<span style="font-weight: bold">Please donâ€™t get trapped, donâ€™t get trapped, donâ€™t get trapped. </span>There was nothing to be opened or shut in the vents, but that didnâ€™t keep Quen from being nervous anyway. What if sheâ€™d taken a wrong turn, or couldnâ€™t get the hatch open from the inside? He needed to stop thinking about all the ways things could go wrong, but there was nothing else to distract him.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">What are you doing, Ser Giann? The suit will only delay the inevitable, not change the outcome.</span><br/><br/>It was a surprise how much relief he felt at being addressed by the chimp again. Even if it was trying to kill him, even if he sometimes got annoyed with listening to it, he hadnâ€™t realized how much he dreaded it not talking to him.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">There isnâ€™t enough oxygen in the tanks for both or one of you to reach any destination alive.</span><br/><br/>â€œYes chimp, I know. Us humans fight to the end thoughâ€¦â€ For a brief moment, killing it was almost unthinkable. Heâ€™d shut it up for good that way. And the chimp had become something of an extension. Thereâ€™d never been a time heâ€™d been unwillingly separated from it.<br/><br/>That didnâ€™t matter â€“ couldnâ€™t matter â€“ he was turning it off. It was trying to kill him; not that he needed any reminder of that. It wasnâ€™t mad, it didnâ€™t hate him, it was broken. With it on, he couldnâ€™t fix it. Hell, with it off he didnâ€™t think he had the knowledge to fix it, but at least that way it wouldnâ€™t be trying to kill him anymore.<br/><br/>The seconds ticked past above his head and he stroked the keypad, waiting, impatient for the time to come, worried that when it did nothing would change.<br/><br/>They rolled by on the bridge clock, hitting 0417. Quen nearly jumped, punching the numbers on the single, old analog keyboard among the rest of the works. â€œOh, four, nine, oh, eight, nine, four, three, three, five, one,â€ he muttered to himself in tandem with the press of the keys.<br/><br/>In the chimpâ€™s core, one panel of the wall dropped open, displaying a bank of its connections to the cold airlessness. Only one was labeled, and that one simply said â€˜Powerâ€™. Partially ejected, it offered its handle to whoever was there to catch hold of it.<br/><br/>With nothing else but to wait and see if the chimpâ€™s power went off, Quen trekked down to the core room. He removed the cable keeping that door shut and heaved it open as well.