The Girl Who Dared to Endure

by Bella Forrest

  The shaft led to a hatch nearly a hundred feet up, and I let Leo go through first so he could help me out. Once we were on the roof, we paused to spray our faces—and Baldy’s—with Quess’s invention, which would obscure our features from the facial recognition software, and I gave Leo a minute to put on his uniform, and then we were moving again, opening up the large door to the hall. Once we were in the hall, I started using my lashes, throwing the thin lines out rhythmically, one right after the other. This was the only way I could carry Baldy such a distance without collapsing halfway there from the weight—and it was much faster than running.

  We’d already taken too long as it was. Even now, the legacies could’ve noticed that Baldy was missing. He was supposed to meet someone, so there was a finite amount of time before they started looking for him. I wanted him back in my quarters before they noticed. Before they came looking. If they weren’t already doing so.

  My eyes scanned the corridors as we flew through them, searching for any sign of movement, but the Attic was, as always, devoid of human life. It didn’t make me feel any better, however, and when we finally reached the storage room that would lead back to the Citadel, I almost quivered with relief.

  It was too soon to feel it, though. I still had to get Sadie out of my quarters, and Jasper and Rose had to be downloaded before the hard drives ran out of power. AIs needed an energy source at all times, or they would die. It was why Scipio had backup source upon backup source, powered both by the hydro-turbines and the energy harvested from the sun.

  When we got to the end of the hall, I slowly lowered myself to the ground just as Leo went for the door. My boots hit the floor, and in my impatience to get this whole mess over and done with, I disconnected the line prematurely—and my knees immediately buckled under Baldy’s weight. Leo moved to help, but I waved him off as I took two staggering steps, trying to catch my balance. I smiled triumphantly at him a second later, managing to center myself, and then toppled right over onto my side, Baldy’s extra weight too much to handle after moving all of those bodies.

  We hit the ground with a thud, and I heard Leo tsk and move over. There was a jerking against my back as he disconnected Baldy from where we had hooked him onto my uniform, and I took a moment, feeling weak and sweaty, my muscles aching and burning from the exertion.

  Then Leo’s hand filled my vision, and I took it, gingerly allowing him to pull me up. “I netted Maddox, and she’s on her way,” he reported softly, his hands going to the back of his neck. I realized he had pulled the neural scrambler off to do so and was in the process of putting it back on. I prayed that the activity hadn’t been enough for anyone to triangulate his position. If they did, and saw two Knights randomly lashing through the halls of the Attic in the vid files, one with an unconscious man on her back, the legacies might piece together that Baldy’s disappearance and Sadie’s quarters simultaneously being reset was not a coincidence.

  And that we were responsible.

  “Good,” I replied softly. “Help me get Baldy over to the hatch.”

  Leo shook his head and took off the bag he had carried. “I’ll stay here with him,” he replied as he knelt down and opened up the bag. I watched him pull out the slaved hard drives, which were bound together with wires and tape. “You have to get these to Quess as quickly as possible,” he informed me. “As soon as you get Sadie out, start downloading them. Too much time has already passed.”

  I glanced at my wrist and saw that he was right: it had already been seventeen minutes since we’d downloaded Jasper and Rose. Which meant we only had thirteen minutes left before the hard drives failed.

  But still I hesitated. Sadie Monroe was in my quarters. Drugged, and slightly out of it. I had to get her out of there quickly, but we still had to knock her out again, put her net back in her head, give her a small bit of Spero, and then get her out.

  Right. There wasn’t any time to waste.

  I squared my shoulders and took the hard drives in my hand, glancing at Baldy’s still form. “Better shock him again, just to be sure,” I said.

  Leo gifted me with a lopsided smile and reached out to smooth a bit of the hair that had escaped my braid away from my eyes. My heart skipped a beat as the simple gesture sucked my breath out of my lungs, and I quickly took a step back, my cheeks flaming at the intensity of my reaction. Now wasn’t the time, and feeling things for Leo while he was inside Grey was the very definition of a complication I did not need right now.

  “I’ll be fine,” he told me firmly, ignoring my discomfort. “Hurry up. Maddox is on her way.”

  I nodded as he brushed past me and moved toward the hatch we had come through earlier, walking down the aisle. I followed him, cradling the hard drives in both hands, and came to a stop as he knelt on the floor twenty feet deeper into the room and pressed on a section of it to reveal a digital keypad. He pulled something out of his pocket and connected it through a wire that he jacked into a port, and the display turned from red to blue, lighting his face with a glow that reminded me of his holographic image when I had first discovered him in Lionel Scipio’s secret office.

  The display turned green a few seconds later, and a square piece of the floor slid back, revealing a shaft with a ladder. And though I wanted to move quickly, I carefully tucked the hard drives under one arm and stepped onto the first rung, and then to the next, awkwardly balancing myself with one hand. It took a second to get the rhythm, but once I did, I descended as quickly as possible, barely giving Leo one last glance before he slipped from view.

  I heard a grating sound seconds later, signaling that he’d closed the door, but focused on the climb down. It took me longer than I cared to admit before I made it to the bottom of the shaft, and when the door below slid open so the bottom section of the ladder could descend into the hall, I was unsurprised to see Maddox already standing there, waiting for me.

  What did surprise me was that my twin brother was standing right next to the raven-haired girl, his eyes narrowed at me in displeasure. I had forgotten that he had been on his way over to force himself into the investigation, but was relieved that Maddox had intercepted him. He, however, looked less than happy.

  “Your stupid Lieutenant kept me locked in an elevator for forty minutes,” he bit off angrily, his dark eyes flashing behind the spectacles on his nose.

  I arched an eyebrow as I stepped off the ladder, thinking that was good. I knew I shouldn’t be dismissive of him like that—being dismissive of his feelings and wishes was what had landed me in the doghouse in his eyes. And he had a point. I’d had my own difficulties in processing my mother’s death and had allowed myself to cut him out as a result. Part of it was unintentional, but I knew I should’ve given him a better effort.

  However, now was, unfortunately, not the time to start. “Good,” I replied, echoing my internal thought. I checked my watch and gritted my teeth. Nine more minutes before we would lose Jasper and Rose. “Now, up the ladder you go,” I told him. “I need to get Sadie out of my quarters, and you being there will only make things more difficult.”

  “What did you find in Sadie’s apartment?” he demanded, ignoring my statement completely. Anger welled up in me, and I took a step closer to my twin.

  “I will tell you after I get Sadie out of my home,” I hissed, trying not to tear into a rage at the precious seconds this was costing us. “Leo is up in the Attic, alone with the man who cut my throat. Get up there and make sure that the man doesn’t wake up and hurt him while I’m handling Sadie.”

  Alex’s eyes gleamed with a dark light that suddenly filled me with doubt about telling him who was up there, but I couldn’t give this any more time, and I had nowhere else to send him. “Maddox, you’re with me. We’ll switch out my net in the elevator. You brought mine with you?”

  She nodded and patted her pocket, but her glittering green gaze didn’t drop Alex’s until he began to move toward the ladder. I did my best to ignore the eager motions of his arms, suddenly concerned about what woul
d happen once he got up there, and reminded myself that Leo would be with him. He wouldn’t let Alex do anything to Baldy. Still, the look in his eyes scared me—it had been like I was looking into the eyes of a stranger.

  I tried to shake it off as I watched the ladder retract behind him, and then started walking down the hallway, heading for the elevator that would take us to the area between the thirty-first and thirty-second floors, where the entrance to my quarters was. I paused to let Maddox give me access to the elevator, knowing the neural blocker would keep the scanners from reading my net, and therefore keep me from using the elevator. Still, I practically leapt onto the black pad that slid out of the wall as soon as the scan was done.

  Maddox followed closely behind, and within seconds I had set the hard drives on the elevator pad and presented her with my back, pulling the collar of my uniform down to give her access to my neck. I heard her rummage around for a second as the floor numbers tracked by, followed by a long silence.

  Then her fingers were on my neck, and there was a sharp sting as she cut through the skin at the base of my skull. I endured it easily enough at this point—I had changed nets too many times to count—but still winced as the tendrils of the net began to pull back from my brain. The pressure was intense for several excruciating seconds, but then it passed, the relief palpable in every muscle in my body. I exhaled slowly as I felt her extract the net, now in the form of a square white chip, her fingers disappearing for a moment.

  I forced a deep, calming breath, knowing that this was only the halfway mark, and watched as floor forty-five slid past. “Hurry,” I said, trying not to shift my weight from one leg to another.

  “Don’t rush me. I’m not as good at this as Quess is,” she replied tersely. Her fingers returned a second later, and the wound on my neck began to sting as she shoved my own net into it. She probed it a few times, seating it in place, and then suddenly the tendrils returned, slithering across my brain like worms wriggling through paths carved out by previous creatures. I withstood it without moving a muscle, and even managed to wait patiently as Maddox dabbed some bio-foam into the wound, letting the pink goo seal up the damaged flesh.

  The elevator came to a stop a second later, and I hastily handed Maddox the hard drives. “Move these over to the pile of our stuff that the reset left against the wall, discreetly,” I ordered softly.

  She nodded, her face pale and tight with worry. I felt it, too, but had to be careful with my face. Sadie might be sedated and getting regular Spero doses, but I couldn’t afford to let anything show. She might be out of it, but she was no slouch. And if she picked up on the slightest thing out of place, she might figure out that we were behind what had happened in my apartment—and hers. I wasn’t about to let that happen. Not after we had gotten this far. I took one last deep, calming breath, trying to ease away all of my panic, worry, fluster, and anxiety, and then squared my shoulders at the opening doors and stepped through.

  4

  My quarters were just as I had left them: in the shape of a large, circular platform that doubled as an elevator, enclosed by a domed ceiling. Before Leo and Quess had initiated the reset meant to lure Sadie into my quarters, there had been walls and rooms of my own design, laid out like a snail shell. Now there was nothing, save a central column that controlled the features of the room and a terminal that was suspended from the ceiling next to it.

  And next to that stood two figures who were opposite in every way. He was tall, with broad shoulders, while she was short and slender. Her hair was a mass of fire, vibrant against the dark gray of her uniform, while his colors were a direct juxtaposition: crimson uniform and black hair. They stood together, speaking in low voices that were hard to discern over the sound of our boots on the ground.

  I walked toward them slowly while Maddox peeled off to go conceal the hard drives with the stack of cartons that held our personal effects, recovered by the system during the reset. We had entered through an elevator hatch near enough to it that it only took her a few seconds to hide the hard drives among them, and I waited, trying not to look at my watch, then sped up when Maddox returned to my side.

  Just then, the man leaned over and tapped on the screen of the terminal, saying something in a contemplative voice. To my surprise, Sadie Monroe looked up and beamed at him, pride lining the curves of her pretty face.

  “Very good,” she said in a throaty purr that I could hear over our footsteps.

  It was so jolting that I slowed to a stop, absolutely repulsed by the idea that Sadie was flirting with Quess. I cast a worried glance over at Maddox, and saw her head cocked and eyebrows raised, green eyes flashing first in shock and then intense displeasure, and I suddenly had a picture in my mind of a gun about to go off.

  And why wouldn’t she be angry? Quess was her… boyfriend? I wasn’t sure, and I hadn’t asked. He had been there for Maddox during her emotional crisis and had managed to nurse her through it. Now they shared a room. That was all I knew, and all I needed to know. They were adults, and it was none of my business.

  But it became my business if Maddox’s jealousy could potentially damage the final stages of our plan. We were almost there—almost finished. We just had to knock Sadie out again, put her net back in, give her one last dose of Spero, and then send her on her way, report in hand.

  Then she’d go back to her home, find it completely disassembled, and tell the council, hopefully with no memory of the events that had, and were about to, transpire.

  “Keep it together,” I told her in a low, urgent voice. Her eyes flicked over at me without her head moving, and she carefully began to pull the anger off her face, softening the hard lines of it until she didn’t look so… murderous.

  Quess glanced over his shoulder at us, and I started moving forward again, keeping my face even and plain. He gave me a little nod and turned back to Sadie. “CEO Monroe?” he asked, his voice soft and almost hesitant, nothing like the confident man I knew. I smiled when I realized he was playing her hard, because sure enough, her head swiveled up to him, an eager smile curling on her lips.

  “Yes?” she asked, leaning closer to him. I bit my lip as his hand dipped down to his belt and slowly eased his baton out, hiding my smile. “What is it, Sam?”

  I heard Maddox snort slightly under her breath, but my moment of levity was gone, and I was once again hyperaware of the time. Sadie was really out of it; clearly the sedative had lowered her inhibitions, and she had zeroed in on Quess as her conquest. And that was great, but we didn’t have time for this. On the one hand, I was happy that he had gone along with it in order to better manipulate her. On the other…

  Maddox growled under her breath, and I silently prayed to a higher power for her to get a grip.

  “Oh, I was just wondering about this little line of code,” he replied with an innocent smile, and then stretched an arm around her to point at something on her side of the screen.

  She giggled and turned her attention to it, and I crossed my arms, my impatience growing, even as Quess slowly withdrew to create distance between them so that he wasn’t shocked along with her. “Sam,” she said, her voice a shrill squeal that rivaled the loud slap she placed on his forearm a heartbeat later. “You already know what this is!” She chuckled throatily and flipped her hair over her shoulder, spearing him with a predatory look. “What are you playing at?” she purred.

  “Ho-kay, that’s enough of that,” Maddox said, and the next thing I knew she was crossing the floor toward Sadie in long, determined strides, her baton sliding out of her loop. Sadie’s head wobbled around toward Maddox, her eyes narrowing in confusion. Quess had just enough time to step away before Maddox was pressing the end of her baton into Sadie’s shoulder.

  Sadie seized up for several seconds, and then slumped over as soon as the charge was expended, slipping right into Quess’s waiting arms.

  “I had it,” he said as he eased her down with a grunt. “What the hell, Doxy?”

  “Sorry,” she said, but her tone
was anything but contrite. “I just couldn’t stand any more of the Sadie and Sam kissing hour.”

  Quess rolled his eyes and then looked over at me. “How’d it go?”

  “We had problems,” I told him honestly as I approached and dropped to the ground to help them flip Sadie over. “I’ve got Jasper and Rose in some slaved hard drives, but Jasper is still attacking Rose, and it’s drawing a lot of power. We need to get them downloaded…” I trailed off to check my watch, and my mouth went dry. We only had six minutes left before the hard drives failed. “Immediately,” I bit out, my stomach churning. A minute to exchange nets, and then we’d only have five more to wake Sadie up and get her out. We were cutting it really close.

  Maddox straddled Sadie’s back, her hands already filled with the kit she’d used to exchange my net for Sadie’s in the elevator. I pushed Sadie’s hair out of the way while Maddox passed the bloody net she’d taken out of my neck to Quess for him to sanitize, and then began to cut, her eyes narrowed in concentration.

  “Okay,” Quess said with a grim nod. “I’ll get them uploaded immediately. Anything else?”

  Maddox withdrew her hand, revealing a half-inch-long incision, and handed the long silver cutter out to me. I took it automatically, knowing she needed to move quickly.

  “Yeah,” I replied, my stomach flopping around with anxiety as each second dragged on. If she woke up while we were doing this… I shook it off and answered Quess’s question as he handed the net, now clean and glistening with sterilizing liquid, back to Maddox. “I’ve got the guy who cut my throat.”

  Quess froze, but Maddox remained focused as she slid the net into the incision with a pair of tweezers, using them to push it all the way into Sadie’s neck. As soon as she was satisfied, she handed me the tweezers and pulled out a silver canister. A press on the top spilled some pink foam onto her fingertip, and she gently smoothed the mousse over the wound. It would be healed in a matter of minutes.