Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
When I risk opening the doors, I find that they swing for me easily, though they’re a bit heavier than I would expect them to be. The wardrobe has some clothing in it, undershirts and things of that nature. Everything is built to saurian scale, like you’d expect.
It does not take me long to find the switch that makes the back panel open. It’s not particularly well hidden. Just looks like a nail sticking out of the back of the piece of furniture. I reach up and jiggle it a little, feeling the way the mechanism must release behind it as it clicks and whirrs just a little. It’s all so simple. I pause before I actually open the secret door. I’m not dressed, after all. I need my suit.
That is going to be more dangerous. I can already tell that the safe does have security measures. There’re ports on the front that look to me like flamethrowers, and that’s just for starters. It’s a box of potential death, so I’ll be careful.
I have to assume that the safe is going to be dangerous if I put the wrong combo in. Fortunately for me, I was listening and watching when he opened it the first time. Thirteen clicks to the right, two to the left, and then another five to the right again. I know the directions, because I watched the way his arm flexed as he manipulated the door. Observation is the better part of survival.
This is going to be a risk, but it’s one I have to take. Without the suit, I’m nothing more than meat on legs in a world full of hungry predators.
I scuttle over to the safe and put in what I think is the correct combination before there’s a chance to get nervous and second guess myself. There’s a satisfying clunk as the door disengages. I stand as far back as I can, and swing it open slowly in case there’s some kind of incendiary charge or some…
BOOM!
There’s now a dent in the wall opposite the safe, a burnished hole the size of my chest.
He was right about it being dangerous, I guess. An incendiary charge big enough to rip me into pieces just went off. My ears are still ringing from the sound of it, and the acrid smell of what has to be old-fashioned gunpowder pervades my every breath. This room has no ventilation, and explosions are dirty.
Fortunately, my suit is made of better stuff than the explosive. I snatch it out of what remains of the blasted open safe, kick my boots off, and drag it on quickly. Putting the suit on is not like getting dressed. It is like pulling on my skin again. I feel so much better. I feel as though I am whole again.
I don’t check the rest of the safe’s contents. There could be more traps and tricks, and I don’t want to end up missing a bit of a limb because I got too curious. What’s mine is mine, and what’s his is his.
Feeling myself again, I go back to the wardrobe, shut the door behind me, and pull the nail to open the secret back. A tunnel opens up in front of me, quite a spacious one. It looks meticulously maintained, which doesn’t surprise me. All of Shan’s things I’ve encountered so far are very simple, lack adornment, and are very well taken care of. I can see about ten feet in front of me, and then it curves to the left. Anything could be back there. Anyone could be back there. But as far as I am concerned, there’s only one thing to do:
Follow the tunnel.
It seems to be empty.
I can’t hear any footsteps besides my own as I move, and I can barely hear mine, so I know I will hear anyone, or anything else that happens to come. I know how to be quiet. I know how to stay unseen. The tunnel is lit here and there with dim LED type lights, electrical embeds which for all I know contain sensors. If we were on the Mare, there wouldn’t be a single step I could take that wouldn’t get me detected if I were just to walk past the lights. We have surveillance on every inch of the ship. We have pressure-weighted sensors. We have sound sensors. We have detectors that can sense when light flickers with the passing of a body. We have cameras. We have everything, mostly because you can’t stop the tech girls from iterating their gadgets and technologies and testing them wherever they can. That’s why we know so much about this city and its citizens. Because there are women floating above who take a possessive interest in seeing and knowing everything. Gossip is elevated into an art form and a science on the Mare.