Chapter 20
ANNIE
As soon as we arrived at the Labyrinth, Cipher took me to the command center and ordered me to sit and stay like a good little prisoner.
I’d waited exactly thirty seconds after the door sealed behind him before I bolted.
With every step I took down the hallway, I cursed Cipher. It was a friction-filled reminder of his arrogance and my own stupid traitor of a body. Don’t touch yourself, he’d ordered and like a dumbass, I’d obeyed. Now I was paying for it dearly.
I wanted to punch him. Mostly, I wanted to find a shower and scrub the scent of him, and the evidence of what I’d allowed him to do to me, off my skin. But since he hadn’t provided a map to the bathroom, and I’d refused to stay in the command center like he had asked, I was wandering.
The Labyrinth wasn’t what I expected. I’d seen it before, just that small glimpse when Twelve had fixed my forehead and Cipher had given me access to League files, but now that I was wandering, I was getting a better picture.
I’d see several other lairs before but they had smelled like damp concrete, stale beer, and desperation.
This place smelled like ozone, expensive cleaning products, and the kind of money that could buy small countries.
It was annoyingly impressive.
Subtle blue lighting ran along the baseboards and ceiling, mimicking the lighting accents on Cipher’s suit, providing just enough light to move around.
The floors and walls were polished black metal that somehow swallowed the sound of my movement.
My thighs brushing one another, my own breathing, even my bare feet creeping along the floor should have made at least a little sound that would echo in the empty hallway, but there was nothing. The quiet was unnerving.
The entire thing made me kind of feel disoriented and a little like I was underwater.
I hugged the wall as I crept along. When he’d taken me to the command center, Cipher had said memorizing the layout was useless, and I was beginning to believe him. The corridors angled in ways that didn’t make sense, subtle shifts in perspective that made straight lines look curved.
The effect of everything, the sound dampening, the lighting, the odd curvature of the halls, it was all incredibly disorienting, designed to make you question your own eyes.
Muffled voices drifted from around the corner, low and masculine.
Henchmen.
I froze. If they found me, they would drag me back to the command center. The thought of being deposited back where he’d left me, like a misbehaving child caught trying to run away, was unbearable.
I ducked around another corner and pressed my back against the wall.
I had no idea how close they actually were since sound traveled so oddly.
A second later, two men in black uniforms walked past the intersection ahead.
They moved with the precision of soldiers, not the shambling gait of the usual hired muscle.
Cipher’s numbered henchmen seemed loyal and, unfortunately for me, terrifyingly competent.
I counted to sixty after they passed then peeled myself off the wall and hurried in the opposite direction.
The hallway opened up, lined on both sides with thick glass. It looked like an aquarium, but instead of fish, the rooms beyond held the fruits of Cipher’s intellect.
I crouched low, keeping below the sightline of the glass, and crept forward. Curiosity was a dangerous vice for a Keeper, but I couldn’t help myself. I needed to know what he was doing down here. I wanted to understand the scale of the monster I was dealing with.
I risked a peek, lifting my head just enough to see over the ledge.
The room beyond was a white lab, a jarring contrast to the dark hallways. Three men in lab coats were huddled around a long workbench. They were assembling drones? Maybe. I couldn’t really tell.
I squinted. The metal casings were matte black, shaped like predatory birds.
The internal wiring was exposed on one, a complex nest of gold and copper that looked more like a nervous system than circuitry.
One of the men picked up a delicate, glowing blue chip with a pair of tweezers and slotted it into the chassis.
I snuck along the hall and found most rooms to be similar to the first, with a few very obviously working on weapons. One window opened onto a much larger sunken area that dealt with larger scale assembly.
I ducked back down, my pulse thumping in my ears. I definitely wasn’t supposed to see any of this. And here I was, wandering around in the belly of the beast, unarmed with no shoes, while aching for the man who owned it all.
“Stupid,” I whispered to myself and squeezed my eyes shut. “You are so stupid, Annie.”
I needed to find an exit. Or a weapon. Or maybe just a dark corner to hide in until my blood stopped boiling and my legs stopped shaking.
I crept away from the labs because I definitely didn’t want to be found around them.
Heavy, rhythmic footsteps echoed from the intersection ahead. There had to be quite a few henchmen for the sound to even reach me.
Shit.
I scrambled backward, looking for an alcove, a shadow, anything. There was nothing but seamless walls. I dropped into a crouch near a panel that looked slightly different from the rest, making myself as small as possible.
The panel beside me hissed and I clamped a hand over my mouth to stifle my gasp, jerking back as the wall slid open. Light spilled out, blindingly bright compared to the dim corridor, catching me like a deer in headlights.
A man stepped out and stopped mid-stride, looking down at me with mild surprise.
I tensed, my muscles coiling to spring, though I had no idea where I’d go. But then I recognized the face. Brown hair, calm demeanor, a tablet tucked under one arm. Number Twelve. The medic who had fixed up my forehead after I’d headbutted Cipher.
“Ms. Bishop,” he said. His voice was level, devoid of the aggression I expected upon being found wandering.
I remained awkwardly crouching. “Hi.”
He tilted his head. “Why are you sneaking outside the Medical Bay?”
“I heard footsteps. I ducked.”
Twelve looked up and down the hallway.
I relaxed, just a fraction. He wasn’t reaching for a weapon or calling for backup. He looked more like a doctor dealing with a confused patient than a guard catching an escapee. And he had been gentle with my head and nice to me, even when I was bleeding all over his boss’s floor.
“I’m looking for a bathroom,” I muttered, straightening up but keeping my back to the wall. It was a sound excuse because it was the truth. “I don’t know where anything is in this maze.”
Twelve’s expression softened slightly and he stepped back, motioning for me to enter. “Second door on the left, past the surgical unit. There are fresh towels in the cabinet.”
I ducked past him into the room and hurried to the door he’d indicated, desperate for a moment of privacy.
When I poked my head out five minutes later, face splashed with cold water and feeling slightly less like a feral animal, Twelve was sitting at a desk, typing rapidly.
He didn’t look up. “You know you don’t have to sneak around, right?”
I froze in the doorway. “What?”
“The Labyrinth has automated security systems, Ms. Bishop. Biometric scanners, motion sensors, pressure plates. If Cipher didn’t want you wandering around, the doors wouldn’t open for you. You’d be locked in a corridor segment before you took two steps.”
That son of a bitch. I wasn’t escaping or being clever. I was a rat in a maze, and the scientist had left the cage door open just to see where I’d run. He was probably watching me right now, leaning back in a lab somewhere, laughing at me tiptoeing around his fortress.
My face heated, humiliation warring with a sharp, spike of anger. He was playing with me. Even when he wasn’t in the room, he was pulling the strings.
“Where is it?” I demanded, stepping fully into the room.
Twelve blinked. “Where is what?”
“The camera. The nearest security camera.”
Twelve pointed a pen toward the upper corner of the room, near a ventilation grate. A tiny, almost invisible lens glinted in the shadows.
I marched over to the center of the room, stared directly into the lens, and raised my middle finger.
“Fuck you, Cipher,” I said, putting every ounce of my frustration into the gesture.
Behind me, Twelve snorted, quickly covering it with a cough. He capped his pen with a quiet click and looked me over.
“Have you eaten?” he asked.
The last thing I’d had was a cup of coffee and a side of panic at the Tower before Cipher had taken me.
“I was kidnapped, trapped on a plane, and left to wander around your boss’ lair by myself,” I snapped. “What do you think?”
Twelve frowned, sliding his tablet into one of the pockets of his uniform jacket. “Right. Follow me. Hypoglycemia makes for poor decision-making.”
I followed him, mostly because I didn’t have a better plan and the smell of something savory was beginning to drift down the corridor.
The Labyrinth’s cafeteria was another slap in the face to my preconceived notions of villainy.
I expected gruel, or maybe MREs eaten in a dark, damp cave.
Instead, I found myself in a mess hall that looked like it belonged in a ritzy tech startup.
There was a digital menu board and a line of henchmen waiting to get food.
We grabbed trays. Despite my anxiety, I was starving. I piled my tray with food and let Twelve lead me to a quiet table in the corner, where he spent the next twenty minutes giving me a low-voiced rundown of the immediate area.
“Showers are down that hall to the left. Laundry chute is by the gym entrance. If you need medical attention and I’m not in the bay, press the blue panel on the wall.”
I nodded, chewing mechanically, but I felt exposed. I was wearing my “rotting on the couch” attire and my face was unmasked.
When we’d first arrived, Cipher had stripped the mask from me.
“I don’t wear a mask down here,” he’d said, his own face bare. “Neither do you. I want to see you.”