You peel off from Medbay with KIVA shouting a direction over the din. Maintenance is a red-strobed throat, cables drooling from panels, the air tasting like hot pennies through your taped mask. A bolt light over the Janitor’s Closet blinks yellow—AI indecisive—but your janicart pass hums in your palm. You slap it to the reader. ACCESS: JANITOR. The bolt thunks up.

The door slides, and the world yanks. A pink haze burps out around your legs as pressure tries to equalize through a cracked vent grille inside. Your boots skate on a visible sheen of Space Lube and a banana peel bearing a clown’s lipstick kiss. The mop bucket launches past you like a torpedo. You pinwheel, instinctively foam a lick of plasma fog before it can lick you, and hook an elbow around the doorframe while your mask hisses a warning so loud it’s almost a scream.

You lunge inside, grab the wall rack. Magboots. You wrench them on mid-slide. The magnets grab hard enough to pop your knees and you slam the CLOSE button with the extinguisher butt. The door seals, the tiny closet scrubber whirs, and the fog thins to a nervous shimmer. You unclip a proper respirator with a fat charcoal canister, switch seals with shaking hands, and the first clean breath feels like drinking cold water. You snag a spare tank, a fresh mop head, and a roll of “WET FLOOR” tape for good measure.

Outside, something distant booms; dust freckles the closet light. Over common, SAZHIR rasps, “Status, Janitor?” Engineering chatter bleeds through: “We need that scrubber escort now.” The AI chimes, gentle and wrong: “Janitorial, please remain in authorized areas. Maintenance traversal during Code Red is discouraged.” The clown’s honk dopplers away down the hall. You’ve got magboots, a real respirator, and the lube still gleaming outside like a trap set for your bones.