Page 141 of Almost Midnight

If they left it any later than that, they ran the risk of radiation seeping through the shields and through the metal and into them.

Like Walker said, it might not kill them outright, but it could shave years, even decades off the lives of the seers and humans in their group.

The arrows for contaminant levels outside the vehicle were all past the red and into the black part of the gauge. Nick didn’t need an interpreter to tell him what the color chart meant. White was clean, and every color darker than that was less clean. Dark purple came before black, and both of them screamed “death,” but the finality of that black color was clear.

Nick hoped like hell Anand had been right about the suits.

The five-foot-and-change scientist had sounded so confident about the engineering wonder of the armored truck, maybe Nick should have pressed him more about the armored suits they were supposed to wear outside of it.

As he pulled up to the spot indicated on the map and switched the view-screens on all around the inside of the vehicle, he found himself glancing at the stacked bundles that represented the ten armored suits they’d brought with them.

They looked awfully thin to Nick suddenly.

The thought of having only that layer between them and the deadly, irradiated air made him uneasy, to say the least, even before he glanced at the clock.

Then he climbed all the way into the back of the van.

He glanced at Kit and motioned towards the view of the cave wall.

“What do you think?” he asked. “Is it worth sending a drone?”

“We have forty-seven minutes,” she said, pointing at the projection of the time gauge. “Just over thirty-nine to make the loop, and we have to factor in each way. Then we have to head back for the science bubble, or we’re all toast.”

“So no on the drone?” Nick clarified.

“We don’t even know how long it will take us to get into the suits,” Charlie muttered.

Nick agreed.

“Get them on,” he ordered. “Now. We’ll go out and see for ourselves. If we can’t get into the cave, hopefully we can at least get some idea of how unlikely we are toeverget in.”

Everyone had already unbuckled their straps and climbed to their feet.

Morley, who was closest to the stack of suits, began tossing them around to everyone in the back of the armored vehicle. He even tossed one to Jordan, but the vampire was still chained to the wall, and only stared at the folded suit in his lap, his expression annoyed.

Nick was relieved to see a lot more Damon Jordan in that annoyance than he’d seen in his friend in a while. Definitely more than he’d seen since he last tried to talk to the newborn vampire, back on that mountain by the other portal.

Nick shoved his leg into the suit Morley tossed him, jammed his foot into the boot part at the bottom, then repeated the motions on the other side. He zipped up the middle of the suit once he’d finished, got his arms into each side, settled the thick gloves, then zipped the rest of it up to his chin, and hit the button to seal the seam.

He walked over to Jordan only then.

The hood and its mask still hung down the top part of his back.

“I’ll put you down, if you fuck with anyone here,” Nick said, his voice an unambiguous threat. When Jordan glared at him, nostrils flaring, Nick gave him an impatient look. “I don’t meankillyou, stupid… I mean knock you out. And don’t get all hotheaded with me, either. I was a newborn once. Irememberhow it was. I’m just telling you, you need tocontrol yourselffor this. We can’t afford to have you doing anything crazy out here. You open the suit of one of these seers or humans, and you’ll kill them. Possibly instantly.”

Jordan’s expression grew a touch less hard.

Nick gave the other man a meaningful look, anyway.

“You want to do that? You want to kill Charlie? Or the kid?” He pointed at Tai. “You want to have to live with that? Because I promise you, you won’t like it.”

That seemed to get through to the other vampire even more.

Still scowling faintly, Jordan shook his head.

Some of the red in his irises began to lose its brightness.

Nick pulled the key off where they’d hung it on the wall by the vehicle’s main sliding door. He walked over to Jordan, bent down, and pressed it to the lock.

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