Adah did not notice the ants when the raft built of their own bodies collided with her ankle. She was much more focused on getting everyone safely out of the flowing water at the time. The ants, however, did notice her. They crawled over her soggy and loose socks, finding their way to her vulnerable flesh.

Pricked already with goosebumps in the cold water, the ants bite hard and pierce the delicate skin again. They insert their venom, and it must be out of spite, for no creature the size of a human being could possibly be more than inconvenienced by their sting.

A hundred tiny stings at once burn pain into Adah’s leg. She squeals with surprise as much as the pain of it and reflexively attempts to shake the insects off of her. Falling hard onto her side, she slaps and pats at her leg to remove the threat and escape the pain. Her flailing only serves to trigger additional ants to bite.

Tiphanie shakes herself out of her own panic and hurries to the aid of the person who so recently organized her rescue. She observes the situation at hand. Adah is in pain from an unseen source. The rolling in the ground suggests insects. Tiphanie orients herself based on these observations. She selects which pieces of information are relevant and makes a decision about the path that needs to be followed next.

And then Tiphanie acts. She grabs her boss’s pant leg and rips the side seam open. With the leg exposed to air, the two women are able to slap away the ants that have locked their tiny pincers into her skin. There are well over a hundred tiny insects crawling over her.

While they are making sure that Adah will not be devoured alive by vicious little bugs, Vasko watches the activity overhead. It takes several more minutes for the water falling into the spin to finally slow to a stop.

The first aid kit in Adah’s emergency belt pouch is thoroughly soaked through, and the one Tiphanie carries is in no better condition at all.

“Where’s Tsim,” Adah asks through the wire when she’s calm enough to speak again.

Vasko points bluntly toward the ceiling above, indicating the next floor inward toward the gate. Tsim sits on the sharp ledge, carefully avoiding injury by making sure his feet do not dangle over it. When Adah looks up to him, he gives her two thumbs up and a celebratory grin.

Stagnant air recalls the reasons for the difficulty of their repair. What should have been as simple as trigging a shutoff valve remotely became an ordeal lasting significantly longer than than a few seconds of navigating a complex and dated graphical user interface. Adah cannot blame Tsim for the catastrophe, nor can she blame Markos for the failure of the computer systems to mitigate the disaster appropriately.

The project manager stalks across the damp tram station to find her abandoned clipboard. She makes several notes in the ticket system. She creates several additional tickets to cover the permanent repairs made necessary by the multiple patches and temporary fixes.

“Markos, do you have an ETA?” Adah asks over the wire, expecting an answer from her actual employee this time instead of one of the unexpected extras aboard.

“Nothing good to report, ma’am,” is the answer Markos gives in response. “I’m not getting any kind of response from the backup to the backup return vents on the docking rim. There should be spare sensors and vent control mechanisms in storage up here, but they’ll need to be physically replaced.”

Adah cannot hear Amina’s response to that statement, but she suspects that there will be some amount of grousing over it.

“We’ll regroup at the tenant elevator. Markos, Tsim, stay put. Anything else I need to be aware of?” Adah tries not to be a pessimist and hopes very much that Vasko will opt to continue his very helpful tagging along. If he keeps it up she’ll have to get him hired officially.

Only silence answers. She accepts that as agreement.

“They’re going to be a bit,” Tiphanie offers, “We need to get that cleaned up or it’ll get infected real quick like.”

Adah consents to treatment, but with their ruined supplies there is not much they can do. She and Tiphanie climb through the smashed window of the restaurant and sit Adah up on the counter top next to the dish washing sink. An automated soap dispenser proves to still have some highly concentrated soap residue clinging inside.

The two women are able to successfully wash the myriad of tiny injuries on Adah’s exposed leg before they head out to meet Amina at the elevator.

It’s not a guarantee of health, but it’s better than leaving the tiny cuts to fester.