The underground facility teemed with employees. Staff members set up work stations. Nurses donned pea-green scrubs. Chemists lined up the hazardous supplies on a shelf, each vial bearing a label—PU-238 and PU-239. The rainbow of colors gave off a deceptive aura of innocence to the deadly tubes of liquid plutonium.

The first patients arrived: Numbers One and Number Two - the impersonal numbering system designed to keep the staff from getting emotionally involved. If the project continued longer than planned, there would be no hope for Numbers One and Two, or for any of the other unsuspecting test subjects who might stumble into Muldovah.

Project Plucore had to succeed before the attack came or millions of Americans would be doomed.