Heaven Can't Wait - Chapter 47
7 Feb 2022 11:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jennickels
Chapter Forty-Seven - I Think We Blew a Fuse
A little over twenty hours later, Bellamy is in the bowels of the station, wedged in a too-small crawl space, a flashlight in one hand, his radio in the other. Faintly, he can hear Kane’s voice over the PA letting everyone know the lights might be going off and on for the next few minutes while they do some maintenance to the electrical grid. Does anyone believe that?
He squirms forward a couple feet and shines his light at the walls. “I think I see the panel,” he tells Raven over the radio. “Who’s idea was it to hide it in here?”
“Take it up with the original builders in 2026.”
Bellamy snorts. “All right. What do I need to do?”
“Just plug in the tablet—it’ll do the rest.”
“Right.” It takes him a moment to retrieve the tablet stuffed in the waist of his pants. And another minute to wiggle it out in front of him. He sighs when he finally has it hooked up. “Ready.” The tablet immediately whirs to life as a program starts transferring. Bellamy has no idea what it’s doing. He leaves the science to Raven. He’s just the muscle. Somewhere outside the station, Murphy has it even worse waiting to disconnect the external transformer.
Bellamy tries not to think about the fact that in the last hour, another storm built in the north. Murphy still insisted on going out. He checks the progress on the tablet then changes frequencies on the radio. “How you doing, Murphy?”
“What do you think? I’m wet.”
Bellamy sighs—sometimes he wonders why he even tries. “How-”
“I’m fine, just hurry it up already. This storm is getting angry.”
“Well, what did you do to piss it off?” Bellamy asks with a grin.
The radio crackles a second. “I insulted its mother, of course”
Bellamy laughs. Before he can respond, though, the tablet beeps. He flips back to Raven’s frequency. “It’s done, now what?” He listens to Raven rattle off a list of instructions to both him and Murphy. His head hurts—the pain building between his eyes again. The heat inside the crawlspace isn’t helping. He wriggles forward like a worm until he reaches a junction. He scans the intersecting vent. “I’m so lost here, Raven.”
“Left. About five yards. There should be another panel. Just repeat the process.”
Bellamy crawls left, banging his elbows on random pipes and cables. “Why aren’t these things connected?”
“It’s a safety feature.”
“Not seeming real safe from my end,” Murphy says. The wind whistles through the radio causing a squeal of static. “Can you guys hurry it up before my skin melts off?”
Bellamy works faster, finding the box and plugging in the tablet. Twenty minutes later, he tumbles out of an access hatch. His hair is plastered to his forehead, and he shivers as the cool air caresses his flushed skin. The station trembles with a rumble of thunder. It sounds like the storm is right on top of them. Murphy is still outside ready to disconnect the cables.
Bellamy hurries on stiff legs to the internal transformer room. He taps in his security code to open the surrounding fence. “Raven, I’m at the box. Lines one through five are green, but the rest are black.”
“That’s good. It means we’re ready to go. Just watch the monitors. If the system gets overwhelmed, it’ll start tripping breakers, and then, we’ll be in trouble. We’re going to have to do this slow and let things equalize.”
“Faster would be better,” Murphy yells over the sound of the storm. “Things aren’t looking good out here.”
Bellamy’s pulse races. This is going to be cutting it close. “Let’s do this.”
One by one, Murphy shunts the power from the external transformer to their internal network. Bellamy watches as each switch peaks then evens out as the energy is distributed.
Lines six and seven turn green. Bellamy nearly vibrates with anxiety. If this doesn’t work, we’re screwed. What would we even do?
It has to work. There are no other options.
He rubs his tired eyes as line eight runs red to orange to green. A second later nine is orange. For one inexplicable moment, he thinks something might actually work out for once, but then line ten goes red, spiking previous lines back up.
“Whoa,” he yells into the radio. “That’s too fast. You’re going to trip a breaker.”
“We’re out of time!”
The terror in Murphy’s voice sends a wave of panic through Bellamy. Another line lights up orange just as six resets to green and eight goes momentarily to red. Alarms start beeping.
“Raven, what do we do?”
There are several agonizing seconds before she answers. “Pull them all now, Murphy. Get back inside.”
Murphy doesn’t waste time. The rest of the lines light up red, sending the rest into chaos. The alarms grow, the gauges go haywire—their lights flickering violently. Bellamy stares helplessly as lines two, seven, and eight go dark. The lights on the other lines start blinking faster. One goes out.
No, no, no.
“Raven-”
“Bellamy, there should be another panel about thirty meters down back in the tunnel.”
“What will that do?”
“It’ll open another line so the power has somewhere to go.”
He’s already running, looking for access to the crawlspace. “Then why didn’t we already do that?”
“Because it goes to the servers, and if that circuit blows, we’re liable to lose the computers.”
Bellamy stumbles to a stop. The overhead lights go off a second then come back on. “Is this a good idea?” Somewhere behind him, a light pops, shooting sparks into the hall.
“We’re out of options. I’m trying to reroute to other subsystems, but there’s too much power in the lines. Monty is heading down to fix the tripped breakers. Bellamy, just hurry, okay?”
“Right.” Hurry. He hits about the spot he thinks Raven is talking about and walks a few feet forward and back until he finds the hatch. He tosses the cover aside and wiggles inside. He’s overwhelmed by the smell of burning ozone. The hairs on his arms tingle. This doesn’t seem safe at all. He’s almost to the panel when he hears something sizzling. His heart clenches. Now what?
From the end of the tunnel, a light explodes. Then another. Shit. In turn, each small bulb blows. Bellamy covers his head as sparks and glass pelt him. Great. He manages to tug his radio free. “Raven, all the lights just went out. What-”
“Just flip that switch. You have thirty seconds before the entire system fries, and we lose everything anyway.”
He digs his flashlight out of his pocket and squirms as fast as he can, ignoring the cut of glass in his hands. He nearly rips off a fingernail, prying the lid to the panel free, but it finally comes loose. His heart is pounding in his head, and his breath is caught in his chest as he hooks it up and starts the program with trembling fingers.
“Come on, come on.”
The program finishes running, showing a green light. He waits, but nothing happens.
His radio crackles to life. “You did it. But Monty needs help with the breakers before we get a cascade-”
“I don’t need the details. Help Monty. Got it.”
It takes him entirely too long to scoot back to the hatch. He tumbles out. Monty is at the transformer box, furiously, flipping switches and twisting wires. Lines one and five are black, six through ten are red, the rest are flickering wildly.
“What do I do?”
“There was a short in the-”
“I don’t need the details. What do you need me to do?”
“When I say, reset all of these breakers at once. Hopefully, it’ll be able to take the extra before we lose the rest of the lines.”
Monty finishes his wires and twists some dials and switches. “All right—now.”
Bellamy uses his arm to force the switches one way and then back. Monty does the same with a few on his side. The lights in the hall go out at the same time the panel explodes, sending them crashing into the wall. Bellamy blinks against the blinding white burned into his vision.
“Monty? You okay?”
Monty’s already at the panel. “Damn it.”
“What the hell happened?” Raven screams over the radio.
Bellamy swallows hard. “I think we blew a fuse. A big one.”
“Don’t worry, I got it,” Monty says around the flashlight in his mouth. Seconds later, the lights flicker back on. Most of the lines on the board are green. The two that aren’t are blackened with soot—obviously the ones that overloaded. Monty sighs, shoulders relaxing. “That should do it for now. We’ll have to fix these other ones manually and parts of the station will be without power for a bit, but I don’t think it’s anything vital.”
Bellamy leans against the wall. Thank god.
