Tony breaks through the door with Mercedes.
Nat tosses both triggers to Mercedes without missing a beat. "We've got less than four minutes to find the main source of Flower before it vaporizes the entire water supply across the city."
The three of them quickly rush down forty feet and scatter across the chemical plant. Nat climbs up a catwalk and gets a better view.
Tony is on the bottom floor with Mercedes on the second. She comes across a control panel and without even knowing which button to press or pull rod to pull, she calls for Tony on the radio. "We're going to need Rose on this one."
"On it," Tony said before running out the front door to grab Rose. He dragged her in by the arm and may have accidentally left a bruise. "Rappaccini's dead, tell us where the main source of Flower."
"Was the timer set?" she asked calmly. "How many minutes are left?"
Tony checks his watch. "Less than three minutes and thirty seconds."
"What a predicament we seem to be in." She walks forward with her hands tucked in her pockets and shoulders shrugged. "When Rappaccini first set up this project, she said that I couldn't be allowed to know where the main source of Flower is within the chemical plant. The timer not only vaporizes the water supply but will blow this factory sky high as well. She needed four minutes to get out of the blast radius. I'm afraid with three minutes and thirty seconds, we won't be able to escape the blast radius."
Tony ground his teeth and grabbed her by the hair and pulled. "Where is the bomb, then? Where is Flower?"
Rose points up to the catwalk. "The bomb is the main control system. It is slowly overloading with a radioactive battery that has to be turned off manually. Even Rappaccini has fail-safe protocols."
"And where is the main source of Flower?"
"It should be in one of the chemical vats. Secretly, one of these chemical vats is just colored water. Look for a vat of chemicals that are colored green and boiling. Once that water in there vaporizes, it will travel down into the water supply and Washington D.C. is history."
Tony looked at her suspiciously, wondering if he should trust her but with only three minutes and fifteen seconds on the line, he had only her word to trust. He relays this information to his wife and sister.
"I'll go to the chemicals." Nat sprinted across the catwalk. She checks her watch, three minutes and five seconds left. She climbs up a small ladder and looks down. She was forty feet above the ground and had a clear view of the chemical plant. There were about a dozen vats of chemicals and all of them were green. "Which one, Nat?"
Green looking water that is boiling. There are about a dozen chemical vats and all of them were green.
But there was one that stood out. A vat of light green chemicals located just beneath her feet under the catwalk.
These chemicals could've been truly green but they were a very light green color while the other vats of chemicals had a deep, dark tone of green to them. Like it was their natural color. As a precaution, she takes out a flashlight and shines it down, the light reflecting off the water. Food coloring in boiling water reflects off of light.
Bingo, Jackpot, Blackjack.
"Tony, I found the chemicals, what's the status on the bomb?"
"We're taking care of it," he answered back.
"Okay." She sighs and stands up straight. She puts her finger back to her earpiece after checking the time. "What am I supposed to do?" She had to wait for about fifteen seconds before a reply came back from Tony, who was no doubt, asking Rose for the answer.
"The microwave emitter is hidden inside the chemical vat. The only way to disarm the device from going off is to turn it off in a very systemically way. You'll have to put in a four-digit combination, cut the red, green, and yellow wire in that order, then remove a fully primed grenade that was put there as a precaution. You'll have to do all of this is less than twenty seconds or the water supply will vaporize prematurely.
Sounds simple: Four-digit combination, three wires, one grenade to remove so the emitter won't blow me up and set off the vaporization prematurely.
She takes out a pair of black goggles and puts them on. She climbs over the railing and grips tighter with her fingerless glove. She takes a deep breath. "What is the four-digit combination?"
2023.
I'm going to jump into a vat of boiling water and I will do it to save Washington D.C. in three...two…
She nosedives.
About three seconds later, after jumping off the catwalk and falling forty feet down, she dives headfirst into the vat of boiling water. She accidentally lets out her breath and allows only about three air bubbles to escape from her mouth as she silently screams in agony. The boiling water was much more painful then she predicted and it felt like her flesh was starting to turn to crisps. But she was determined.
She swims down to the bottom, building up a strong tolerance to the pain, and her eyes catch the sight of what looks like a rectangular glass box down at the bottom and it was glowing like a glow stick.
Four-digit combination: 2023.
She types in the combination on the keypad on the side and the glass box opens from the top. There was a flashlight that was illuminating the box up and also illuminated up a rectangular device with wires going in every direction. Fortunately, there was one of each color.
Red, green, yellow.
She cuts the wires in that order. Now time for the last part.
Primed grenade, how to remove.
She spots the grenade and sees the pin missing and it was being held down by duct tape and wires. She had an idea but it was a longshot.
She took out an acupuncture needle form her matchbook and inserted it into the pinhole of the grenade, effectively rending it harmless as if the pin had not been pulled at all.
Tony and Rose were with Mercedes in the control room. They were looking over the control panels and seeing which buttons to press. If there was a sign that the system was going to overload and blow up, where would it go then? What tell-tale sign would there be that the system is overloading?
"How do we stop the factory from overloading?" Tony demanded. As much as he wanted to die a hero, his sister and wife were still in the factory while his daughter was in the hands of a couple of nerds who don't even know how to fight. He and his wife were going to survive and he was going to pull his sister out of the mess as well.
Rose answered, "There's a scaffolding outside and at the top are some cables that have been mixed. All you have to do is disconnect the cables but there is a high chance of being electrocuted. When Rappaccini intertwined the cables together that powered up the electricity within this place, it shocked her numerous times to the point she had me hypnotize her into not feeling any pain."
"Looks like I'm going to have to shut the power down. Where's the breaker?"
"It is upstairs where the scaffolding is. Even if you were to turn off the lights, you would have to do it at the very last second because this place has a backup generator. You disentangle the plugs too early, back up power will restore. And the scaffolding is the only place where cables are intertwined."
"Then how do we stop the system from overloading like a bomb?"
"The cables above us, once they're disconnected, the system will shut down due to overheating but will turn back on in less than thirty seconds. If you don't want the bomb to go off, you have to pull the plug at the very last second so that way when the powers come back on, the system will have cooled down permanently."
"And Rappaccini manage to overload the entire system by a simple push of a C4 detonator?"
"She is that smart."
Tony races out of the control room and looks up at the scaffolding, forty feet to the top. He looks down at his watch and gasps when he realizes that he only has one minute and five seconds left. He climbs up the ladder, going as fast as possible.
Upon reaching the top, it had taken him less than ten seconds and he to wait fifty-five seconds. If Rose was wrong, and this whole factory blew up, he was going to drag his biggest fan to hell with him.
At the top, he spots several large cables that have been intertwined together like licorice and they were giving off steam and sparks of electricity. He looked around the factory and saw multiple other cables interlaced the same way.
It'd be so much easier to just run away but if Rose is correct, we can't escape the blast radius in under three minutes. Besides, if this is radioactive, then we got to stop the radiation from spreading.
He checks his watch, still only forty-five seconds to go. He waits patiently and grabs the cables.
He screams in agony as the cables shock him with several thousand volts of electricity. He loses his footing and falls over the scaffolding. He reaches his right hand out to grab the ladder but unlike movies where you can just grab ahold of things when you fall and not suffer any pain, he yanked his right arm out of its socket and he screamed even louder the rest of the way down.
He landed on his shoulder and groaned.
"Tony," both Mercedes and Rose shout.
You were trained in the Red Room, Tony. Shake off the pain.
He clutches his left hand and winces but no one could see it under his mask. He looks up and climbs back up the ladder.
Thirty seconds to go.
He was operating with only one hand and he was primarily right hand dominant and he had to climb with his left. Only three ladder steps away and the ladder begins to shift as if it slipped on ice.
Twenty seconds to go.
He doesn't take any chances and jumps up and grabs the ledge with one hand. He pulls himself up but loses his footing. He hangs onto the ledge with a strong grip and pulled himself up successfully this time.
Ten seconds to go.
Realizing how much time is left, he yells in pain and lifts both of his hands and grabs both cables.
Five seconds to go.
I've broken my right arm and I'm getting zapped with possibly ten thousand volts of electricity. But this is for my daughter.
Three…
Two…
One…
From the outside of the factory, it seemed that nothing happened. If one was standing outside the factory, they wouldn't be able to hear anything. Nothing but the wind.
On the inside, one could hear Tony's body fall to the ground and smoke like a hamburger on the grill. It was darkness for several seconds before the lights finally came back on. This time, when the lights came back on both literally and figuratively for Tony, he felt relief. Relief that he had accomplished his mission.
He pulled the cables at the right time and he paid the worthy price of getting shocked with eight thousand volts of electricity. The radioactive material that was stored wherever in this factory had no chance of going off now if it suffered a power out during the last second. It was this sense of victory that made Tony close his eyes and rest.
Outside of Rand Enterprises Chemical Plant
There was a place for all the chemicals to go once they were drained, into the ocean.
The water was bubbling up in the ocean and a hand emerges from the water. A matchbook full of acupuncture needles floats to the surface. A hand rises to the surface, wearing fingerless gloves and skin red and scarred from the boiling water.