10 Minute Tales

Apr 6

They marched on. The resistance they faced was minimal at best; there were no more turrets to meet them. They exchanged nervous glances. Sentinel won't have given up this easily. They came up to a large door that stretched across the whole corridor. They glanced to each other nervously.

"Trap?" Aurora asked.

"Probably." he looked back. "There was no other way to go, though."

"A straight corridor?" Aurora frowned. "Doesn't seem likely in a facility like this."

"I guess not..." It was Queenson's turn to frown in thought. "So many different rooms to power all those servers, to maintain them... it'd make more sense to spread them out."

"But there were definitely no doorways or anything like that, right? Just straight walls."

"No, nobody saw anything like a doorway."

"Too late to go back now, though." Aurora pointed out, priming the rifle. "Every second we give this guy is another second he has to build more defences." She turned to a panel by the door and started tapping away at it rapidly.

"Build?" Queenson raised an eyebrow, doubtful. "I'd have been surprised if there were resources up here."

"You said he'd been self-updating for ages, right? Odds are he's figured out how to automate shipments up here, too." She frowned as the panel flashed red. "Damnit, he's patching me out as quickly as I can get in." She growled slightly as she sped up. Queenson took a step back to look at the door. It meant business; a solid grey all over, except for black and yellow hazard stripes around the edges. A line of these stripes stretched down the middle, too, showing where the two halves of the door joined. Queenson grinned as he examined the door's frame.

"Let me try." he commented, stepping towards the panel. "I have an idea."

"What?" Aurora looked over, incredulous. "If I can't hack him in time, what hope do you have to do it?"

"Just trust me, okay? I think I know what to do here."

"You're crazy, but let's see, then..." she stepped back, hands raised defensively. Queenson took a couple of steps closer, then suddenly brought his pistol to bear and shot the panel once, twice, thrice. Energy crackled over it as the door slid open with a hiss. "... the fuck?" Aurora asked, confused."

"Put simply, it's an emergency responce. Not even Sentinel would want that door to stay shut forever, his servers are behind it. How will his robots come in to repair it if the door's shut forever?"

"Jeez, that was stupid..." Aurora sighed, walking through the door. "What if he had decided he could cut it open?"

"It would have been a waste of resources. If he wanted to cut through, he'd have had to have something brought up, cutters of that intensity aren't cheap."

"You're mad." Aurora commented, unable to hide an impressed grin. This grin didn't last very long. They were close now.