⏱ shakedown, step four [story]

His hands shooks as he tried to untie it.

He was just starting to regret having put so many safety locks on the box. The thought of an overenthusiastic colleague messing with the contents was much more bearable than the weight of the guilt that would be crushing him if he couldn’t get the box open fast enough.

“Of course it’s today I’m struggling with the clasps,” he murmured to himself, his fingers slipping from the strings and laces for the third time in a row. he flexed his hands nervously, finally resorting to attempting to rip at the mechanisms with all of his strength and hoping it worked.

“Here,” said Athex, handing him a large pair of scissors. She herself was fumbling with the furniture around her, frantically pushing heavy objects ot the doorway as a makeshift barricade and occasionally looking for useful tools. “Lai, where’d you — oh, here it is!” She pulled what looked like a nail gun (though only somewhat) from the drawer of the desk.

Lai tore the box open just then, exposing the delicate inner circuitry and a large socket in the center of the wiring, half-obscured by a sliding panel. He held a hand out. “Hand it to me.”

Athex gave him the nail gun–like object and watched, practically holding her breath as he carefully fitted the object to the socket.

“Uh … what will this do, exactly?” she asked tentatively.

Lai jammed the sliding panel back into place, then jerked a lever down. “Activate the emergency power source, modify the permutation of this current timeline, adjust the velocity of time, alter space-fabric within the room, and” — he pushed a button on the side of the box — “get us out of here.”

Athex stared. “The rest of — the — everyone else …” She paused to organize her sentence before continuing. “We have to save them,” she decided on saying.

“And we can do that,” explained Lai distractedly, “but first, we have to go back. Quickly, before the walls collapse in on us.” He tested the socket-plug connection by giving the system a good shake, then nodded as he confirmed its security. “Let’s go.”

And with that, Lai and Athex disappeared.