“It’s silent. Unsettlingly silent. No whoosh of air, no rustling clothes, no hum from the lights. Then the painful pressure in your ears is suddenly gone. That would be your eardrums rupturing.
You are suddenly very cold, colder than you’ve ever been. Thats what a complete absence of heat feels like. The tickling you feel is the moisture on your eyes and tongue is boiling away, its a peculiar sensation, you might remark. This is about the point you remember that the human brain can survive for maybe thirty seconds in space before the oxygen diffuses from the red blood cells of the brain. That means you only have ten seconds of useful consciousness with which to save your life.
You’re now down to eight seconds.
You look back through the small round window of the airlock at his pressed suit and expressionless face, his hands on the controls. You yell something about his mother. Its a strange sensation screaming at the top of your bursting lungs, and not hearing a sound. Thats too bad, it was a good line.
He’s a contractor, who will stop at nothing to find fugitive bounties, to include throwing them in an airlock and opening the outside doors. How did they find you? Under a different name, after a clean getaway? Then the tunnel vision begins to set in, hypoxia is shutting down your senses. Your joints begin to feel like they’re on fire from the nitrogen bubbles fighting to escape through the sinew. You know what he’s looking for, at this point you’re probably out of ideas and luck.
Six seconds.
You dig into a pocket, your hands are numb, your eyes are dried open. It has to be here. It feels like being stumbling drunk, the small airlock is spinning. You fight off the tunnel vision, focusing hard, gasping for air in packed, empty breaths. If only you could feel an edge or corner.
Three seconds.
That must be it. You slam the plastic ID card against the glass, an old name embossed across the front. His expression changes to a condescending smirk. You’ll get the agony of decompression sickness and he gets a paycheck.
You try to give me the finger, and the last thing you see is a very thin smile.
…Or would you prefer to cut the bullshit?”