Red Awakening (Red Zone 2)

“She’s alive.”

“Yup.”

“Miriam lied.”

“It’s one of her main skills.”

“I need to think about this.” She sank to the floor and started the recording from the beginning again.

Mace considered her for a moment. Had he pushed her too far? “Are you gonna be okay?” he found himself asking, even though he knew it was probably a stupid question.

She looked up at him. “I have to be, don’t I?”

There was nothing he could say to that, so he turned his attention to finding a way out of the building for the both of them.

…

Keiko watched the recording of Friday several more times as she let the reality of her situation sink in. There was no doubt in her mind she was watching the same scientist that CommTECH had labeled a traitor before telling the world she’d died. Yet here she was, alive and well and part of the team that desperately wanted to get into the research facility.

The same research facility that was working on a top-secret project—a state-of-the-art datachip that would wipe out the competition. Keiko didn’t know anything about the chip except the company was rushing it to the market. Were they so desperate to get it out ahead of their competitors that they were using unrefined ladmium? Her stomach lurched at the thought, and she had to fight back nausea. If ladmium wasn’t processed properly, it would leach into people’s systems and kill them for sure.

She watched Mace as he studied the feeds from the security cameras that were still functioning. It felt like the world had been turned on its head. Her parents were fighting against CommTECH’s rule. Mace was trying to stop CommTECH from killing people for profit. And what had she been doing? Blindly believing every single thing they said to her. She’d never questioned anything. She’d never wondered why Freedom was fighting against the government; she just assumed they were wrong, because her insider view of the company had to be right. But what if CommTECH was doing everything Mace said it was? What if everything he said was true?

She looked at Friday’s face, frozen on the screen in front of her. She was alive. Healthy. Worried about a mission that needed to succeed. The mission Mace had taken. The mission that had caused them to hold her parents, just so they could get inside the building.

She cleared her throat. “You really were never here to steal company secrets and sell them, were you?”

He kept his eyes on the screen, but his shoulders tensed. “Don’t make me out to be a hero. I’m here because my team thought this was a good idea. I’m here to do my job, and yeah, that job involves stealing company secrets.”

“The injector Friday talked about. What is it?”

“Nano virus. It’ll copy the research information

on the CommTECH server. Copy their secrets.” He gave her a dark look. “Still think I’m here for a noble cause?”

The only person he was trying to fool was himself. She knew who he was, now. His actions revealed his true heart over and over again. Mace saved people—her included. That’s who he was.

“I think trying to stop people from having the faulty chip implanted is a noble cause.”

“Like I said, I don’t much care what people implant or don’t implant.”

She rolled her eyes at the infuriating man before looking back down at the datapad. It was tempting to smack Mace with it, but she didn’t. Instead, she considered the image of Friday, frozen in the middle of telling Mace to wipe the datapad clean. To get rid of her image and any evidence that she was still alive. To make sure information about her never got out.

As she stared at Friday’s face, it occurred to Keiko that she had the perfect weapon in her hands. All she had to do was transfer the recording in front of her to her internal chips, and she had all the ammunition she needed to make sure that Mace and his team never blackmailed her again. But more than that, she could use the information to barter with CommTECH, ensuring her parents were never arrested and her job was secure. She could carry on living her life the way she’d always lived it—with her head in the sand, ignoring everything she’d learned about the company she represented.

It was tempting. Denial. Pretending. All for an easy life.

All she had to do was hand Friday over to Miriam Shepherd, and her life would return to normal.

Mace had handed her the answer to her problems.

It was sitting in her lap.

Literally.

Slowly, she moved her fingertip up to the conduit used to transfer data. She didn’t even hesitate. All it took was a second.

With trembling hands, she stared at the blank screen. She’d made her decision.