Of course, being the calm and collected sort we were, we handled our unscheduled entombment with calmness and aplomb. By which I mean Jenel shot the Damn door, Nara tried to blow it up, and I tried every code I could recall on a cycle, then ran a random sequence in an attempt to brute force it, while swearing like a dock worker. Then, having exhausted our usual repertoire of explosions, shooting, and swearing while trying to pick the lock, we figured that maybe it was time for plan B.

The only problem there was that we didn’t really have a plan B per se. Usually, that would consist of repeating plan A until tired, or until said obstacle gave up and let us through, whichever came first. But obviously in this case that wasn’t going to work out so well.

So I started examining the pods, doing the worst possible thing and opening them one by one, in the desperate hope that maybe one of them had some kind of keycard. No such luck, and apparently the stasis pods had succeeded in preserving the victims to an extent, the extent being instead of nice dry bones we had people soup. The worst possible outcome really. I couldn’t help but wonder for a bit what they would have thought if they’d realised going in that this would be the outcome. I know, depressing right?

But there was really nothing else to do at the minute but go through the pods one by one, then look to the terminals. (WHAT? It’s not like these people calmly scribbled their passwords onto the walls of the pods while they were frozen or something. Plus any paper kicking around the place would have been dust a long time ago, so no hope of an ancient post-it note either.)

That went on for what I can safely call the longest and most depressing three hours I’ve ever had outside the Convent before Jenel suddenly called me over to one of the pods.

The pod didn’t have an error light, and the occupant didn’t look like soup. That was a good sign, they looked like a raggedy kid. After that long in deep-sleep though I didn’t fancy their chances of waking up. I looked again, poor kid, even if they did eventually wake up their entire world was gone. The least we could do is wait till we found an exit to give them the best chance.

Skinny little thing too, kind of made me think of us back in our scavenging days. The question was had she gone in before or after things went to hell. Not that it would tell us a lot either way, but we at least owed the kid a fighting chance. I marked the pod, then resumed the search, going from pod to pod. Until eventually a skeleton flopped out, with a tattered lanyard around its neck. Apparently, his name had been Joe Hopper, some kind of a maintenance technician. Well, that was handy, it’s amazing how much access most places have to give a grease-monkey, at least to the structure itself.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

A lot of folks assume that they would leave that to bots so only command would have the best access, but Nah, you do not use anything that can be hooked up to a net in a secure area. Better to way overpay some poor schlub to come in with a dustpan and brush all old-school style. Making sure that they’re well-watched of course. Of course, it would be useless for access to technical systems. But what we wanted right now was access to the good loot, and an exit. Computers were great in theory, but they put up a better fight than the doors ever could, better to just leave them be unless you wanted your cybernetics fried.

“Score”, I muttered. “Now with any luck, we haven’t set off anything that shuts this down. Look for a door.”

“What about the kid?” Jenel asked eyeing the pod anxiously, it was pretty easy to tell that the idea of leaving things be was needling at her conscience. Jenel acts all tough, but she’s an absolute teddy bear at heart, which just makes her all the cuter.

“If we pull her outta there too soon then she’ll not survive long enough to get hooked up to nutrients. Look at her, she’s like a twig. We need to figure out an escape route, get a med-bed down here, and even then it’s going to be tough. So look for an exit first.”

Jenel thought about it for a minute before nodding, I can’t say I blame her for feeling kinda bad about it, made me feel a bit guilty too. But we can’t help the kid if she just got entombed with us.

“WE GOT A DOOR” Nara shouted, quickly shoving aside a few chunks of a collapsed duct that had fallen all over the place at some point. Revealing a decent-sized door with a card reader. I quickly scanned the card.

“Welcome Joe Hopper, last login 730067 days,12 hours, 27 minutes ago. Please report to the administration office for disciplinary action, this event has been logged to your personal record as a first infraction. If you feel this decision was made in error you have twenty-four hours to appeal as per the guidelines in section five of the employee handbook.” a voice said over the speaker beside the door. Looking at the pile of bones in the administration booth I figured that odds were pretty good that I wasn’t going to get chewed out though. So I ignored the skeleton slumped over the admin desk and made my way to the next door.

“ACCESS DENIED.” The voice from this speaker said. “Employee Joe Hopper is suspended for unauthorised absence in excess of two weeks. Pending management intervention, report to Administration office for disciplinary action.”

“You have GOT to be shitting me” I muttered, considering trying plan A again, it wouldn’t work of course, but it would be satisfying. Before turning around to head for the admin office. The door let me in of course, after all I was “Joe” as far as they were concerned. At least for now. I quickly stepped up and swiped the ID from miss Jennifer Bahdee, and broke my own rules regarding terminals to flag check that this card was a bit more useable. Noting with a grim chuckle the system crediting her for 730067 days of overtime, with an automated notification about her being declared Employee Of The Month.