“Prefect, I need a Bullet.”
The minisub burbled up to the surface like a bout of bad tacos; Hwa spun its hatch open with ease. It should have been heavy. Difficult. It wasn’t. She was like one of those mothers who could lift a car off her baby. It felt like being drunk. That special slick easiness that came with not feeling the full extent of her extremities. Maybe that was what came with knowing some extra-dimensional asshole was after you. You just stopped caring.
Hwa watched the boat as it came closer. Then she turned to look at the city. She wished for a moment that the towers were not shrouded in snow, that ice was not clinging to every surface. She tried to think of it in sunlight, under a blue sky, on a calm sea. And with that, she jumped into the submersible.
Inside the minisub, the winch worked just as easily. She spun it shut until a little green light came on in the shape of a happy face. She gave it the thumbs-up. The sub’s controls were simple: an accelerator, a joystick, and a brake. It was tethered to the big milkshake straw, so it couldn’t go very far. The other instruments on the panel were for lights and cameras, and Hwa had no need of those.
Down.
Down.
Down.
The reactor loomed large in the sub’s bubble. She initiated a docking program, and watched as an animation in the instrument panel told her how close she was to making contact. It all looked vaguely obscene. But finally the connection was made, the airlock threaded, and she could emerge.
The interior of the reactor control room looked exactly as its designers had promised. An empty tube led to a blank-walled room. The room had a few displays hanging in it. They showed the reactor’s progress and the safety of the core. It was already up and running in a small state; to increase gain you’d have to draw more ions from the seawater and layer in more tritium. But from here, you could vent the whole thing, or seal it off entirely.
The door clanged open. Right on schedule.
“This room.” Branch looked for the door that had just been behind him a minute ago. Now it was a smooth expanse of blank white wall. “What room is this?”
“It’s my room.” Hwa closed her eyes. Raised her hands. Hoped it would work. Hoped that her instinct was right. And began to draw.
Master control room. All the buttons. All the switches. The door locking behind you. The door no one can open but you. A perfectly secure room where you are in complete and total control. Where you have all the power. It will respond entirely to your commands, and only your commands. It will behave exactly as you need, because this is an emergency. Because no one should be down here. If someone is down here, it’s because the city of New Arcadia and everyone who lives there is in profound danger.
When she opened her eyes it was there. The master control room. The one she and Tae-kyung had always talked about. It hummed. It peeped. It sang. The displays showed the reactor in ancient pixellated fonts, pale green on black. It was big and clunky and the buttons were so bright they were hot to the touch. And right there, right under her thumb, was a big fat red one. The Button. The one in every doomsday scenario. The one you weren’t supposed to push. Ever.
“Your problem is, you got no imagination,” Hwa said, and pushed it.
INITIATING OVERLOAD, the displays read.
Branch looked at the displays. He looked at her. “You’ll die.”
Hwa shook her head. She swept away all the buttons. Now all the arrays were nothing but grey plastic. “No. We will die. Here. In the mud. Together.”
Branch made a noise unlike any Hwa had ever heard before. It was a long, resonant screech of frustration. He threw himself at the walls. He kicked and punched and launched himself at their smooth white surfaces. Nothing opened for him.
“You have to be organic,” Hwa said. “Sorry.”
He vaulted over a rack of useless arrays and grabbed her by the shoulders. He shook her. “End it! End it now!”
Hwa started to laugh. It was the strangest thing. She should have been scared. Terrified. Anxious. Worried, a little, about all her skin falling off and her eyes melting out of her skull. But there was something so delightful about Branch’s frustration. He wore the same expression as a cat trying to fight itself in a mirror. Vicious and angry, but still profoundly stupid. The longer she thought about it, the longer she laughed. Slowly, he let her go. She started hiccuping, and he slapped her.
“Aye.” Hwa rolled her neck. The slap barely hurt at all. “Aye, b’y. Really? That’s the best you’ve got?”
He punched her in the stomach. It hurt, but not as badly as it might have. Maybe he was already weakening, somehow. If anything could do that to him, it was probably fusion radiation. At least, she hoped so.