"Everybody out!"
Doctor Bruce Banner looked around to make sure everyone was on their way towards the door, then returned his attention towards the dials.
Pressure was way too high, but there was still enough time to release the appropriate coolant fluid, if he moved quickly enough...
Sweat poured out of him, staining his creased white shirt - he wasn't sure how much it was because of the heat, or if the pressure was getting to him.
The control bunker was cramped, with a series of large grey consoles he had to move between. Worse, as they'd retrofitted an older building, trying to get the equipment in any which way, many of the consoles were located at odd corners to each other. It had made the bunker a nightmare to run - having to move through tight gaps and ask half a dozen people to squeeze out of the way just to check up on someone stationed over at the other side of the bunker.
The indicator on a circular dial was reaching into very dangerous territory - well into the light red that was technically bad, approaching the dark red that meant disaster was imminent.
Bruce had never thought of himself as being great under pressure. Sure, he'd been in charge of the Subatomic Energy research team at Los Diablos these past few months, but he was a far more talented theoretician than he was an administrator or a boss. Having to balance different responsibilities against each other always made him nervous, and he was particularly awful at keeping General Ross off his team's back.
But now, he had only minutes to prevent the reactor completely overheating, filling the entire base with the gamma rays they'd been studying at a controlled distance. There were safety protocols of course, people were being evacuated, but chances were that some lives at least were in his hands...
Something just moved.
Bruce swore he could just see something move out of the corner of his eye. Rats and various desert creatures had worked their way in, but it looked like a person.
"Hello?"
A young man appeared.
"Ricky."
Bruce was relieved and annoyed to see the junior researcher.
"What are you doing here? I ordered everyone out."
"I just... I wanted to help..."
"No. The best you can do is get as far away as possible. This isn't a job that needs a lot of manpower, I just need to think."
Bruce looked into the young man's child-like, innocent face. He barely seemed to have even started puberty. He had neither visible stumps of decapitated facial hairs, nor the weariness that comes from being forced to make ideological compromises to pay the rent.
He placed a hand tightly against the young man's arm.
"Just make sure you get back to your family. I'll follow you as soon as it's safe."
Ricky nodded awkwardly, and moved slowly towards the door as soon as Bruce removed his hand.
"Run!"
He stumbled towards the door at first, then, from the hallway, Bruce could hear him pick up speed, his shoes clattering against the tiles. He'd make it to the stairs back to the surface level in no time.
Ricky Jones was still a baby – although most of his team was under forty, Ricky was too young to remember the Moon landing, and wasn't even alive when Kennedy was shot. Bruce wondered when exactly it was he got old.
Left alone to think, Doctor Banner visualised a dozen different interlinked systems in his mind, moving from console to console. The army had not, despite his requests, provided the funding to design a console capable of displaying all the most important information in one place.
Quickly he was able to put together a mental map of what needed to be done - how to lock away the radiation, how to prevent the unstable material from breaking down further at their base levels, what needed to be done to counter the side-effects of the first two operations...
The minutes seemed to fly past in a blur, which was somehow simultaneously never-ending. Bruce Banner was so deeply in the zone that the world outside the bunker disappeared entirely from his conscious mind.
That was it. Feeling like he had completed his complex task, Bruce let himself go, releasing the effort of will that kept him moving. Seeing the dials drop, he wiped his forehead with a sleeve, and sunk down to one knee. A smile grew to fill his sweat-drenched face - he even let out a little laugh as he climbed to his feet. He looked at himself – he looked awful, the torso of his shirt transparent with sweat. He didn't exactly have the body to pull off that look.
Then a rumble built quickly from behind him. Turning in horror, Doctor Bruce Banner was propelled to the floor.