The door was closing. The wide rectangular opening at the aircraft's rear was shrinking, the heavy metal panel descending from above in a slow, inexorable arc. Through the narrowing gap, Raizen could see the platform - the warm yellow light from the hall, the unconscious guards, the night sky beyond.
The gap was a meter wide. Then half a meter. Then -
The lizard jumped.
Raizen felt it leave - the small weight in his pocket managing to finally escape, after all the minutes of struggle, the tiny body launching itself from the fabric with a force that something that size shouldn't have been able to produce. It cleared his chest, hit the floor, and scrambled toward the closing door with a speed that turned its small legs into a blur of black motion.
It reached the door's edge with centimeters to spare.
And then it did something Raizen had never seen it do.
It stood up.
