Atomic Anna

Soviet Union

The scientist Anna Berkova was asleep in her narrow bed in Pripyat, the closed city that housed workers from Chernobyl. She was cold, but then again, she was always cold. The walls in her building were thin. Damp and wind clawed through cracks and she huddled under blankets to escape them. She had fallen asleep working on the amplifier she hoped would increase efficiency at the nuclear power plant, the prototype lying on her chest. It was small and crude, a circuit board covered with diodes and capacitors. She didn’t hear the explosion or feel the catastrophic shudder as Reactor No. 4 ripped apart, its insides flayed, releasing the most dangerous substances known to man. Nor did she witness the shock of light that stabbed the dark, because at that exact moment Anna tore through time. It was her first jump—and it was an accident.

When she opened her eyes, she was on her back in the snow, alone, on a mountain, clutching the smoking amplifier. Her head felt like it was being split in two; her hands throbbed. They were burned and raw; she didn’t know why. She assumed she was dreaming, but she never felt pain in dreams, only fear when nightmares had her seeing soldiers at her door. It was why she still wore boots to bed, even now as an old woman, so she could run from them like her mother should have run all those years ago. But on that mountain there were no soldiers. She put the amplifier in her pocket and her scorched hands in the snow. That hurt even more. Wind slid through her nightgown and scraped at her skin and with every sensation, she was more convinced this wasn’t a dream. This was real. She quickly understood that she needed to find shelter or she would freeze.

She spotted a building in the distance. Smoke stained the sky above, leaking from the chimney. If she could get to that building, inside, she’d be safer. She slipped and clawed her way to her feet and forced herself forward. The building was narrow and long, built with stone. As she stumbled toward it, she passed a spot in the snow that bloomed red with fresh blood trailing in a long line. Her panic grew.

Perhaps the KGB had left her here? It was no secret Gorbachev detested her. Her safety protocols were expensive and slowed production, but without Anna and those protocols there would be no RBMK reactors—and those reactors were Gorbachev’s pride. He wouldn’t kill her, she assured herself. Besides, if he did, it wouldn’t be like this. It would be with a bullet. This was too elaborate.

The front door wasn’t locked. Just before she opened it there was a flash. After that, the pain in her head was gone. Relief. She barreled through the entrance, aware of heat as it rolled over her like a wave. She spilled onto a bench. A black parka hung next to her. She put it on and slowly her body warmed. As her temperature rose, so did her terror. The smoke from the chimney meant someone was there, but it was too quiet. She peered down the hall and had the feeling that this complex was familiar, but she couldn’t place it. “Hello?” she called. Her voice shook from fear and cold, and only silence hit her back.

She pulled the parka tighter and that was when she realized it was wet. She looked at her charred hands. They were covered in blood. The parka she was wearing was soaked with it. So was a black uniform on the floor. She let out a scream. But again she was met only with silence. “Anyone?” she called.

She crept deeper into the building, down the hallway. The walls were covered in bright murals. Adrenaline had her mind working faster than her body, and as she stumbled through, she caught glimpses of the art, of what seemed to be three superwomen with capes and high boots.

In the kitchen, the table was toppled. Chairs were overturned. Anna grabbed a knife, held it up as best she could. That was when she recognized the lead-lined box from her laboratory flung into the corner, covered with warning stickers she had created. The box was made to hold pellets of enriched uranium oxide, the fuel used in the RBMK reactors.

She heard a moan. “Anna?”

Anna jumped back, stabbed the knife into the air in a wild gesture. She scanned the room, searched for a threat, for someone, tried to think who could do this. “Anna,” a woman’s voice said again, and Anna saw her, a stranger lying in a puddle of blood next to a picture window that looked out over the ice-covered mountains. She appeared to have been shot in the chest, to be bleeding out. Anna dropped to her knees at the woman’s side and tried to apply pressure with blood-soaked towels already next to her. It was all she knew to do.

“What happened? Is anyone else here?” Anna asked, frantic. She looked at the woman’s face, tried to place it, but she didn’t recognize her. “How did you know my name?” Blood gushed from the woman’s chest, spilled over Anna’s hands as she pressed harder to try to stop it. Her panic rose. Surely whoever did this would hunt Anna next.

“Why are we here?” Anna asked, and then saw two pendants around the stranger’s neck, golden bears. One bear was on its haunches, ready to fight. The other was on all fours, resting, at peace. She looked down at her own matching necklace dangling between them. Anna’s mother had given Anna the bears just before she was taken. They were unique, a wedding present to her own mother, and Anna had never seen those pendants anywhere else. “Where did you get that necklace?” Anna asked. “Who are you?”

“You gave it to me. Or you will.” The woman’s voice was a rasp. “Anna, we failed.”

“What are you talking about? What’s happening?”

“I’m Manya. Your daughter.”

Anna’s elbows buckled, her hands slipped, and she had to remind herself to keep pressure on the wound. Anna hadn’t seen her daughter since she was a baby. This had to be a cruel trick. Anna had spent years staring at any girl or woman who was the right age, sure that if they happened across each other, she would recognize her daughter. But this woman didn’t resemble who she imagined her Manya to be. Anna forced herself to look closer. She tried to find a trace of Yasha or of her own self in her features, her voice, but fear and panic made it impossible to see. “Manya?” A surge of sadness paralyzed Anna as she realized the irony of what might be unfolding, the idea that she might only see her daughter on the two ends of her life, as a baby and a corpse. Tears drenched her cheeks, fell on the woman and mixed with all that blood. “Are you really Manya?”

“You gave me the bears, said you would trust me if you saw them.” The woman’s voice was softer now. She didn’t have much time. “You said if I told you about the cake, your tenth birthday, you would know me.” A queasy sensation hit Anna when she heard the word cake. The woman was fading, paler even than she had been a minute earlier. “We’re running out of time. This is your first jump. Your amplifier, it pulled you through a ripple in space-time. It’s December 8, 1992.” The woman’s eyes fluttered. Anna shook her to keep her awake.

“Time travel? I actually did it?” Anna whispered. “This is 1992?”

“Yes, but we failed.” The woman gasped for air. “This is your station. The one you designed. Yasha built it. For you.”

It was beginning to make sense now, why it felt familiar.

“We failed. Again,” the woman whispered. “You have to try again. For Raisa. You promised to save Raisa.”

“Who is Raisa?”

“Your granddaughter.”

Anna shook her head. It was too much to take in and she was trying to parse facts from the emotions roiling through her, the fear and regret, sadness and confusion, making it hard to think clearly. The woman—her daughter, Manya, maybe—grabbed Anna’s hand. It was warm and slick, covered in blood.

“Chernobyl melted down. Reactor Number Four.” The woman’s voice was even weaker.

“It couldn’t melt down. I designed it. Oversaw the safety protocols myself,” Anna said.

“The impossible is always possible.” A ghost of a smile crossed the woman’s face. “You told me that.” And then, “The reaction caused the jump. We’re out of time.” She gasped. “Save Raisa. Remember you promised.” The woman struggled to hand Anna a worn photograph just as everything around Anna turned into static, as if she were watching television and the antenna needed to be adjusted. She was sucked into a place with no light at all. Her legs and arms lengthened and stretched. She was sure she was dying and she screamed because she couldn’t leave, not yet, only the sound was lost in the dark.

“Anna,” a voice said. Anna opened her eyes. Vera, her nurse, was standing over her, back in her cold, damp bedroom in Pripyat. Vera had been assigned to Anna seven years ago even though she didn’t need her. Young, dark-haired and all heart, Vera was more spy than attendant. The Soviets watched all their best scientists with nurses like Vera. “You screamed,” Vera said. “What are you wearing? What happened to your hands?”

Anna looked down to see that she was still wearing the parka from the mountain. She’d been too cold to take it off even if it was soaked in blood. She was holding the photograph in her burned, tortured hands, now blistered and bleeding.

“Can I help you take off your boots at least?”

“Leave me alone,” Anna said. “I tell you all the time, leave me be. I don’t need your help.” She turned away, reeling from the shock of what she’d just seen, to look at the old photograph. There in the picture was the family she hadn’t contacted in decades. Yulia and Lazar. They were older, but there was no question it was them. They stood in front of a store’s plate glass window. The woman from the mountain—Manya, yes, it had to be Manya, Anna decided—was next to them. She was smiling, holding a baby. Baby Raisa, Anna’s granddaughter. A date was scribbled in the bottom corner: 1971. Anna started rocking back and forth, tried to make sense of everything that was happening. Manya. The memory of the birthday cake and the bears, they were all real, proof—of what?

“The explosion, it was violent. It shook the building. Did you hit your head?” Vera asked, bringing Anna back. “At least let me bandage your hands.”

“What explosion?”

“Something happened at Chernobyl. There’s a terrible fire.”

“It melted down,” Anna said, remembering what Manya had predicted. Anna hadn’t believed her then. But now she looked toward the window and saw an eerie blue light streaming through the glass. She stumbled out of bed to take a closer look, and her foot crunched on something. It was the amplifier. It must have fallen from her pocket. The circuit board was charred. Anna ran her fingers over the melted diodes and capacitors. Her mind raced. Berlin. That was where she first thought about the theory of ripples in space-time—of time travel. Anna blinked and realized she believed that whatever had happened on the mountain was in the future. But Chernobyl was now. Anna was the chief engineer and those reactors were her responsibility. Instead of seeing the silhouette of illuminated towers, she saw a column of fire topped by a blue beam of light like a spike splitting the sky, and Anna knew this wasn’t just a fire. The reactor really was melting down just as Manya had told her it would. Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people would die, and it was Anna’s fault.

“No, no!” Anna cried, feeling overwhelmed and terrified by the mountain and Manya, and now this. She leaned against the wall to steady herself. Crowds had formed in the courtyard below. All of Pripyat had come out. It looked like they were in the rain, but it wasn’t rain. It was radioactive ash coating the lawn, the streets and cars, and worst of all, the people. Children were laughing and dancing. They were playing in poison and no one was stopping them. Anna wanted to run outside and warn them, but it was too late. It had already been on their skin, sucked into their lungs. She knew these children, the crowds, they would all be dead within a week.

“What did I do?” Guilt and shame took hold, and then the phone rang and she knew exactly why, and what would happen next. All the blame and punishment would fall on her. Arrest, torture, death.

“No, she wasn’t at the lab. She didn’t do anything wrong,” Vera said into the receiver. Anna shoved clothing into a bag along with the singed amplifier. She was still holding that photograph of Manya, Raisa, Yulia, and Lazar.

Anna had only one option. It was a risk, but everything was a risk now. She had to go to that mountain, to the cosmic ray station she’d designed all those years ago, so she could go back in time and stop all of this, put the world back the way it should be.