A distinctive waveform appeared on a central display screen. The pattern displayed a series of rising peaks, starting small at first, but quickly increasing in size and frequency. Serizawa examined the display in fascination. The pattern matched no biological phenomenon he was familiar with.

A hand tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to find David Huddleston, the base’s head of security, behind him. He was a tall, brusque American who took his duties very seriously.

“Dr. Serizawa,” he said. “We arrested two men in the Q-Zone—”

Whelan was annoyed by the interruption. “Can this wait? Have Dr. Graham take a look.”

“She did, sir,” Huddleston replied. “She sent me.”

Whelan glanced around, as though noticing for the first time that Graham was no longer present. Serizawa recalled her being called away during the countdown to the pulse. Intrigued, he gave Huddleston his full attention. He trusted Vivienne’s judgment, and wondered what about the trespassers was so significant.

“One says he used to work here,” Huddleston said.

At the old nuclear power plant? Serizawa found this provocative enough that he let the security chief escort him downstairs to the antechamber of a utility room that had apparently been converted into a makeshift interrogation room. He found Graham waiting for him outside the utility room, while an armed soldier stood guard at the locked glass door to the larger room beyond. A table held what Serizawa assumed to be the trespassers’ confiscated belongings: a duffel bag, a couple of American passports, a vintage Geiger counter, a flashlight, and other odds and ends.

Looking troubled, Graham nodded grimly at Serizawa as he arrived. They peered through the clear glass door as one of Huddleston’s subordinates, an American named Fitzgerald, attempted to question the distraught prisoner, whom had been identified as Joseph Brody, a one-time nuclear engineer, formerly employed by the doomed Janjira facility. Serizawa wondered what had brought the man back to this site, some fifteen years later. He noted that Brody was wearing a battered brown radiation suit, minus the hood.

“I want my son,” Brody demanded, visibly upset. “I want to see him. I want to know he’s alright.” He pointed accusingly at the guard posted outside the door. “This guy, he knows where he is. I want my son and I want my bag and my disks and I want to talk to the person who’s in charge here. I know what’s going on, okay?”

Serizawa listened with interest. Just how much did Brody truly know about what now occupied this site? And what might have caused the disaster so many years ago?

Fitzgerald tried to calm the prisoner. He had a shaved skull and an intimidating manner. “Mr. Brody—”

“You’ve been telling everybody this place is a death zone,” Brody ranted. “All the while you’ve been hiding something out there! My wife died here! You understand? Something killed my wife and ten other people, and I deserve answers!”