Tom didn't hear any little voices in his head telling him that he was forgetting something, so he took a deep breath; the gun in one hand, and opened the heavy metal door in the other, and ...

Another door. He was in a small room, a couple meters big, with another closed metal door on the other end. "Huh, I guess it does make sense they would compartmentalize it." Tom thought to himself. He closed the door behind him, took a couple steps.

"Ok this time for real" Tom's gun in one hand and opened the door with the other.

He was in some sort of control room. Part of it was computer workstations with chairs and flat-screen monitors on the walls. And in art of it was pipes and physical gauges were visible. More worryingly, there was about two centimeters of water on the floor, and someone looking into a utility cabinet, their back to the door.

As was previously explained to Tom, a duress code was used, so there was a possibility that it could be some sort of enemy agent.

"Hands up! Don't move!" shouted Tom as confidently as he could.

"Woah, hey alright!" the guy said as he put his hands up.

Tom kept his gun pointed at the person as he got closer. He was wearing a blue jumpsuit, like the scientists did in the photos the Sgt. Sweet showed Tom earlier. "Do you work here?" Tom asked.

"Yes, yes I do." The guy said.

Tom relaxed a little. Though he didn't know why the duress code was used; maybe an enemy agent was impersonating the scientist. Tom thought back to the photos and profiles that Sgt. Sweet had shown him earlier.

"Are you Kyle?" Tom asked.

"Yes, wow, that's right." the guy replied.

"What's your last name?" Tom asked.

"McCloud" he replied.

"Yeah, that's what the profile said." Tom said as he lowered the gun, "Now what the heck is going on?"

"Alright, so we got this leak. It fried some of our equipment. I tried radioing for assistance. Then you show up. Who are you anyway?"

"I'm Tom. I'm with ... the US ... Navy. Sort of." Tom stammered a bit "Why would you use a duress code? Is someone in trouble? Where are the other scientists?"

"We're fine here, well, besides what you see. When I tried the radio, it sparked while I was typing messages, then it went dead. I don't know what it actually sent." Kyle shrugged a little, "The other scientists are fine. They sealed off in another section when the leak happened; they're not supposed to open the door until the leak is contained."

"So you should evacuate right?" Tom asked.

"The thing is, I want to try to save this station. I could evacuate right now. The others are totally sealed off. They'd be fine for days even if this section completely flooded."

"I see." said Tom. "I want to speak to them, make sure they're alright, if that's possible."

"Yeah, we've got a local video cam system. Hopefully it still works." Kyle pushed a button on a console with a microphone and webcam.

"Hello?" said a female voice on the screen of the console.

"Hello, um, I'm here to help with your problem," said Tom, "Just wanted to make sure you're ok."

"Yeah, we're ok. We know about the leak; we'll be fine for a while. Kyle is looking into it."

"Can I just see all 3 of you on the cam at once? A duress code was used, apparently by accident."

"Oh, for sure" she said "everyone get in here." And they did. And Tom could see that they matched up with the profiles Sgt. Sweet showed Tom earlier.

"ok, that checks out. Thank you for your time We'll contact you when we have an update." said Tom, ending the call.

Tom turned to Kyle and said, "Ok. Hmmm. Here's what I see. Number one. You said you could evacuate now, but if this place floods suddenly, you won't have time to put on your scuba suit. I want you to put it on now."

This was true, but Tom also thought that Kyle would look good in a scuba suit anyway.

"Number two. We find some way to stop this leak. Number three. We find some way to communicate with whoever's responding to the duress code. They don't know it's a false alarm, so they'll be sending soldiers instead of just technicians. Soldiers with guns drawn, and ... flash-bangs ... and explosives. I don't know. Just that it could get hairy if we don't think of something. Any comments? Anything I'm forgetting?"