The intelligence settled into Nolan's thinking and rearranged several other pieces he had been carrying separately. The Soviet Union's resilience, its refusal to follow the trajectory that had seemed inevitable in the late eighties, its unusual opacity to external analysis: all of it acquired a different shape when you understood that the government was not a government in the conventional sense. A nation-state administered by mutants who had every reason to stay invisible and every capability required to do so was not going to behave like any other geopolitical entity. That it had survived and consolidated while every conventional prediction said otherwise was not coincidence. It was policy.
Nolan had no particular objection to mutants. The Warhammer universe had taught him that what humans called aberration was frequently just evolution operating faster than the institutions around it could process. Mutants in this world were, from everything he understood, still human in every way that mattered for the question of which side they were on. If the Soviet mutant leadership had chosen to hide rather than conquer, if they were managing a nation rather than dismantling one, then the relevant question for Nolan's purposes was whether they could be approached and whether the approach would hold.
He had begun to think through the opening of that question when the alarm arrived.
The sound came through the base's structural materials the way serious alarms always did: not loudly, exactly, but with a quality that made it impossible to ignore. Nolan was on his feet and the Starfire Glory was active before he had consciously decided to move.
David was already processing.
"The alert originated from the Stark Watchtower's monitoring array, my lord. The system was configured to flag chaos incursion signatures and large-scale catastrophic events. What it has flagged is a radiation anomaly in the Chernobyl region of the Soviet Union. The dosimetry readings began climbing several hours ago and have not plateaued. At the current rate of increase, a significant portion of the European continent and its population will sustain irreversible damage within a timeframe that is not comfortable."
A pause.
"Additionally: Natasha's last known position placed her in or near that region. She has not responded to contact in the interval since the anomaly began."
Nolan made three decisions in rapid sequence.
"David: have Tony contact the Soviet embassy formally through the Inquisition's official channels. Use the radiation data as the basis for the inquiry; keep it straightforward. Simultaneously, reach out to S.P.E.A.R. and see whether they have supplementary intelligence from their own channels."
He moved toward the transit chamber.
"Prepare a Time Platform unit for immediate deployment. I'm taking the Raven Guard into the Soviet Union. Banner comes with us. Radiation problems are his area."
"As you command, my lord."
The camp bed in the barracks had been made for standard military dimensions and had been suffering under non-standard occupancy for long enough that it had developed a resigned quality, the springs expressing their objection with a series of metallic complaints when the weight on top of them shifted.
Major Piotr Rasputin, Colossus, opened silver eyes.
He lay still for a moment with the dream still present, the way significant dreams stayed present before the waking mind processed them into memory. His sister, alone against a crowd of things that were rotting and wrong and did not belong in any world he wanted to live in, fighting with the particular ferocity that had always been more characteristic of Illyana than of him. He had dreamed about her before. He always had, even before she was gone. But lately the dreams had become more specific, more detailed, more insistent about conveying something he couldn't quite read.
He pulled himself upright, the bed frame groaning under the redistribution of two meters and considerable metal mass, and reached under the pillow for the diary. It was old and thick and well used. He wrote the dream down carefully, the same way he always did, in the hope that the accumulated record might eventually tell him something that the individual entries could not.
When he was done, he dressed in the green military uniform, left his room, and walked into the corridor.
She was already there.
Short red hair. Green skirt uniform. Curves that the military cut did not quite manage to suppress. She had arrived at this posting recently enough to still have the freshness of someone who had not yet been ground down by it, and she was planted directly in his path with a document under one arm.
"Good morning, Comrade Rasputin."
"Good morning, Comrade Natalie." He looked at her without particular warmth and not quite without it either. "It is past seven. You are technically in the duty period. I would appreciate it if you would use my rank."
"Major Colossus." She said it with the small smile of someone who finds precision slightly amusing. "I didn't come to find you this early because I enjoy your company."
She held out the document.
"Orders from General Logan. He wants you in Red Square within three days."
Colossus took the document. He read it in approximately three seconds. Then he crumpled it into a ball with one metal hand, applied slightly more pressure, and reduced it to a compressed nugget of waste paper.
"This is the third time this month." His voice was level. "General Logan's transfer orders have not been approved by the State Duma. The next time he sends something like this, you will inform him on my behalf that he is welcome to take the matter up with the clan elders. My assignment is to protect the nation's critical assets and to maintain security at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. That assignment has not changed."
Natalie looked at the compressed paper ball and then back at him. Something in her expression had shifted from performance to genuine interest.
"Major, I'm a recent transfer. A civilian post. Even from my limited vantage point, the number of personnel guarding this facility is not proportionate to a nuclear power plant that is, officially, not operational." She tilted her head. "Is there something here that the briefing documentation did not cover?"
Colossus considered reminding her about confidentiality regulations. Then he considered who he was talking to: a newly arrived civilian worker who had been given no context and who was, by all evidence, going to keep noticing the discrepancy between the posted garrison and the official status of the facility. A more useful response than silence would serve the situation better.
He took a slow breath.
"Comrade Natalie. This is a personal advisory rather than a formal directive. After twenty hundred hours, do not enter any section of the power plant for any reason. If you hear an alarm or an evacuation broadcast at any time, locate the nearest exit route immediately." He met her eyes. "If time does not permit evacuation, every section of the facility has sealed rooms with reinforced doors. Get into one and seal it. The internal supply is sufficient for twenty-four hours. Our comrades will reach you before that runs out."
The expression on Natalie's face underwent a gradual and unambiguous change. The performance disappeared. Something that looked like a genuine calculation of personal safety replaced it.
"Major Colossus." Her voice was quieter than it had been. "This is supposed to be a decommissioned nuclear facility. Everything you've just told me sounds like you're describing a containment posting."
"It is a test," Colossus said, with the particular tone of someone who believes the thing they're saying and also knows it isn't the whole truth. "The country and the elders are determining whether new personnel can demonstrate the necessary composure. You should continue."
He paused, and for a moment something that was close to a reassuring expression crossed his face.
"For what it is worth: since I assumed command of this sector, there has not been a single safety incident. Whatever you may be imagining, the record here is clean. I am not in the habit of..."
The floor moved.
Not a tremor. Not the distant feeling of something settling in the substrate. A sharp, directional shock that came from below, followed immediately by a second one, and then a rumble that had the quality of something large and unhappy making decisions about its immediate environment.
The red lights came on across every surface simultaneously.
Colossus stood with the expression of a man whose final sentence had been rendered definitively ironic by the universe.
Natalie had gone entirely still, her face now carrying none of the earlier performance.
"Is that an earthquake?"
"No." Colossus was already moving, the unhurried but inexorable motion of a man who weighs what he weighs and has done this before. "Something in the lower levels has gotten loose."