They stopped in front of a heavy steel door. John punched a code into A control panel THAT WAS AFFIXED on the wall.

“The access code is 7-7-6-1-9…” John began as the door slid slowly to the left/right, thus revealing what seemed to look like a bottomless shaft. “– this shaft leads directly to the lab.” he added. As if on cue, a sleek, bullet-shaped elevator descended from above…… etc.

“The access code is 7 7 6 1 9.” he said, then waited while the door slid slowly to the side, revealing a shaft that seemed to have no bottom. “This shaft leads directly to the lab.”

The way you had it didn’t make it clear. The above is the way I’d do it. In general less punctuation and marks is desirable because people don’t really read them so if you have to many in a row (. —”) it breaks up the continuity of the text too much. I struggle with this kind of thing all the time and much worse ones and I enjoy finding clever ways to make it work and sometimes I’ll even make a comment or joke about the mechanics of writing itself in the story.

I don’t think the way you have it is wrong, but it is clunky. I’d simply split it up into two sentences, like this:

“The access code is 7-7-6-1-9.” He waited while the door slid slowly to the side, revealing a shaft that seemed to have no bottom. “This shaft leads directly to the lab.”

There isn’t really a need to have it be one long sentence, and the way you have it makes it seem like he pauses for a long time between “and” and “this shaft” which people don’t tend to do in normal conversation.

This sounded familiar as if you posted part of this before. Not this chapter but another. My only real problem is that she is the exception and then the exception to the rules. If she is going to be more powerful then let her. She’s the first female and she reads minds. That ability alone should facilitate training. How much could you learn if you could simply yank it from someone else’s head? Perhaps the truth is that she loses angel power because she’s in love with her charge, yet she doesn’t know it yet. Anyway the angel rules are the only ones that currently upset the story. They seem random. Night angels so no wings, no training is okay, day angels, can be invisible or not if they are in love. Things like that.