Emergency
The bio-shell doors opened slowly with a sharp hissing noise venting thick white clouds of cryo-gas that billowed outwards to completely engulf the small interior of the room. As the doors opened its occupant, Ekta, opened her eyes slowly from what had been a routine deep slumber to quickly realise as her eyesight returned that this was no routine awakening.
—
Clouds of cryo-gas that would have normally been extracted had by now entirely consumed the room and were being illuminated by a solitary orange-red emergency light that flashed menacingly inside a panel on the wall opposite to the bio-shell.
As soon as she was able to move her arms, Ekta flung a hand clumsily towards the release mechanism of her harness. Her mind numbed by the long sleep and shocked by a sudden and apparent emergency awakening began to process the scene before her.
“This wasn't right,” she thought as she began to float away from the bio-shell, “something is wrong here.” It took a few moments before she realised that instead of dropping into a heap on the floor, in the absence of gravity she was instead drifting into the middle of the room towards the panel with the soul light source flashing away.
Ekta contemplated why this was wrong before slowly coming into contact with the wall. Her arms still sluggish from the deep sleep responded too slowly and clumsily to be of any use in bracing for the impact but she was able to cling hold of the panels edge to stop herself from bouncing backwards.
In doing so she was able to read the description next to the source of the flashing, in big capital letters it read:
“EMERGENCY”