Fallout (10 page)

“Where else is there?” Derek asked.

Lyrica grinned. “Well, there’s the janitor’s closet. It’s not glamorous, but I can guarantee Tucker won’t look for you there.”

“And neither will anyone else,” Derek said, returning her grin. “Well, Sam, shall we go back in the closet for a couple of hours?”

To Derek’s surprise, Sambit grinned too. “I thought you hated the closet.”

It was those little bits of humor that always caught Derek off guard. He had this image of Sambit, lingering from their first meeting, of a starchy, buttoned-up, prim man, and while that was true in some respects, Derek was discovering how untrue it was in others. Sambit might be prim, but he wasn’t repressed, and underneath that proper exterior lay a wicked sense of humor. “Only if I’m forced into it,” Derek replied. “I’ve found closets quite interesting when I choose my company.”

“Oh, really?” Sambit said, finishing his tea and standing up. “I don’t remember you choosing my company.”

“I got up at six a.m. to do yoga with you,” Derek reminded him, tossing his bowl in the trash. With no running water because of the flooding, they couldn’t wash dishes and had to use disposable ones instead. “If that isn’t choosing your company, I don’t know what is.”

“Why, Mr. Marshall, I didn’t realize what an honor that was,” Sambit simpered, batting his eyelashes at Derek.

Lyrica burst out laughing, breaking the sudden tension that invested Derek’s frame at Sambit’s flirting, however jokingly. “You two are something else. The closet is at the end of the hallway on the left. Get your computer and get started while I go distract Tucker.”

“I’ll get the computer,” Sambit offered. “You get Number Five outside and join me.”

“Sounds good,” Derek said, still a little off kilter from the unexpected banter. He took a few deep breaths as he walked into the break room and unplugged Number Five from where it was charging, trying to dismiss his sudden susceptibility to Sambit’s teasing. The other man wasn’t at all Derek’s type, except that appearances, in this case, were deceiving. Sambit didn’t look like Derek’s type, but he was acting more and more like the kind of man Derek could be very attracted to. Of course there was the issue of Sambit being essentially in the closet, and the fact that Derek had no idea if Sambit found him attractive in return. Oh, and the fact that they could all die of radiation sickness if the core had a meltdown or if the radiation leak got worse.

He couldn’t think about that or he’d go crazy or go looking for a bottle of booze. They’d been careful, and his Geiger counter had only beeped when he was wearing the hazmat suit, so he hoped they were safe. The dosimeter on his belt that measured his personal exposure to radiation over time hadn’t sounded any kind of alert. Maybe he’d look into radiation sickness a little later, though. Just so he knew what signs to watch for.

He carried Number Five to the door and set the robot down outside, glancing at his Geiger counter out of habit, but the readings, while higher than inside, were not at dangerous levels. He took a moment more to make sure Number Five was receiving the signals from his remote, then went in search of the janitor’s closet and Sambit.

“So what are we looking for?” Derek asked as he maneuvered in the small space to find a spot where he could see the computer screen and still sit comfortably.

“Anything that isn’t as it should be,” Sambit said.

“That’s so helpful,” Derek joked, “since I don’t know what anything is supposed to look like. Lyrica said to start where the containment system was damaged, right?”

“Right,” Sambit said. “That’s where we have the highest radiation levels so far. If we can trace that back to the source, we should be able to find the leak.”

“Okay, let’s do it.”

Derek guided Number Five across the open space, noticing that the puddles weren’t quite as numerous or as deep as they’d been the day before. “It looks like the flooding is going down.”

“As long as we don’t get hit again with runoff from inland,” Sambit agreed. “The Colorado River isn’t very far away.”

“One disaster at a time, please,” Derek said, navigating around the rubble that had killed the second shift manager. “Two at a time might be more than I could handle.”

“I don’t believe that for a moment,” Sambit said. Derek gave him a sharp look but let it go for the moment. This wasn’t the time to discuss the new awareness that had plagued Derek since their yoga session that morning.

“Okay, here’s where the Geiger counter went ballistic yesterday,” Derek said. “Number Five’s readings aren’t quite as high as the Geiger counter said, but they’re still higher than they were when I first put it outside.”

Sambit accepted the change of subject without comment, focusing back on the computer screen and what he could see through the robot’s cameras. “Radiation can come from two places: the reactor itself and the spent fuel rods. I haven’t even asked Lyrica if anyone checked on the spent rods, other than when we put her colleague in there to get him out of the elements, but I don’t think that’s the source of our problem. I think we’ve got a valve that’s leaking or something like that.”

“A crack in the core?”

“No, if we had that, the pressure inside would be out of balance. Once we put the boron solution in, it’s stayed within a predictable range, so the core is intact.”

“I thought the computer systems were supposed to monitor the valves and stuff for leaks.” Derek guided Number Five deeper into the secondary containment system. The Geiger counter readings stayed fairly stable, so while he wasn’t sure they were moving closer to the source, he figured they weren’t moving farther from it.

“They are,” Sambit said, “but we’ve already gotten inconsistent readings from the system in other areas. We can’t afford to rely on those readings until we’ve verified them.”

“So what are we looking for?” Derek asked again.

“At the moment, a spike in the radiation levels,” Sambit said. “Something to give us a clue where to look more closely.”

“So I’ll just keep letting Number Five wander.”

Sambit nodded, and Derek let silence fall between them.

“You realize that after that conversation, Lyrica probably knows you’re gay too,” he said eventually.

“I told you. I don’t deny that I’m gay. I simply don’t choose to broadcast it to every person I meet regardless of their need to know or the impact their knowing might have on me,” Sambit replied. “I’m not pretending to be someone I’m not. I’m choosing who I show certain sides of myself to, the same as I choose who I show my sense of humor to, or who I tell about my childhood in India. If Lyrica knows now, that’s fine. If she doesn’t, that’s also fine. She can draw what conclusions she chooses to. If they are incorrect ones and it interferes with our working relationship, I will correct them, but until then, it doesn’t matter.”

“How can it not matter how people see you?” Derek asked, puzzled rather than angry now that the initial, ingrained reaction to Sambit’s revelation had worn off.

“Because how they see me doesn’t affect who I am,” Sambit explained. “I don’t define myself by how others see me. I know the truth about myself, and nothing else matters. If someone makes a false assumption and it affects how we interact—if a woman flirts with me and won’t take no for an answer, for example—I might correct that assumption, but most of the time, those interactions are too fleeting or inconsequential to make it worth the effort. Whether I say I’m not interested or I’m gay, the result is the same, so why make it into a bigger issue than it is?”

“Because if she knows you’re gay, she might introduce you to her cute brother,” Derek said, but Sambit didn’t smile at Derek’s attempt at a joke. “Okay, sorry, that was lame.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Derek sighed and tried to formulate an explanation for his experiences and convictions. “I tried ignoring how others saw me,” he said slowly. “I tried to ignore the comments and taunts and assumptions, the jocks who figured that because I was gay, I’d be willing to blow them when they couldn’t get a girl to do it. I was a cocksucker so why not suck theirs? I tried to ignore the jeers when I walked down the school halls and they crucified me for being smart at the same time they crucified me for being gay. I tried letting that roll off my back, and nothing changed. So I went away to college where at least being smart didn’t make me different. Being gay still did, and hiding it didn’t work because people found out, and then they accused me of lying because I hadn’t told them. I got tired of it. If I put it all out there up front, no one can accuse me of lying. No one can accuse me of being something I’m not.”

“I can see that helping with the people who accused you of lying, but how does it change the way the jocks treated you in high school?” Sambit asked. “Their actions came from their assumptions about what it means to be gay, not from anything you said or did or didn’t say or do.”

“I’m a little stronger now than I was then. They can’t force me onto my knees anymore.”

E
VERYTHING
made so much more sense now.

That was Sambit’s first thought when the import of Derek’s words sank in. His second thought was outrage at the thought of anyone being subjected to that kind of abuse. “Did you report them?”

“Of course I did,” Derek said. “You know what the coach told me? They didn’t mean anything by it. It was just a bit of harmless roughhousing. Boys will be boys, after all.”

“What about the principal? Or the police?” Sambit asked.

“It was my word against theirs,” Derek said bitterly. “There was no physical evidence other than a bruise on my knee that could have come from anywhere, and those were the boys who were going to win us a state championship in football this year. Nothing could be allowed to jeopardize that.”

“For what it’s worth, and I realize that’s probably nothing, I believe you,” Sambit said. He wanted to reach over and comfort Derek, but the hurt was hardly new and the other man was already so prickly that Sambit didn’t want to make it worse.

“It’s old news,” Derek said.

Sambit might have believed that if Derek hadn’t retreated behind his defensive mask again. The sudden beeping of the robot’s Geiger counter interrupted them before Sambit could figure out what to say next.

“What the hell?” Derek demanded.

“I don’t know,” Sambit said. “Give me a minute.”

“At those levels of radiation, a minute is all you’re going to get before the circuits are fried. I don’t have a backup robot.”

“Okay, get him out of there,” Sambit said. “I’ll study the video he took and hope I can see something from that.”

He waited while Derek directed the robot back out of the secondary containment system. “With that kind of exposure, it’ll have to stay outside until we can get a hazmat suit to take off its shell,” Sambit said. “We can’t work on it without one.”

“Which means dealing with Tucker,” Derek said with a groan. “I hope to Christ we got something useful in the videos because I don’t want to have to fight with that asshole for nothing.”

“We have the Geiger counter readings if nothing else,” Sambit said. “They’re proof that we have a problem. Let me look at the footage and see if I can spot what’s causing it.”

Derek hit play on the recordings Number Five had made, scooting back so Sambit could peer more closely at the screen, watching the corresponding Geiger counter numbers as he studied the frames. “I don’t see anything out of place other than the outer wall,” Sambit said finally. “The turbine, the condenser, the generator all look exactly like I would expect them to look under the circumstances.”

“Could they have gotten irradiated somehow?” Derek asked.

“Obviously they did,” Sambit said. “The question is how. There shouldn’t be any transfer between the reactor and the turbines. The whole point of a pressurized water reactor is to keep all radioactive material confined within the reactor building.”

“So what brings the heat out, then?” Derek asked. “I mean, it’s steam from the heat of the nuclear reaction that turns the turbines, right?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Sambit said. “There’s a transference system within the reactor building where the heated coolant from the core runs through pipes surrounded by water. That water produces the steam that comes out to the turbines.”

“So what would happen if some of those pipes were damaged?” Derek asked. “Could the water and the coolant get mixed together so that some of the radioactive material could end up in the turbine area?”

“If so, the plant is fucked,” Sambit said. “There’s no way to get in there for repairs. This unit will have to be decommissioned like the one that melted down on Three Mile Island.”

“I thought you didn’t curse,” Derek teased.

“You must be rubbing off on me,” Sambit replied, summoning a smile.

“Not until we’ve had a chance to shower, thank you,” Derek joked. “Neither one of us smells particularly pleasant at the moment, I imagine.”

Sambit boggled at the speed Derek changed moods. From vulnerable to defensive to flirtatious in the span of minutes. He couldn’t decide if that made the other man infuriating or fascinating. Or both.

“And here I thought getting sweaty and dirty was the point,” Sambit replied, not sure where the boldness came from but unwilling to let the moment pass.

“You’re supposed to end up sweaty and sticky,” Derek agreed, “but I can only deal with so many days of body odor when I start, and I passed that point two days ago.”

Sambit laughed and shook his head. “You win. Let’s get Number Five unwrapped and see if we can figure out any other explanation for the radioactivity around the turbine before we give Tucker the bad news.”

“I can’t help you figure out the explanation,” Derek said. “I’ll deal with Number Five because I want to run some diagnostics anyway. You and Lyrica can come find me when you have something I can actually help with.”

“You just don’t want to deal with Tucker.”

“There is that,” Derek agreed, “but I really should check the circuits in Number Five. They aren’t built to withstand that kind of radiation for long.”

“Put a hazmat suit on, at least a lower grade one since Tucker hasn’t bothered locking those up, before you take the covering off Number Five,” Sambit said. “If that kind of radiation could damage Number Five, just think about what it could do to you.”