She watched his face, and saw a flicker of emotion before he smoothed it away.
“I can handle it.”
“I know. I’ve never been in here.”
“Well, that’s about to change.” He bent over the control panel beside the door. “Pretty high-tech stuff, but nothing outstanding.” He hooked up his Sync. “This unlocking program that Niklas recently perfected can hack any lock.”
“It doesn’t need to be top of the line. No assassin would dare trespass here.”
“Lucky you aren’t an assassin anymore.” The Sync beeped and he unplugged it. “All done.”
He moved to open the door, but she stopped him. “I want to do it.”
He studied her face and nodded. “Go ahead.”
Ria gripped the handle and paused. She’d just helped kill a master assassin, opening a door seemed trivial after that. She knew there was no going back. She wanted her freedom. She wanted to be free of the organization that had stolen her childhood.
She opened the door.
Inside was another long corridor, but this one had a white polished floor and tiled white walls. She expected to hear the chatter of children, but it was silent.
She and Zayn moved forward. There were no doorways but ahead was a staircase. The left side went down, the right went up.
“Which way?” he asked.
She pulled up the blueprints they’d stolen from the Tekton. From here, they needed the map. “Up.” She gripped the smooth white handrail and headed up.
They reached a landing identical to the one they’d left, with a long hall going back to another door. The stairs continued up. With a shrug, she kept going.
Another landing.
Another set of stairs.
Another landing.
Zayn shook his head. “I feel like I’m in the fun park on Souk. It has this maze with mirrors and halls, everything looks the same. I have no idea why they call it a fun park.”
Ria stared at the map, trying to make sense of it compared with what she saw around her. Nothing seemed to match. She turned slowly looking hard at the white walls. “It’s the disorientation tech. It’s making everything look the same.”
He frowned. “Shit.”
“We need to focus on any discrepancies, anything that stands out. If we can break through the hallucination, we should be able to see the real path.”
Both of them turned. She searched the walls. White. White. And more white.
“It all looks the same to me.” He ran his hands over the wall.
“Let’s keep moving upward and keep looking.”
But the stairs looked exactly as they had before. Ria felt a choking sensation welling up inside. They might be trapped in here when the assassins returned.
“Look.” Zayn pointed.
She eyed the spot on the wall and saw nothing. “What?”
“There’s a mark there. It’s small. Looks like a black smudge.”
She peered hard, felt like her vision was wavering. For a second she thought she saw something sparkle, but then it was just white wall again. Closing her eyes, she dragged in a deep breath, then opened them again. “I don’t see anything, I don’t think. Nothing seems real. It’s like a bad dream.”
