Page 47 of Red Zone Awakened

“You expect people to get historical references?”

“Never mind,” he said with irritation as he put her down on the pristine white bedspread.

Seemed she wasn’t the only one who woke up grumpy.“Help me look for the panic room entrance.”

Mace frowned at her.“We don’t even know if there is a panic room.”

“It’s worth spending five minutes on.If we find one, we can hole up in there until this whole experience is over.”

“No, we can’t.But I agree, it would be good to have a few minutes to regroup.”

He opened the closet and knocked on the walls.While he executed a bad-tempered search, Keiko took the time to survey their surroundings.If she were Miriam, she’d want the panic room entrance close to the bed.That way, if danger came while she was asleep, she could get into it without having to give it any thought.

A door in the wall would be the obvious place, and Miriam wasn’t one for the obvious.Keiko rubbed her feet, then stood to peek underneath the bed.But there was no “underneath.”The bed sat on a solid platform.A tingle ran up her spine.What if all Miriam had to do was literally roll out of bed?

Closing her eyes, she tried to imagine she was Miriam Shepherd and under attack.She pictured herself asleep on the bed.As an alarm sounded, she reached out and slapped her hand to the side of the bed where the sensor was.The bed shifted, and she fell under it.Her eyes popped open.It could work.Maybe.If Miriam was super creative, or if she employed a whole company full of creative people.

Keiko bent over and moved the silken comforter aside, then ran her fingers over the built-in base.

“What are you doing?”Mace came up beside her.

“Looking for the panic room.”

“And you think it’s under the bed?”

Keiko ignored him and continued searching the bed base.The panic room would need a mechanical way of opening it in case using implants wasn’t possible.She felt along the edge of the base and up the end nearest the wall.In the corner, against the wall, her fingers encountered a button.

Could it be that she was right?

Her heart racing, she pressed it.For a second, nothing happened, then the bed and its platform slid to one side, revealing a staircase beneath.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Mace said.

“Probably.”Keiko climbed into the narrow stairwell.“Are you coming?”

He followed her down into a large room.One wall was covered in screens.Next to them stood a desk with an inlaid control panel.A small kitchen area with a well-stocked pantry was off to the left, while a bed sat in the opposite corner, this one as luxuriously decked out as the one above.An armchair, two dining chairs and a table comprised the rest of the room’s furnishings.

“Looks like Miriam wanted to be comfortable while panicking,” Mace said as he found the button that sealed them into the room.

As the door shut above them with an ominous thud, Keiko couldn’t stop the thought that she was being buried alive.“I can’t help feeling like we’re in a tomb.”

“A colorless tomb.If I ever have the misfortune of being in Miriam Shepherd’s presence, I’m going to ask her what she has against color.”

With a shake of his head, he crossed to the desk.Keiko, in the meantime, opened the door in the far wall to be greeted by the most glorious sight on the planet—a bathroom.She left Mace to check the screens for the position of Freedom’s team while she used the facilities to freshen up.She eyed the shower.What was the protocol for having a shower while running for your life?And, technically, were they still running for their lives if locked in an impenetrable room?

She stuck her head out of the bathroom to ask Mace but got distracted by the images on the screens.

He glanced over at her with a frown.“I’m trying to bring up the building’s cameras, but all I’m getting is forty different versions of the same news.”

“Technology really isn’t your strong point, is it?How do you cope every day?Life must be a nightmare for you.”It wasn’t like they could avoid tech—they were surrounded by it.

“Can you just get over here and do that thing with your nails to fix it?”

With a dramatic sigh, she crossed the room to stand beside him.“You don’t need my magic nails for this.You just need to bring up the command screen and choose the option you want.”She hesitated, her fingers hovering above the access panel as she realized what the wall was showing: almost every channel was rerunning the footage of her falling from the ledge.A chill passed through her as she watched.“I really didn’t fall that far at all, did I?It felt like forever, but it was only a few seconds.”

“You don’t need to watch this.Just show me how to change it, and I’ll do it myself.”

But her eyes remained glued to the screens as she watched Mace’s instantaneous reaction to her fall.It was like watching it happen to someone else, and she honestly couldn’t believe what she was seeing.“You could have fallen with me.”