Sure enough, the ticking weaves a convoluted path through the endless chains of waterlogged pipes and old, rusty wiring. Stryx maintains a firm lead, pushing through object after object, the bruises and scrapes evident along her black hide that Kanene tries to ignore for the time being. Coriander can't help but wonder the consequences of their shared recklessness, but there's an eagerness to leave that gets the better of him that would undoubtedly slow their already painfully mediocre progress.

Jack makes a noise, staring upwards at something that Coriander follows with his own gaze before realizing… Well, it's a decently sized hole in the roof of the chamber, and an old, brittle ladder dangles haphazardly from the frayed bits of what he assumes were once very large, elaborate vent shafts. "Could that be the source?" Kanene asks, stepping around Stryx who's pressing her nails into a panel that looks half attached to the wall.

Coriander shrugs, gauging their surroundings with a quick glance. The water in this area is low, but he can see another crack beneath the surface that must be siphoning out this chamber into one further below… or, maybe just out and away. He clicks his tongue to the roof of his mouth before gesturing for the crew to follow him. Like a gaggle of geese, three of the colonists move to the center of the chamber where the water sits ankle high, cold and brisk just as most every other area has been. One could almost mistake the old lights as sunlight with the way it twinkles through the broken ceiling, but the air is so musty and iron-tinged that all it takes is one sniff to ensure that nope, they are still very much deep below the ocean.

"Kanene, if I lift you, do you think you could grab hold of the ladder?" Coriander's question is gently poised, but his face is hesitantly hopeful as the medic of their crew assesses the ladder before delivering a smile that makes his ears feel hot. Stryx mutters another sound of protest, but Jack seems optimistic as he circles the flooded area, poking and prodding at various bits of mechanics to see if any of them might be as helpful as that ladder.

"Don't see why not, love. Why, you hopin' I'll be able to see something up there you can't down here?"

He shrugs, but she's already caught onto his plan of potentially making their own path into a room they can't quite see without eyes in the sky. Or, er… vents, he supposes. "More or less," he confirms, and he gestures for Kanene to clamber on, which she does without another moment of hesitation.

Sure enough, she manages to get a hold of the ladder with only a few failed attempts at Coriander lifting her thanks to the slick panels beneath his feet. The vent system groans in protest to the new body within, and the ladder's rusty hinges break off, sending what was left of it down into the water where it lands with a resounding thud.

"Watch your head, darlin'," Kanene muses, and Coriander sinks away from the opening just as she disappears from sight. Stryx listens as her footfalls echo now, not too dissimilar from the ticking that still manages to make itself known from the walls. In the meantime, Jack follows along Kanene's audible trail until he meets a wall that seems… Different from the rest.

The paneling is an off colour. It's a faded blue, a hard contrast to the dark, dingy blue of the rest of the walls and the ticking seems louder there than anywhere else they've been so far. Even Stryx notices, and soon after Coriander too gathers by the strange wall until they hear a delighted noise ripple through from the other side.

"Stand back!" A confident Kanene calls, and not even a moment later… The wall comes down. In her hand, as the debris and rust particles clear, is a clump of very odd, very old wires. The ticking has stopped, and she beams. "Good thing they were dead explosives, otherwise this wall might've done more than topple."

In unison, Jack, Stryx and Coriander cry out: "They were what?"