The Aethernet Falls

Chapter 13 - Aftermath - Part 1

The first breeze, if you could even call it that, was only the beginning. Nobody in the history of humanity had seen a fusion explosion. It was always theorized that they wouldn’t melt down in a similar way to fission reactors. The dominant theories were much more horrifying.

The only thing the myriad researchers behind the United Fusion Reactor Project had only one thing to compare fusion reactors to. Stars. They were the basis for the development of fusion tech, compositions, mass, expected energy output, and any related problems. Their idea for a fusion reactor blowing was only as a state of decay, and then they had no idea if a miniaturized star would go supernova or run out and go dim. Their models also included comparisons to appropriately sized nuclear bombs. The numbers that came out of those sessions were too terrifying to think of.

In reality, it turned out to be somewhere in the middle. A massive blast of white light and heat enough to reduce anything in the vicinity to its component atoms. This far away, the mushroom cloud was almost as big as the city itself. The first shockwave had been warm. It didn’t take the three of them long to realize they had to find somewhere safe in the shaped concrete observatory.

Safe being a relative term.

Greco had led them to a basement storage area, accessible only by an aging lift large enough to fit two military cargo haulers in with room to spare. It smelled of petroleum grease and concrete dust. When it began its short route down it had kicked the powdering material off the walls of the shaft, sending it through the grated walls of the lift itself.

By the time it was halfway down it began to shake violently. “Hopefully that’s just the shockwave.” Clarissa had observed. She was smiling again, though nervously.

Boros was hovering around her protectively, as though his thin frame could protect her from nuclear Armageddon. Greco was pacing around the lift, kicking up new clouds of dust where the shaking hadn’t gotten every particle off the ground.

“We’re going to die in this lift.” Greco said pensively.

“We don’t die here.” Boros responded. He hadn’t moved. Said it more for Clarissa’s benefit than anyone his or Greco’s.

“This is the power of stars we’ve harnessed. We have no idea what’s going to happen.” Greco would have sounded furious had he not felt so suddenly exhausted. The actions of the last few hours had dragged on him more than he had known, and now he recognized that he had been running on adrenaline for far too long.

He had ran from his office to his home only to be ambushed, knocked out, and held at gunpoint. Then they had to leave the city in his ground car, something he hadn’t driven in some time. Then there was the confrontation with the Militia.

He hadn’t lied to the other two. He had never killed anybody. If he was being honest with himself, he felt that it should have affected him more than it had. Shooting two men in the back wasn’t something he had ever expected to do in his career path. Though the concept of a career path was rapidly becoming a fond memory.

“You two need to stop it.” Clarissa said, her voice barely above a whisper.