Page 36 of Red Zone Awakened

She was staring at him as though worried for his sanity.He almost laughed.That boat had sailed long ago.

“Interesting look,” he said as he pushed away from the washbasin.

She’d found a pair of cream pants that were far too big for her and cut off the legs to make shorts.They were fastened at her waist by a belt that almost wrapped around her twice.Her dress hadn’t been spared her scissors, either.She’d cut off the bottom section, turning it into a top.

As though she’d already forgotten what she was wearing, she glanced down at her outfit.“Can’t kick or run in that dress.This will have to do until we get out of here.I couldn’t find shoes that fit, though.”

Her look of disgust made Mace laugh.“That’s because you have tiny, baby-sized feet.”

“My feet are perfectly in proportion to the rest of my body.”She waved a hand at him.“And you can’t talk.You’re not exactly average-sized.Your feet are huge.”

“You know what they say, the bigger the feet, the bigger the…”

Other women might have been embarrassed.Not Keiko.She laughed.“Don’t forget, I have experience with your perfectly proportioned body.As far as I can see, the only part of you that doesn’t measure up is your brain.”

“That’s just plain mean.”

“You’ll cope.Now come and see what I’ve found.”

With his hand clasped in hers, she dragged him from the room.He couldn’t help but thread his fingers through hers and go where she led.It was a compulsion, that need to feel closer to her.The smile of mischief and approval she shot over her shoulder filled his stomach with butterflies.

It was official.He’d turned into a fourteen-year-old girl.

She led him down a hallway decorated with black-and-white photos of abandoned buildings.Some of them Mace recognized from his childhood.One had been an insane asylum famous for illegal lobotomies.Another was a high-security prison that specialized in death-row inmates.

“Miriam sure does love her cheery art,” he muttered.

On the far side of the living room, Keiko let go of his hand to open a door.She waved him inside.“Voilà.The office.And it’s connected to the security hub.Maybe you can check the building’s cameras from here instead of going down there.”

“Hot damn.”Mace rubbed his hands together as he headed straight for the control panel.“Let’s see what we’ve got.”

Her bare feet were silent on the carpet as she came to stand beside him.It took all of his self-control to keep from pulling her close.Instead, he stabbed at the screen.Nothing happened.

“It won’t let me access it,” he said with frustration.“It’s probably a security thing.You need the right code to remotely connect.”

“I can’t remote access anything because of the signal jamming, but I might be able to tap into the panel and get the cameras up for us.”She waved her fingernails at him.

Mace scanned the room.“I don’t see a keyboard around here.”

“Keyboard?The only keyboard I’ve seen in years is the one your tech guy was using.No, I mean my nails are hardware.There are chips embedded in them.Watch.”

She spread her hands apart, and an image appeared between them.It was of him, laughing at her.He looked happy, relaxed, delighted.It had the same effect as someone throwing a bucket of ice water over his head.

“You recorded me?”he said.“You can do that?”

“Sure.”She gave him a look of bewilderment before tapping her face below one eye.“The camera in my lens can record or take photos.It isn’t capable of the same resolution as the cameras on a reporter’s drone, but it’s good enough for taking notes or making memories.Almost all lenses do this now.Don’t yours?”Her nose scrunching, she frowned at his eyes as if somehow able to gauge what comm lenses he wore.

This wasn’t the time to share that he didn’t have any lenses in his eyes or, for that matter, any tech implanted in his body at all.In the territories, if a person didn’t have implants, they didn’t belong.Government mandates demanded that babies be implanted within days of their birth.They needed the basic implants just for survival in a tech driven world.The only people without implants were either visitors from outside the territories or criminals and terrorists who’d had their implants removed.

“You can’t keep photos of me in your databanks.It’s too dangerous—for both of us.I can’t have my image getting out there.”

Keiko laughed at him.“I’d say after that news chopper pinning us to the ledge with its spotlight, that ship has sailed.”

He glanced down at the transparent image playing in the air between her hands.She had a point.“Have you recorded my team too?Did you record our conversations?”

“Not intentionally, but there might be something in there.”

“When we get somewhere safe, you need to go through your data and eliminate all references to my team.Any information you have stored is dangerous to us.”