FINDING HER WAY back to what Wayne had called the briefing room was easy enough.

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 get out.

Which apparently meant going through the Capital-D Door.

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 the room.

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 been made.

All of her tricks for figuring out a key code based off of sight alone were thwarted before she even had a chance to start.

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 hard enough.

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’s inadequacy.

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 button gave.

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 the whoosh of pressurization, echoed in the silence of the briefing room. Jo held her breath, slowly reaching for the simple, curved handle of the door, and pulled.

It opened easily.

Jo wasted no time, as if forcefully drawn across the threshold by an unseen hand.

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 the area. . .

First and foremost, she had to figure out where she was.

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 it was.

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 “Senior Investigator.”

A Ranger compound.

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 notice her.

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 along nicely.

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 turn it.

An office door creaked open nearby.

“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 on straight.

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 to perfection.

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 consume her.

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 whole time?

What if she’d never left Texas?

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 political maneuver?

But then what about the Society?

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 being inflicted?

What if they’d drugged her?

What if, what if, what if!

At the sound of more footsteps, Jo stumbled to a halt, heart in her throat and mind buzzing with paranoid over-stimulation. They were approaching from her left, but she’d been coming from the right, which gave her very little option. She chose an adjoining hall and peeked around the corner, hurrying past once she deemed it safe. The footsteps persisted, but they didn’t seem rushed, like they hadn’t realized her presence yet. Another stroke of luck; luck that might not last long the deeper she went into the compound.

She had to find a computer, a phone or tablet left out on a desk, something she could use to hack into the Ranger main server from within their firewalls and look at the building’s layout. She’d worry about her own sanity and possibly repressed trauma once she was out of their clutches and safely back home. Or as safe as she could be, considering the self-imposed WITSEC she’d probably have to endure for a while.

Her luck sneaking around had to run out sooner or later, but she wasn’t ready when it did.

At almost the same time as she turned the corner, a man in a suit decided to come out of his office. Jo swallowed a sound of panic and turned back the way she’d come. Only that hallway was now inhabited by multiple men and women leaving what looked to be a conference room.

She’d rather take her chance with the lone man than the swarm.

At least that was the plan, till they all looked her way.

Jo bolted down the other hallway at once, sprinting past the man in the suit. She’d been spotted. Shouts would turn into alarm bells that would become dogs barking and the click of disengaged gun safeties. But all Jo heard was the ringing in her ears. All she knew was that the lone man hadn’t grabbed her; she hadn’t been captured yet. She was alive for now, but if she didn’t find a way out, that would surely change.

Jo bolted for the first open door she saw, thanking any gods that might possibly exist when she saw a computer inside. It was a bigger office, no glass on the walls—again, thanks to all possible gods—with pictures of some man’s family on the desk. It looked to be the office of someone higher up, but not too high. Still, better to hurry and avoid—

She made it a few strides towards the desk before a man and a woman in full Ranger attire walked right in behind her.

Jo’s vision seemed to dim in fear even as it heightened in desperation, looking at every corner of the room for somewhere, anywhere decent to hide. But even she wasn’t desperate enough to think they hadn’t already seen her.

“Don’t shoot!” she said out of reflex instead, holding up her hands and willing them not to shake. She thought of Yuusuke, full of holes and bleeding out on a dusty server room floor. She wasn’t ready to die then, and she still wasn’t now. “Please, don’t shoot!”

They didn’t.

Instead, they didn’t seem to notice her at all, talking amongst themselves like she wasn’t even in the room. Like there wasn’t some sweaty-palmed girl pleading for her life literally two feet in front of them.

The man whom the office seemed to belong to walked right up to her, looking just past her shoulder, and grabbed something off his desk. If he’d been any closer, he would have skimmed her hip in the process.

Panting loud and harsh, Jo watched the two agents have a civil and almost flirtatious conversation in front of her before exchanging the file and walking away, closing the office door behind them.

It wasn’t until she heard the click of lock on the door that Jo even thought to put her hands down.

What. . .? What just happened?

“Do you see now?” An already terrifyingly familiar voice spoke without warning from the edge of her periphery. Jo jumped, nearly knocking the computer off the desk as she whipped around to face him.

The man who every instinct told her was Snow leaned against the office’s side wall, arms crossed over his chest and silver hair hanging casually over one eye. Jo wanted to ask what he was doing there. She wanted to ask a lot of things really, like how they hadn’t seen her, how she’d ended up in the compound at all, whether or not she was actually dead this time. But no words would come out, like the neuron-pathways from brain to mouth had fractured; too much data or not enough, she couldn’t be sure.

Either way, Error 404.

“Jo,” Snow said her name, soft and low but with impossible depth. Despite the fact that she was looking right at him, despite the fact that he’d obviously meant it to be nonthreatening, she still started. “Do you understand?”

No. No she didn’t. How could she? So much had happened, too much, too quickly. There was no way for someone to take it all in and stay sane. She wanted to understand, she wanted more than anything to figure out just one tiny bit of what was going on, but a part of her already felt broken. All she wanted to do was go home. . . Was that so much to ask?

Why couldn’t she just go home?

Something on Jo’s face must have compelled Snow to walk towards her, and even though Jo felt wound up tight, about ready to snap, somehow his presence didn’t make her feel cornered. It didn’t soothe her either, but not being outright panicked was something. Without a word, he reached towards her face and, with pale, elegant hands that seemed almost too still, carefully tucked a loose strand of dark hair behind her ear. Then, with the pad of his thumb, he gently wiped away a tear from beneath her eye.

Oh. She’d started crying after all. Damn it.

This close to Snow, it was impossible to ignore just how excruciatingly beautiful he was. He didn’t smile, and his eyes remained guarded even as he scanned her face. But somehow, that cold, quiet distance only added to his allure. Like a statue in a museum—untouchable, and all the more breathtaking for it.

He said her name again, and this time she didn’t jump. Instead, she soaked it in, reveled in the way it rumbled past her ears and echoed deep in her chest. When Snow finally dropped his hand from her face, turning away, it took everything she had not to feel disappointed. With a gesture over his shoulder that almost seemed bored, he motioned for her to follow.