04/30/2023 Snippet, GHOSTS ON AN ALIEN WIND.

Thank God, this section is almost done. I’m going to get back to it today too, hopefully.

How did I get him in there, though? Well, bullets weren’t going to kill him, sure, as I confirmed by putting three three in his torso. Adam didn’t fall down; he didn’t even slow down, not that he was moving that quickly anyway. I did keep his attention, though, which was the idea. I wasn’t sure what would happen if somebody distracted him, and I didn’t want the effects of finding out to be on my conscience later.

The sanitation room was supposed to be empty, with its only feature a small raised alcove, barely large enough to fit a single human. Unfortunately, right now it was half-full of stuff that wasn’t supposed to be there. You know how it is: people will see an open space that isn’t being used, and they decide to use it for storage space. As I ran by the junk on my way to the door to the animal lab, I absently hoped that none of the stuff was really important. Because either way, it was all about to go away.
You see, there was a plan. I would get him inside the sanitation room, get to the far door, slam shut the blast doors behind him, then duck out the other door and slam that shut before he could reach it. Then I’d hit the emergency cycle switch, and hope like Hell a standard sanitation episode would do the job. It should; physics always wins, right — certain recent episodes to the contrary.

In fact, most of that plan worked fine. The only problem was, when I hit the switch, both sets of blast doors came down. That left me trapped inside the room with Adam. It also almost left me with a hand cut in two, but I was able to snatch it back in time. We don’t mess around with blast doors; when you need one in the Tomb Worlds, you need one right now, and with no nonsense.