But I recognized many of the men they had brought because they were not only my friends and neighbors, but workers that I supervised on Reactor 4. At first I thought they were just going to have them help on one of the other reactors, but as we began dividing up, I saw they were being told to report to their normal stations. Without any special instructions or suits, not even respirators or potassium iodide tablets.

Then they gathered the few of us left, the supervisors, together. Told us that they knew we had questions, but now was the time was for action and loyalty, not questions or fear. We all nodded and held our tongues as we made our way into the plant, and as we went deeper, I kept waiting for the smell of smoke, the heat of fire, or worse yet, the metallic tang on my tongue that I’ve heard comes from radiation poisoning.

But there was nothing. No signs of destruction or even disarray. I went through my rounds like I normally would, checking with every station, and everything seemed to be in order. Not only in order, but still running. There had been no shutdown of Reactor 4. As far as I could tell, the control rods were still in their normal position and there were no signs of a meltdown or any other incident. After a couple of hours I snuck away long enough to look at some of the readings for the past few days, but the logs for the past week were all gone. Aside from confirming my suspicions that none of this was what it seemed, it also troubled me for another reason.

If they were going to all this trouble for secrecy, would they ever actually let us go?

The answer seemed dreadfully apparent, and over the next few days, it only became more so. We weren’t allowed to go back to Pripyat or leave the plant at all. It was justified as “safety measures” and “security precautions”, but by the third day several of the men had had enough. Many of us gathered in the dining hall, and three of the most vocal dissenters demanded we all be released at once. After a brief consultation of who they were and how critical they were to the running of the plant, two of the three were shot dead in front of us. The third, a nuclear engineer named Dusan, was taken away in handcuffs and I never saw him again.

It was that evening, as I lay in my cot during my three-hour shift break, that I realized what I must do.