Chapter 93: Manual Labor

They continued deeper into the facility, following the route Jake had memorized as they made their way toward the main warehouse center where the Association’s creations were stored, and after several more minutes of walking through the increasingly quiet corridors, they finally arrived at their destination.

"We’re here," Jake whispered, his voice barely above a murmur as he stopped in front of the enormous entrance.

Ethan’s eyes immediately traveled upward.

The warehouse entrance consisted of two enormous conjoined metal doors, each one thick enough to make him question exactly what the Association was keeping inside, and right in the center of each door was a large hand wheel, or hatch wheel, designed to be turned manually to unlock and open the heavy mechanism.

The moment Ethan saw them, his face fell.

Hand wheels?

Those things existed in his previous world, and he knew exactly how much effort and strength it could take to operate one, especially when it was attached to a massive reinforced door like this. The thought of having to stand there and repeatedly rotate the wheel until the locking mechanism released was already exhausting him mentally, and considering how much energy he had wasted climbing the damn gate earlier, Ethan was fairly certain there was absolutely nothing left inside his body that could be considered useful strength.

He immediately turned toward the duo behind him with an expression of pure despair.

"Seeing this alone is already making me want to puke!" Ethan complained, staring at the massive doors as though they had personally offended him. "I don’t think I have any strength left to pull a hand-wheel door!"

Lara immediately counterattacked, naturally doing so for her own personal gain because she clearly had no intention of getting anywhere near those wheels herself.

"Look at you! Do you have any strength at all?" she shot back, placing her hands on her hips as she looked him up and down. "You climbed just a gate and you’re already complaining about being weak. You’re a man, for fuck’s sake! Men shouldn’t be weak! Besides, Jake climbed the same gate, and he looks just fine and hasn’t complained."

Jake immediately beamed from ear to ear at Lara’s praising words, visibly enjoying the compliment far more than he should have. His shoulders squared almost instantly, his chest puffing out with exaggerated pride as he glanced at Ethan.

"Hmph. Ethan, Lara is right. Man up!"

Ethan stared at him for a moment before immediately retorting, "Oh, shut up! You’re a Sentinel and I’m a Guide. Our builds are built different!!!!!"

"Whatever, Ethan, but the fact still stays that you have to be the one to pull the other hand wheel alongside Jake pulling the other one," Lara said, her expression becoming sheepish as she walked over and lightly tapped Ethan on the shoulders. "I’m a girl, so I can’t, and I’m a Guide, so naturally heavy pulling is not for me, okay? Besides, if I hadn’t joined you guys, you wouldn’t even have an option to refuse if it were just the two of you."

Ethan’s mouth opened, but no words came out.

He wanted to argue with her logic, but unfortunately, he could not find a single part of it that would actually help him escape the situation.

With a long, suffering groan, Ethan finally stepped toward the massive door and took his position in front of one of the wheels, closing his hand firmly around the thick metal handle and adjusting his stance so that he could put as much of his body weight behind the movement as possible.

A few feet away, Jake moved to the opposite side and gripped the second wheel, positioning himself in exactly the same way.

Jake glanced across at him.

"Ready?"

"No," Ethan immediately answered.

Jake ignored him.

"One..."

Ethan tightened his grip.

"Two..."

He planted his feet more firmly against the ground.

"Three!"

Both of them pulled.

The hand wheel resisted immediately.

Ethan gritted his teeth as he leaned his entire upper body into the movement, twisting the wheel with both hands and forcing it around despite the stubborn resistance coming from the mechanism behind the door.

"Ugh!"

He pulled harder, his arms beginning to ache almost immediately.

The wheel finally moved another fraction.

"Come on!" Jake grunted from the opposite side, his own muscles straining as he turned his wheel in sync with Ethan.

Why the hell had he agreed to this mission?

He could have been comfortably sitting somewhere right now.

He could have been eating.

He could have been sleeping.

Instead, he was currently breaking his back trying to open an enormous warehouse door in an Empire research facility because Jake had decided that raiding it would be fun. And he had stupidly agreed to join in.

"Why is this thing so damn heavy?!" Ethan complained through gritted teeth as he forced the wheel around another rotation.

"Stop complaining and pull!" Jake called back, somehow still sounding far more energetic than Ethan.

"Easy for you to say!"

Another turn.

Then another.

The mechanical sounds coming from inside the door gradually became louder as the locking system began disengaging, with deep metallic clicks echoing through the massive entrance each time the wheels completed another rotation.

Ethan’s arms were practically trembling by the time he finally felt the resistance begin to lessen.

"Wait..."

He pulled again.

The wheel turned far more smoothly this time.

A final metallic clunk echoed through the warehouse entrance.

The lock had released.

Ethan immediately released his grip and stumbled half a step backward, shaking out his aching hands as the enormous doors finally began responding to the mechanism they had just unlocked.

With a deep metallic groan, the two massive doors slowly separated from the center, moving outward with the heavy grinding sound of reinforced machinery shifting into place.

A dark opening gradually appeared between them.

Ethan stared at the widening entrance, his chest rising and falling rapidly from the effort, before finally letting out the biggest sigh of relief he had managed all night.

"Ugh, thank goodness," Ethan groaned out.