke to death before radiation penetrates cells. Ryan watches as the helicopter gets a little too close. The rotating blades cut into the smoke, kick more of it around the vehicle.

“No, no! Tell them they’re too close!” Ryan takes a step forward. He’s right near the edge of the building now.

“Team One, come in. You’re too close to the reactor. Minimum distance is ten meters. You are inside the perimeter.”

No reply comes from Team One. Team Two, just behind them but spared from the smoke, pipes up. 

“Team One, do you copy? You are within the perimeter. Turn back immediately.”

Ryan’s breathing becomes audible and rapid as Team One comes back on the radio, but broken up and filled with static. They’re not visible within the smoke now. Team One has been swallowed up in the choking blackness. It looks like ink spilled into water, and below it is a dim glow that’s visible even in the light of day.

Then it reappears. Shane steps backward, back towards the radio operator as he barks an order. “Get through to them! Tell them to get out of there immediately-”

But Shane is interrupted by a sickening crunch. Even Ryan’s breathing is interrupted by it, because he’s been watching the whole time. He holds his breath as his eyes bug up. Despite the falling ash Shane takes in a gasp of air.

Team One’s rotator blades have made contact with cables from machinery overhanging the core. Both the cables and the blades crunch together and break apart. A hook on the end of the cables falls and just above it, with a sick whirr, the helicopter falls too. They fall behind the structure of the Chernobyl Power Plant, but the collision noise of a Helicopter with hard earth tells Ryan and Shane all they need to know.

All is silent.

Ryan looks down finally, and takes a step back. He tries to collect himself, but there’s no coming back from what he’s seen. Among the fifty-thousand people who live in Pripyat and still reside in the very apartments they’re standing on top of, the lives inside of that helicopter count as the first he feels responsible for losing.

Shane speaks up first. “Ryan.” The first time he ever uses a first name since they met. His voice is soft, low. “Is there any other way? ”

Professor Ryan Bergara shakes his head.

Another pause. 

“Alright.” Shane turns to the radio operator. “Tell Team Two to approach from the west and mind the perimeter.”

Doctor Steven Lim ( PhD) startles awake at his desk for the third time this week. He’s not even sore anymore, because at this point sleeping on a bed would shock his system too much. The desk is his home. And coffee. Coffee is too. Steven makes himself a steaming cup, stretches his aching back, and groans. 

Hot.

It’s hot in his office.

Steven sips his coffee then sets it down on his desk, minding the physics and radiology papers he had been working on pre-sleep. He cracks open a window, and hums as he feels cool air come in.

He startles for a second time that morning when his in-home dosimeter starts to alarm. Steven jerks up straighter, whips his head to the dosimeter. It takes no time at all for him to connect the dots. He slams the windows closed, backs away from them. The alarm still continues to blare. Steven flicks a switch to turn it off. He knows something is wrong now, he doesn’t need the nuisance of a screaming machine. Steven grabs a tissue, opens the window again, and wipes it against the outside glass. It comes back dirty.

Steven makes sure to lock the window before he leaves with the precious tissue. He continues through his place until he gets to his laboratory space. There are machines and canisters everywhere. Steven yawns. He puts the tissue in a slide, covers it, and inserts it into a machine to be read.

What comes back is shocking, to say the very least. He’s in Minsk, the nearest power plant would have to have had a less than common incident to account for this much radiation. Steven is quick to get to the phone, but the first power plant he calls denies anything. The second closest is Chernobyl, but it’s nowhere near enough to account for this.

Right?

Steven swallows. “RBMK-1000 reactor cores. No. No, they’re not responsible.” He mutters to himself. “But they might know what’s going on.”

After several long minutes waiting on the phone, Steven hangs up. No one picked up. He tries another number, this time one of an acquaintance in the workers city of Pripyat overlooking the plant. 

No answer. 

Dial tones every time he tries to call.

Something has gone horribly, irreversibly wrong for every phone number he tries to be down. That’s when Steven decides he needs to get into his car and drive. It will take just over five hours, but he needs to know. He needs to help.

But before he goes he makes one more call. This time to someone else in Minsk who will definitely know what’s going on. As he gets more information from the secretary of a bureaucrat, Steven Lim begins to understand.

He begins to see the grave mistake they’re making even now, even with most of the damage seemingly already done. 

Now Steven has cause enough to run to his car.

“Comrade Bergara.” Shane says as he enters Ryan’s hotel room in Pripyat. He sounds pleased, despite everything.

Ryan stands at the window, staring out of it with an untouched glass of Vodka on a nightstand nearby. Shane closes the door behind him before he speaks again.

“I’ve been told there’s been twenty tons dumped as of fifteen minutes ago.” Shane says. He stands in the middle of the room as Ryan still doesn’t turn around. “What is it?”

Ryan swallows. “Fifty thousand people live here, Madej. Fifty thousand people are here while all of this happens on their doorstep.”

“ We’re here too, Bergara.” Shane says in a reassuring tone. Ryan doesn’t think it’s reassuring though. In fact, it sets him off in a way he had seen coming as soon as he got back to his hotel room.

The Professor turns around, stares at Shane, and holds a hand out as if to say ‘so what?’

“What’s your point? Is that supposed to calm me down, because it doesn’t. It does the exact opposite actually-”

“Calm down, Bergara.” Shane says. His eyes are soft. He saw what happened to the helicopter too, but he thinks Ryan is a little softer than him. Less used to the reality of disasters like this. Less desensitised to death and sacrifice.

“No! No, I won’t calm down, Shane! Everyone here, and that includes us, will be dead in five years from now because of something that they still have no idea is happening! I’m-” But he stops himself. Ryan sees what he’s said affect Shane. He can almost see the words bounce around in his comrade’s skull. 

We’ll be dead in five years.

Ryan knew as soon as he heard the proper Roentgen reading, but Shane is just now realising that the very air they’ve been breathing is killing them. The open wound of Reactor Number Four is killing them, and they’d be none the wiser if Ryan wasn’t an expert.

Shane sits down in the nearest chair. The phone rings as if on cue in some sick comedy. Shane lets it chime once. Twice. Three times. He picks it up on the fourth. “Madej.” He croaks out. Shane leans forward. His own mortality is hurting him, and Ryan can do nothing but hope that whatever information he’s getting will distract them.

When Shane hangs up the phone he joins Ryan at the window. They’re standing close together. If they were the same height their shoulders would touch, but at their current heights Ryan’s shoulder almost touches Shane’s elbow.

“A power plant in Sweden has detected radiation and linked it back to airborne debris from us. The Americans have taken satellite imagery. The reactor. The fire. The smoke. ”

Ryan looks up to Shane. He reaches down to grab his Vodka glass. He drinks half. Shane takes the other half and gulps it down. They both look to the courtyard below as Shane continues. “Kids in East Germany aren’t allowed to play outside because of the radiation fallout.”

Russian occupied East Germany is one thousand three hundred kilometers away. Over eight hundred miles, if his calculations were correct. Ryan and Shane watched the courtyard below as high school kids, oblivious and barely one and half miles away from the radiation epicenter, walked home. They were slow and leisurely. 

“Because of the radiation.” Shane says again, with more finality. His bottom lip shakes some, but Ryan doesn’t see it. Both of them lean closer to each other, each using the other as a metaphorical and literal crutch.

Each keeping the other from falling over.

It takes hours for Steven Lim, Nuclear Physicist and currently panicking man, to arrive at the checkpoint into Pripyat. The guards at this checkpoint always carry guns, Steven knows this because he’s only ever lived in the USSR. All of the guards have guns. But now they hold their guns like they anticipate something happening. There’s a tensity laying dormant in the air, like electricity crackling and raising neck hairs before a devastating strike. 

In this case, Steven fears that strike has occurred once and will occur again unless he gets to whomever is in charge. Whomever will kill millions of people without Dr Lim’s knowledge. 

“Pass slip?” The guard asks as he holds Steven’s passport in his hands. 

Steven methodically taps his fingers against his steering wheel as he speaks, tone firm and frantic. “No I don’t have a pass, but-”

“Get out of here, you need permission to get through this checkpoint now.”

“I know, ” Steven emphasises as he white-knuckles the wheel, “But if you don’t let me in, people will die! Understand? I need to get to whoever is in charge and tell them that-”

“No! No pass-”

“I know what happened!” Steven blurts out. He doesn’t want it to come to this, but he needs to pass on the information that he knows will save several million more people from a terrible fate. “I know about the power plant, I’m a Nuclear Physicist from Minsk. I know the number four reactor is blown, I know the core is exposed, and I have information that will save millions of lives. If I’m not let through they won’t understand what’s happening before it’s too late.”

“I can’t let”

“Yes, you can!” Steven feels the stress starting to break him down. If he were at home he’d simply take a break from work and nap, then come back rejuvenated… but now that’s not an option. He has to get personal. “Let me put it this way if you don’t let me through everyone here will be dead almost instantaneously. It might be two days from now. It might be two hours from now, but I still have time to warn them. Let. Me. Through.”

SIlence and empty rooms always make Ryan feel somewhat at ease. He likes the feeling that no one is watching him, at least not in-person, and the only person making noise is himself. No distractions. Right now that safe space he can relax is in his own hotel bedroom. It’s nothing special. The bed is lumpy, the phone has an awful static to it whenever he takes a call, and the toilet whines when he flushes… but it’s quiet when he needs it to be. Ryan has taken the time to lay down on the best point in the bed - right in the middle - and close his eyes. 

He runs equations through his head. Scenarios. Thoughts of decades from now, when he will likely feel the effects of staying in this very hotel room.

The world is briefly peaceful as Ryan floats away in his mind. 

“Comrade Bergara?”

It’s peaceful until Shane knocks on his door, at least. 

Ryan Bergara sighs audibly, and grunts. It’s sign enough for Shane to come in. When he does come in he does it with a diplomatic nod. Comrade Madej has something in his hands. Wrapped in paper, approximately the shape of two baseballs. Ryan peeks his eyes open slowly, and gives Shane a once-over with his eyes. Shane still hasn’t shaved, even though he has a patchy five o’clock shadow. It looks like he’s brushed his hair with his fingers, and not slept for a second last night. Ryan pities him, but he also relates. 

“I brought us some lunch. There’s a Deli not too far from the hotel.” Shane holds up the paper-wrapped lumps. “Sandwiches.”

Ryan sits up on the bed. Sandwiches. He hasn’t asked Shane to get him anything, nor has he given any indication of hunger last time they interacted. So why was he here now, offering a sandwich bought with his own money?

“You bought me a sandwich.” Ryan states. It’s not a question, but Shane takes it as one.

Comrade Madej looks down to the one he’s outstretched, and sighs. He places the sandwich wrapped in paper on Ryan’s bed. He takes a seat beside the telephone. “I think we should start afresh, Bergara. We weren’t diplomatic at first. Hell, we were barely civil.”

Ryan stares at the sandwich.

“Eat the damn sandwich, Ryan.”

“What are you playing at?” Ryan asks. He's used to living in this country. He’s used to people doing things for their own personal gain and nothing else. Used to people offering him food and drink that should always be refused. 

There’s a flicker of recognition in Shane’s eyes. He briefly understands, and even more briefly a flicker of an apology passes. Then he rolls his eyes. Shane leans forward and grabs Ryan’s Sandwich with a lanky arm. He unwraps both of them and takes a hefty bite of each. Bite. Chew. Swallow. Bite. Chew. Swallow.

Ryan watched him the entire time. Shane returns a sandwich to him wordlessly, and the two begin to eat together. Once he begins to eat Ryan realises just how hungry he’s become. He takes hefty bites, and wrestles with the likely stale bread until he can finally swallow each bite. It’s a welcome relief from overthinking.

“How are the helicopters going?” Ryan asks between bites.

Shane blinks slowly. “They were finishing the last passover when I walked down to the Deli.”

A nod. Ryan looks up when Shane moves to stand. “Something’s troubling you.”

Silence.

For a moment Shane says nothing. He’s taken all of three bites of his sandwich, each one smaller than the last. Now he’s looking at the other with an intensity Ryan is sure makes his cheeks turn red.

“Come for a walk with me.” Shane says.

For a moment Ryan doesn’t hear him. He‘s finished his sandwich and balled up the paper in his fist. “What?” He asks. Ryan’s brain catches up to the situation, and he shakes his head. “No. Come on, Shane, I’m tired. It’s been a long few days.”

“ You’re coming for a walk with me. ”

“Shane, I-” Ryan looks up as he talks, and catches that intense stare once more. He’s ensnared in it. There’s something about Shane’s tone that isn’t asking whether Ryan wants to go on a walk, but rather telling him he needs to.

So they set off. Ryan insists on brushing his hair before he leaves, but leaves his tie unadjusted and wonky. They’re out in the open air within minutes, with warming sunlight on their faces and slow strides. They don’t need to be anywhere until the next readings are back, and the nest plan of attack can commence. Once they’re far enough away from the square Shane steps awfully close to Ryan as they walk. Ryan’s shoulder bumps into Shane’s arm. Ryan feels his cheeks burn up again. He’s thankful for the excuse of the warm sun. Thankful for the walk.

“From now on, we only talk about sensitive material in the open. Understand me?” Shane asks.

Ryan’s head perks up. He briefly looks up at Shane, then his eyes snap forward. “They’re listening to us?”

“They listening to everyone… but yes.”

Their hands brush together. Ryan isn’t sure whether that’s another sign he should read more into, or whether his addled brain is trying to trip him up. It wouldn’t be the first time. Ryan wonders what the KGB are looking for specifically, or if Ryan bad-mouthed officials just a tad too far. He wonders if Shane thinks it’s his fault, and hopes for the opposite. He prays for the opposite.

“Don’t panic.” Shane says. He turns down an alley-way connecting two parallel streets. Inside he casually leans against a wall, takes out a cigarette, and rolls his shoulders some. He looks so natural. So used to being spied on. 

“How am I not supposed to panic? I can’t even fart in my own hotel room without them reporting it back to the Comrade General Secretary.” Ryan whisper-shouts.

Shane takes the cigarette out of his mouth so he can lean his head back and laugh. Ryans chuckle quickly turns into a laugh as well. Soon they’re both leaning forward on opposite ends of the alleyway, trying to calm themselves down. Shane stuffs the cigarette back into his mouth and lights it. As he chuckles smoke billows from his nose. They catch eyes again, and this time Shane doesn’t look quite as scary as he usually does. With his unkempt hair and dark eye circles he looks like the sort of man Ryan could work with, or go grab a drink with. He looks like the kind of person Ryan would keep secrets with.

“Ryan.” Shane whispers. The cigarette bobs with every syllable he pronounces. The fact that this is the first time Shane has ever said his first name without spitting it at him isn’t lost on Ryan Bergara. “You aren’t good at lying, are you?”

“No.” Ryan says without thinking. He shoves his right hand into his right pocket, but keeps his eyes steadily on Shanes own eyes. He watches Shane’s eyes flicker down to the pocketed hand. On its way back to Ryan’s eyes Shane’s gaze takes a layover at his lips. For a brief second he lingers there.

Shane blows smoke through his nose. He had been holding it for a few beats, so the smoke is a thick, dark grey cloud. He slides a hand into his left front pocket. 

Now it’s Ryan’s turn to look down, and take detours over Shane’s suited body. 

Shane speaks up as smoke seeps from his mouth. The cigarette bobs. “But you’re good at keeping secrets?”

Ryan nods.

“Good.” Shane inhales through the cigarette then exhales through his nose again. Ryan watches him the whole time, well and truly sure his face is a deep red. Shane speaks again. “We’ll keep this walk between us then, yes?”

“Right. A secret.”

“Not a lie.” Shane smirks some. He lets the cigarette drop from his lips, and crushes it under his boot without looking away from Ryan. “A secret.”

“Yes, Comrade Madej.” Ryan swallows, “Shane. Yes, Shane.”

They stand there for a moment, both leaning toward each other but neither willing to close the gap. Ryan is the first to move forward, but just as quickly as he takes the plunge Shane removes himself from the water entirely. He leans back, straightens himself up, and looks outside of the bubble they’ve created.

“Comrade.” Shane says.

Ryan blinks hard. He looks to the end of their alleyway hiding-place, and spots two military personnel. One of them is holding out a message for them. Shane takes it with such ease and poise that Ryan questions whether their interaction actually happened outside of his imagination or not. 

“Thank you,” Shane says as he reads it. He passes it to Ryan without so much as a glance, his eyes are trained firmly on the men watching them. Shoulders held back, gaze firm and authoritarian. This is Bureaucrat Shane Madej at work, not the real Shane briefly glimpsed a moment ago.

Ryan takes the message. He furrows his brow as he reads, not because he’s actually taking in the message but because he’s trying to process which Shane is the one he wants right now. 

“What do you think?”

“Huh?” Ryan looks up to Shane, then to the other men. Everyone is waiting for him, and Ryan wishes for what feels like the thousandth time that he was back home. “Um, sure.” Ryan looks back down to the message. He skims it. There’s someone who wishes to talk with both of them. In person. Now. That’s all Ryan gets before he hands it back to Shane. He nods.

Shane takes the lead once he has the message in his hands. “Lead the way, gentlemen.”

Ryan is still thinking about the interaction he and Shane had in the alleyway as both men sit down inside of an empty meeting room. They’re told that the person they’ve been requested to meet will be in shortly.

Shortly in the USSR could mean anywhere from three seconds to three hours, so Shane settles into his seat once they’ve been left alone. Ryan can’t settle in though, he’s still wondering whether or not the past twenty minutes means something. He wonders whether Shane was just teasing him, or whether something was cut off. 

“Shane-” Ryan starts. He’s cut off before he can say anything else. Not by a person, but by the ornate room door bursting open. Two bodies stride in; one of them clad in military garb and the other in… Ryan furrows his brows as he stares.

His companion however is quick to enter Bureaucrat Mode™. Comrade Shane Madej stands to attention, he slots his hand into the newcomer’s in a firm handshake. “Madej.” He introduces himself. “This is my associate, Comrade Bergara.”

Ryan offers a weak nod.

The person before them nods, and rips their hand from Shane’s grasp like he can’t wait to start talking. “My name is Steven Lim, I’m a Nuclear Physicist from Minsk. I know what’s happening here, and you’re making a mistake.”

Momentary silence ensues. Shane cocks his head to the side like a curious puppy, his barely kept hair floofs to the side too. Ryan bites back a smile. 

“What do you mean?” He asks.

Steven holds up a finger. He turns to he uniformed guard and holds out his hand. “The map, please?” Once he has the map, Steven unravels it on a table and jabs at it. “This is the Number Four Reactor, yes? And this,” He makes a tight circle with his index finger. “This is where you’ve been aiming your material to cover the exposed core. You’re using Boron and Sand, yes?”

Ryan nods. Shane answers with a firm yet questioning ‘yes’. 

“Have you considered the water tanks underneath?”

This is what gets Ryan Bergara to perk up and focus on the problem, rather than the increasing distraction that is Shane Madej. “They’ve been drained for a while, yes.”

“No!” Steven says. He points with both hands to piping on the schematic. “These pipes all feed back into the water tank, yes? But the explosion destroyed all of them. Think about the rain we’ve had, the firefighters that morning of the explosion. Any water reported to have been drained hours after the explosion has already- ”

“Already been replaced.” Ryan finishes. A cold sweat tingles the back of his neck. Oh, no.

Shane seems lost. His eyebrows furrow and his head shakes. His tone comes out as annoyed, and for once Ryan isn’t confused as to why. There’s two experts in a room, and Shane is the odd one out. Inadequacy.

“What’s the problem here? The water is underneath all of this, the fire is out.”

For a moment Steven looks between Ryan and Shane. He can’t believe that question is even being asked here, until Ryan swallows his nervousness and pipes up.

“Shane,” Ryan catches himself, “Comrade Madej… just because the core isn’t on fire anymore doesn’t mean it will cool down. In fact, it’s going to heat up more. The first step to my containment plan was to put the fire out, then we were going to reinforce the concrete slab underneath the reactor so it wouldn’t get through to the underlying water source, but-”

Steven interjects. “It’s going to superheat.”

Ryan waves a hand at Steven as he shrugs. “Right. And when it does superheat, it will impact a massive area surrounding us.”

“Impact...” Shane has that far away look in his eyes that Ryan last saw when he told Shane he will likely die in twenty years from now because of this. “What does ‘impact’ mean, exactly?”

Meetings are always a drag.

That’s what Ryan remembers thinking the first time he was in this room, with the people who are currently staring at him for an answer. The answer to a question he didn’t come to by himself, for once. It’s both comforting and shameful to have Steven Lim by his side. On one hand it’s another intellectual in the room, but on the other it signals to everyone that he made a vast oversight. He’s the reason they were pulled from their jobs and driven here, or flown in.

Ryan starts to explain that the sand they dumped onto the fire doused it perfectly, but it was well-anticipated that the core would continue to heat up because of the sandy blanket. As soon as Ryan mentions the sand turning molten, though-

“You’ve made lava? ” Comrade General Secretary raises his eyebrows up so far that Ryan is sure they’d fly off of his face and stick to the roof. 

“I… I anticipated this. But, as it turns out, I was worried about the wrong thing. I was initially worried about reinforcing the concrete slab underneath the reactor to stop the lava from contaminating our water supply, but the water tanks we assumed were empty are actually full. This is Steven Lim, he’s a Nuclear Physicist from Minsk. He alerted me to the water tanks being full of-”

“Yes, water. You mentioned that, but why is it a problem?” The General Secretary isn’t asking Ryan this question. He’s asking Comrade Lim.

Steven and Ryan exchange glances. They have a certain camaraderie that makes Ryan feel a tad protective of him. The poor man had been fiddling endlessly with his tie on the helicopter ride over, and Ryan can tell when a specialist was going over mental notes. Steven did it without pause, right up until this very moment.

Still, they switch positions. Ryan sits down as Steven stands up, and opens his flyer. “Well, when the lava hits these tanks it will instantly superheat and vaporise the seven thousand cubic meters of water within. This will cause a… significant thermal explosion.”

“ How significant?”

Ryan looks to his right and stares for a moment at Shane, who looks even closer to his breaking point than he had a few moments ago. He wants to be able to put a hand on his shoulder and squeeze, but Ryan doesn’t dare. Instead he looks up to Steven and nods him on.

“We estimate,” Steven continues, “Between two and four megatons. Everything within a thirty kilometre radius would be completely destroyed. That includes the three remaining reactors at Chernobyl.”

No one makes a sound throughout the meeting. They don’t need to gasp, or cry out in shock. All they do is widen their eyes and stare down the table at the General Secretary. He stares right back at Shane, Ryan, and Steven. The room is quiet apart from the shuffling of papers as some officials struggle to grasp the concept of the entirety of the USSR being either flattened or destroyed by contaminated food and drink. Not to mention cancer and birth defects. Millions will die if they don’t do something.

“How long until this happens?” Asks the General Secretary.

Ryan sits up straight in his chair as Steven sits down. “Approximately forty-eight to seventy-two hours, Comrade.”

They’re all going to die in two to three days. 

A massive thermonuclear explosion will kill all of them. That’s the realisation that ripples through the meeting table. Every man and woman there has the same reaction. Shock. Disbelief. Unending hopelessness.

For a moment Ryan lets them think they’ve lost, not because he revels in their misery but because he knows what Shane is really affected by. It’s not the oncoming explosion. It’s how they plan to combat it.

Professor Ryan Bergara stands up, hands opening the flyer as he steels himself with a shaking breath. “But we may have a plan to stop it. We can pump the water from the tanks. Unfortunately they are sealed shut by a gate that can only be opened manually. We’d need to get three reactor workers that would be able to navigate these tunnels and open the gate themselves.” Ryan weekly taps the flyer. Peppers turn at the table as others turn to his page on their own flyers. “We’d have to have them open it manually, Comrade. Without them we have no access to the water in order to pump out the tanks. We will need your permission, of course.”

The General Secretary furrows his brow. “My permission for what? ”

Ryan sucks in his bottom lip. He looks down to his flyer, and taps it again. “Well, the water flooding the area here is incredibly irradiated. Even with protection, the people that go in will, um.”

Steven picks up the slack. “They’ll likely be dead within a week.”

Ryan nods to Steven. He glances at Shane, who takes a deep breath and stares forward. Ryan speaks in a low tone, drawing out his words because he can’t believe he’s saying them seriously.

“We are asking for your permission to kill three men.”

“Is it possible that the water has already killed them?” Shane asks. He and Ryan are in the back seat of a land rover. They both sit with their arms resting on the seat backs. Ryan is acutely aware of their pinky fingers an inch from touching each other.

“Yes.” He answers. The three men who volunteered to unlock the water tanks had been in for the time they had approximated it would take to complete the operation. They were overtime now. Essentially on borrowed time. Ryan takes in a deep breath. Men outside mill about outside of the water tank entrance. No one is paying attention to Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej waiting inside a car.

No-one notices when Shane shifts his hand a little, and captures Ryan’s. He squeezes the hand as Ryan whips his head around to stare at him. Shane doesn’t look back, instead he keeps his eyes on the scene outside. Ryan tries to catch his eye for a moment more. Then, with a long glance at their intertwined hands, he returns his gaze outside. The less conspicuous they are, the better. Ryan tells himself over and over to act normal, that no one can see Shane rubbing circles on the back of his hand. He plays the ‘reassuring’ thoughts over and over again, until they have the opposite of their intended effect.

Then the doors open.

Ryan sits up in his seat, he feels Shane’s hand firmly squeeze his own briefly before they part ways. Both Ryan and Shane step out of the rover on opposite sides, and approach as three men burst out of the reactor. One grasps at his mask in an effort to rip the thing off. One pumps his fists into the air. The other slumps against the cool concrete as soon as he’s out, and accepts a cold bottle of beer when it’s offered. They’re helped out of their masks as everyone around them claps. 

Shane is the first to clap along with them. He smiles and keeps his distance, but he’s celebrating along with them. He’s happy they’re out of there, despite the danger these men still face from the radiation. The heroes have saved the day, and Shane allows this small victory to carry him for a while.

Ryan joins in last. He can’t bring himself to smile but he claps along with the others. He does it because he’s glad they’re out of the water, and because millions of lives are potentially saved. 

“Come on, we’ll let them get washed off and congratulated in peace.” Shane says from his left. Ryan looks over to the man and nods.

Ryan’s hotel room isn’t a fraction as calming as it once was now that he knows it’s bugged. The bedroom, the bathroom. All of it. Ryan is sure his telephone is being recorded. That doesn’t stop him from inviting Shane Madej in though. It doesn’t stop Shane from grabbing onto Ryan’s hand as soon as the door is closed. 

“They’re gonna die.” Ryan whispers. He’s still thinking about it, and from the look in Shane’s eyes Ryan knows that the feeling is mutual. Shane clings to Ryan’s hand like it’s the only thing keeping him from collapsing. Shane clings to Ryan like they are each other’s oxygen.

That’s certainly what it feels like.

“I know.” Shane grabs Ryan’s other hand. They stand there for a moment, merely holding hands and looking down to the ground. “Where’s Professor Lim?”

Ryan shakes his head. “Said he was going to check on some business elsewhere. He mentioned needing to get an injury checked out.”

Shane didn’t need to see Ryan’s face to know what he really meant by that. Steven had told Ryan he was going to the victims bedsides in Moscow. The hospitals where firefighters and reactor workers alike lay dying. Shane squeezes Ryan’s hands. Ryan squeezes back.

For a moment both of them stay like that, with Ryan wondering how on earth they went from despising each other to being this. Whatever this is. Ryan looks up to Shane, and brushes his hair back with his fingers. The Bureaucrat breaks his staring contest with his own shoes to smile at Ryan. 

Shane opens his mouth to speak, but instead of letting him finish Ryan cups both hands around Shane’s jawline. He leans onto the point of his scuffed shoes until they’re the same height.

Ryan can feel Shane’s heartbeat in his neck. It thrums just as hard and fast as his own. Fear. Longing. Both of them mix into their blood as Ryan and Shane get closer and closer to each other. Shane bends down some, dim hotel room lighting casting shadows on his face. Ryan plunges into the kiss like it’s a hot bath at the end of this long, arduous day. He feels his blood boil as Shane’s hands hold his hips, fingertips likely bruising where he grips for dear life.

Perhaps time stopped when their lips met. Perhaps the world paused to allow them this small pleasure, because when Shane and Ryan’s lips parted it felt as if they hadn’t been kissing for more than a second. In reality, it had been two whole minutes. 

For a moment Ryan has no idea what to do. He’s never gotten this far with a man before. It has always been in his mind, but putting fantasy into practice is easier said than done. 

And the bugs still remain in their hotel rooms. Bugs looking to pick up anything out of the ordinary, listening to their every word.

Shane wet lips. He pressed their foreheads together. Ryan closed his eyes. Maybe they’d only get this moment. Maybe they’d only get to kiss in the middle of a bugged room, and be forever terrified of making too much noise. Spending too much alone time together. 

“Shane?” Ryan whispers into Shane’s hair as he places a kiss there, with much stretching. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“So the power level jumped from two-hundred to four-hundred megawatts?” Steven Lim asks. He gazes through a thick plastic sheet that encompasses the entire hospital bed of one Senior Engineer Toptunov. The man who remembers the night of the reactor explosion; because he was in the control room at the time.

“Yes,” Tontunov says. His skin is blisters and festers despite the strict isolation procedures he is under. There’s nothing that can help him now. The nurses Steven sees coming and going are only here to make sure he’s not in any pain they can help with. Toptunov speaks again. “It rose… very fast.”

Steven is a patient man, especially with the sick and wounded. He respects the time it takes for Toptunov to breathe and push out words. Speaking likely hurts this man but the fact that he’s doing it anyway inspires Steven to jot down as much as he can. Dr Lim takes careful notes. “Why didn’t you initiate an emergency shut-down?” Steven asks. He stops himself from speaking for a moment, because he’s afraid his passion makes him wound arrogant and annoyed.Steven collects himself as Toptunov turns his head. Some fragments of skin from around unhealing wounds stay on his pillow. Steven continues, and tries not to stare. “Why didn’t you press the AZ-5 button?”

“We did. I reported the rise to Akimov and he pressed the button.”

Steven raises his eyebrows in disbelief. He can’t stop this reaction, because what this man is saying cannot be possible. If they pressed the right button, then why did the wrong thing happen? Steven thinks that perhaps this man is delusional. Perhaps he wants to make peace with the world before his demise, so he’s creating a fantasy where everything else is wrong.

But there’s something about Toptunov’s tone that makes Steven feel a wash of guilt for even thinking such things. Still… Steven’s calculations don’t account for explosions just happening for no reason.

“Leonid.” Steven uses the man’s first name and employs a soft tone. He’s sympathetic and understanding, but he won’t take everything at face value. “Leonid, that’s not possible.”

“It is.” Toptunov breathes laboriously. “I suh-swear. I saw him do it. ”

Steven nods a little. He takes down notes about what is being said, and underlines the words ‘pressed AZ-5’. He also puts several question marks around it as Toptunov catches his breath. 

“That’s when it exploded.”

Whipping his head up so suddenly makes Steven feel as if he has whiplash for a split second. They pressed the button, and then the reactor exploded? No. No, that’s not possible. The AZ-5 was an emergency shut down, and the RBMK reactors were faultless. They were invincible by design. An emergency shut down should have done the opposite of all of this. Steven gives Toptunov a look that apparently says it all, because the poor oozing man begins to gasp in breaths. If he still had tear ducts Steven knew they’d be crying. Then the guilt comes again. Steven keeps his eyes on Leonid Toptunov. He’s twenty-four years old and already a Senior Engineer. Already at the end of his life. Already in more pain than any man his age could imagine. There’s no justice in that, but Steven still can’t bring himself to quite believe what the poor young man is saying.

As if on cue they’re interrupted.

“Excuse me.” Says a soft voice behind them. A nurse bows her head to Steven, and gestures to the medicine cart she’s wheeled in. Toptunov breaths in gasping breaths as Steven Lim stands up. He takes away his chair from the edge of the plastic barrier. He lets the nurse set up her things. For a moment Steven simply watches as she arranges equipment, draws up pain medication, and gives Toptunov a warm smile from beneath her fabric mask. Steven tugs at his own mask. He adjusts it at the ears to it’s snug, then leans in. 

“Excuse me, where is Akimov?”

The nurse looks up. “Twenty-seven.”

Steven dreads the thought of seeing another young man quite literally falling to pieces in a hospital room… but he has to corroborate what was just said. He has to make sure it’s not just the ramblings of a dying man.

He leaves the room without another look to the isolated man.

“I pressed the button.” Akimov says. “I pressed the button… and then the reactor exploded.”

Steven Lim can barely look at this man. Not because of shame, or how young he is, or how unfair the whole situation is to a simple Nuclear Plant Engineer. If that was all that was going on Steven would be able to look this man in the face and speak to him one-on-one. 

Except this man barely has a face.

Steven thinks Toptunov is far better off than this man. Akimov can barely talk without most of the skin on his face. Teeth show, eyes bulge. Steven can’t look at the remains of this man's face as he says his story so he writes down every single word he says. Word for word. That’s much easier than looking at him and thinking of how much pain the poor man is in, and how much more confusing his account is making the whole situation. It’s no longer a question of whether the emergency shut down was pressed or not. Now this is a situation of why the shutdown button didn’t work, and why these men had to die just for doing what they were told would fix it?

“Thank you Comrade Akimov.” Steven says as he stands. Still unable to look into the man's decaying eyes, Steven instead opts to stare at his equally decaying hands crossed over his chest. That’s less of an affront to his senses. After a short bow of his head, Steven turns on his heels and takes the first steps towards the exit of the room.

From behind him, Akimov speaks again.

“I did everything right.”

For a moment Steven simply re-reads the contents of his notes. He pours over them intently in a hallway chair. But only for a moment, then he is on the move again. If anyone on a security detail found him taking statements from these people he’d be in deep trouble. Deeper than he could ever talk his way out of. Steven takes long strides down the hallway and glances into every windowed door he passes. Some of them show barren and empty rooms. Some of them show Nurses and Doctors discussing god-only-knows-what. But there’s one that makes Steven stop in his stride.

A woman with another victim of the Chernobyl radiation. She’s inside of the plastic isolation tent put up to protect the patients. She has no mask, no protective gown.

What’s even worse than that is that she’s rubbing her stomach, holding his hand to her stomach and rubbing circles with her thumb. She looks at peace. Happy.

Steven bursts into the room like he has any authority worth showing off. He rips off his mask so the woman inside the isolation zone can see how angry he is. Steven walks through the slit in the plastic and grabs her. It’s for her own good, of course, but as Steven drags her out into the hallway she struggles against him. Once they’re outside Steven Lim opens his mouth to speak to the woman only, but a nurse catches his eye. She’s heard the sounds of a struggle, and has come to investigate.

“You.” Steven says with a pointed finger outstretched. “Do you have any idea what kind of danger she was in? Did you let her inside the plastic? Did you know she’s pregnant? ”

The nurse looks dumbfounded but Steven can’t see past his rage. The nurse looks away from him and to the woman. She protests. The nurse speaks in a startled whisper. “What have you done?”

Steven doesn’t let them have a moment to soak the gravity of this in. He’s just spoken to two young men who are going to die agonising deaths because of something they did everything to prevent, but the very same hospital they will die in is letting a pregnant woman touch and breathe the same air as her decaying husband?

“What kind of place is this? Do you have any idea what you’re dealing with? She needs protection!” Steven starts to speak loud enough for his voice to carry and echo. 

The nurse nods her head. Of course she knows what she’s dealing with. “Of course I do. Please, I didn’t-”

“No! People are going to hear about this, do you hear me? People are going to hear. Everyone is going to hear about this. ”

For the second time that day, someone walks onto the scene as if on some cosmic cue. From Behind Steven Lim a deep, dangerous voice cuts through any blind anger he had been unleashing.

“What is everyone going to hear about?”

Steven stills. He knows who these people are just from the way they speak. KGB. Steven turns around and prays for a little stillness in his voice, but it doesn;t come. His voice is wavering at best. “I’m authorised to be here by the Chernobyl commision. You can speak to Ryan Bergara, he’ll tell you the same. My name is Steven-”

“We know who you are.” The man says. Another just like him except wearing a black jacket descends the staircase after him. They’re pack animals, and now that there’s more than one Steven knows what’s about to happen.

It isn’t going to work out well for him.

For a while Shane Madej runs on his own spiel about how well he and Ryan are doing at Chernobyl. Everyone in the meeting seems enraptured by his presence. Everyone except for Ryan, who is wondering how on earth Shane does it. All of the lying. Hell, they made a miscalculation so bad it almost killed millions. If Comrade Lim hadn't said something while risking his own career they’d all be dead. And now, like a cherry topping off the Disaster Cake, Steven is being held by the KGB. The Chairman of the KGB sits directly opposite Shane. The man looks absolutely stone-cold, which Ryan thinks suits his career. 

Still, Ryan Bergara tries not to look at anyone too much. He makes a good point of re-reading through his notes several times. If he had a pen he would do some light mathematics to pass the time while the Career Party Men spoke. That’s what they all are, at the end of the day. Men who only care about their career progression, and having fun. No matter the cost. Ryan gives a glance upward, to Shane’s exceptionally tall form. Is he truly different? Is the Shane Madej that kisses him in hotel rooms and on secluded walks around Pripyat the same Shane Madej that stands here and brags to his colleagues? Are they the same person, or is Ryan falling for two men at once?

“We hope, Comrade, that we have lived up to the very highest standards of the KGB.” Shane finishes with a particular tonation that rouses Ryan from his notes. As Shane moves to sit down he speaks again, “Professor Bergara will now speak to you about the work that remains.”

For a moment they’re both sitting as Ryan collects his notes and nods to everyone. For a split second Shane adjusts his sitting position, and their knees tap against each other. Shane is looking at Ryan, like everyone else, but Professor Bergara wonders. Was that on purpose? Is Shane reassuring him that everything is okay, and that Shane the Bureaucrat is gone for now?

Or is all of this a coincidence?

Ryan stands before he can conjure up some fantasy answer to all of the questions running through his mind. Racing to see which of them can confuse him the most.

“Uh. Well,” Ryan says as he straightens out his papers, “Deputy Chairman Madej has given you the good news, and it is… uh, good.”

Nice one.

Ryan continues regardless.

“The immediate danger is over. Now I’m afraid a long war must begin.” Ryan pauses. He looks to the KGB Chairman, who stares right back at him. Ryan wants to grab him and shake him and ask where Steven is. Instead he looks to the others at the meeting table, and continues reading directly from his notes. “There’s an enormous amount of radioactive debris as well as contamination spread out across a twenty-six-hundred kilometer zone. This entire zone must be evacuated as early as possible. All of it. The people must be taken out of their homes in a quick and orderly fashion, and any animals that remain behind must be terminated. Whether they’re wild or domesticated does not matter.”

Ryan doesn’t like that he’s saying. He doesn’t like thinking about his cat back home being terminated just because of something she isn’t aware of or at fault for. But that’s what has to happen for every single animal inside the exclusion zone. He doesn’t like that he feels a sense of relief knowing his own cat won’t suffer that fate while hundreds if not thousands of other animals will. But what he doesn’t like most of all is how easily accepted this suggestion is by the people. They seemed more alarmed by evacuation of citizens, rather than the culling of entire towns worth of pets and wildlife.

“Secondly,” Ryan starts, “In the immediate area surrounding Chernobyl every rock, tree, and the ground itself has absorbed dangerous amounts of radionuclides. They will be carried by the wind and the rain if left exposed, putting more lives at risk if left. To combat this we will have to… destroy entire forests. We will have to rip up the top layer of earth and bury it under itself. Approximately one hundred square kilometers down.”

Not only is Ryan asking for the extermination of an entire region of animals, but the region itself as well. Everything is contaminated now. Ryan supposes that even himself and Shane are a little higher in radiation than the average man. He looks down to his sitting companion. Shane once again has a far-away look in his eyes.

There’s a part of him that always shines through when Ryan speaks in meetings. A part of Shane that seems to understand the weight of his job, and feels crushed beneath it. Ryan wants so much to shield Shane from it, envelop him in a big hug and tell him that it’s okay. But it’s not. It’s not okay, and Ryan still needs to state the hardest task to be started. 

“Finally, we will need to construct a containment structure around the plant itself. Which will be...” Ryan wants to put the words in a sugar-coated way, but he can’t. He can’t lie. “There will be deaths. From underneath we will also need to contain the core. To do this we will need a heat exchanger made with nitrogen.”

“How much?” The General Secretary asks.

Ryan frowns. “Uh… all of it. The total supply in the USSR. We will need to employ miners to dig underneath the structure in order to give us access. This will stop the core from melting through the facility and poisoning the soil and water supply.”

And that’s all there is. 

The General Secretary asks how much time they need, and how many men will be required. Shane answers curtly, says that they’ll need three years and hundreds of thousands of men. Ryan sits down again, and folds up his notes. 

“How many deaths will there be, Professor?” A man in military uniform asks. 

Ryan looks up, briefly catched the KGB Secretary’s eyes. He’s staring. Ryan answers the questioning man. “Thousands. Perhaps in the tens of thousands. But it will save millions.”

Comrade General Secretary doesn’t need much convincing when Shane Madej is the one confirming everything Ryan says. When they both sit back down their knees touch again. Ryan glances at Shane as he speaks. Bureaucrat Shane Madej shines through as he answers little questions from the others, but their knees press firmly together. 

That’s when Ryan answers all of the questions running through his head.

He’s falling for a man with two faces. 

One for the world.

One for him.

The meeting is over just as formally as it began. Men say their goodbyes to each other, and pat Shane on the back for being so strong and capable. No one pats Ryan on the back. Instead they give him nods as they pass by. Usually Ryan would feel left out and abused, but today? Today he’s grateful no one is touching him. He wants to stay by Shane’s side as a shadow so none of these power-hungry men give him any notice. He doesn’t want their praise. He just wants to do what is right.

What is right looks him right in the face. Comrade Charkov, Chairman of the KGB, slips out of the room with a few others. Ryan Bergara tears himself from Shane’s side and strides after the man. He can’t simply stand idly by and do nothing while Steven is being held in a cell somewhere. Ryan strides out into the hallway and calls out.

“Comrade Charkov!” Ryan watched as the man turns around.

“Bergara!” Shane whispers behind him. He’s caught onto what Ryan is doing, and he knows just how dangerous things can get with the KGB. Granted, so does Ryan but… well, his friend was arrested. He doesn’t exactly care.

“Professor.” Charkov says as he turns around. He does not smile, or nod. He simply watches.

“My… my associate was arrested last night.” Ryans voice lowers down to almost a whisper but he has no idea why. Is he trying to seem small to this man? 

“Oh?”

Ryan gets no more than that so his mouth begins to form words before he can even think of what to say. “Uh. I was wondering if you could tell me… why?”

“I’m sorry but I don’t know who you are talking about.”

“He was arrested by the KGB. You are the First Deputy Chairman of the KGB. ” Ryan says. He practically feels Shane cringing behind him. Shane keeps his distance though, tries not to convey too much emotion as men pass them from within the meeting room. They notice what’s happening but keep their heads down. Ryan refuses to.

“That’s right,” Says Charkov, “I am. Which is why I don’t have to deal with arrests anymore.”

“But you are dealing with having us followed.” Ryan says as Charkov turns around. Shane sucks in a breath. Ryan stands firm as Charkov looks back at him. The older man had been about ready to dismiss this conversation but now… now he stayed.

“I think,” Shane says as he stalks forward like a kicked dog looking for validation, “Comrade Charkov is busy-”

“No, no. It’s perfectly understandable.” Comrade Charkov says. It is most certainly not alright, and Shane knows that well enough. Ryan doesn’t seem to notice the Chairman’s tone. “Comrade, I know you’ve heard the stories about us. When I hear them even I am shocked… but we are not what people say. Yes, people are following you. People are following those people. Do you see the men behind me? They follow me. The KGB is a circle of accountability. Nothing more.”

“You know the work we’re doing here.” Ryan states. He steps forward. Behind him Shane cringes some more, and prays that the Chairman is feeling generous today. Ryan continues. “Do you not trust us?”

“Of course I do. But you know the old Russian proverb; trust, but verify.” Charkov finally smiles, but it isn’t a smile of warmth. Not a smile of reassurance. It’s a smile that speaks and says ‘this conversion is over because I say it is.’ “It was nice speaking with you, Comrade.”

But Ryan still doesn’t give in.

“I need him.”

For a moment Charkov keeps his back turned. Ryan thinks he might simply keep walking away, pretend he didn’t hear Ryan and torture Steven for the trouble that was caused here today. But he does not walk away. He simply turns again for the last time and speaks in a soft tone. “Then you will be accountable for him?”

Ryan nods.

“Then it is done.”

A sigh of relief. Ryan bows his head in thanks. “His name is-”

“I know who he is.” Charkov states. Ryan pauses for a moment, dumbfounded. “Good day, Professor.”

Ryan feels like he’s caught inside of a rip in time as Charkov walks away. He stares as the man leaves, and watches two men follow after him. His followers. His accountability men. Stalkers. Ryan swallows. Blinks. He looks back to Shane and lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“No,” Shane says, “That went well. You came off like a naive idiot. Naive idiots aren’t a threat.”

Ryan is allowed to see Steven in his cell. He’s allowed to walk in and have some alone time with him. The room is so barren and bare that Ryan is sure there’s no bugs. No plants inside of telephones or embedded underneath tables. Every surface in this room is a block. Not even a cushion is given for the comfort of the person inside. Yes, there’s definitely no bugs in here.

When Ryan hears the door close behind him, and hears the guard walk away, he sits down next to Steven.

He has a bruise underneath his right eye.

Ryan asks whether Steven really wants to help them anymore, after all that has happened. He’s not sure whether he’a asking Steven Lim, or asking himself.

“Do I even have a choice anymore?”

Steven has a point. Both of them sit back for a moment and ponder this. Do either of them really have a choice whether or not to keep working at this? Steven wonders when he will be able to go home at the same time Ryan does. They think the exact same things in this moment. Ryan closes his eyes.

“Do you think the fuel will actually melt through the concrete pad?”

“Maybe. I give it a forty percent chance.”

Ryan chuckles. “I said fifty to Madej and the others. But it all amount to the same thing in the end; maybe. Maybe the core will melt right through to the ground water. Maybe the miners I’ve told to dig under the reactor will save millions of lives. Maybe I’m killing them for nothing.” Ryan Bergara looks to Steven Lim. He gulps, looks over the bruise on his face. “I don’t want to do this anymore. I want to stop.” Ryan almost whispers. “But I can’t. I dont think either of us have a choice. Despite all of this, you’re compelled to solve the problem. That’s who we are. Scientists.”

Steven smiles some. “What about your friend? Madej?”

“He’s...” Ryan pauses. “He’s the key to our success.”

It’s better to say what someone hopes to hear, rather than the truth. Especially when Ryan and Shane are much more than what they appear to be. For a moment the all-too-familiar guilt washes over Ryan. He trusts Steven, he really does, but… somehow he doesn’t trust him at the same time. Some secrets are far too big to divulge, even to friends.

The door wrenches open and two guards stand inside the doorway. They beckon for Ryan and Steven to follow, which they do happily. Once they’re outside of the cell and in the fresh air the two scientists sit down on a bench. It’s cold outside. Far colder than the cell Steven was in for hours… but the fresh crisp air is a welcome to his lungs. He breathes deep, even takes one of Ryan’s cigarettes and pops it into his mouth. Ryan allows him watever he wants, if only to help him forget whomever gave him that bruise.

“Did you know they were running a safety test?” Steven asks as he exhales.

Ryan nods. 

“Well, there’s something else. Akimov says they shut the reactor down. Toptunov confirms it. They pressed the AZ-5.”

“Apparently not soon enough.” Ryan says. He picks out a cigarette for himself and shrugs as he lights it. He expected as much from the people Steven went to interview.

“No,” Steven corrects, “They say they pressed AZ-5 and then then reactor exploded. If it had been just one of them I would’ve put it down to faulty memory or delusions but they both agreed. They insisted.”

Ryan lets the cigarette he has just lit hang in his mouth unused. “Do you think that’s even possible?”

“I think it’s what I would say if I wanted to cover my own mistakes.” Steven says.

But there’s a certain tensity to his face that lets Ryan know that not all is well. “But?” He asks.

“But,” Steven takes another long puff of his cigarette. “I believe him. I have to pursue it, I have to go back to the hospital and re-interview Akimov and Toptunov.” A pause. “If they’re still awake.”

Ryan finally takes a long drag of his cigarette. “They’re not.” They were pronounced dead mere hours ago, after a long and agonising wait for death they’re finally no longer in pain. But that also means that Steven Lim can’t get more information from them. What he has is all he’ll ever have… now he has to find a way to make it work.

Air in Pripyat is warm and smells of freshly cut grass. It’s almost a paradise, if it weren’t for the silent predator in every molecule. Ryan and Shane are out on yet another walk. It’s just after lunch time, so almost everyone that has a job is inside. The people who don’t are either children or sick. They’re in schools and homes. The world is theirs if only for an hour. They walk with shoulders almost touching, but Shane makes a point of clasping his hands together behind his back. There’s certain things they can’t do even when they feel alone. They don’t hold hands under the suns warming rays. 

“Professor Lim said Akimov had-”

“Please,” Shane whispers. “I can’t stand anymore talk about all of this. Can we just have a walk where we talk about something else?”

Ryan pauses. He wants to tell Shane what Steven said, and why it’s so important. He wants to talk about the miners that are on their way to Chernobyl already. He wants to talk about their kiss. Ryan Bergara chooses the last one, for Shane’s sake. “Alright. What about our… interaction? Forgive me for overthinking but that’s essentially my entire job description.”

“What’s making you overthink it?” Shane casts a nonchalant look to his left, then to his right and behind. No one is following them that he can see, and he’s sure none of their clothes are bugged. Neither is that stupid to not notice.

“Well, everything. All of this. You being so damn-” Ryan cuts himself off. He doesn’t want to say too much, but Shane is already frowning. Ryan continues. “I’m sorry. I’ve never had to work this closely with someone like you before and it’s… it’s making me question whether you need me here or whether I’m just a puppet you’ll dispose of when we’re done.”

They slip into a small side street and after a few steps Shane unclasps his hands. He holds onto Ryan’s forearm and stops both of them in the cover of the skinny street.

“Ryan,” Shane doesn’t make eye contact as he speaks. “You’re not a puppet. I want you to know that I’d never think of you like that, but... well, I’m not sure what’s going to happen after this. What can happen? We’ve never worked together before this, and we likely won’t ever again. I live in Moscow, and you’ve said yourself that you barely make time for anything other than work. And we’re not… normal.”

Ryan stares at Shane’s eyes as they bore into the ground. Oh. Ryan reaches his hand up to hold onto Shane’s forearm as well. He supposes Shane has done this so it looks like they’re encouraging each other, or having some sort of disagreement. Holding hands is harder to explain. That doesn’t mean Ryan isn’t desperate to lace their fingers together though.

“We could...” Ryan tries to think of a solution that wouldn’t get them in trouble, or worse. Living together isn’t in the question. Being friends that occasionally meet up in the country is just as bad. Meeting for coffee too many times a week would look suspicious, even if no one suspected what was really happening. “You could call on me whenever your Bereaucrat buddies are too stupid to explain something to you.”

Shane chuckles some. There’s a dull pain in his eyes, but Ryan is glad he’s chased it away for now. “You’re right. Whenever we’re talking shop I can call on you to give myself a punch in the gut. Really ground me.”

“And hey, maybe something is too complicated to explain over the phone. Maybe you need me to come into Moscow for dinner.”

“Maybe I wear my best jacket and tie.”

“Maybe I forget to buy the train ticket back home before dinner starts. Have to stay a night in some dingy hotel.”

For a moment Ryan and Shane are swallowed up by the fantasy. Them together, fooling everyone around them with their wit and slippery antics. They allow themselves to think all of this is possible, even if it certainly isn’t. It’s nice to dream. Ryan wants to close his eyes so he can see Shane in a jacket and tie, on a date and nervous about it. All gangly limbs and clumsy words. Not like the Shane he sees in meetings. The real Shane, the authentic one. The one reserved only for Ryan.

“Leave your workshop a few times a year.” Shane says abruptly.

Ryan furrows his brow. “And do what?”

“Take a trip. Send me a cryptic fax.”

“You wouldn’t decode it in time to come see me.” Ryan laughs. He grips tight to Shane’s forearm. “How about the other way around? You go on a trip a few times a year, send me a cryptic fax. First letter of every sentence is the town you’re visiting, things like that.”

Shane takes in a breath. He gazes down to their forearms, and rubs circles into Ryan’s with his thumb. They lock eyes finally, and Ryan feels like he’s on cloud nine. Butterflies rise in a swarm within his stomach as Shane nods.
“Deal.”

The miners arrive with Crew Chief Mark Celestino requesting to speak to both Ryan and Shane almost immediately. They barely have time to get into their makeshift office on site. Ryan barely has time to go over the thinly veiled lies he has. He stands in the office while Shane scribbles at his desk. 

“What?” Shane asks. He sounds annoyed, but his face expresses concern. Ryan has learned to watch Shane’s face, and not listen to his tone. Tone can be picked up by a bug. Shane’s eyes can’t.

“I’m not good at this, Shane. The lying.” Ryan looks up to the office roof and sighs. His voice is shaking. He doesn’t want to be here. He wants to be back in his hotel room, or better yet in some small town having a drink with Shane. Not in these suffocating formal clothes near a disaster.

“Have you ever met a Miner before?” Ryan shakes his head. Shane clicks his tongue. “Don’t lie to them. They work in the dark. They see everything.”

A guard opens the office door making Ryan jump. The guard gives him a look that apologises without him saying it, and then announces that the Crew Chief has arrived. Shane barely has time to wave the guard out of the way before Mark Celestino pushes himself into the room. In his hands he holds a jacket and a mask he had likely been given on arrival. Mark drops it on the desk Shane sits at and sits down.

“These work?” He asks.

Shane looks to Ryan, and in time Mark does too. “Uh. To an extent.”

Mark nods. He makes a face, then grabs Ryan’s packet of cigarettes from the table. He takes one out, lights it up, and pockets the entire packet. Ryan blinks. “Right. So, what’s the job?”

“We need to install a liquid nitrogen heat exchanger underneath this concrete pad. There’s no way to approach from inside, so you have to get at it from underground.” Ryan explains. He rolls out a layout map of the reactor itself as he speaks.

Mark seems unconvinced. He picks at things in Ryan’s speech. “What’s above the concrete pad?”

“The core of the reactor, which is melting down as we speak.”

“Won’t it fall on top of us?” Mark asks. He sits back in his seat like he;s the man in charge here. In essence he is, because they’d be well and truly screwed without him. 

Ryan shakes his head. “Not if you’re done within six weeks.” He gestures to the layout map. “We need the dimensions of the space underneath to be thirty by thirty meters, and twelve meters underground.”

“Why?” Mark asks.

“To protect your men from most of the radiation damage. You’d be shielded at that depth.”

Mark scoffs. He sees right through what Ryan says, just like Shane warned he would do. “The entrance to the tunnel won’t be twelve meters down. We’re not twelve meters down now.”

“You’re right.” Ryan says after a slight pause. He continues on with the requirements, but this time he doesn’t sugar-coat anything. “The entire thing has to be dug by hand, because machinery could disrupt the ground above you. It’s for the immediate safety of your miners.”

Mark is silent. He watched as Ryan points and draws circles with his fingers on the layout map. He listens intently. Shane suggests he can start tomorrow morning and get some rest, but Mark immediately replies.

“No, we start now. Get me at least four hundred more men. We’ll work around the clock. I don’t want to keep anyone here a second longer than they have to be.” Mark stands up at that, takes in a deep breath through the cigarette. He holds onto the mask again, and holds it between himself and Shane. “If these worked,” He said, “You two would be wearing them.”

Just as quickly as he came, Mark left. Ryan and Shane are left to their own devices in the office before they eventually take a long walk back to their hotel rooms. 

For a whole six hours the miners were working hard. Four hundred new people had been brought in and allowed to shower, put away their personal effects, then get to work as well. Everything seemed to be going smoothly. One incident did occur when Mark asked for fans to keep the men from boiling alive in the tunnels… but that request was denied. Mark thought it was unfair, so he decided to take matters into his own hands.

Shane Madej is in the office with Ryan. They’re sharing a drink together when Madej is called out for some news, then comes back in less than a minute later. He pours himself another Vodka and hands one to Ryan too. “They say the miners are doing exceptional work. They’ll be done in four weeks. A whole two weeks ahead of schedule. Isn’t that incredible?”

“Four weeks.” Ryan repeats. He takes a big sip - more of a gulp, really - of his Vodka. He feels the previous drink seep into his blood. It makes him feel like his brain is filling with cotton wool, but in a more pleasant way than that sounds.

Shane smirks some. He takes a tentative sip of his own. “It’s the beginning of the end, Ryan.”

“Comrade Madej? Sir?” A voice said from the doorway. Shane looked up to the man, and gestured for him to go on. “Uh. Well, it’s the miners sir.”

The Miners. As Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej walk onto the scene they see every miner  outside the entrance to the tunnel. They see everything, quite literally, because the miners are wearing nothing but the protective hats given to them by Ryan.

They’re absolutely naked. Shane seems unfazed, perhaps even annoyed, as his Bureaucrat Face is thrown up to protect himself. Ryan is a red mess. He stares directly at Mark as he approaches them, totally naked apart from a flimsy protection hat, and shrugs his shoulders.

“They wouldn’t let us have fans.” Mark says. He stretches his arms behind him and rolls his shoulders.

Ryan and Shane say nothing.

“ What? I’m still wearing the fuckin’ hat, aren’t I? ” Mark scoffs.

“You’re… you’re less protected.” Ryan says in a quiet voice. He’s sure he;s never sounded so timid.

Mark just scoffs again. “Can you honestly say it made a difference?” Ryan blinks. He refuses to answer that, which in itself is all the answer Mark needs. “And you,” Mark looks to Shane, “When this is all over, will my boys be looked after?”

Ryan expects Shane to spout some nonsense to appease the Crew Chief. He expects Shane to say something along the lines of ‘certainly! We’ll afford them every possible avenue we can’, but he doesn’t. Shane instead just says…

“I don’t know.”

Ryan stares up at him suddenly. Shane Madej telling the truth, despite how it makes him look? Despite the Bureaucrat Mode he has up? Ryan tries to burn this memory into his brain so he might remember it forever.

Mark just nods, repeats what Shane says, then walks back to the work site.

For a moment Shane just watches them work. Then he ushers Ryan into their car and drives back to Pripyat just in time to see hundreds more military personnel roll into the town. Numbers of busses are parked and loading up with people by the time they get back to their hotel rooms. The evacuation has well and truly begun.

It’s the beginning of the end.

August 1986. Four months after the explosion. The cleanup is immense. More immense than Shane had ever imagined it would be. Ryan knew somewhat, but the image of trucks overturning trees and men shooting both domestic and wild animals within the exclusion zone still makes his eyes water. It still makes his fingertips twitch towards Shane’s fingertips, but his head doesn’t dare let him touch. Shane does the same, though with more self control and poise. He brings a hand up to his mouth to cover the smell, bumps his elbow against Ryan’s shoulder.
They’re watching dogs and cats, shot once or perhaps twice, being buried in large pits. Those pits are then filled over with concrete. 

Ryan and Shane don’t stay for long. They’re there to talk to the leaders of these operations. They’re there to get updates. They’re there for a break from their own work, and to wait while the next task is prepared for them. Ryan tries not to look at the guns the soldiers carry. Ones that have been used to shoot beloved pets and beautiful life that once roamed free in the Pripyat forests. People have long since been evacuated, told they may come back whenever the cleanup is done. They’re given vague numbers. Weeks? Months? Ryan knows they won’t come back. Ever. They will never be allowed back to their homes. Whatever they took with them is what they have. They certainly weren’t allowed to bring pets no matter how small… so now they lay underneath a blanket of concrete, on a bed of their own kind. Ryan is just glad it’s over for them. They don’t have to live with an invisible killer. At least they’re at peace now.

At least.

Shane watches Ryan stare out the window on their short drive back to the makeshift office they’ve called home for weeks. He wants to say something comforting, wants to stretch out a hand and grip onto Ryan’s knee. Shane wants to tell Ryan that everything will be okay. He clears his throat of a slight tickle in there. He swallows whatever he coughs up without looking. It tastes metallic. He ignores it. The miners who have since finished their job and left are probably suffering much more than he is now. Much more than he will be given some time. Shane focuses back on Ryan. The bags underneath his eyes that weren’t there when they first met. The faraway look he has as he watches people they drive by as they hold guns and whistle. Calling to dogs. Calling to animals who will be all too happy to greet them and beg for food. All too happy to look down the barrel of a gun yet still crave affection.

“They’d suffer the same fate left to their own devices.” Shane says.

Ryan frowns. He doesn’t turn from the window. “What?”

“If they were left here to rot they’d eat each other. Wolves would prey on them. They’d suffer the same fate. Slower, perhaps. At least this is quick.”
A scoff from Ryan. He shakes his head. “At least.”

* * * 

When they get back, a brand new problem arises. The construction of a dome-like structure over the nuclear reactor will need to wait until the debris on the roof can be cleared. All of the graphite from on top of the roof must be pushed into the gaping hole. Trouble is; no one can get close enough without it being a death sentence. Shane, Ryan, and a few others sit around a table. Ryan lets everyone talk amongst themselves as he thinks, but Shane actively participates. At one point someone mentions using explosives to blast the graphite back into the wound that was once reactor number four. Shane openly chastises that idea. The mere mention of using bombs and other explosives is ludicrous, but what options do they have that are more logical? There’s nothing that doesn’t involve yet more death, like with the firefighters and miners.

And then Ryan speaks up. He asks whether they can use robots covered in lead plating. Robots with the right attachments and protection could do the trick, if only they were light enough to not fall through the crumbling roof. 

At first they think of moon rovers. Light, movement that is precise, video feeds.

But then they settle on something that can be given to them in mere days. 

* * * 

Joker.

That’s what the police rover that arrives is called. The name that is emblazoned on the side. It is supposedly protected enough to be able to withstand the immense radiation on the roof. For the first time in a while, Ryan smiles. He smiles in the control room as the rover is placed via helicopter onto the roof.

“What’s that?” Shane asks. He smiles too, and points to Ryan’s face. Green lights are lit up as a controller checks over the robots systems. Everything is good. Everything is working. “On your face, is that a smile I see?”

“Shut up, Shane.” Ryan says. Dimples form beyond the corners of his mouth, and Shane can’t help but laugh and hold the side of Ryan’s face like he’s an adorable little animal he’s seen on the street. Or an especially chubby baby. Ryan squirms a little, but laughs along with Shane. The touch is the most he’s had from Shane in weeks, but he’s not worried about anyone thinking anything. This is the sort of thing friends do, right? Right.

“You’re smiling. That’s good.” Shane asks as he lets go of Ryan’s face. He watches the controller as he presses buttons, flicks switches, and generally pays them absolutely no mind. Why would he? No one in Soviet Russia pays obvious attention to their superiors. Ryan is rubbing his face and staring at the control panel when it happens.

A light turns from green to red.

Then another.

Another.

And another, until all of the lights on the control panel have turned red. Shane asks what’s going on, and a second controller from their left leans on the control panel. The two men converse for a moment, then they shake their heads. The control panel doesn’t seem to respond to their orders. All of the buttons are red. The rover is shut down all on its own far above their heads. On top of all of that, Shane looks to Ryan for answers and finds nothing but a disappointed and tired man. No more smiling. Shane Madej feels his blood boil. He scowls in Ryan’s direction as the man shrugs helplessly, content to let the robot rot there as the radiation shuts it down for good. But Shane isn’t going to let Ryan’s happy hopeful smile go. Not that easily.

He storms out of the room, leaving Ryan to wonder where on earth he’s going. The shorter man follows behind, with one of the controllers following along too. He can’t call out to Shane, or stop him with a hand grab as the man storms in front of them. There’s a person watching them. Maybe he’s a plant. Maybe he’s in allegiance with the KGB. Who knows?

In any case, he follows as Shane bursts into the open air with Ryan not too far behind. Shane stomps into his trailer just outside the building and slams the door behind him. Ryan doesn’t follow. Instead he glances awkwardly at the controller who has decided to follow him. They both stand in silence as Shane Madej begins to yell into the phone inside the trailer. No, not yelling. He’s borderline screaming. Ryan worries about the man’s poor vocal cords, or the rasp that’s already present in his voice getting worse. He’s worried Shane is tiring himself for nothing.

But Shane doesn’t see it that way. As he screams down the line to people who knew the robot wouldn’t work, he thinks of Ryan’s smiling face as he held it. The face full of hope, however fleeting, and relief, however premature. The smile he’s been wanting to see since he first held Ryan’s hand. The face he has longed to witness since they leaned against each other for support as both of them realised their lives were being cut short by the very air around them. They’ll die because of this. At the very least, Shane wants to be able to make Ryan smile. He wants to bring Ryan something that will make him happy, and relieved, and thankful that Shane is here. 

Shane doesn’t want to be useless.

When he’s finished, Shane walks out of the trailer with a phone that has been smashed right down to the motherboard. Ryan sighs as he steps out. Shane drops the broken lump of chips and wires onto what little grass is left in this place, and shakes his head. 

“They told the Germans we got the robot from the propaganda number. They told them the highest we have here is two thousand roentgen. The robot was never going to withstand the job.”

Ryan hangs his head. Shane feels his blood boil again, but this time he’s just too tired to do anything about it. He hasn’t been sleeping, but this tiredness comes from more than just that. He’s tired of all of this. He wants it to end. He wants it to be easy.

He wants to see Ryan smile.

“What do we do now?”

The controller pipes up. “We could… pour molten lead onto the reactor. That would make it possible to get the robot up and running again.”

Ryan shakes his head. “No,” He says, wishing that word was no longer in his repertoire, “We don’t want to heat the core up more than it already is, and molten lead in a helicopter? I don’t think that’s exactly feasible or safe.”

“So we think of something else.” Shane says. He forces his voice to sound like he hasn’t been up all night. He forces it to sound chipper and eager to work. “We think of some way to make this better. We can keep asking for those moon rovers, get some lead plating made, and-”

“Bio-robots.”

Shane furrows his brow. “What?”

Ryan lifts his head to look at Shane. “Bio-robots. Humans. That’s the only way we’re going to get this done before any further damage is done. We need… a way to have men up there without sacrificing their lives. Three minutes up there will half their lives without them feeling it, even in full protective gear.”

“What about a rotation?” The controller asks. “Get as many men as possible, make them spend as little time up there. Maybe each man only throws one rock over into the hole, but if we have thousands then the job is done… right?”

Everyone thinks that sounds crazy, because it is crazy. But crazy is what they need right now, and Ryan finds himself nodding along with what the man is saying. So long as they keep the men down to a minute - perhaps a minute and a half - then they have enough time to do a little bit of work before the next rotation comes in. They’ll need at least a thousand men. All of which will suffer the consequences years down the line. Whether it kills them or not is uncertain, but even if they take every precaution necessary they’re still sacrificing more men.

But it has to be done. Shane looks down to the ruined phone, and barks at a nearby soldier to get him another. 

He needs to call this in, and request yet more troops.
            * * *
The year is 1987. It’s been almost a year since the explosion at Chernobyl. Ryan and Shane haven’t been able to manage anything beyond brief meetings and passings in the street. Once they had coffee, though Shane hadn’t been able to make it without someone to accompany him. For his own safety,. A gift from the KGB. Definitely not someone to listen to everything they said. Lucky Ryan and Shane didn’t need to say much to enjoy each other’s company.

But now, on the stone-paved streets in the cold air, Ryan wants to say something to Shane. He’s alone on the street, nothing but a newspaper stand and a man yelling the latest headlines to distract him from the fact that he’s lonely. It’s been months since he’s been allowed back to Chernobyl, months since he’s been allowed to think about anything but the upcoming trial. Dyatlov’s trial. The man who gave the orders that night, and allowed an under experienced crew to run a safety test they had no idea was going to happen when their shift started minutes prior. Ryan has given a statement in another city, took the train all the way just to tell lies he had been fed by a committee that knew nothing. He told them it was all human error, nothing was wrong with the reactor itself. Absolutely nothing. It was all Dyatlov’s fault.

That was a bold-faced lie and everyone who had attended that hearing knew it. They knew the reactors had a fatal flaw, and they knew what the now deceased men reported. Ryan had heard it from Steven. They pressed the shutdown button - the AZ-5 button, and then the reactor exploded. Ryan stares at the newspaper in front of him. He grabs one, turns it over, and sniffles against the chilly breeze. He pays the man a few coins for the newspaper, and steps away from the stand as he turns back to the front page. He reads about the upcoming trial he’s set to speak at. The trial that’s nothing but a smoke screen. A show and tell full of lies to put the public at ease. Ryan sighs. He thinks about the promotion he got in return for lying. The work he has  now that he’s Director of an entire scientific institute. The promotion should be an honor, but it feels like sucking on a greasy coin. Ryan keeps the newspaper under his arm as he walks back to his hotel room.

He needs to go over what he’s going to say in the trial.

For a moment Ryan doesn’t see him. He doesn’t see the black hair peeking out from underneath a thick beanie, or the stern look he’s getting from one Steven Lim. When Ryan does look up from the stone paving he stops in his tracks. He doesn’t look around. Too many years living in the Soviet Union has taught him a lot, and being inconspicuous under a watchful eye is one of those things. Ryan picks out the newspaper like he just remembered something, and moves to lean against a building facade. He pretends to read thoroughly, but in reality he’s just darting his head back and forth aimlessly.

Steven speaks up first. “Got the time, friend?” He asks.

Ryan looks to Steven like he’s a stranger. He looks at him as if he didn’t expect such a question. Ryan nods, folds up the newspaper, and checks his watch. “Yeah. Here.” He shows the watch to Steven, who nods. “Got a cigarette on you?”

Steven smiles a little, and nods. “Sure, come with me. Stinks less like trash back here.”

* * * 

An abandoned building within city limits is a place for rats, stray cats, and secret meetings. Ryan tries not to breathe in too much of the dank air, he tries not to smell the acrid smell of cat urine. He tries to focus on the fact that Steven is here, and has just led him into a place they can talk freely. It makes Ryan’s heart skip a few beats. “When did you get in?” He asks, full of excited energy at being able to speak to an old friend. Someone who knows the truth.

“Today. Though, your friend is on an even tighter schedule.”

Ryan whips his head around like he’s on a rollercoaster. His eyes catch the third member of their secret meeting. Ryan gasps his name. “Shane.”

Shane looks tired. He’s clad in an expensive jacket and his hair, though thinner than last time they met, is impeccably combed. The tall Bureaucrat looks like he’s due for a meeting with the General Secretary. Ryan puts a hand to his own jacket, well worn and weather-beaten. They’re two sides of the same coin. So different, yet thrust into the exact same problem.

“Ryan.” Shane smiles. His voice is a little strained, but he manages a smile and nods in Steven’s direction. “He’s right. We have to be quick. I have things to get to today, and if I’m late-”

“I know what happened with the reactor.” Steven interrupts. Shane looks thankful for the quick start. He clears his throat and keeps his eyes on Ryan as Steven continues. “I’ve analysed the data. Toptunov was telling the truth. He shut the reactor down, and then it exploded. I think this article may have the answer.” Steven procures several pieces of paper. “But two pages have been redacted.”

Ryan looks at the article. He’s seen it before. Steven is holding it out for him to take but Ryan doesn’t dare. He remembers seeing a copy of that in his colleagues office. Steven isn’t a stupid man though, he recognises the look on Ryan’s face as soon as it crosses.

“You’ve seen this before?”

Ryan nods. “Yes, but please believe me… I had no idea it could cause an explosion. None of us knew.”

“None of you knew what?”

“In nineteen-seventy-five at an RBMK reactor in Leningrad a fuel channel ruptured. The operators pressed AZ-5, but instead of power going down it immediately spiked for a brief moment.”

Steven blinks. Shane looks a little lost, but he still cocks his head and asks the question. “How is that possible?” Steven looks back at the man, then whips his gaze to Ryan again. He’s laser focused.

Ryan swallows. “A colleague of mine asked the same question. His name was Volkov, he’s the one who wrote that article. When an RBMK reactor runs at low power it’s notoriously unstable,” He looks to Shane as he explains things in detail. He knows that Shane needs to understand the most, of course, but mostly Ryan just wants to lock eyes with the man and keep them there. “They’re prone to swings in reactivity. Under normal circumstances the control rods can compensate for that-”
“Under normal circumstances!” Steven exclaims. He points to the paper to emphasize his point. “The Chernobyl staff stalled the reactor during the test. They pulled almost all of the control rods out to bring the power back up.”

“That’s what Volkov found out in Leningrad, you see. If the Boron control rods are completely withdrawn from the reactor when they’re put back in, the first thing that enters the core isn’t Boron. It’s graphite. The control rods have graphite tips to displace water and steam. That’s why the reactivity doesn’t go down, and instead goes up.” Ryan watches as Steven puts both hands onto his face and turns away. He locks his eyes back to Shane’s again. “Volkov warned the Kremlin… ten years ago.”
Shane nodded his head. “The KGB classified it. It’s a ‘State Secret.’” Shane took a deep breath, and sat down in a musty old chair at the edge of the room. He takes another breath, easier this time.
“Even when I saw the reactor blown open I still didn’t think it could be from the AZ-5 flaw. This could have only happened if they pushed the reactor to its very limits.” Ryan says to Steven, who has a faraway look in his eyes mixed with fear and anger. 

Shane interrupts. “So it is their fault then?”

“Yes.”

Steven shakes his head. “But not only their fault.” Ryan looks down, and whispers a ‘no.’ “Is that what you’re going to say in Vienna, at the trial?”

Ryan doesn’t know what to say. Shane speaks for him, at Steven. “You can’t possibly be that naive.”

Steven stares at Shane now, and takes a step toward him. “There are sixteen RBMK reactors in the Soviet Union. We have to fix them!” Shane stands as Steven continues, and takes steps toward him as well. Shane is taller, but Steven hasn’t felt any of the affects of radiation that Shane has. Ryan decides to block the thought of them fighting at a time like this. “We have to go public to force the Central Committee to act!”

“What you’re proposing is that Ryan humiliate a nation that is obsessed with not being humiliated!” Shane stands over Steven, then casts a soft look over to Ryan. “We can make a deal with the KGB. You tell them what you’re supposed to in Vienna, and they let us quietly fix the remaining reactors.”

Shane is standing close enough to Ryan to touch him now, and Ryan is nodding. That sounds like a good plan to him, but the smell of Shane’s cologne might be affecting his thought processes. Steven scoffs behind them, unaware of Ryan’s addled mind. “Are you joking? A deal with the KGB? And you called me naive!”

“They’ll go after your family. They’ll go after your friends. Everyone you love.” Shane says, gaze unwavering from Ryan’s. 

“Ryan, this is your chance to speak to the world! If that chance was mine I’d-”

“Well it isn’t!” Shane whirls around and yells at Steven. He scowls, puts himself between both of the men like a knight protecting a royal. “I’ve known braver souls than you, Lim. Men who had their moment and did nothing, because when it’s your life and the lives of everyone you love your moral conviction doesn’t mean anything! All you want is to not be shot.”

“Do you know how many people - how many men and women and children - will die because of this? Do you realise how many more might be on the line if we say nothing?”

“He’s given everything already!” Shane retorts. “What are you suggesting he do? Line up in front of a gun and take the shot in the name of truth?”

“Yes!” Steven has to look up to yell at Shane, but he does so with the passion of a man three times his own size. “If it were me, I’d do it in a heartbeat! The truth is more precious than anything-”

“He’s more precious to me than any truth! Do you hear me? I love him, I’m not going to let you pressure him into killing himself!” Shane’s voice is dangerously loud now but he keeps going. Ryan wants to stop him but he’s afraid of what might happen if he does. It’s like touching a dog when it’s ripping another apart. Breaking up the fight might get Ryan bitten. So he stands there, and watches as Shane realises what he’s said. The man steps back some, rummages in his pockets, and pulls out a handkerchief. He coughs into it, and stares right at Steven.

Steven, who stares right back at both men. He frowns a little, confusion crossing his face. Ryan feels his stomach drop, but all that comes from Steven is a soft tone.
“Even with all that… he still has an obligation to the truth.”

Shane shakes his head. At last he looks back to Ryan. He says nothing, but he doesn’t need to. Ryan takes in a breath. He has a lot to think about. What is the human cost of lies? Is he a murderer if he keeps the truth, if only to save his own happiness?

* * *

Vienna. 1987. The trial of the century begins with cameras rolling in the courtroom, and all three men in their best attire. Ryan splurged a little with the new money he had been getting thanks to the bogus promotion, and opted to get a new blazer. It wasn’t anything fancy like Shane was wearing, but it held up in court. He looked a little more presentable and less like a mad scientist. But even if he looked like a million rubles on the outside, he felt like absolutely none inside. Ryan had taken to wearing beanies and hats lately to hide the fact that his hair was shedding more and more as the days wore on… but in this courtroom he couldn’t hide it anymore. His hair was thinner. Noticeably thinner, even if only from close-up. The affects were settling in, and Ryan hates it. It was a constant reminder of the truth. Every hair that fell out begged him to tell the truth, but every look he stole at Shane down the bench begged him to shut up. Say what they wanted to hear. 

Shane is first to give his statement in the courtroom, and when his full name and title is called he stands graciously and nods his head. Everyone with a title in the room regards him with respect as he stands at his podium. At first Shane gives a look to Dyatlov, then to the presiding judges. His model of the Chernobyl power plant is wheeled out on a stretcher. The model is cut in half to get a good view of the inner workings. Shane clears his throat as he gathers everything he needs. Pointer, notes, model.

“It began with, of all things, a safety test. But why was there a need for a safety test at all? Reactor number four was not new when the accident occurred. In fact it went into operation on December twentieth, nineteen-eighty-three. Eleven days later the Plant director signed this document.” Shane held up the document in question. “It certifies the completion of construction of the reactor. As a result of finishing the work at the end of the year he was awarded a hero of socialist labour. His comrade was given Valorous Labour. And Comrade Dyatlov was given an Order of the Red Banner. But their work was not finished. This document is a lie. In order to sign this, all safety tests have to have been successfully completed… and yet one remain.” Shane looked again to the model, and began to point to various parts of it. “A nuclear reactor generates heat in the core here. A series of pumps here and here send a constant flow of cooling water into the core. That water coupled with heat creates steam, which turns turbines here. The result is electricity. But what if a power plant has no power? What if the power itself is disrupted? A blackout, equipment failure, or an attack by a foreign enemy. If there’s no power the pumps cannot move water through the core, and without water the core overheats. The fuel melts down. A nuclear disaster.”

Shane takes a breath. He coughs into his handkerchief, but stifles anymore coughs and continues.

“The solution is backup generators placed here. Does that mean problem solved? No. They knew that the problem was not solved at all. The generators take one minute to fully power the pumps to prevent a meltdown… but that’s not long enough to evade disaster. So they came up with a theory; if the plant lost power the turbine that had been previously pushed by steam would still be moving, yes? So perhaps they could bide time by using the energy from the dying turbine to allow the generators to start up.”

Shane started to cough again. This time Ryan saw his neck straining, and his hand clenched inside of his jacket pocket. His other hand motioned nonchalantly. He was pretending everything was fine. Shane swallowed, and managed to ask one question. A beg for a little time.

“Is there any questions?”

Ryan looks from Shane to the judges, and then back again. One of the judges says no, they don’t have any questions. They tell Shane to continue. Shane nods, and despite the need to cough he simply turns, takes in a deep breath, and continues. His voice never wavers. Ryan wonders how he does it, and marvels at just how determined to get this over with me must be.

“To test this theory the reactor is placed in a reduced power mode. 700 megawatts. This simulates a blackout condition. The turbines are turned off, and as they slow down their electrical output is measured to see if its enough to power the pumps. The science is strong. But the test is only as good as the man carrying it out. The first test fails. The second fails. The third time they try they fail. The fourth time they tried… was April twenty-six, nineteen-eighty-six.”

That marks the end of his speech. For a moment Shane simply shuffles his papers. He wants to appear as if he’s fine. As if he isn’t dying to get back into his seat and have some reprieve from all of this. He nods to the judges, and walks calmly back to his seat. He walks past Ryan without so much as a look his way, and swallows hard once he sits back down. Every time Ryan tries to look to his right down the bench to Shane his eyes catch Steven’s. Steven stares into his soul, and without words he brings Ryan right back to what was said in the abandoned building. Ryan gives up on trying to find Shane’s eyes after the third time.

All the while Dyatlov and his colleagues are being cross-examined Ryan is staring straight forward. His eyes are dull and he’s only half paying attention. The trial will only go one way from now until he takes the stand. Even then, people might ignore him. When Shane starts coughing again not many people take mind. When he continues to cough, and cough hard too, the judges that had previously been ignoring him turns their heads. Shane looked up, held up a hand, and started to move to the exit. As he did judges called for a recess of thirty minutes.

Ryan could barely get out of his seat fast enough.

* * *

He found Shane seated on a bench just outside the building. It’s serene. No people walk by, birds sing, and the trees rustle while a cool breeze weaves between the leaves. It’s peaceful. Ryan almost smiled as he sits down next to Shane.

“Do you know much about this place?” Shane asks, voice raspy.

Ryan shakes his head. “No. Not really.”

“It was mostly Jewish and Polish people who lived here. Then the Jewish were killed in the war, and the Polish were pushed out by Stalin. Then the Nazis came and killed everyone else that remained.” Shane looked out to the trees. “But people came to live here anyway. They knew the ground under their feet was soaked in blood but they didn’t care. Dead people… but not them. No one ever thinks it’s going to happen to them. But here we are.”
Shane holds up his handkerchief. Ryan stops himself from having a reaction. He sees the red splotches on the material. He sees Shane’s tired eyes, even paler skin. He sees a sick man. A dying man. Ryan knows that, deep inside, he’s dying too. It’s all Ryan can do to ask Shane one simple question. “How much time?”

“Maybe a year.” Shane says. “They call it a long illness. It doesn’t seem very long to me. I know you told me before, and I believed you. But time passed and I thought ‘it wont happen to me.’ Time passed and I pushed it away, I wasted it all for nothing.”

“For nothing?” Ryan asks in an incredulous tone. He can barely believe what he’s hearing.

“Do you remember the first mornings we were at Chernobyl? Hard at work. I was unconcerned. I don’t believe much that comes out of the Kremlin but when they put me in charge of the cleanup they said it wasn’t serious. I believed them. Do you know why?”

Ryan swallows. His eyes are tearing up but he does nothing to stop them. “Because they put you in charge.”

Shane nods slowly. “Yeah. How many consequential men were there? That was all I’d ever been. I hoped that one day I would be one of them. I’d hoped one day I would matter,” Shane put his hand on Ryan’s shoulder, “But it turns out I just stood next to people who did.”

“There are other scientists like me. Any one of them could have done what I did. But you.” Ryan stifles himself for a moment, and puts his hand on Shane’s knee. “Everything we asked for. Everything we needed, you got it. Men, materials, police robots. Who else could have done that? They heard me, but they listened to you.”

Shane looked right back into Ryan’s eyes, and gave an unbelieving smile. Ryan could tell he appreciated the sentiment, but he didn’t quite believe it.

“Of all the ministers and deputies they could have sent - an entire colony of obedient fools - they mistakenly sent the one good man. For gods’ sakes Shane; you were the one that mattered the most. Not just to me.” Ryan blinked, and used his free hand to wipe his cheek.

Shane swallowed. He brought the handkerchief to his mouth and coughed violently, then forced it back and simply cleared his throat. He wanted to say something to Ryan like he did back in that abandoned building… but who knew where bugs were around here? Certainly not him. Ryan withdrew his hand, and so did Shane. The taller man took in a breath, and closed his eyes. Now it was his turn to try subtlety. “I’m going on a vacation after this. A long one.”

Ryan furrowed his brow. For a moment he was confused. What a startling turn of subject… but then he caught on. Ryan cocked his head. “Where to?”

“Spain. Sunny, warm. Peaceful.”

“Send me a postcard.” Ryan said. He gave Shane a smile though his eyes were still wet. “Pick out the prettiest one, and maybe I’ll visit as well.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”

* * *

Steven Lim’s speech is much like Shane’s. So is Ryan’s, right up until after his presentation. He tells the crowd of ministers and deputies and scientists exactly how a chain reaction of devastation can occur if even one element of a stable reactor is taken out. Elements like the water, steam, or boron cased rods. In this case the workers seemed to do everything Dyatlov told them to do, and he was doing seemingly everything in his power to push the reactor to the brink of destruction.

“Akimov and Toptunov, both now deceased for months, did these things because they believed there was a failsafe. They followed orders because they thought they knew there was something to fall back on. The AZ-5 button. A simple button to shut it all down, but in the circumstances that Comrade Dyatlov created this was not a failsafe.

Akimov engaged the AZ-5 button at 1:23:40am. The fully removed rods begin to move back into the reactor all at once. These rods are encased in Boron, but not the tips. The tips are cased with Graphite. This accelerates reactivity.”

Ryan looks down to his notes for another prompt on what to say next, when he is interrupted. A judge speaks up, and asks; “Why?”

A frown. Ryan looks up to the judges. “Why? The same reason we are the only nation that builds graphite fueled water moderated reactors with a positive void coefficient. It’s cheaper.” Ryan shrugs. People around him murmur, especially the scientists sitting in the stands behind him. Ryan tries not to react. He continues with his speech, knowing that Steven must be stifling a smile while Shane’s stomach must be doing backflips.

“The first part of the rod that enter the core are the graphite tips, and when they do the reaction which had been rising skyrockets further. Every single molecule of water converts to steam with expands and ruptures fuel rod channels. The control rods in those channels are stuck, they’re fixed into position. They are endlessly superheating in a chain reaction… Chernobyl is now no longer a nuclear reactor. It is a bomb.

1:23:42am. A worker looks down on the enormous lid of the reactor, and sees the impossible. The control rod and fuel channel caps, each weighing 350 kilograms, are jumping up and down. He runs in the direction of the control room to warn them, but there is nothing that can be done even if he can warn them.

1:23:44am. The steam breaks more fuel channels. We do not know how high the power went, only the final reading. This reactor, designed to operate at 3200 megawatts, went beyond 34000. The pressure can no longer be held back.

At long last we arrive at 1:23:45. The explosion. In the instant the lid is thrown off the reactor oxygen rushes in. It combines with hydrogen and superheated graphite. The chain of disaster is now complete. No one in the room that night knew the shut down button could acta s a detonator. They didn’t know… because it was kept from them.”
“Comrade Bergara!” A judge interrupts Ryan as he speaks. “You are conflicting with your own testimony previous to this day!”

“I lied.” Ryan said simply. He shrugged as people around him murmured some more. Shock and awe rippled through the room. Steven sat up more in his seat. Shane shrunk down some. “That testimony was a lie. To the world. I’m not the only one who kept this secret, I was following orders. From the Kremlin. The KGB. There are 16 other reactors just like this one, two of which are not far from this very building!”

“Professor Bergara!” The lead judge almost spits the title Ryan’s way. Ryan stands firm behind his podium. He hides his shaking hands by restacking his papers. “If you are implying that the nation is somehow also at fault for this let me remind you; you are trodding on dangerous ground.”

Ryan scoffs. “I’ve already trod on dangerous ground. We’re on dangerous ground right now, because of our secrets and our lies! They’re practically that defines us. When the truth offends we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid. That is how an RBMK reactor core explodes. Lies.”

* * *

The trial ends. Everyone inside is sworn to secrecy over what was said inside of the court room, and Anatoly Dyatlov is sentenced to ten years in prison. No one knows it in Ryan’s day, but he will only serve four of those years. Ryan doesn’t thing even ten is enough. After the court trial Steven and Shane suffer little to no consequences, but Ryan Bergara is stripped of all his titles and fired from his position as a professor of nuclear science. He takes menial jobs in Moscow for the following year. He drinks a lot. He doesn’t see Shane once after the trial is ended, but he also knows why he doesn’t. Shane needs to keep up appearances. Ryan doesn’t blame him in the slightest, not even when he must suffer the harsh Russian winter without central heating.

Ryan adopts a cat in the autumn months. She’s a stray, of that he’s sure, but Ryan loves her all the same. Some days he’s in high spirits, some days he stares at the rafters in his kitchen and wonders how long it would take for him to end it. How long would it take before his cat leapt out of his apartment window, never to be seen again? How much water and food would he have to leave out for her to be okay until he was found?

Most of his days are bad, laced with good.

Then comes the postcard.

Ryan goes through his mail with a heavy jacket on at his dining room table. He throws the bills to the other side of the table, and stares at the unmarked postcard. The picture is of a beautiful beach, with golden sand and warm smiling faces. In the background a child and a dog play tug-of-war with a frisbee. Ryan rubs his thumb over the word at the bottom.

Torremolinos.

Ryan turns the postcard over. Nothing is written on it. Ryan holds the postcard up to his face and inhales softly. Too many hands have held onto this thing, and too many hours have passed for it to smell anything like Shane. Still, Ryan holds it close to his chest.

* * *

The Torremolinos beach strip is long, to say the least. Ryan has spent a lot of money, scrimped and saved for weeks, to even get here. He must find the beach where this postcard takes inspiration from. For two whole days Ryan walks along various stretched of sand, and holds up the postcard to locals. He tries to speak Spanish. He fails. Ryan tries to speak what little English he knows, but even that doesn’t help him.

He can’t find the strip of beach in the postcard.

On the third day Ryan is ready to give up. He arrives to a new stretch of beach with a packed lunch and a few dollars to spend on ice cream… and he walks. Ryan walks for what feels like hours before he has the nerve to approach someone. This time there’s a food vendor at the beach. This stretch is much more popular to tourists, it seems, so the vendor Ryan speaks to manages to stutter out some English. Ryan is just as bad as this man is, but he manages to catch some words. ‘Yes’ comes up a lot. ‘Over there’ comes up twice while the man gestures north. Ryan stares north, and takes back the postcard. He buys an ice cream to make the man’s effort worthwhile, and steps out of line. He stares at the beach stretching in front of him. No one there is tall. No one there has gangly limbs that make it hard to fit properly into a suit. Ryan swallows some. He’s ready to give up. Hes ready to talk to Spanish officials by himself, and ask for political asylum. He has all the paper proof of who he is. He’s sure they’ll accept him. Positive, in fact. Ryan has a plan; he’s going to offer to give himself and all his expertise to them in return for asylum. Everything. Every secret, every scrap of knowledge that they need.

But that doesn’t make him excited anymore.

Ryan holds up the postcard, and compares it to the stretch of beach before him.

“Hold it at an angle.”

Ryan jumps almost out of his skin when he hears Russian behind him. He whirls around like he’s been shot in the back, and stared with eyes bugged out of his skull.

There Shane stands, hair thinning and skin pale and handkerchief in hand. But he’s there. Ryan can’t believe his eyes. He launches himself forward and wraps the man’s torso in the tightest hug he’s ever given. Shane groans a little, but wraps his arms around Ryan too. He buries his face in Ryan’s hair, and laughs.

“You’re here.” Ryan says.

“I come here every day.” Shane answers. He parts them so he can look Ryan in the eyes, and takes the postcard from his hands. “Here,” He says. He holds the postcard at an angle, and points to a giant luxury hotel block. “This is new, not in the postcard anymore. I could only find ones from last year… I had hoped you would come here anyway.”
“This is my third search… how are you?” Ryan asks. He reaches up to run a hand through Shane’s hair. “It’s thin… how’s your health?”
Shane shakes his head; he leans away from Ryan’s fussing. “I’m fine. We’re both dying, you and I, but at least now we have good food… and better doctors.” Shane smiles despite it all. He ruffles Ryan’s hair. “We have each other.”

Ryan nods. He feels his heart could burst at any second, like his chest could implode if Shane kept looking at him any longer… but he never wanted Shane to stop looking at him. He never wanted to let the man out of his sight again.

And he never would.