Prologue

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant
Northeastern Japan
March 11, 2011

Dr. Hideki Ito felt the floor shift and braced himself against the elaborate control console in front of him. He waited for the earthquake to subside, reminding himself that the structure had weathered a number of powerful tremors two days before with no issues.

Still, he could feel the tension creeping into his stomach the way it always did when the earth decided to move. There was no reason for concern, he told himself again. The general had chosen to shut down Reactor Four and use it as a research facility, ostensibly because of its ability to contain a radiation leak in the face of just these kinds of shocks. It wasn’t radiation they were asking it to hold in check, though. The work Ito had dedicated his life to was far more dangerous and difficult to control.

The vibrations seemed reluctant to subside as they had in the past, and he glanced nervously behind him. The room itself was unremarkable—a nine-meter cube of treated concrete lined with insulated pipes of every imaginable diameter. The only access was through a small titanium hatch centered between tables covered in computer equipment. His two research assistants had pulled back from their keyboards and sat holding the edges of their chairs, feet spread wide to keep from toppling to the rubber-coated floor.

The young man had the same stoic expression he’d been wearing since Ito had recruited him two years ago. The woman, a brilliant postdoc recently coaxed from the University of Tokyo, was searching the stark bunker with quick, birdlike movements of her head. Looking for cracks, Ito mused sympathetically. He felt compelled to do the same thing a thousand times a day.

The elderly physicist faced forward again, squinting through ten-centimeter-thick glass at the tiny room beyond. At its center was a secondary glass enclosure containing samples of concrete, plastic, and steel. Interspersed were organic materials—various dirt and stone specimens, as well as a few carefully chosen plants. And hovering above it all was a disinterested white rat stretching lazily on one of the robotic arms that serviced the enclosure.

The electron microscope reacted to the joystick in Ito’s hand as he tried to compensate for the continuing tremors and maneuver it over a patch of moss. The deep-green color suggested that it, like the rat, had been unharmed by his experiments. Of course, that hypothesis would have to be confirmed at the atomic level. To the naked eye, none of the human-made materials in the enclosure had suffered any damage either. The deeper truth, though, was very different.

With the scope finally over its subject, Ito was able to examine its fundamental structure on a monitor set into the wall. It looked precisely as it always had. A thriving biological specimen unaffected by the war being silently fought around it.

After so many years of failure, Ito was having a difficult time adjusting to his recent string of triumphs. Were they real or was there a fatal error hidden somewhere in the thousands of calculations he’d made? Were his carefully designed safety protocols as foolproof as they seemed? Was his sense of control just an illusion?

The euphoria he’d experienced when he first realized that he was influencing the fundamental forces of nature had slowly turned to a sense of dread. Had Einstein felt this way when his equations were used to create the bombs that had been dropped on Ito’s own country so many years ago? Had Einstein understood that, while intoxicating to explore, nature would never allow itself to be mastered by something so trivial as the human mind?

As if reacting to his thoughts, the intensity of the earthquake began to grow. This time, though, something was different. Within a few seconds, Ito was struggling to stay upright, even with both hands gripping the console in front of him. The roar of the tremors filled his ears, making it impossible to understand the high-pitched shouts of his new assistant.

A pipe snaking across the ceiling burst, showering him in a stream of frigid seawater powerful enough to finally knock him off his feet. He crawled across the heaving floor toward a cutoff valve, eyes burning from the salty spray as a wave of panic began to take hold. By the time he made it to the wall, he could no longer keep his eyes open. He was forced to feel along the wet concrete until he found the metal wheel he’d been searching for.

It didn’t move with the first effort, but his adrenaline-fueled muscles finally managed to break it free. He spun it right and when it stopped, so did everything else—the tremors, the water, the light. Chaos had suddenly turned to silence.

Ito pressed his back against the wall, struggling to fight off the disorientation brought about by the unexpected collapse of sensory input. He focused on the sound of dripping water, eyes now open but seeing only blackness.

Power had been lost. That was why the lights were out. No electricity.

That simple bit of analysis was enough to build on, and he clung to it as he evaluated his situation. Beyond the sound of falling water, he could make out the erratic breathing of his two assistants. The room was stable, so the earthquake was over. Aftershocks were possible—even likely—but when and how powerful could only be guessed at.

In the rest of the plant emergency protocols would be under way. Active reactors would go into automatic shutdown, and backup generators would be brought online to keep the cooling systems running. None of this was of any importance, though. The only thing that mattered was his own lab’s security.

“Isami!” Ito called into the darkness. “The emergency lights! Can you reach them?”

A grunted affirmative was followed by the splash of lurching footsteps. They’d trained for this situation and after only a few seconds, the room was bathed in a dull-red glow. Isami was predictably at the switch, but Mikiko was huddled beneath a table, her eyes locked on the thick glass wall that ran the length of the room’s north side.

The dust and water vapor hanging in the air created a kaleidoscopic effect, but not enough to hide what she was fixated on: a jagged, lightning-shaped crack that ran from floor to ceiling.

Mikiko suddenly bolted for the door, slamming into it and clawing for the handle. Ito moved more quickly than he would have thought possible, leaping to his feet and shoving her out of the way before sliding back the cover from a keypad. He managed to enter only two digits of his personal lockdown code before she grabbed him from behind. His air was cut off as she snaked an arm around his throat but he kept one hand wrapped around the door’s handle and refused to be torn away. Her terrified shouts filled the room as he fought to get the remaining sequence into the pad.

Isami managed to get to them and pulled the woman off, dragging her back as the metal-against-metal grinding of the lockdown bolts filled the room. The sound prompted the woman to fight even harder and Isami finally threw her to the floor, grabbing a fallen stapler and slamming it twice into the side of her head.

Ito stared down in horror at the blood flowing from her temple but then turned away. There had been no choice. Their lives were meaningless when weighed against the devastation that would ensue if his creation escaped into the world.

Once again silence descended, broken only by the gentle drip of water and the rhythm of their breathing.

Ito walked hesitantly to a hatch in the cracked glass wall, opening it as his heart pounded painfully in his chest. He slid through, having already forgotten about the unconscious woman on the floor and the emotionless man standing over her.

The glass cube containing his experiment was supported by hydraulic shock absorbers and thick rubber pads—additional insurance against eventualities exactly like this one. They were all intact, as was the glass upon first inspection. He went around it slowly, running a bare hand carefully along its sides. His heart rate began to regulate as he moved, but then his finger hit something. It was nearly imperceptible—nothing more than a slight roughness in the meticulously ground surface. He held his breath, moving his head back and forth in the red light, praying to the Christian god he’d adopted so many years before that the imperfection was just a trick of perception.

But like so many times before, his prayers weren’t answered. The crack was only a few centimeters long, and there was no way to determine with any certainty if it had fully penetrated. Not that it mattered. No chance of a loss of containment, no matter how remote, could be tolerated.

“We have a possible breach,” Ito said, his voice shaking audibly as he passed back through the hatch.

It took the combined efforts of both him and his assistant to open the bent locker that held their radiation gear. They put it on without speaking. There was nothing to be said.

Ito secured his face mask and connected it to an oxygen supply as Isami went to the unconscious girl and began trying to get her limp body into a bright yellow hazmat suit similar to the ones they were wearing. The safety gear would be sufficient to keep them from being killed outright by the radiation-driven sterilization process, but that was all. They would trade a relatively quick death for a drawn-out, painful one.

Ito used the key around his neck to unlock a cage protecting a fluorescent orange lever. He put his gloved hand on it and closed his eyes. In that place, in that moment, it was impossible not to look backward and question his entire adult life. To wonder if he had spent the last forty-five years shining a light into a place that God intended to remain dark.