Seventeen minutes ago…
"I think we have a pulse!" Dr. Mullen shouted.
He had been working feverishly in an attempt to reroute the power from the emergency lights to the control room systems ever since Superman and Dr. Yamamoto left the room. In the time since, he had managed to shock himself twice, hurling a string of curses each time; illuminate the room twice, once in a hail of sparks from the wires he was working on, and the second time the actual room brightened slightly, and finally, while the room remained dim, the amber points of light that accessed the virtual keyboards blinked into existence and hung in the air.
Now, Dr. Morales, virtual keyboard before her, was typing away feverishly. A monitor fluttered to life over the wall, blinking in and out sporadically. "I'm in!" she reported.
Davison was next to her. Up until then, he had been content with pacing the room quietly, allowing the "big brains" to work without interruption. "Can you access the cooling programs?" he asked.
"One second..." Morales's fingers danced gracefully over the keyboard. "It's not working. The programs still not responding."
Mullen cursed. "We're wasting time. We need to get out of here before it's too late?"
"We don't leave until this situation is under control!" Davison barked, giving him a stern look.
Mullen opened his mouth to respond, but thought better of it.
"Why don't you try helping Dr. Morales instead of whining like an eight year old girl?" Davison urged.
"Why?" Mullen spit back. "It's no use. The systems complete FUBAR and we're running on batteries. None of the primaries are working and we'd have to hack the firewall to get to the fail-safe's…" His eyes went wide then. "That's it!" he shouted, clapping his hands together. He was in front of his own virtual keyboard a moment later, typing quickly. Another monitor flickered into view.
Davison and Morales looked at each other and then to Mullen. "What is it?" Davison asked.
"The fail-safe's!" he said excitedly. "They're programmed into the main OS; not the primaries or the sub routines! We just have to hack the firewall and upload them!"
"Of course!" Morales smiled, her attention snapping back to her own monitor. "Brilliant!"
Davison frowned. "What's he talking about?" he asked her.
"There are failsafe programs built into the main operating system. They are basically stripped down version of all the safety and containment protocols we had in place before we reset the system." she explained. "Primarily the cooling and venting programs! We won't be able to activate any of the subroutines, but we should be able to cool and vent the cores!"
Davison felt a weight lift from his shoulders. "Lady, I could kiss you!"
"Careful, Agent." Mullen said. "That's my woman you're talking about."
Davison looked at him, and then to Morales, who blushed, but didn't correct him. He rolled his eyes. "Wow!" he sighed. "I so did not see that coming!"
Mullen laughed. "What? You didn't think a geek like me could score a fine piece of a—"
"Dr. Mullen!" Morales shouted.
Mullen's face went solemn. "Sorry, honey." He said softly. "Alright. I'm in!" he reported.
Davison walked over to him. Lines of code were scrolling past on his monitor faster than he could read.
"It's not much, but so far I got security, power relay, turbine controls…"
"Cooling!" Davison urged.
"On it!" Mullen punched in a series of commands. "Yes!" he shouted. "Cooling controls are online! Opening valves… and pumping coolant…NOW!" he pressed the "ENTER" key.
"Confirmed!" this from Morales. "Valves are open and coolant is running." She looked at the two men. "We did it." She beamed.
"YES!" Mullen shouted, doing a little dance. "I am the man! I am the man!"
Davison just looked at him and shook his head.
Morales crossed the room, grabbed Mullen by the head, and kissed him deeply and passionately. "When we get home, Papi," she began. "I'm going to rip your clothes off and…"
There was a loud beep from one of the monitors.
Mullen went to it. He read the screen and sighed. "Well screw me gentle with a chainsaw!"
"Now what?" Davison asked.
"There's a block in reactor two." Mullen explained. "The coolant's not reaching the core."
"What about reactor one?" Davison asked.
Morales was back at her station, her fingers once again dancing over the keys. "Coolant flow in reactor one is at one-hundred percent." She typed another command. "The temperature is already down to four hundred degrees and continuing to fall."
"Damnit!" Davison fumed. "See if you can get the communication system operational." He told Morales. "We need to tell Superman and Yamamoto to check the pipes and see if they can get the coolant flowing again."
"I think I can pull up the security feed from inside the chamber." Mullen offered. "Maybe we can see what the problem is."
He typed in a series on commands and his monitor flickered, then the screen shifted to a color display of the reactor chamber interior.
"What the hell?" Mullen shouted.
Davison was next to him then, his eyes wide. "Oh no…" he whispered.
There on the screen, they watched Superman lift something that looked like a killer robot from the future into the air, slam it to the floor, and fling it across the chamber. Then, almost faster than they could follow, Superman zipped across the chamber, pulled the door from its hinges and zipped across the chamber out of view. The camera shook then. Then again. And again. And twice more.
"What the hell was that?" Mullen asked.
Davison heard himself answer as if someone else had spoken. "Metallo." He said softly.
"What's a Metallo?" Morales asked. She was standing beside them, looking at the monitor.
Before anyone could answer, Superman staggered back into view. The front of his protective suit was visibly torn. He walked towards the core like a drunk leaving a bar.
"What's wrong with him?" Mullen asked. "And where's Dr. Yamamoto?"
"There." Morales pointed at a small unmoving object in the corner of the screen. "Oh my God. Is he…?"
"Is that fuel rod supposed to be green?" Davison asked.
"No." Morales answered after a moment. "They usually emit an amber glow."
Superman stopped over the core and seemed to just collapse. After a moment, he fell forward and rested for a moment before reaching down into the core. And after several long moments, he simply fell forward and didn't move.
A minute or so later, the large metal robot-man was back on screen, walking towards Superman. He bent over him and began tearing the protective suit away like it was wrapping paper.
"We should do something." Mullen said; his eyes fixed on the monitor. "Hey, Agent Davison, maybe we should go down there…"
He turned to address the man, but no one was there.
Agent Davison was already gone.