The shouting was coming from one of the stations; it belonged to a controller named Leonard Bell. But it was an assistant who was making the noise—a young woman standing in the station’s doorway.
Leonard Bell was no longer lying down with electrodes pasted to his forehead. He was up on his feet, and his face was covered with blood; it looked black in the red light of the workroom. Hager wondered for only a moment where the blood had come from—it was obvious a second later. Calmly, even methodically, Bell was digging his own fingernails into his face and raking deep gouges into the skin. Hager could see the muscles in his forearms strain under the force he was using—like a man applying steady but immense pressure to a wrench handle. Tearing open his own face as if it were a simple chore to be done.
All at once Bell seemed to notice the assistant. He pivoted and lurched toward her, and the girl turned and ran, screaming.
Hager was already moving. He shoved open his office door, crossed the landing, and took the stairs down to floor level, three at a time. He saw the assistant coming more or less in his direction; he dodged past her and crashed head-on into Bell, bear-hugging the guy and bringing him down onto the concrete floor. Christ, the man’s face was a shredded mess. He strained and bucked against Hager’s hold, little red droplets flying as he shook his head.
“What the fuck’s wrong with him?”
Hager looked up. The question had come from Seth Cobb, standing in the doorway of his own station, nearby.
Before Hager could answer, Bell went slack in his arms. In almost the same instant, the man seemed to become aware of the damage to his face—aware of the pain. He took a hissing breath, worked a hand free, and put it delicately to one ripped-up cheek. He made a low moaning sound, full of fear and confusion.
Cobb stepped out of his doorway. He seemed to be coming to help, but then he stopped. He turned in place and surveyed his surroundings. His eyes settled on a steel support column that came up out of the floor and rose to the ceiling, forty feet above. The column was an I beam standing upright, each of its flat faces about twelve inches wide. Cobb took two long strides to the beam and grabbed the edges of the nearest side, like a karate student holding a pine board he meant to break with his head.
Hager saw what he planned to do, absurd as it was.
“No!” Hager shouted.
Cobb reared back and swung his whole upper body forward, like an upside-down pendulum. He didn’t take the impact with his forehead; he took it with his face. His nose and chin and cheekbones hit the steel with a sickening crack. To Hager it sounded like ceramic coffee mugs being crunched under a tire.
Cobb’s grip on the steel didn’t so much as falter. He leaned back—there was blood coming out of his mouth and nose like a trickle from a tap—steadied himself, and rammed his face once more into the steel, harder than before. Hager saw a tooth skitter onto the concrete at Cobb’s feet, and a second later the man blacked out and dropped in a heap where he’d stood.
All the controllers were watching now, along with the assistants and the few technicians present. Everyone stood frozen, unable to process what they were seeing.
Hager, still lying on top of Bell, looked around and found all eyes turning to him for answers. Never in his life had he felt so unable to offer any.
Except—
Well, there were a few things he could do, he supposed, now that he thought about it. Yes, he did have the answers. They were all coming to him, just like that.
He let go of Bell, pushed himself up, and got on his feet.
“Everybody out!” he shouted. “Right now. That’s a direct order.”
Thirty seconds later he had the building to himself; the others had even carried Cobb and Bell away. Hager went to the metal staircase that led to his office and climbed halfway up—just high enough that he could see out above the tops of the glass-walled workstations. He swept his gaze over the vast chamber and found it drawn to something in the far corner, in the shadows near the restrooms and the supply closet.
It was the fuel tank for the furnace and the generator. The thing was massive—it was, in fact, simply the trailer of an 18-wheel tanker truck, flown up here aboard a C-5 and rolled into position. Various hoses now connected it to the building’s heating and power systems. Hager descended the stairs again and sprinted across the huge room toward it.