YesterWorld (Book 2 of the Down World Series)

Original Edition: Chapter Forty-One

The sight that greeted me at the foot of the stairs actually made a small sound of surprise escape my lips. The entire basement was just one giant lab, with a small entryway partitioned off from the rest by a glass window.

And on the other side of that window was what made me stop in my tracks. Pictures from a dozen history books on nuclear energy and particle physics suddenly came into blinding reality before my eyes. I wanted to cry at the awe-inspiring enormity of what I was looking at.

It really did look like a racetrack, the magnetized tubes that were processing raw uranium atoms and separating out the much-needed lower-neutron isotopes, creating a mass of Frankenstein element wholly impossible in nature: plutonium. Men in white lab coats buzzed about the apparatus as the humming of the magnets grew louder and louder.

I approached that reinforced glass now like a kid at the zoo seeing an exotic animal for the first time, unable to hide the amazement in my eyes as I took in the scene and watched the handful of scientists assessing the quality of the machine's output.

The scientists loped around a central figure like electrons around a nucleus, and my heart stopped when I saw who was at the center of all that energy: Alexei.

And he was looking right at me.

Or, at least, that's how it seemed at first. But only after a moment of my heart leaping into my throat did I realize that his soft gaze was actually focused on a point behind my head. In the reflection of the glass wall between us, he couldn't make out my face.

Still, I spun quickly around before his eyes had a chance to adjust, or before he took a step that reduced the glare, exposing the fact that I'd followed him here.

With the rag in my hand, I busied myself cleaning the lamps in the small lobby, trying to think of what I could do to expose Alexei to the other men in the room. If I simply came forward and announced what I knew about him, who would believe me? Even if this time period weren't proving to be even more racist and sexist than the future, it would still be hard to believe a cleaning woman over a revered scientist.

But my indecision was settled for me when I looked up again.

A small cannister, about the size of a coffee can, was now sitting under a protective glass case on a small rolling table, which Alexei now turned to push, quite gingerly, through a doorway at the back of that glassed-in room. Turning in unison, almost like they were one interconnected blob and not individual men, all the white-coated scientists in the room followed right behind him.

That cannister—such a tiny, insignificant-looking thing—was the reason this whole place existed. It was hard to believe that something so small would be the death warrant for hundreds of thousands of people.

I waited a few seconds, making sure the coast was clear, before venturing into the lab and letting my eyes rest for a just a moment on that incredible piece of machinery—still humming and radiating off a slight warmth from its efforts. Then I proceeded through the back doorway, following Alexei and that precious little cannister.

The hallway that lurked behind the door had the feel of a secret tunnel—dark and narrow, lit up only by a few overhead mining lights. It traveled on for maybe forty feet, turning a couple of times, before letting out through an identical door at the other end.

Once I reached that door, I took a deep breath, not sure what might greet me on the other side. What if Alexei was waiting for me there? What if a security guard was?

I shook off my nerves, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

It took me a moment to process that the room I had entered was the size of an entire building. Trying to get my bearings, my eyes latched onto something that was oddly familiar—high-up windows that lined the edge of the room, like storm windows, revealing that we were just underground. And it wasn't until I stared at them for a moment that I was able to place them.