“So, hear me out. It wasn’t a trespassing notice exactly.”


    As he had not only an eager learner but a captive audience, he had decided to think out loud for the time being. His translations had required the use of both hands from time to time, something the girl had protested. It had only taken a few moments after he stopped the first time for the girl to follow his escaping hand.


    She was currently situated in, what looked like to him at least, a very uncomfortable position draped over his knee. She may very well have had other intentions that first time, but as she had tried to follow his hand into his notebook he had simply returned to his back massage. As she went limp pretty fast, he had simply continued that course of action. If he needed both hands, he switched to rubbing her back with his arm and elbow instead. She was either quite pleased with the situation or had fallen asleep. Both worked for him, but he would continue to think out loud just in case she could absorb the lesson.


    He really didn’t like what he was finding in the translations anyway, so this way at least he was accomplishing something. The large text block the panels had shown were some kind of access control. He couldn’t translate the entire thing, but what he had managed basically said, it was a restricted area, his access had been logged and he had to override security. Which was the yes/no at the bottom.


    All fantastic access control things in a working facility.


    Well, aside from a rando like him being able to override it.


    Those words meant something very different to him now that he had been here a while. The first was that wherever they were had restricted access. That meant either under-qualified people would be a danger to themselves or others, or there was something not everyone in the facility was allowed to see. Given that he was currently in what he was assuming was a secret area, it didn’t make much sense to have information control on certain areas on the main level. What he assumed was the main level at least. It would make more sense to simply put those areas up here.


    The second thing it said was that those areas needed special considerations, and likely training, to operate and maintain safely. Probably involving safety gear and the like as well. Areas he had wandered into with nothing but a makeshift backpack. He was lucky the first one he had found was a water area. Had he wandered into a radioactive stockpile or a high-voltage area and poked around like he had, he would be toast. The need to find the purpose of those rooms before he entered had made itself all the more apparent.


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    The third thing he was forced to face was the fact he could get in at all. It had to mean one of two things. Either someone had given him full access or access control had been suspended. He wasn’t sure which scared him more. If access control had been suspended, that meant something had happened to all the qualified people that made this place function. There was either an automated system that noticed the lack of maintenance or someone had started an emergency protocol before whatever happened… well, happened. He was somewhat ok with an automated system. He couldn’t figure out why it hadn’t been shut off before everyone left, but if there was an oopsie that resulted in the emergency systems staying functional he could live with it. It noticed no maintenance being done, opened his cryo-pod and made him the ‘fix-it’ guy.


    No idea how his leg warmer fit into all of that, but it was workable.


    If it was an actual emergency protocol and hadn’t been simply forgotten but had gone off properly, things weren’t so peachy. An emergency that emptied a place this extensive had to be catastrophic. It would probably be invisible as well. A gas leak, radiation bloom, epidemic. The list went on but none of it was good. Given that the girl was most likely awake before him, given the stashes of choco-sticks, he didn’t think it would be a quick fatality.


    It was possible that whatever it was had caused an evacuation and an automated clean-up, in which case they would have visitors soon enough or he was back to his first theory only it hadn’t been forgotten, simply overzealous.


    Regardless, if a hazard had occurred that cleared the facility, he needed access to the computers as soon as possible to find out what that hazard was. He couldn’t be wandering around trying to find a power plant if there was a radiation leak.


    The last option…. That one gave him shivers.


    He could think of a couple legitimate reasons to give the man in a cryo-pod full override access to everything in a secret facility. They all revolved around tests and last resorts. If you had a body in cryo sleep and something happened, like they were completely forgotten, that person had to be able to go anywhere they needed in an abandoned or mothballed facility. The optimist reason being that they needed to be able to find a way out. The pessimist reason was that a locked door could prevent them from being able to survive that journey.


    The part that scared him was that kind of override access was likely to be the one, and possibly only, clue to a mastermind or game-master running a human zoo. That or some other entertainment setup. As he had no indication before this that override access had been activated for everyone or that there was a need for it at all, it meant it hadn’t been part of a narrative he was in the middle of or he had missed crucial information that had been laid out to push him in that direction. Him finding out with this translation and no hints beforehand meant he wasn’t really supposed to know.


    “Who would have believed that I would find myself in a situation where the radiation leak was the less scary option?”


    Unfortunately, his smaller companion didn’t seem to have an answer to that question.


    ‘Good thing it was rhetorical.’