My Ultimate Sign-in System Made Me Invincible

The bay panels parted, with a controlled gap opening in the sealed ceiling, just wide enough for the shuttles to descend through and nothing more.

Both shuttles dropped through simultaneously. And the moment they cleared the threshold the panels drew back together and sealed. The section above the landing platform, which was isolated from the rest of the bay by the platform itself, began repressurizing. The sound of it filled the small space between platform and panel, with a familiar rush, and then it was done.

The landing platform began its descent.

It lowered slowly, carrying both shuttles. Below, the main bay waited, still pressurized, with active gravity and lit in the steady white light.

The staff were already in position.

They had been in the bay for ten minutes, long before the panels opened. The nurses stood nearest the landing zone, each one beside a levitating medical cot — Nova Technologies’ version of a gurney, lower and wider than anything a hospital on Earth used, the surface pressure-adjustable, the underside holding itself at a fixed height above the floor, just as the metal boxes. There were six cots in total.

Nobody had spoken much since they gathered. There was nothing to say that wasn’t already understood.

The platform reached the main bay level and locked into position. The shuttles sat on it, dark and still, their hulls catching the overhead lighting without reflecting it.

Then the shuttles boarding platforms descended.

The Mexico City shuttle moved first.

The platform came down slowly, carrying Thomas and Dr. Park and Dr. Brenner and Marco, and behind them the four volunteers and their families, and the Synths at the rear.

The nurses moved before the platform finished its descent, crossing the floor at a pace that was fast without becoming a run, the cots tracking silently beside each one.

Thomas stepped off first and moved immediately to Diego, who was sitting upright in the portable transit chair they had used for the lounge, both hands braced on the armrests.

"We’re here," Thomas said.

Marco translated. Diego looked around the bay, at the ceiling, the rows of shuttles extending into the distance, the staff waiting, the cots hovering at knee height beside each nurse, and said something.

"He says it looks like it could hold a city," Marco said.

Thomas didn’t argue with that. He stepped aside and one of the base nurses moved in smoothly, speaking quietly, guiding Diego’s transfer from the transit chair to the medical cot with the particular efficiency of someone who had practiced it and understood that what the volunteer needed most right now was for it to be over quickly.

Diego moved with the help offered to him and settled onto the cot surface. The moment his weight transferred, the cot adjusted — the surface conforming slightly, the height dropping two centimeters to optimal carry position, a small green indicator appearing on the side rail.

He looked down at himself on the cot and then up at Marco.

"He says he feels like he’s floating," Marco said.

"He is, a little," Thomas said.

Diego processed this. Then something moved at the corner of his mouth.

Ernesto’s transfer took longer. His condition required more hands and more care, with his wife keeping contact throughout, her hand on his shoulder and then his arm and then his hand as he settled.

The nurse working with him moved without rushing, and when Ernesto was finally on the cot and his wife had confirmed he was comfortable, the nurse met her eyes and nodded.

She nodded back.

Maya’s transfer was the fastest, not because less care was taken but because Maya was nine years old and had decided, somewhere between the viewport and the landing, that she was going to be useful.

She helped where she could be helped. She moved when she was asked to move. When the cot adjusted beneath her she looked at the side rail with curiosity.

Rosa stood at the cot’s edge and rested her hand on Maya’s ankle and Maya held her mother’s hand with her own.

The fourth volunteer, an older woman whose documented condition was late-stage Parkinson’s and whose hands had not been steady in four years, was helped onto the cot by two nurses working in tandem, her daughter standing close and saying her name softly throughout.

When she was settled she looked at the cot surface beneath her hands, then pressed her palms flat against it carefully.

Her daughter exhaled in relief.

***

The Warsaw shuttle’s platform came down while the Mexico City transfers were still completing.

Two volunteers. Piotr first, stepping off the platform with his daughter beside him and his hand on her arm. He reached the bay floor and stopped and looked at the space around him the way he had looked at the building’s facade, taking inventory and storing it.

A nurse moved toward him with a cot.

Piotr looked at the cot. Then at the nurse. "Is it necessary?"

"It’s recommended for the initial transit through the base," the nurse said. "You can walk later. Tonight is for rest."

Piotr considered this, then he sat on the cot without further discussion.

The second volunteer from Warsaw airport, was next, and she sat on it without being asked twice.

***

Six cots, with six volunteers moved through the bay.

The families walked alongside, each one keeping contact.

Thomas walked ahead to the airlock at the bay’s far end, which stood open. It wasn’t cycling the way it had on their first arrival.

He had noticed the change as he got closer to.yhe airlocks and he had understood it without needing to ask.

Nova Technologies doesn’t want the volunteers to not wait in an airlock, to stand in a sealed chamber while pressure equalized and lights changed from red to green.

The group passed through into the lower corridor.

The corridor was wide enough for the cots to move three across, and they moved at a steady pace.

Maya was watching the corridor ceiling. The sourceless light, the smooth walls, the proportions that were generous without feeling designed to impress. She was filing all of it.

Diego had his arms folded across his chest. His posture was that of someone settling in.

The group reached the elevator and its doors closed.

There was no sensation of movement, as the doors opened shortly onto the residential corridor, with the numbered sections along the walls.

A different set of base staff were waiting here — the psychologists and counselors, standing at intervals along the corridor without blocking it.

Each volunteer was taken to their room.

The doors opened as they approached and the rooms beyond were lit in the gentle rising sequence that gave the eye time to adjust.

*** 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

Outside in the corridor, the nurses compared notes in low voices. The psychologist who had been standing near one of the volunteers’ room made a note in her notebook, then looked at the closed door for a moment before moving on.

The volunteers has arrived at the Base and were currently resting. Their final assessment and consent document before deployment would take place in the next town hours. They would also be asked if they want to be part of the livestream. And then, the clinical trial would start officially.