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The cuffs opened.

Jordan stood at once.

Everyone but Nick stepped back.

Nick just stood there, measuring the other vampire, while Damon stretched out his limbs, then gingerly picked up the folded suit. He shook it out, and then, with a sudden purpose in his movements, began to pull it on, one leg at a time, just like Nick had done.

Nick, feeling his muscles relax perceptibly, glanced around at the others.

He was relieved to see that most of them were dressed.

Wynter, Charlie, and Tai looked like they’d been helping one another. All of them had their hoods on, too, and had ignited the seals. They looked strangely cartoon-like with their faces made larger and rounder by the green-lit masks.

“The clock’s not running in here,” Nick said, gruff but loud. “Not on the suits, I mean. You can turn on the shielding now. Everyone make sure their suits are workingnow.I’m not opening that fucking door until everyone isabsolutelysure.”

There was a series of sparking, low hums as several in their group turned on their suits.

Tai got hers working first, then Kit, then Wynter, then Charlie.

Walker and Morley followed, then Walker’s mother, Rose, then Malek, and finally Nick yanked up his own hood and turned his suit on, followed by Jordan.

They all examined their own suits, then they examined each other’s.

All of them were working at full power, according to the gauges.

“Okay,” Nick said. “Everybody ready?”

No one nodded.

No one shook their heads, either.

Nick checked the clock.

They now only had eighteen minutes, each way.

Without another word, he walked to the large red button on the side wall of the armored vehicle. He glanced around at everyone a last time.

He found them all looking back at him, eyes waiting, expectant.

Nick lifted the organic safety case with his fingers and punched the button with the edge of a gloved fist.

CHAPTER32

THE COUNTDOWN

The suit immediately felt compressed.

Nick couldn’t smell anything from inside the suit, but the air was murky, dense, like walking through a cloud of fine iron filings. He felt disturbed by the weight of it, and the weight of the suit itself.

But they didn’t have much time to adjust.

The armored van supposedly had a decompression system in the event they had to go back inside. It would suck all of the radioactive matter out of the ventilation shafts, soak them in some kind of chemical to kill the reactions, then they were supposed to ditch the suits and leave them in a chute at the back.

The science team went over all of it before they left the hangar inside the bubble.

Now, Nick wondered if they would need to use it.

It seemed inconceivable they could get far enough in eighteen minutes to know whether the cave would even be accessible.