Greg was surprised to see some lights on at Indian Point, since the power had been out the last that they knew. Someone's up to no good and they have to be checked. Everything looked quiet from the outside, but he knew better than to accept the calm environment at face value.
He clutched his rifle close to his chest as he set first foot on the property, and tried to determine where his team should go first. It had been agreed in advance that they needed to pay attention to the spent fuel pools, and Greg figured that would be a good place to start. Sayuri was beside him, and he could just see Kelley and Tim out of the corner of his eye when he turned his head.
Greg felt like he couldn't hear anything for miles; even the wind was quiet, giving him the impression that Nature itself seemed to be holding its breath. He scanned every direction to watch for potential enemies, but he'd yet to spot a single soul. That's not entirely a bad thing, but I know they have to be here somewhere. Brandon and Jazz had better stay back with Marcus, or I'm going to strangle them. We don't need this type of distraction; we've got to get to work! I hope the guys are okay.
He tried to contact the turtles once more to no avail, but he could tell that the sound over the phone line was from the disruptor shutting down electronic devices. It didn't mean they were facing more than they could handle on the Akiudo's end. I don't know that, of course. There's no telling how many of the warriors they regrouped. That's the hardest part of all of this. We each have an individual task to carry out, regardless of what's going on with anyone else. They could be going to hell in a hand basket, and there's nothing I could do about it. We're too far away to be of any use to them.
Greg tried to focus his mind on his present location. They'd been able to review some images in advance thanks to Kelley, but the series of buildings looked larger and more foreboding in the darkness. The tin roofs of the fuel pools, however, weren't difficult to pick out. He took a deep breath inwardly as the units came into view, and motioned for the others to come closer.
"We can go about this one of two ways. The buildings are in close proximity, so it wouldn't be difficult to divide and conquer," Greg started.
"I don't like the idea of splitting up," Tim negated. "The goal was to stay together."
Unless something goes south, Greg thought morosely, but he nodded. "Then we'll take one pool at a time and check the areas together."
Sayuri's fingers brushed against his wrist, and he glanced over at the woman.
"I don't like how quiet it is," she told him.
"Neither do I, but we have to push forward and keep our eyes open."
The woman shivered as if she'd caught a chill. "I have a bad feeling over all of this."
He squeezed her hand in return. "It's going to be all right. We'll get through it."
They searched around the first building until they came to a door. Greg tried the knob for the heck of it, and found the door unlocked. The Officials wouldn't have left it that way. It's been tampered with all right.
Greg slipped into the building, and reached for his flashlight when he met complete darkness. He cast the beam of his light over the space curiously, letting it linger on the surface of what actually resembled giant swimming pools. The man shook his head distastefully as he imagined the amount of nuclear waste that had to be stored there, cooling down for the long period before it could be moved to dry casks. And for now, it's all been shut down.
"What are we looking for?" Tim murmured.
"We don't know what their intentions are here, so that's impossible to say for certain." Kelley broke his uncharacteristic silence. "We should be searching for their people, shouldn't we? To prevent them from acting. That's why we're here."
Greg had the temptation to chuckle. We want to avoid notice, and yet we have to find them. It never occurred to me how difficult this task would turn out to be. "I think we can start by looking for anything that seems unusual," he suggested, and then gazed at Kelley. "Unless you have a better idea, Sir."
Kelley shrugged. "I've never thrown the rule book out the window before. I wouldn't be the one to ask, Heffernan."
Greg started to say something to Sayuri, but the woman wasn't looking at him. Her eyes were focused across the room, widened as if she'd seen something. "What is it?" he asked.
"I thought I saw another light," she answered. "Someone is out there, I'm almost sure of it."
Greg turned off his beam in a flash, but the total darkness was unnerving. Little good it will do. I wasn't even trying to hide my flashlight. They've got to know someone is here too. Do we move on with the light and hope that we aren't outmanned and outgunned, or should we keep going in the dark, with no clue what's around us? Neither idea seems that great.
He felt the presence of the others pulling in together beside him, and decided to compromise by using the backlight from his phone to give them something. "We need to make a decision real quick here, whether to search out who's inside this unit, or go back outside. We'll be announcing ourselves if—"
Greg was cut off by an explosion of light behind them, at the door they'd used to access the building. The shadowed outline of pursuers had Kelley grabbing his shoulder.
"Divide!" the older man ordered hoarsely. "Don't let them catch us together."
Greg swallowed. "Sayuri, Tim, go left, and don't fire unless you have to. Try not to give yourselves away. We have to attempt to pick them off in smaller groups if we're gonna have a shot of doing this."
He felt Kelley's hand on his back as they went in the opposite direction, not waiting to make sure that the others did as he'd told them. Greg kept one hand braced against the wall to guide them through the space, hoping for another door that would lead them out of the open. He used the backlight on his phone to provide a tiny bit of direction, so they could keep moving quickly.
Kelley was saying nothing, which scared Greg more than if the man had been talking a mile a minute. In the faint light from his cell phone screen, he saw an upcoming hallway. Another look over his shoulder confirmed the number of men that pursued them. Whether it's a way out or a dead end, we have to try this.
Greg veered around a corner, and felt the oncoming wind of an attacker seconds before he struck. The sandy-haired man lunged out of the way, jerking Kelley's arm to pull him to safety. An odd sound that vaguely reminded him of a staple gun resounded in his ears, and he heard Kelley gasp.
Greg tried to get his arms around the larger man, but Kelley was on the ground in an instant. The older man's body was rigid as if every muscle was tensing at the same time, but he didn't utter another sound. His first reaction was to yank Kelley back to his feet, but the man didn't appear capable of budging.
As he was still trying to help his Director, someone stretched a hand over his shoulder from behind, and Greg noticed a small box in the hand of his attacker as it hovered inches from his wrist. He swore as he heard the strange sound again and felt something metal embed into his skin. The circular disc made no sense in his mind, until he felt a powerful shock course through his entire body. Despite the pain the current produced, he was unable to vocalize a single word.
As the electrical pulse hesitated, he realized that he hadn't even been breathing. Greg rolled his eyes over to Kelley from where he was lying on the ground, and saw the man move the fingers of one hand. Paralysis is temporary—he thought fleetingly, right before something crashed over the back of his head.
Brandon stared at the image of Indian Point in the distance impatiently, and picked up the phone to call Donny for something to do. "Have you heard from anyone?" he asked the purple-masked turtle.
"No." He could read Donatello's anxiety from his tone. "I'm watching life signs on my brothers, and everything is strong. No reason for concern. I figured Greg might have contacted me by now, but there's been nothing."
"You have no idea how frustrating it is to stare at the lights coming from the Plant and not go anywhere," Brandon told him.
"I have no idea what it's-" Donatello sounded sarcastic, but then stopped. "You see lights from Indian Point?"
"Not many, but yes."
"Why didn't anyone tell me?" he demanded.
"Is that important?"
"Of course it is! Hang on a second."
Brandon heard him typing in the background, and waited for the turtle to speak again.
Donatello cursed. "No. The user interface is still down. They must only be running on partial power. I can't access squat from here."
"What do you need to access?"
"In a perfect world, I'd like to get some eyes on a larger portion of the Plant and find out what the shell they're doing in there."
Brandon glanced at Jazz. "I don't suppose there's a possibility that Jazz and I could be of any assistance?"
"Bran, you're not supposed to be in the action."
"Neither were you last time," he retorted. "But you were right inside their fortress with the rest of us. Our guys are operating blindly in there, Donny. I'm of the mind to go whether you say yes or no, so you may as well cooperate with me."
"I'm not going to agree with this."
"That's fine, Don. I'm going to talk to Jazz, and I'll let you know what we decide."
"Brandon, Leo said—"
"Bye, Donny." He hung up, and found Jazz staring at him.
"What's the deal?" she asked.
"Donny mentioned something about trying to get an inside view of the Plant since there's some power. He said the user interface isn't working?"
Jazz nodded. "Right…so we'd need a physical terminal. Are we going?"
"He doesn't want us to."
"We're here, Brandon. What do you want to do? If we're looking at the end of the world as we know it, we may as well get a front row seat."
"This is insane."
"So what's new?"
"You have a point," he allowed. "Okay, let's do it."
Brandon had no sooner fired up the Battleshell than he spied Marcus dashing around the side of the van.
"What are you guys thinking?" the man asked.
"We're going, Marc. Period. It's a big place. If we can get a bird's eye view, we'll have a greater advantage," Brandon told him through the open window.
"Let me in," Marcus ordered.
"You're not coming inside the Plant, are you?" Brandon asked.
"No, because you're allowed to disobey orders and I'm not," Marcus retorted.
"Someone has to stay healthy enough to administer medical treatment," Brandon offered.
"Shut up and let me in the car."
Brandon stopped a few yards short of the main gate, and gave Marcus a meaningful look. "Stay in the car unless you see a giant mushroom cloud."
"Not funny." Marcus frowned.
Jazz readily jumped out of the passenger side. "What's the game here, Brandon?"
"Stay out of sight," he returned. "I don't want to get into it with anyone, not with you involved. We need to find a computer."
"They usually keep a private security company on the premises, right?" Jazz asked. "They'd need access to a monitor feed. There's probably somewhere to access it without going inside the main buildings."
Brandon tried to stay alert for every possibility as they silently trod across the property. His heart beat faster and his breathing automatically quickened as nerves tried to take over. No. Not now. He centered his breathing the way Leonardo had trained him, focusing on the most calming visualization he could muster.
He was so busy preventing himself from experiencing a breakdown, he didn't realize that Jazz had stopped in her tracks.
"Brandon," she called softly. "There. Let's check it out."
The man tracked her motion to see a dark glassed-in booth. He followed her lead as she trotted toward it, and peered inside the window.
"I see a flashing power-strip," she said. "It has electricity. We just need to get in there."
Brandon circled the small structure warily, making certain no one else was nearby before approaching the door. He jiggled the knob experimentally and it didn't move. "Stand back for a second."
"What are you gonna do?"
Rather than answer her, he honed all the power of his right leg on a concise thrust against the frame, and smirked as the door gave way.
Jazz shook her head. "Don't have much call for keys, do you?"
"After you."
The young woman climbed into the booth and ran her fingers over the keyboard once before ducking down to search for something under the desk. Brandon turned on his flashlight for her, and she straightened up a moment later. As soon as the computer came to life, Jazz reached for her phone.
"I'm at a terminal, Donny. No, it wants a password. Give me a minute to create another user name, and I'll skip over all of this. No, we're not inside; it's a little guard hut or something. There's no one around…. Brandon's watching, Don."
The woman was quiet for a little while as she clicked through screens. "It doesn't want to allow another user, should I…No. I didn't try that. Hang on." Her fingers flew across the keys faster than Brandon could make out anything she was typing. "You're right; the IT setting did it. I'm in. God bless a manual override. Let me see here."
Brandon kept scanning the area while Jazz worked in the background, along with Donatello on the phone.
"Some of the monitoring feed is up. I'm seeing limited camera angles, mostly on the buildings with the reactors and the cooling towers. I don't see any sign of activity yet. No, I don't have any views on the fuel pools – that was one of the first things I looked for too. Let me look through the rest of these possibilities."
Jazz's silence was deafening for a couple more minutes. "I've got a hit on something," she mentioned finally. "In the base of the cooling tower for the second reactor. I don't know if I can adjust it any closer, Donny. I'll try."
Brandon glanced over as she typed in a command that enlarged the monitor view, and caught the image of three figures that seemed to be dressed for a science fiction movie.
"What are they doing?" he asked.
"I don't know," she replied. "Don, there are men here that look like scientists. Not dressed like the Akiudo, but they're definitely foreign. They're working on something, but I can't tell what it is. If I had to guess, I…" She cursed. "Yes, that's what I was going to say! No, they're in the cooling tower, Donny. It doesn't appear that the fuel pools have anything to do with this!" Jazz gasped, a strangled sound that made it seem like she couldn't breathe.
"Jazz, what?" Brandon inserted. "What are you talking about?"
"This isn't about nuclear waste," she replied. "They don't care about strontium. They're after the plutonium; they have to be!"
"What do they want with plutonium?"
"Are you seriously asking me that question? It looks like they're working on a weapon, something to take advantage of the resources already present inside the reactor."
Brandon swallowed deeply. "I think we just found something to prevent."