And instead of letting go the man clings on, toppling forward onto her rather than releasing the weapon. But that is enough. She tumbles him down, under her, releasing her hold on the stick and double-fisting hunks of sand directly into the man’s eyes and rubbing down hard—blinding him.
He yells out, writhing and kicking, but she stays low on him hugged tight to his core like a limpet. He releases the weapon and flails at her to get her off and she obliges, scrambling from his violent body onto the sand and snatching up the weapon. She turns it to face him, activates the charge, and applies it directly to his heart.
He fights it. She kicks more sand in his face, then applies a knee to his throat. At the end of five seconds, she pulls back, the stick recharges, she applies it again to his heart. And again. And again. And again. Until his movements stop.
Then she slides down onto the sand beside him, crying in deep shuddering sobs.
After a moment she calms her breath, carefully clambers up to standing, and makes her way toward the water.
CHAPTER 27
NINA
A s Nina enters the room, the lighting state changes to a pinkish hue. She notes the small metal panel on the wall just inside the door that says ATRIUM as she passes it on her way to the pulsing green button.
Nina’s academic mind slips easily around the word’s etymology. If the house is a puzzle box, then every word is important.
Atrium from the Latin: first room of the house, from which other rooms lead off.
Nina stops in the middle of the room to take it in, the cavernous space, the smooth white walls now bathed in pinkish light. Entrance hall indeed.
It’s funny, now that she is down here she has never been so certain that her father truly did build this house: the cleanliness of line, the simplicity, the functionality. But why would he build this, what was he doing down here?
She turns to the pulse of the green button. Perhaps that flickering pulsing light has all the answers, she thinks wryly, but there is only one way to find out.
She cannot see a camera in here but she knows there is one. The music in the house beyond stops abruptly as she steps up to the green button.
They want silence for this. This is the moment they’ve been waiting for. She does not know who they are yet, whether the Korean man is involved or not, or the woman who had been emailing Joe’s company for months prior to her arrival, or even if Joe himself is somehow involved. And she is even less certain how much of this seemingly awful situation is down to her father, her brilliant, kind, loving, gentle father. Her father with the secret house. The secret house with the secret rooms upon rooms beneath it.
But help is on its way. Joe is on his way, and she would rather know than not know what all of this means. Because part of her still is certain her father was a good man, and that he wants her to see, to uncover something. That all of this will turn out to make sense, somehow, if she can just get to the bottom of it.
And with that thought Nina presses the green button. Far behind her back, the door into the atrium slides shut. She does not run to it; she was expecting as much. Instead Nina remains where she is and waits for the house to make its next move.
Noiselessly a door begins to open beside Nina. She flinches from the movement momentarily until her brain makes sense of what is happening. Beyond the opening door she catches a glimpse of a long thin hallway, the door at its end sealed.
“Attention,” the voice of Bathsheba intones, causing Nina to jump at the sound. “Please make your way to the vestibule door.”
Nina looks back at the new doorway and what she can only assume is the vestibule. She steps inside, the door closing behind her. She turns back to view the sealed door. There is no door panel on this side; she suspected as much. The rooms seem to be individually sealed, leading her on like a rat in a maze, cutting off enter and exit points and funneling her on. A door at the end of the corridor begins to open and with it comes the sound of flowing water. Nina follows the sound. On either side of the corridor, mirrored walls.
She is now officially playing whatever game this is.
She reaches the doorway and takes in the new room. It’s brightly lit, brilliant white, and much smaller. Perhaps big enough only for a single bed and a chair, though the room has neither. A twinge of claustrophobia yawns inside Nina, though she has never had it until now.
The room doesn’t feel crushingly small, and as she looks up she notes that the ceiling here is notably higher than in the previous rooms, perhaps reaching fifteen feet in height.
On the farthest wall there is a tap. It’s flowing, its water pouring directly down onto a grate and disappearing from sight. Every few seconds the tap stops and restarts in automated pulses.
Above the tap, built into the wall, is a flatscreen panel. Words appear on the screen as she watches, but she is not close enough to make them out. She would need to go in, and she is fairly sure what will happen if she does.
But she has come this far for an explanation; surely she isn’t going to chicken out now, she berates herself. And yet she has never been a huge risk taker. Perhaps it’s better not to go in after all, to wait here in this vestibule for Joe to arrive with the police, with other people. Best to wait to be rescued. Then they can tear this place apart, search the rooms, find out who is behind this whole setup.
Yes. She steps back from the doorway. That’s the sensible thing to do. As she pulls back, more words automatically appear on the screen across the room. Nina feels the pull of urgency, suddenly terrified that there might be someone else down here trying to contact her, someone else trapped.
The message behind the mirror upstairs warned her not to come down here—but what that meant really relied on who left the message.
Nina turns to look at the large mirror panels in the hallway.
“I’m not going any farther until someone tells me what’s going on. If you want me to keep going, you’ll have to explain what the hell this is,” Nina tells her reflection.
