Page 103 of Semblance

“How do you know for sure?”

“Because I gave her that ring for her birthday,” he replied.

Before we had a chance to mourn, shots erupted from outside.

Shit was really starting to hit the fan.

#

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Protect Aria,” Shadow ordered.

Lincoln nodded, grabbing my wrist with one hand and drawing a gun from his belt with the other. “Stay down,” he whispered. “Bullets always have a tendency of flying high.”

I dropped to the ground, as instructed, and watched Shadow move towards the kitchen in a crouched position, his hand gripping his silver handgun tightly.

The main floor of Calisto’s condo had an open concept, which provided horrible coverage for a take-no-prisoners shoot out.

Outside, a barrage of gunfire erupted in quick succession, followed by screams.

“Shit,” Lincoln cursed. “They have automatics. From the sounds of it whoever’s initiating this little attack is well armed.”

Shadow positioned himself behind the island countertop facing the entranceway. He turned to us, and with his free hand, motioned for us to hide.

I watched him with wide eyes, fear seizing my entire body. I needed him to make it through this. I thought of Abraham and the bullet that tore through his heart and I bit my lip. I couldn’t have the same thing happen to Shadow.

“He can’t take on everyone by himself,” I said. “You have to help him.”

“You’d be surprised by what Shadow’s capable of,” Lincoln said as he led me up the winding staircase to the second floor. He guided me into the master bedroom.

“Quick, under the bed,” Lincoln instructed.

“Can I even fit?”

Lincoln sighed and opened up a hidden panel on the side of the wooden bed post, revealing an electronic keypad. He punched in a sequence of numbers and suddenly, the entire king-sized bed folded upwards and the hardwood floors beneath parted, revealing a hidden stairway.

“It’s a panic room,” he said.

“How did you know about it?”

“Without getting into specifics, I’ve slept in this bed before. Now get inside and stay safe while I play Sundance Kid to Shadow’s Butch Cassidy,” he paused for a moment, thinking, and then added, “You’ll notice the control center for the condo’s security system inside. It’s been activated with the passcode I punched in. It’s complex, but if you know what you’re doing, feel free to have some fun at the controls, otherwise don’t touch anything. One slip of the finger and you may inadvertently kill us both.”

I nodded and descended down the cold iron steps and into the secret room. The hatch automatically closed behind me.

I’ve only seen panic rooms in movies and on television before, but this one in particular was pretty impressive. It wastheCadallic of panic rooms, if there was such a thing.

At the center of the room was a massive eighty inch computer screen that was surrounded by several smaller monitors. The entire set up was reminiscent of a mainframe computer seen only in science fiction movies.

I took a seat in front of the system and switched on the monitor next to a thin microphone attached to the console. Just because I was safely hidden away in here didn’t mean I had to be useless while Shadow and Lincoln were out there in a gun-blazing shootout. I was going to find a way to help them from inside with whatever security Calisto had installed in her condo.

One-by-one the screens came into focus, each displaying one of the rooms inside the condo. The large screen provided and overhead view of the entire place which was digitally superimposed onto an electronic blueprint of the space-aged security system.

The control panel itself was separated into sectors of the condo, each clearly labeled on the console along with the defense system available.

I never admitted this to anyone else, but back in high school I was a gaming geek, especially in those real-time war strategy games. My boyfriend at the time had dragged me into video game LAN parties and despite my protests at first, eventually found myself enjoying them. The control panel didn’t seem all too different than a custom made gaming keyboard.

With all the functions tagged, it took me only minutes to figure out the system.

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