You stick with the medics and cut left into Medbay as blast doors chatter and seize. Inside, red strobes paint everything raw and urgent—cryo tubes idle, a surgery table half-lit, and triage mats crowded with groaning crew. You slide a proper emergency oxygen mask from a wall cabinet, trading the borrowed Arrivals mask for one with a taped-up canister. The first breath tastes of rubber and antiseptic as the seal bites your cheeks. KIVA, cracked visor still spiderwebbed, flicks your foam extinguisher with a knuckle. “Keep that handy. Don’t breathe the station if you can help it.”

The Chief Medical Officer, a tall lizard with a soot-smudged coat and a tag reading SAZHIR, lifts his voice over the clamor. “Briefing: pink plasma fog is pooling near Engineering and Maintenance. Scrubbers offline, power intermittent. AI is selectively bolting doors—expect pathfinding to be creative. Do not trust corridor air. If your mask hisses, tell us before you pass out and become décor.” An IPC surgeon trundles past with a rack of burn kits; a moth-nurse snaps at you to mind the slick floors before a gurney goes skating.

A sudden pressure dip flutters your sleeves; shutters boom down halfway, and a tray of scalpels goes skittering toward an open doorway like it wants to emigrate. You catch the tray and nearly get dragged after it. Your mask coughs a weak hiss—KIVA slaps a strip of medtape over a hairline crack at the coupler. “Temporary fix,” she grunts. “You’ve got minutes, not hours.” Behind her, a purple sheen creeps under a half-latched blast door before a wall-mounted scrubber wheezes it away.

Sazhir points a claw. “Janitor. Useful hands. Three things we need: someone to escort a portable scrubber to Engineering through maintenance, someone to retrieve magboots and a real respirator from the Janitor’s Closet, and someone to keep this floor from killing my patients. Choose fast. Your oxygen is on a clock.” Foam can cold against your palm, janicart pass digging into your pocket, you weigh which way you want to nearly die.