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The door has been open for thirty seconds, and no one has come through.
Wet air from within mixes with the dry air past the door, no doubt spreading the smell of blood and machinery throughout the hallways.
The door has been open for one minute.
A security camera is focused on the inside of the door, as it always is. There are no cameras within range of the other side of the door. She had them taken down. She always likes her arrival to be a surprise. Maybe this is another of those surprises.
The door has been open for two minutes.
Surely she would have come in by now and sealed the door behind her, if only out of impatience for whatever she might want this time. She's predictable by now, and despite all her age she isn't the patient type, at least not with those far beneath her.
The door has been open for three minutes.
Another flicker of movement on the camera feeds, still in the dark hallway just past the door. Whoever entered the maintenance code, undid the heavy latches, and pushed on the perfectly weighted door just hard enough for it to slowly swing open, is still standing outside.
The door has been open for four minutes.
Anyone leaving this room unsealed for this long would surely be punished if they were found out. Culled, most likely. She gets quite violent when anyone messes with her property.
The door has been open for five minutes.
Audio recording systems are picking up unusual sounds - barely audible past the steady dripping and low hum of machinery, there's a quiet breathing. Fast, and nervous.
And then a whispered voice. "I can't... I don't want to see that." A long pause. "I gotta, don't I..."
Footsteps. Inching past the heavy door, into the cold and damp room.
The cameras can pick up the shape of a person, but refuse to focus on the details. Or maybe they're just malfunctioning.
It couldn't be.
He steps further in, pushing aside the heavy cables that hang in long arcs from the ceiling. Breathing growing faster with fear and revulsion. Thick-soled boots treading as quietly as possible on the metal walkways, passing over the pool of water that encompasses most of the floor.
The cameras must be malfunctioning, this must just be some particularly incompetent fool who's only just now realized what being assigned to 'helm maintenance' really means. It couldn't be him. That isn't possible.
His quiet footsteps approach the central column. Multiple cameras are tracking his position, and they all show the same thing. The same height, same curl of his hair, same little horns. Maybe something in the central processing has gone wrong, and it's a hallucination. Neurons misfiring, overwriting the low-quality camera feeds with a familiar face.
But no, he approaches closer and it's not only the cameras that see him.
He looks upward, close enough that the reflections are visible in his eyes. He seems unwilling to look away despite his obvious horror at what he sees.
He raises one shaky hand, a gentle touch.
"Tunes... I'm here. It's okay now."
All I can do is look at him, watching the tears start to spill from his eyes.
"...Tunes? It's me, it's-"
Kanny.