“It’s hot. Stay back.” He should have worn a suit as well, but they needed to see what was inside and he’d just have to rely on his own metabolism repairing any damage to his system … at least for a while.

Alex crossed to the sealed canisters, and then moved to the only one that was open. The ball top was visible, and he recognized it immediately – it was the casing holding a nuclear bomb’s initiator. He sighed, these days nukes were so easy to assemble that a high school kid could put one together if he had the right material, and access to the Internet.

He looked down at the assembly, assessing the design. It was an old model but with new technology. Most likely it’d be a fission blast, as they were the most basic. All that was required was to bring two subcritical masses together to form a supercritical mass. This needed to be done at speed to generate a high-energy collision. Basically, you just needed to make a giant gun, and fire one mass into the other. Alex placed a hand on the sphere, and his fingers tingled. In his mind, he saw how it would work – Uranium-235, fashioned into a bullet, placed at the one end of a long tube with explosives behind it. At the other, another mass of 235, as a target. The casing holds the particle collision together until criticality is reached, and then boom; simple as that.

He removed his hand when he saw the large button. Big and uncomplicated, so something like the giant, drone-like Travelers would only need to punch down on it to initiate the nuclear event.

He straightened, feeling dizzy; he needed to leave. There were a half dozen of the huge packs. He stopped at another, tilting it slightly. The weight was immense. The things that carried these, in some case for hundreds of miles, were unnaturally powerful. He hoped Hammerson was able to find the last of them.

Alex backed out of the room, sweating profusely, and then leaned against the wall, waiting for his stomach to settle. “Okay, there’s six bombs in there. Just waiting for their pack mules to walk ’em out.” He turned his head, feeling a compulsion drawing him on. There was also something else – Eli’s pain, the feeling of the man crying out to them.

“Further down. It’s further down.”

“Eli?” Adira crowded in close.

“I thought it was the bombs we were after,” Casey said. “Let’s fuck ’em up.”

Alex shook his head. “I think Eli is down there. But also the one responsible for them … and the things that carry them.”

“Is it … a person?” Adira asked.

Alex concentrated, but it was like pushing against a brick wall. “I can’t tell. So let’s go find out.”