“Oh yeah. Here it comes,” Lipton said. “Just wait, folks. This is going to be priceless.”
Asher put his hand up and ran it through his hair. A glob of loose strands stuck to his fingers. He showed it to the group. “There’s only one reason for this to be happening.”
“Radiation,” Lipton answered. “Exactly what I thought when you asked for a Geiger counter as part of the exchange.”
“Not that any of us wouldn’t have come to that same conclusion,” Krista said.
Lipton raised an eyebrow at her and said, “But what you don’t know is that I detected elevated levels of radiation in the atmosphere right after The Event, while I was down south.”
“Probably hiding out somewhere like the coward you are,” Krista shot back.
Lipton continued, apparently ignoring her dig. “It was only a trace, but it was there nonetheless.”
“Wait, I don’t understand, Lipton,” Summer said. “Since when do volcanoes or calderas or whatever they’re called give off radiation?”
“They don’t.”
“It was the North Koreans, wasn’t it?” Flipside said, turning his focus to Asher. “That’s why you’re down there all the time.”
“Wait, what does that mean?” Summer asked.
Asher nodded, though he didn’t look happy about it. “He’s right. Remember when I said the stolen plans were sold to China and then ended up with their neighbors next door?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, apparently the North Koreans decided to take advantage of my absence.”
“Shit. They planted a bomb, didn’t they?” Krista said.
“Yes, nuclear, I’m afraid.”
“There you go, folks. The real reason he’s sick,” Lipton said. “And none of that has anything to do with me, even though he wants you to believe I am the reason the world ended.”
“Except for the fact that someone on your team was a traitor,” Summer said.
“Well, there is that. But one fact has nothing to do with the other. What the North Koreans did could not have been anticipated. Nor did it cause The Event.”
A new idea tore into Summer’s brain. “Hey, wait a minute. If you detected radiation ten years ago, then the North Koreans might have been responsible for all those volcanoes going off at once. That’s what started the chain reaction. A nuke down in one of those tunnels—”
“—not Asher’s pressure calculations being off,” Destiny said.
“Well, we can’t know any of that for sure,” Lipton said, his voice cracking a bit.
“Holy shit. They were running a test, weren’t they?” Flipside asked. “But they didn’t know the chain reaction would start.”
“And if it worked, they were going to detonate the nuke here, to take out the USA,” Krista said. “That was their plan all along.”
“It’s certainly possible. We’ll never actually know for sure,” Asher said, “but it seems logical.”
“So what do we do now?” Summer asked.
“I’ve been trying to figure out a way to get down there and disarm it.”
“Assuming it’s set to go off,” Destiny said.
Lipton started laughing, his eyes tearing up.
“What’s so damn funny?” Krista asked.
Lipton pushed the answer out through his rapid-fire laughs. “This is why you need to leave the physics to the experts. Especially nuclear physics.”
Nobody answered.
“If the device is leaking radiation, then the core has been compromised. And once that happens, it’s no longer viable.”
Krista pinched her eyebrows and looked at Summer.
Summer gave Krista a head shake and a shoulder shrug.
Lipton continued, “This is why Asher should never have been in charge of anything. A compromised core means it was damaged and won’t detonate, not with the precision physics involved in the implosion process. If they’re off even the tiniest of a percent, the implosion won’t cause the core material to become supercritical and thus, no nuclear explosion. So even if they did arm the bomb on a ten-year timer, which is ludicrous by the way, all you need to do at this point is bury the device to stop the bomb and its radiation. Simple as that.”
Again, nobody said a word in response.
Lipton looked at Flipside. “I’m assuming you have dirt moving equipment or explosives available.”
“Yes.”
“Then just do it,” Lipton said, brushing his hands together as if he’d just finished a month-long project.
“So we don’t need to disarm it first?” Summer asked.
“Just bury it and walk away. It’s so simple that even a junior high school student could do it. End of story.”
Krista looked at Summer again and raised an eyebrow.
Summer nodded, realizing what Krista was asking with her expression and why.
Krista picked up her handgun from the table and aimed it at Lipton.
She pulled the trigger a millisecond later, sending a thunderclap across the room as the bullet tore into Lipton’s forehead.
The impact snapped his head back and sprayed his brains across the wall behind him in a spectacular shower of red.
“Yes, end of story,” Krista said with a clenched jaw, still holding the gun in a firing position.
THE END