After we left the cafeteria, we quickly made our way through the corridors with Quinton giving us directions as she had memorized the route before closing down the map. Within a few minutes, we were once again in the large open foyer near the main entry. We walked past the entrance clearly able to hear the loud quaking steps of the rappavore over the still screaming alarm, though we could not see the creature, because the front door and all the windows to the outside were tightly closed away behind metal slats. We moved through the foyer with quickened steps, right past the east wing, and came to a stop before what was designated the north wing on the map.

  Unlike the south and east wing that had an open airy archway leading down a wide corridor, this access point was walled off with a single sliding door. And like I expected, there was a palm reader, which did not open when Markus placed a hand on the scanner. He motioned us to step back as he unhooked his executioner’s staff from his belt.

  “Uhmmm… what are you doing?” I asked as my Protector took a few backward steps, extended the staff to its full seven-foot length, and rooted the end securely to the floor in front of him. He was now a few feet away from the entrance with the vertical staff lined up to the middle of the door.

  “Opening the door. Stand back,” he said.

  Quinton and I took a step back. He glanced over his shoulder at us with a raised eyebrow. So we both took a couple more large steps backward. Markus seemed satisfied with that and then faced forward again.

  My Protector pressed one of the several buttons at the center of the staff, which caused a light blue transparent energy field to extent three feet outward from both sides of the staff. This was the shield, one of the two important functions of the executioner’s staff. The second function was activated after the press of another button, which sent out an invisible force forward that slammed into the door. It couldn’t be seen, but was certainly heard and felt as the pulse hit the door with a resounding whomp that vibrated the floor beneath our feet.

  It didn’t appear to do much damage on the first hit, but by the third blast from Markus’s staff, the door had buckled inward as the frame twisted, and I watched with amazement as the entire security mechanism gave way with a shower of sparks and the screech of tearing metal.

  “That was... efficient,” I said, eyeing the now mangled door. I was pretty sure the Governor wouldn’t be happy about Markus’s way of opening the door, but considering the circumstances, it was an elegant solution.

  My Protector admired his handiwork for a moment, nodded as if he was satisfied, and then retracted the executioner’s staff, clipping it back on his belt in one fluid moment. Markus stepped through the now much larger than man-sized hole he’d made like he hadn’t a care in the world. Quinton and I gave each other a dubious look before we followed him through the newly made entrance.

  I’m not sure what I was expecting in the north wing, but I couldn’t help but feel underwhelmed to discover that the north wing looked exactly like the south section we’d vacated only minutes ago. It had the same gray walls, dark blue tiled floor, and a soft white light emanating from the ceiling. The corridor stretched out before us, with doors marking the entrance to rooms every few feet. As we passed the first door, I noticed that the room indeed had a number beside it like the rooms in the south section. In fact, it had the exact same room number I remembered seeing marking the conference room we’d had our debriefing in.

  Out of curiosity, I stopped and put my hand on the palm scanner. Half expecting it not to open, but it did. I stuck my head in and looked around. Shock coursed through me. That, I think more than anything, got Markus’s attention.

  “What’s going on?” My Protector said suddenly at my side. It seemed he’d covered the distance of several feet from continuing to lead us down the hall back to standing next to me in the door’s opening in an instant.

  Quinton had peered over my other shoulder to get a look inside too. I could feel her breath on the side of my neck as she spoke. It caused my skin to prickle, or maybe the eeriness of the situation did that. At this point, I wasn’t sure about anything. “It’s the exact same as the other conference room.”

  “Why would they block off a whole wing to hide a conference room? A conference room that looks like an exact double of the one we used earlier today?” I asked no one in particular.

  “Maybe they just needed a conference room in this section and the real reason for the extra security is elsewhere,” Markus replied.

  I stepped backward from the room and allowed the door to close. “Which makes me even more curious about what we will find in the other rooms,” I said as I started toward the next door.

  “I think we are losing focus here. The priority is finding an exit,” Markus gave a reminder, and there was definitely a hint of admonishment in his tone.

  “Yeah, well, we aren’t going to find an exit if we don’t look around,” I said, attempting to justify my actions. My curiosity was at an all-time high now, and I couldn’t shake it. Yes, I knew we really needed to get going, but something was telling me that looking a little deeper was important, and we weren’t going to get another chance. So I went to the next door and palmed it open.

  I stuck my head in and gave a quick look. It was about half the size of the conference room. There was a desk on the left side of the room, a set of shelves on the opposite wall of the door, and a small sitting area closest to where I stood. There didn’t seem to be anything obvious that might reveal what made this wing so special.

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  “It’s just an office,” I said with clear disappointment.

  “This one too,” I heard Quinton say somewhere behind me.

  I turned to see she had opened the door directly across from mine. I went over and peered over her shoulder. It was an exact duplicate of the office I’d just left.

  “Here too,” Markus replied a little ways down the corridor.

  I was a little surprised he wasn’t being more insistent about our leaving. Maybe he’d felt my determination to uncover the secret of the north wing through the bond and decided his help would hurry things along. Or maybe he was just as curious as I was. Either way, I was glad he wasn’t putting up more of a fight––yet. Something had ignited in me the moment I set foot in this wing, and it was pushing me to find answers.

  I walked over to Markus and looked inside. The exact same as the other two. I looked down the rest of the corridor. There were many more doors. More than we had time to check, and if the north wing was exactly like the south section, there were many more corridors too.

  And of course the alarm was still going strong. A constant and immediate reminder of the danger we were still facing. There was no way we could search every room before our core temperatures rose back up and the rappavore started in on the building again. In fact, the chill I had endured while in the freezer was nearly gone. The time we had bought ourselves nearly gone too. We would definitely have to speed things up.

  “I’ll check a few doors down, if you will get the last door on the left, Markus. Quinton, I see the passage here branches off up ahead. Go left and start checking every four or five doors,” I said as I fast-walked past a handful of doors, while Markus moved past me to the end, checking the door opposite the hall from mine.

  Another office.

  I started my way down to Markus. He had just arrived at his door. He opened it, took one look, and removed his hand from the palm scanner. As the door closed, he shook his head.

  “Office.”

  The next corridor was a little longer. I went down the right, walked four doors down and opened the door, while Markus checked the fifth one on the opposite side of the hall.

  More offices.

  “What in the blazes do they need so many offices for?”

  “I have an idea about that,” Markus said as he walked past me and moved down four doors before stopping to open and check the inside. I did the same on my side.

  More offices.

  “Sometimes when you want to hide something, you hide it in the middle of the ordinary. But I don’t think we will find anything this close to the entrance of the wing. If it were me, I would put it near the middle or at the end. That way, if someone does breach the wing, there’s plenty of time for their presence to be discovered and intercepted.”

  I stopped in the center of the corridor. I noticed Quinton as she crossed the passage to check a room further down. I knew if she’d found anything different, she would have called out, so there were just more offices down there too.

  “We are looking in the wrong place,” I breathed, realizing Markus was right.

  “Yep,” was all he said as he came back to stand next to me.

  I looked down further into our half of the passageway. It seemed this corridor deadened at a single door. I itched to check it, but I was almost certain it was an office too. So I turned and started to make my way toward Quinton. Markus followed closely behind.

  “Suggestions?” I asked my Protector.

  “If this wing is laid out similarly to the south wing , then it has a cafeteria near the heart of this section too. We find the north wing’s cafeteria, then we search that corridor. If there’s nothing there, then we go down to where the north wing’s command center should be and check that passage.”

  Our quick pace down the hall got us caught up with Quinton, and she closed her door and shook her head, clearly disappointed she had found yet another office.

  “Did you hear the plan?” I asked the Lieutenant as we passed her.

  I could almost feel our time running out, and was a little surprised the rappavore hadn’t made its presence know yet, though I was sure it was only a matter of time, maybe even moments.

  “Check the middle of this wing and then the end,” she said as fell into step behind us.

  “Do you remember––” but I didn’t have to finish as Markus stepped around me to lead the way down the passage. I was glad he had an excellent memory for directions and layouts.

  We moved through the corridors with purpose, taking several turns that mirrored what I recalled from our travel through the south wing. As we rounded the corner, a wide corridor opened up before us. And if my memory was correct, the cafeteria would be six doors down. I hurried past Markus, hit the palm scanner, and, sure enough, the sight of a cafeteria exactly like the one we’d been in before sat before me.

  “Well, at least we have a freezer close by if we need it,” I joked. I then turned to Markus and Quinton with more seriousness. They were still close to the entrance of the wider corridor. “Check those doors. I’ll start on the other side.”

  I moved quickly to the far side of the corridor and started checking doors. The first one I opened revealed another office—identical to the ones we’d already seen, down to the placement of the furniture. I closed it with a frustrated sigh and moved to the next door. Seriously, how many freaking offices did these people need?

  “Oh, that’s different,” I heard Markus say from his side of the corridor.

  I looked over to him expectantly, but he shook his head as he closed the door and walked down to another door. “Don’t get excited. It was just a storeroom for maintenance bots and extra parts.”

  I let out a sigh of frustration. This wasn’t going the way I had hoped. Maybe this was exactly as it seemed, just another wing of offices for the administration staff? Maybe we should just drop our search, find the exit, and get as far away from the rappavore as we could. I was a little concerned that the creature outside hadn’t triggered an emergency response from the local government yet. Surely, the admin building alarms going off had been registered by security or an authority figure somewhere, but then with the Nanite Network offline, perhaps it had affected Talion Proxi’s emergency protocols as well.

  We had been checking every third door on this passageway. Markus and I were finishing with the last doors, while I’d sent Quinton on to the next corridor. I peeked through my door, disappointed to find yet another office. That was when the Lieutenant rushed around the corner with a flushed face.

  “Highness, I found a locked door,” she said excitedly and then whirled around, going back to where she’d come from.

  Markus and I exchanged a look of expectation, and then we followed the woman. In the new corridor, she had chosen the second door on the left to check. Quinton now stood a few steps from the door as she waited for us to catch up. Once we arrived, she backed away, and I joined her.

  Markus extracted his executioner’s staff and made quick work of the door. He took a quick look inside. My Protector must have been satisfied it was empty of any enemies, stepped back from the door, and motioned me to enter.

  I moved forward with Quinton a step behind me. Her presence hovered at my elbow, with strong tones of curiosity and excitement radiating from the woman. I felt my own emotions mirroring hers as I peered inside to see the secret the north wing held, and for a span of quick heartbeats, my mind attempted to interrupt what lay inside.