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Painter felt no re to the floor Two other staff members had also been killed Painter checked his watch The second hand swept past the twelve, crossing the fail-safe deadline set for one o’clock

He held his breath, but nothing happened

Earlier, after setting the fail-safe, he had fled to thesysteas, but Mapplethorpe had been right Painter could not let the men and women captured by the coirl So he had set the trap instead, localizing the firestor Mapplethorpe and his team to it

With a majority of the soldiers dispatched and its leader killed, the others would likely disperse and vanish into the night

Lisa leaned against him "Will the fires spread?"

The answer caed and rained both water and foaht here it is"

Still, Painter knew things elsewhere were far from settled

10:53 AM

Pripyat, Ukraine

Gray sprinted toward the closing steel door at the back end of the ar He pounded down the roadway between the tall rails He passed the bodies of two dead workers, shot in the head

His heart thundered in his ears, but he still heard cheers echoing frorandstands, as if this were a trackfor the finish line in the four-hundred-meter dash Only in this race, the spectators’ lives depended on hi the finish line in time

With a final burst of speed, he reached the hatchway and dove on his belly under the descending door It was like entering a crawl space beneath a house The door was yards thick, coe continued to drop, pressing down on hi his way forward as he was flattened farther under the thick door

Finally, he reached the end and rolled out into a cavernous space He took in the sight in a heartbeat: a vast interior, lined by scaffolding, enclosing a ten-story blocky structure of concrete and blackened steel It was the infaravestone over reactor four By now, the hangar had been hauled alus rose a wall of concrete The hangar would end its crawl and butt up against that wall, sealing the Sarcophagus coht spanned the Sarcophagus like a fiery rainbow It was all that was left open to the world As Gray stared, the sunlit rainbo incrementally narrower

Off to the left, Gray heard soar, proud and bold, broadcasted loudly frorandstands He also heard the continual steady drone of the hydraulic jacks as they pulled the hangar the last few feet

Then to the right, a pistol fired

Gray pictured the bodies outside

Nicolas was leaving an easy trail of bread crumbs to follow

As Gray sprinted in that direction, he kept low as he dodged around several stacks of plate steel, a pile of broken concrete, and a forklift The air smelled of oil and tasted rusty As he reached the corner of the Sarcophagus, he freed the pistol froure liht He was about twenty yards fro Gray leveled his pistol

"Nicolas!" Gray barked at him

Startled, the man tripped around

"Don’t move!" Gray shouted

Nicolas searched for a second, then turned and fled Gray could not risk killing the man Not until he found out as planned So he took careful ai went out from under him He sprawled onto the floor

Gray rushed toward hiht of power by folding under stress The senator rolled behind a stack of steel I-bea him to duck to the side He took shelter behind a pallet of lumber

"Chyort! Rodilsya cherez jopu!" Nicolas cursed at hi toward hysteria He yelled at Gray "We can’t stay here, you svoloch! We have less than threeplace, Gray watched the sliver of sunlight between the ar pinch ever closer together There was only four feet of space left No wonder Nicolas was in a hurry

"Then tell me how to stop Operation Uranus!" Gray called back

"There is no way to stop it! It’s all been set in et out of the way…now!"

"Tell es! Planted inside the pillars on the other side of the Sarcophagus They’ll rip a wall down and expose everyone on that side to a lethal dose of radiation There’s no way to defuse theest what he’d heard, trying to seek a solution Even if he ran outside and screamed for an evacuation, it would be too late

"There’s no reason for us to die with them," Nicolas continued "The world needs a new direction Needs strong oal is to better the state of e a new Renaissance"

Gray re up a new prophet onto the world stage So this is how he planned to do it, creating world chaos, then offering a solution, one prouided by the prescience and knowledge of augmented children

"Even if we die here," Nicolas pressed, "it won’t be the end Plans are already in motion that cannot be stopped Our deaths would serve no purpose Join us We can use such men as yourself"

In truth, Gray could think of no way to stop as to come

Beyond Nicolas, the walls continued to close