Tiphanie has had the longest, most physically active day of her last several months. She knows very well that she should be spending time in any of the Moldy Donut’s many gymnasiums to keep up her physical health while living in space and spending much of her free time away from even the gravity created artificially by the ring gate’s perpetual spin. But the treadmill is boring, weight lifting gives her aches, and a stationary bike is just not the same as actually riding an actual bicycle for fun. She knows better, but Tiphanie hasn’t lived up to her own demands lately.

Rather, Tiphanie has started to come to the conclusion that perhaps she ought to take up rowing or boxing or something, anything, that will help her build arm strength so that she would not have to suffer so horribly if ever asked to climb another emergency ladder again.

Every muscle in her body burns with the effort, even though she’s been completely finished with the climb for a significant period of time now.

And she’s almost finished realigning the elevator’s magnetic rail. It had been damaged by some sort of falling debris, and a little cleaning, a lot of hauling on it with a hammer and pry bar, and just a teensy little bit of swearing seems to have cleared up the issue. There is nothing left in the elevator shaft that could cause the box to grind against it and lose contact with the magnetic points again.

From the safety of the electrical switching box near the elevator’s top floor, Tiphanie checks and rechecks her work. All systems appear solid. Green lights on all boards. Everything should be fine.

Tiphanie releases the safety catch bolts experimentally. While they’ve handily punctured the elevator shaft itself, the box is undamaged and can still be moved on its rail. Tiphanie carefully sends it further up the shaft. The elevator responds precisely to the direct controls from the switches available in its maintenance booth.

To make sure that nothing horrible will happen, Tiphanie triple checks that the elevator can pass the floor where it was stuck before. She then goes ahead and brings it all the way to her.

Despite all the work she completed, the elevator still smells strongly of urine. As mechanically sound as she could make it, there was no chance she could actually also make it clean. It’s going to take a lot more work to get it into a proper customer facing position for the final reopening of the sector.

Tiphanie hums to herself on the way down, keeping time with the piped in music, but mostly ignoring its tune. It’s incredibly forgettable music.

She plans ahead and times it perfectly. She strikes a triumphant pose, heroine of the day, and waits for the doors to open for her return.

Nobody is there to wait for the elevator to open. Tiphanie tries not to feel too much disappointment at this fact, but she cannot help but feel emotionally drained by all the events that have occurred in the past ten hours. She slumps dejectedly and shuffles out of the elevator.

“Where’d everybody go?” she asks over the wire.

“Oh hi Tiphanie,” Amina responds, “I’m not far. Head toward the ladder.”

Tiphanie complies with the request immediately. She ambles, somewhat less heroically, in the general direction of the ladder she’d so recently spent so very much of her time climbing desperately. There is absolutely nothing Tiphanie wants less than to have to think about that long, arduous climb again within the next several hours at a bare minimum.

The claustrophobia, the sweat, the vague smell of mildew, all her muscles screaming from an excessive amount of effort and there she goes again, thinking about that ladder.

That’s quite enough of that already. Tiphanie rubs her sore arms as she wanders.

When she turns the corner into the access hallway between two docking stations, she finally locates Amina. And Amina is, quite surprisingly, entirely alone. Around her, on her, and in a great smear from the door to the ladder out into the hallway, however, is an astonishingly large quantity of blood.

Tiphanie’s vision goes dark as she faints clear away at the sight. Amina almost catches her before she hits the ground.