Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.
Author's Note: Much of the subway information in this chapter is accurate, but some is made up for story purposes. This is where the story starts to look more and more like a Sci-Fi Channel Disaster Movie. D'oh!
Chapter 7
Downtown Crossing T Station
October 16, 2010
The third rail was not supposed to be on, but it was.
It was on at 100 volts, far below its standard operating capacity of 600 volts. Dry unbroken human skin had a resistance of 100,000 ohms. The 100 volts would fry up some of that skin and shave some of those thousands off the 100,000 ohms, but the current that coursed through the human body would still be measured as a few milliamperes. A few milliamperes was not enough current to cause ventricular fibrillation in the heart.
In North America, household electricity operated at 110 volts. Getting shocked through the third rail was like getting shocked through the lightbulb socket of a lamp. The heart would palpitate, but it would not stop.
Reid snatched his hand away from the third rail and jumped up from the tracks. His heart jumped up with him, threatening to beat its way out of his chest. For twenty or thirty seconds, he could neither inhale or exhale. He could not swallow. Then, as quickly as they had come, the palpitations passed. The heart returned to its normal rhythm, and the lungs returned to their normal bellows.
The brain ramped up to its highest voltage. The body ached with bruises and burned with scrapes, but the mind exulted. It thanked its clumsy unreliable vehicle. The vehicle had provided the data, and the driver had made sense of the data, all within a single minute.
"It's all so obvious," the driver chided itself. "You should've figured out it earlier."
Park Street T Station
October 16, 2010
SSA Derek Morgan stood, arms crossed over his chest, in front of a Finagle-A-Bagel on Tremont Street, across from Boston Common. The bulldozers that normally cleared away rotten produce at Haymarket, Boston's giant open-air fruit-and-vegetable stand, were now clearing away the last heaps of rubble from the main entrance of the Park Street T Station. Soon, Morgan would lead a team of FBI and Bomb Squad personnel into the damaged T station. Their primary mission was to search the hub of the subway system, looking for a thermonuclear device planted by a UFO cult. Their secondary mission was to locate Dr. Spencer Reid, who had been living out a post-nuclear future in the pre-nuclear present for the past six hours.
"Ring! Ring!" Morgan's cell phone wailed at its highest volume.
"Reid!" Morgan yelled without checking the caller ID.
"Morgan? I'm getting signal again! Two bars on the subway track!" Reid declared gleefully. "I've discovered something! The cult is planning to detonate the device using an electrical discharge through the third rail. The third rail isn't supposed to be on, but it is!"
"What? The third rail? Detonation through the third rail? How do you know all this?" Morgan rushed the words, afraid that the network would drop the call again.
"I touched the third rail...I touched it accidentally. It's definitely on! It gave me a little shock."
"You shocked yourself on the third rail?" Morgan yelled, "You're alive to tell me this?"
"It's not on at full capacity. It felt like I was getting shocked with household electricity. I'd guess 100 volts at most."
"Wait, Reid, wait! Stay exactly where you are! I need to ask someone something," Morgan waved at one of the MBTA engineers to come over.
"Why is the third rail on?" Morgan demanded.
"It's not on," the engineer replied.
"It is!" Morgan pointed at the engineer. "Our agent, the one who's been missing for several hours, just called me from Downtown Crossing. He said that he shocked himself on the third rail. He's still on the phone with me. Reid, are you there?" he spoke into the phone.
"Yeah, I've still got two bars!" Reid answered.
"He shocked himself?" the engineer asked. "The third rail shouldn't be on, not at any voltage. The T isn't operating today or tomorrow or the next day, so the generating stations aren't sending anything through."
"How do you operate the third rail?" Morgan asked.
"We send direct current through at 600 volts from a generating station in Braintree," the engineer explained. "We have feeder stations at various locations around the system, providing auxiliary capacity to compensate for resistance through the rails."
"Can you send current through the feeder stations?" Morgan asked.
"Yes, but not nearly as much," the engineer replied. "It takes awhile for the capacity to ramp up at a feeder station, and the capacity would have to be targeted..."
"How long does it take to ramp up from 100 volts to 600 volts?" Morgan cut him off.
"It depends on what the ramping up is for," the engineer said. "If the generating station isn't operating, we can use a series of feeder stations to power one train at a time through one tunnel at a time."
"That doesn't answer my question!" Morgan demanded. "How long does it take to ramp up to 600 volts?"
"At full capacity, with all our downtown-based feeder stations operating, we could ramp up in thirty minutes," the engineer replied.
"Thirty minutes?" Morgan repeated back, "Thirty minutes!"
"But only one of our downtown feeder stations is working right now," the engineer said. "The one at South Station is working. I mean...it's reporting that it's online. The feeder station doesn't seem to have been damaged in the explosion, but it's not supposed to be operating today. It normally sends current through the Red Line in both directions, towards Broadway and Downtown Crossing."
"That's where Reid is!" Morgan gestured towards his cell phone. He suddenly remembered that Reid was still on the line.
"Reid! Are you there?" he asked.
"Yeah, Morgan," Reid replied. "I can't believe I'm still getting signal."
"I have an MBTA engineer here with me," Morgan said. "He just told me that the feeder station at South Station is capable of sending current through the third rail at Downtown Crossing."
"Yes!" Reid answered, "That's got to be the voltage source. It's going to take awhile to ramp up the voltage from a feeder station. An exploding-bridgewire detonator in a nuclear device requires a high-current fast pulse to trigger the initial explosion. That requires at least 600 volts through the third rail, maybe up to 1200 volts, but I don't know if the Boston system is capable of such a high voltage. I don't know the system here. Ask the engineer how long it would take to ramp up to 1200 volts!"
"How long would it take to ramp up to 1200 volts?" Morgan asked the engineer.
"Our system doesn't run at 1200 volts," the engineer replied. "I mean...not in practice...I guess...theoretically..."
"Can it ever reach a maximum of 1200 volts, even for a few seconds at a time?" Morgan pushed the man. "In practice, not in theory!"
"For a few seconds, yes," the engineer replied. "We'd never max out the system like that, but it's definitely possible for a very short duration. It would take at least six hours to ramp up. We've never done it before, not even during system tests..."
"Six hours! Six hours!" Morgan's eyes filled with hope. "Reid! Six hours!" he yelled into the phone.
"I heard you the first two times," Reid snarked. "We have at least six hours before the city gets nuked. We have a timeline."
"I'm going to South Station," Morgan declared. "That psycho cult has to have someone there right now. One of them has to be an MBTA employee. There's no other way for them to get access to the third rail."
"Is there? Is there?" he asked the engineer.
"No, there isn't," the engineer replied. "Normally, the current from the generating station has to pass through the feeder stations to get to the subway lines. There's no other..."
"Got it!" Morgan waved him off. "I'm going to South Station, Reid. I'm going to rip that cult into pieces and serve them up as minced meat pie before the day is over."
"Wait, wait!" Reid stopped him. "Didn't they blow up South Station? I heard it through the tunnels."
"Shit!" Morgan remembered. "The roof collapsed over the tunnels, both the northbound and southbound tunnels. Can you still send current through the third rail with rubble on the tracks?" he asked the engineer.
"Yeah, as long as the third rail isn't severely damaged," the engineer replied. "Third rail electrification is very simple. The third rail is just a bunch of high-conductivity steel beams wire-bonded together to form a continuous conduit for high-voltage current."
"We need to dig out South Station," Morgan said. "One or all of those psycho bastards is in there operating the feeder station right now. They probably never left for the night. They probably planted the bombs and blew up the station with themselves inside."
"I agree," said Reid. "We need to get in there. You need to get in there!"
"Now you're talking!" Morgan replied excitedly. "OK, we have six hours until the cult can even think about setting off the device. In six hours, I can make those little bastards wish that they had never been born."
Reid half-snorted and half-snickered through the cell phone. He couldn't believe his luck. Everything was coming together. Even the cell phone signal was holding steady.
"I'm kidding, Reid," said Morgan. "I'm not going to do anything to them. I'm just going to arrest them and interrogate them about the device. We still need to figure out where it is and how to de-activate it."
"Are you going to tackle them, at least?" Reid asked.
"What do you think?" Morgan asked back. "It's standard operating procedure. SSA Derek Morgan at your service."
"If only I could be there to see it," Reid said. "If only..." he stopped abruptly.
He suddenly realized the source of his good luck. He realized why the signal had been holding steady.
"Reid? Are you there? Can you hear me?" Morgan wondered if the network had dropped the call without the sickening "dun-dun".
"Um, Morgan? I can see the sky," Reid replied.
"From inside the T station?" Morgan asked.
"Yeeeeeeeah," Reid replied slowly. "I can see a sliver of gray cloudy sky from the subway platform, next to the northbound tracks. Actually, there's more than one sliver. There's another crack, and another over there..."
"Get out of there, Reid!" Morgan yelled. "Get out of there right now! That station's coming down!"
"Morgan? Oh..." Reid's little girl voice came through the phone.
A loud noise, like thunder with all crack and no boom, followed the little girl voice.
"Dun-dun!" the network dropped the call.
Derek Morgan closed his eyes and dropped his cell phone on the ground. He could not inhale, exhale, or swallow. He felt his body trapped in some kind of stasis field. He wanted to burrow into a hole and hide there until the crisis passed, which would happen as soon as the cult detonated the device. Six hours. A whole six hours. Only six hours left.
Downtown Crossing collapsed one city block to the southeast of Park Street. If Morgan moved a few feet to his left, he would be able to look down Winter Street to view a mountain of concrete and steel debris. That was where his buddy was trapped, but he refused to acknowledge the fact. He held onto the only thing he had, which was the "dun-dun" of the network dropping the call. There was a small chance that the network had not dropped the call randomly. The network might have dropped the call, because Reid had jumped into the northbound tunnel leading to Park Street. Perhaps he was running through the tunnel right now. Given the miniscule distance between Downtown Crossing and Park Street, it should only take a few minutes for Reid to get through the tunnel. As soon as the last bulldozer cleared away the last heap of rubble, Morgan would find Reid waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Reid would beg Morgan to let him come on the raid, and Morgan would concede, because Reid had earned it. Besides, he was not the Unit Chief, and it was not his job to leave anyone behind.
The last bulldozer cleared away the last heap of rubble. The last heap of rubble no longer propped up the unstable pavilion over the entrance of the T station. The pavilion collapsed onto the stairs below, and the stairs collapsed into the station itself. The hours of work at Park Street had been wasted. Morgan would not find Reid waiting at the bottom of the non-existent stairs. If Morgan ever saw his friend again, it would be as a dead broken body pulled out of the rubble. Morgan would not want to see it. The only thing he wanted to see was the cult. Wherever they were, he would find them and gather them up, and he would put their heads, one by one, on sticks for public display.
"Ring! Ring!" Morgan's cell phone wailed.
"Reid!"
"It's Hotch," said a deep serious voice. "We have returned from the Andromeda Galaxy. We have new information about the cult and the plot. We don't think it's a single hydrogen bomb. We think it's a pair of neutron bombs. The new data opens up a new option. Should we evacuate the city?"
"What?" was all that Morgan could muster.
