Gray.

The desert was hot, in the afternoon air. It was the safest - and only - place where a test of its kind could occur, somewhere away from civilisation, in the dust and the dirt, where it wouldn’t hurt anyone. 

The plan was never to hurt anyone. Even Ross would concede to that. 

But plans go awry, more often than not.

A small section of the Nevada desert had been cordoned off, labelled as a minefield so the public wouldn’t attempt to enter, with eight-foot fences to dissuade anyone who would try.

Bruce, Ross, and Betty were all inside the concrete shelter, almost a mile away from where the bomb itself would go off. The test needed all three of them - three keys to be turned at once, which would begin the countdown sequence. The shelter was in a trench that extended for a few hundred metres in all directions, to allow any gamma rays to pass clearly over them, rather than through them.

Bruce, Ross, and Betty all held their keys in their respective locks. Bruce smiled at Betty, and nodded.

“Countdown begin, in three… two… one…” he said.

They each turned their keys. Bruce’s eyes never wavered from Betty - in his world of studying radiation, she emanated sunlight. She was pure, life-giving energy. In his left chest pocket, he kept a ring, a ring he wasn’t quite ready to show her, but one he hoped to, one day.

She looked back at him, and smiled. She looked past him, out the long thin window of the shelter, and her face turned to a frown, and then a look of horror. 

Bruce cocked his head, and turned. He followed her gaze, and saw what she was looking at.

Who she was looking at.

Outside, climbing over the fence that cordoned off the testing site, was a person.

Only just older than a teenager, he wore a loose leather jacket, and carried a skateboard.

“...Sweet God in Heaven,” Ross said.

Bruce didn’t even hesitate. A second later, he was out the door of the shelter. 

Removing the third key from the equation, the countdown couldn’t be stopped. As Bruce ran towards the boy, Betty screamed after him. 

“Get out of the field, you idiot!” Bruce yelled. The boy looked up, and smirked.

“Relax, lab coat,” he said, “the mines ain’t real.”

Bruce caught up to him, and grabbed him by the arm. “No,” he said, his voice grave, “but that bomb is.” 

Shock crossed the boy’s face, and he ran alongside Bruce, back toward the shelter. Bruce was counting in his head - he had always had a good sense of timing. Time was one of the most basic physical forces, it was required in so many equations, to calculate the movement of objects in space. To calculate gravity, speed… acceleration.

Time was running out. They weren’t going to make it.

Bruce glanced back at the bomb, and made a calculation. The fastest calculation he had ever made in his life, more gut instinct than mathematical conclusion.

There was a sound, a rumbling in the ground, and Bruce gave the boy one decent shove, using all his strength. It gave him the miniscule boost he needed, the difference between life and death, pushing him over, tripping him up, but getting him into the trench.

The boy would live. 

Bruce was not so lucky.