The connection complete, Lana began extracting some other devices from the black box’s various compartments: a thick disc like an oversized hockey puck, a vial, a reel of cable, and a black block the size of a dishwashing sponge. When she was done, she placed the first device, a thick, flat, black disc, on the inside of the cupboard’s single door and closed it. As the door latched closed the disc shot out six arms, each armed with a small but very sharp claw, which imbedded themselves in the frame around the door and then latched themselves to the door itself, locking it securely in place. The door could now only be opened by someone hacking it apart with an axe, but in the unlikely event that happened the disc would turn its six razor-edged hooks, effective in wood, devastating in flesh, to a far more brutal purpose in order to defend the bag within.

Walking to the bedroom’s one window, Lana then placed a small dab of liquid from the vial on each of its panes of glass. Spreading from each drop, the glass began to turn opaque, blocking the view from prying eyes. More importantly, the reaction also began to harden the glass to something close to the strength of sapphire crystal.

Lana then extracted a length of the wire from the reel she had taken from her bag and laid it around the outside of the window, walking away after she had joined the ends of the wire together. As she walked down the stairs the wire started to sizzle, reacting with the caulking around window and turning first viscous, and then into an extremely hard glue around the frame, even as the spreading opaqueness of the glass blanketed to each pane’s edge. She proceeded to do the same with each of the bottom floor’s six windows, using the final part of the wire to seal the back door shut. She then returned to the upstairs cupboard, the disk protecting it forewarned of her approach, and rolled the still half-full vial under the sealed door to the waiting black box to be reabsorbed into its interior.