Hendrix slammed into his side. Lester's breath fled his body as he stumbled backward into the airlock and smacked his forearm on the frame of the outer door. The airlock swung closed as he scrambled.

“Hendrix, what the fuck!” he gasped.

“Nina!” Hendrix whooped on the other side of the door. “Nina, I—”

Lester jumped at the mechanical unlock switch as, through the inner porthole window, Hendrix mouthed shit and grappled the hatch from the other side, jamming the door with his greater body weight. It wouldn't budge.

“Fuck, Lester! This would have been easier if your patch worked. We coulda just hacked it! Nina figured out how—has half the station tripping on Stress Reduction Hormone so they won't interfere.” Hendrix spoke through gritted teeth. “You really threw me for a loop when you just kept working.”

“What the fuck are you doing Hendrix?” Lester screamed. “Get me the fuck out of this airlock!”

His vision was spotty as he wrenched at the mechanical unlock switch. It felt like his shoulder would pop from its socket. He looked at Hendrix through the window and saw a caricature—A crooked face, so contorted with anxiety that despite the glint of the bulging glasses Lester wasn't sure it was really Hendrix.

“Do you even have a patch, Lester?”

Lester stared at the surgical scar above those lenses.

Dark ceiling vents breathed anxieties across the hairs on the back of his neck. He pressed the pads of his palms into his eyes. And then he looked up at a security camera hanging inert, its fisheye lens floating dead on the water. He wished he were on the other side.

He didn't need a patch. He hadn't had one back in the Navy—back when he always knew that heaven lay above. He tapped thumb to finger repeatedly in the dim airlock lighting and looked at the blue striplights of the ceiling. He breathed in.

He could make it to the maintenance airlock.

He could hear Hendrix distantly through the metal of the door, calling to Nina through his transmitter, but Lester didn't see him anymore.