Problemâ€¦ Quen ticked off the seconds in his head unfailingly, pausing in front of the bridge doors. He knew the procedures for dealing with an escape and was positive that the chimp would follow them exactly. Unfortunately for him, one of those involved running a discouraging and rather painful amount of current through the bridge, core, and engine room doors.<br/><br/>He could hear the imaginary ticking of precious seconds as they passed him by.<span style="font-weight: bold">You remember this, Quen. Simple circuit. They showed you more than once how to cut it. Good thing you have a knife. Correction, good thing Zilah had knives</span>. That would be something heâ€™d have to bring up. Or not. His fault again. How much worse could his day have gone if heâ€™d done everything by the book? If he had, heâ€™d probably be standing here, stumped by the door and the panel that hid the box he needed to get at.<br/><br/>A knife wasnâ€™t the best tool for prying the panel loose, but it did the job well enough. Inside were the jumbled wires and cabling that let the chimp open, shut, and lock doors along with numerous other functions. Much of it was useless now, since heâ€™d hit the manual override. And they were all the same color, which at this juncture, only made him want to rip them all out. But that would make it worse, so he took a deep breath, calmed himself, and looked at it just as heâ€™d looked at the model in training. It was one of the cables. Not easy to get to. The task was made even harder by the not so great visibility through the faceplate, but he reached as far back as he could and caught hold of the thickest cable back there.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold">Press up, half turn clockwise, let it drop, twist off counterclockwiseâ€¦</span>He prayed to every god he knew the name of and several heâ€™d just made up that it was the right one. There was never a sense of relief so great as when he pulled the end of the cable out and the dull hum next to his shoulder stopped.<br/><br/>The door was heaved open with noisy protest and this time he didnâ€™t bother shutting it. Even electing to leave the helmet on just because, at least that way, it was easier to breathe.<br/><br/>As much as he wanted to tell Zilah that he was in, he couldnâ€™t. If the chimp had even an inkling that they were actively working toward shutting it off, it could still cause a problem on her end. He hoped it hadnâ€™t taken that step already. To disengage the heavy shielding that could encase the core was another process he didnâ€™t want to go through. If she needed it, he could talk her through it, but heâ€™d rather not since the chimp was still listening. Was always listening.<br/><br/>All he could do was wait and hope that when he put in the code, sheâ€™d be there and ready. When the bridge clock told him it was time, that was exactly what heâ€™d do. What kind of cruel universe would make him put any trust in someone who had proven she couldnâ€™t be trusted?<br/><br/>Oh well. At least if he ended up dead, they couldnâ€™t demote him.