meg, dressed in an old knicks t-shirt and boxer shorts, stands next to the alarm panel in the master bedroom, reading from an instruction manual. she's frustrated. she mutters, slurring, a bit drunk.
meg puts sheets on her bed in the master bedroom.
-- 2:26. meg is in a hard, boozy sleep. we drift out the door of the master bedroom, into the third floor hallway, and down the open stairwell. we glide through the entry floor, still gently falling through the stairwell's airway, dropping even further, all the way down to the kitchen floor, the ground floor.
in the master bedroom, a message appears on the alarm panel:
in bed, meg stirs. an alcohol sleep is a restless one, and she's suffering.
in the master bedroom, meg flops over in bed, facing away from the doorway, really having a rough go of it. she slept too hard before, now she's awake, her head is killing her, she's really paying the price of four glasses of wine.
meg sits up in bed. she's bleary, her head feels like someone rested a manhole cover on it. she gets up, in the dark, and staggers off toward the bathroom door, feeling her way with her arms, her eyes not adjusted to the dark.
using the light that spills from the open door to the panic room, meg comes back into the master bedroom and finds the proper door to the bathroom.
meg rolls over, to go back to sleep. she sees she's left the lights on in the panic room. she tsks, gets out of bed, and walks across the floor toward it.
meg races across her bedroom, flies out the door, and bolts up the carpeted stairs, headed for the top floor.
meg and sarah run through the master bedroom. as she passes the night table, sarah swings an open hand to grab her cell phone from its cradle. but in her haste she starts to pull it out at an angle and the prongs at the bottom stick in the charger. the phone slips from her fingers, bounces off the corner of the table, caroms off her foot, and skitters under the bed.
junior slams into the closing metal door, banging his shoulder into it, and slithers to the ground, too late.
junior is slumped at the base of the door, livid, in pain, pounding on it with his fists, screaming "no!" over and over again, crazy with rage.
bam!
near the tank, raoul shoves burnham out of the way.
raoul is standing guard over the tank, to make sure no one messes with the valve.
in the master bedroom, the debate has turned physical. burnham lunges across the room at raoul, to get his hands on the valve, to turn off the gas. but raoul catches him and hurls him aside.
burnham turns abruptly.
out in the bedroom, it's worse for burnham, who has lost most of his hair and shirt. but his skin isn't badly burned, which is something, i guess.
the intruders have stopped their racket too, and are listening carefully at the common wall. eventually, the soft pounding stops, the complaining voice complains no more.
burnham is concerned as well. he's still in the master bedroom, but barely, he's standing in the doorway, straining like hell to hear a conversation that junior and raoul are having in the foyer, one floor one.
in the bedroom, burnham is desperate. the argument downstairs is entering round two, and he's got to hear what they're saying.
the door begins to crank open, meg slips through the gap sideways before it's even all the way open. she darts across the room --
the big empty charger cradle is in the foreground when the three men burst into the room. burnham stops in the middle of the floor, turns in a frantic circle.
in the bedroom, burnham stands just outside the door, fingertips lightly resting on it, the ghost of a smile on his face.
at the same moment, burnham is having the same thought. he's still at the door, fingertips still resting there.
burnham looks down, at the baseboard below. what is he looking at?
yes, that is correct, there is in fact a jack in the base of the wall outside the door to the panic room.
tired, burnham drags himself back up the stairs and into the doorway of the master bedroom. raoul and junior stand there, staring at him.
in the bedroom, junior has had enough.
harris, still semi-conscious, is hurled against the metal door of the panic room. he collapses at its base. burnham, bends down next to him.
burnham shouts at the door to the room.
harris is shouting against the closed door.
burnham shouts at raoul, pleading.
harris finally lapses into unconsciousness. raoul stands over him, chest heaving.
meg steps out of the panic room, into the master bedroom. she looks at harris, on the bed. with his back to her she can't even tell if he's alive or dead, but first things must be first, so she turns and races out of the room.
-- the person on the bed in the bedroom is burnham, wearing harris's shirt. his eyes pop open, he sits up, sees the wide open door to the panic room.
-- and races into the master bedroom, where raoul is motoring, fast, headed for the panic room, where she can already see burnham, standing in the middle of the open doorway, in front of sarah, wearing harris's shirt and a grim "tricked you" expression.
seen from overhead, meg paces in the master bedroom, out of her mind with worry, no idea how to communicate to the people in the room the desperate situation.
a voice comes over the intercom in the master bedroom. it's raoul.
in the master bedroom, meg pulls on a pair of jeans that are hanging over a chair.
-- and rise up out of the floor in the master bedroom, and now we can hear the conversation on the other side of the wall in here, the neighbor's fearful, angry tones, meg's firm, urgent declarations.
raoul stretches to push the red "close" button for the door, but he has to hold meg's head down, out of the lower beam with one hand, all with sarah savagely attacking him at the same time, and three syringes hanging out of his neck.