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FINDINGHER WAY back to what Wayne had called the briefing room was easyenough.
Its black decor and dim lighting were as dark and shrouded in mystery as before. Regardless, Jo hurried inside, closing the door behind her. When no lock could be found on the massive entry door, she grabbed one of the eight chairs around the table and shoved it roughly, at an awkward angle, beneath the handle. Not much of a barricade, but enough to buy her time. All she needed was long enough to getout.
Which apparently meant going through the Capital-DDoor.
An anxiousness she wasn’t used to became fast friends with a determined desperation, one she’d spent many an hour with in the past. The feeling only increased as Jo turned toward the back of theroom.
From an analytical perspective, the Door didn’t seem too outlandish, if a bit intimidating with its thick-looking steel frame. The lock, however, was both familiar in its keypad structure, and unfamiliar in coding methodology. The pad was alphanumeric, as she’d noticed before, but with no screen and no discernible locking mechanism. When Jo looked closer, it even appeared to be unused: no wear from the oils of fingerprint residue, no scuffs from pushing the buttons too hard. In fact, despite her familiarity with various decades of technological equipment, she couldn’t even seem to pinpoint when the keypad might have beenmade.
All of her tricks for figuring out a key code based off of sight alone were thwarted before she even had a chance tostart.
Except the more she looked at it, trying desperately to analyze its structure, possible weak points, and unintentional clues left behind by lazy users, the more she started to see. Each number started to match with an opposing letter like a line drawn in connect-the-dots. The seemingly endless list of “all possible combinations” began to shorten, some options fading away in unimportance. Suddenly, buttons seemed recently pressed where they hadn’t been before, as if she just hadn’t been looking hardenough.
It was like watching a movie in black and white slowly bleed into color, starting at the edges and inching towards the center until the whole screen had been filled. Within moments, the lock seemed almost laughably simple to decode. Jo couldn’t help but roll her eyes at the Society’sinadequacy.
Pulling her sleeve down over her fingers out of habit, Jo carefully plugged in the most recently used code, holding her breath when what she assumed was the last buttongave.
For a couple of seconds, nothing happened. Jo’s heart jumped into her throat. But before she had a chance to panic, the keypad blinked three times, and a heavy click, followed by thewhooshof pressurization, echoed in the silence of the briefing room. Jo held her breath, slowly reaching for the simple, curved handle of the door, andpulled.
It openedeasily.
Jo wasted no time, as if forcefully drawn across the threshold by an unseenhand.
She started by hurriedly closing the door behind her, letting out an involuntary breath of relief at the sound of it pressurizing and locking automatically. At least they couldn’t be quick on her heels. She wasn’t sure where the Society had taken her, but the green field and clean lake alone meant she was far, far from home. That also meant it would take her some time to find an escape route, make contact with Yuusuke, barter favors for transport from someone in thearea. . .
First and foremost, she had to figure out where shewas.
The moment Jo turned around and properly managed a look at her surroundings, she knew. Where she expected to be outside in a green pasture—at least in some kind of entry way—Jo found herself in a long hall of doors. It was industrial and dated, and nothing like the other areas of the mansion she’d seen. It shouldn’t be familiar, but itwas.
Even though Jo had never stepped foot here before, she could see the truth of her situation in the rows of offices, in the pompous-looking walls and doors of glass, in the high ceilings and the hardwood floors. She could see it in the placards on the walls next to bigger offices spouting titles like “SeniorInvestigator.”
A Rangercompound.
The panic from before that she had managed to redirect into calm action returned full force. The layout of the hallway she was standing in was too open—too much glass. She didn’t have blueprints and couldn’t identify an immediate escape route. She needed to think, needed to breathe. But she couldn't do either in her present spot and if she waited any longer, one of the many suits sitting behind their computers would noticeher.
Which left her no choice. With the stakes substantially higher, Jo turned around to key her way back into the Society. She’d stay just long enough to figure out a proper plan once she really knew what secret task team she’d unwittingly been drafted into. Things worked out much better with the feds when they believed you were playing alongnicely.
Except the door she found herself facing was no longer giant and steel, but wooden and labeled “Supply Closet”. Jo blinked, feeling her chest tighten as she reached for the handle. It didn’t budge as she tried to turnit.
An office door creaked opennearby.
“Shit!” she hissed under her breath and tugged on the handle again. No luck. Jo frantically searched for an empty hallway, a vacant office—somewhere she could hide for a second to get her head onstraight.
Blindly, she started off in the opposite direction of the office. As soon as the door swung open, she ducked into a side hall, keeping an ear out for anyone else wandering around. Thankfully the path she’d chosen was empty and, as she scanned the doors to her left and right, she found none of the large panes of glass from previous hallway. A lucky break, for sure, but that still left her wandering aimlessly in enemy territory. So, mental map set in place, Jo began sneaking around as quietly as possible—a skill she’d honed toperfection.
But skills honed to perfection often left the mind free to wander, and as Jo inched her way around the compound, those wandering thoughts began to consumeher.
Was she going crazy? She’d seen the steel door when it closed behind her, watched it lock and heard it pressurize. How had it suddenly transformed itself into a supply closet? Was the Society even real? Had that all been a dream and really she’d been stuck in this Ranger compound the wholetime?
What if she’d never leftTexas?
What if they’d captured her that day, dragged her away from Yuusuke’s bleeding corpse and threw her in a government prison cell to rot? Was she even in the Lone Star Republic anymore? Or had she been handed over to the Yakuza—the Japanese mob—who’d hired her, to be dealt with by them as some sort of under-the-table politicalmaneuver?
But then what about theSociety?
Was this all an elaborate hoax meant to mess with her head, get her to confess to her collaboration with the mob and spill her carefully combed information on the Black Bank? Was any of what had happened with Wayne and Nico even real? Or was that just a hallucination brought on by torture she didn’t even remember beinginflicted?
