Looking over at Leo, I saw him reading one of the files from Lionel Scipio’s office—the ones I had been trying to make sense of earlier. “Any clues in there to help us? With Jasper or Rose?”
He pursed his lips and sighed. “Not yet, but there’s a lot to go through. The psychology profiles help somewhat, but they don’t really matter if I can’t figure out what Lionel did to create the barrier around the core memory. I’m hoping the answers are here, somewhere, but…” He trailed off, and finally looked up at me over the top of the file, his eyes bleeding with unspoken fears.
“The answers are in there,” I told him. “They have to be. Have you managed to make any contact with Jasper? Or seen anything from him?”
Leo shook his head, his face grim. “His program is locked up in a tight shell to protect his coding, to the point where he won’t accept even the friendliest of pings. I’m guessing it’s a defensive measure he’s been taking against Sadie, and we’re collateral damage. I’m not entirely sure what to do about it. Maybe he’ll come out of it eventually to check things out, but right now, he’s not even listening.”
I considered the problem. “Can you let him hear my voice? If he recognizes that it’s me, maybe he’ll know it’s safe.”
The look on Leo’s face told me he didn’t think it would work, but he turned to the computer and started to type something. After a few seconds, he gave me a nod. “Go ahead.”
“Jasper?” I called. It was tempting to yell, because working with noncorporeal AIs always felt like I was trying to shout a message across a chasm. But in reality, they could hear me no matter how loudly I spoke, thanks to the microphones in the rooms. “Jasper, it’s me, Liana Castell. You helped me out a few times in the Medica, remember? You saved my life, actually.”
I looked at the wall of screens that hung from the ceiling, hoping for some sign of acknowledgment, but nothing changed. “We rescued you from Sadie’s quarters,” I added. “You’re safe. And I actually have someone I think you’d like to meet. We call him Leo, but at one point he was the original basis for Scipio. We also have Rose, and we’re working on finding the other fragments. We want to help you all go home.”
Silence. Disappointed, I looked at Leo and nodded that he should shut it off. “I was hoping it would work,” I muttered. Maybe it had been wrong of me, but I had been wanting to find Jasper for so long that I had built it up in my head that it would go smoother than this. It wasn’t just because we needed him. That was true in many ways, but I had always pictured his rescue ending with him being exactly as he had been.
But his reticence to even accept communications from us told me that he had probably suffered greatly at Sadie’s hand. My heart ached for him, and I wished there were some way of communicating with him.
“I’m going to get him back to us somehow,” Leo said softly. “I’m going to get them both back, as they were. It just might take more time than we wanted.”
“I know you will,” I told him. If anyone could, it was Leo.
And if we couldn’t spring into action right away with our AI fragments, we had to do something else. Give Leo time to work while focusing on our other objective: finding the legacies. We had to wait for Quess and Alex to break into Sadie’s files to really know what we were dealing with, but we did have other leads. Dylan Chase was helping me track down the undoc side of the legacies we were after, and since Tian had also secured Liam, we had different avenues of moving forward.
But it would be difficult. We were going to have to make sure we got everyone, or it wouldn’t matter at all.
Leo smiled kindly at me, his features growing soft as his misery slowly dissolved. “Thank you,” he said, and his voice was intimate and… inviting. I found myself wanting to go to him, but I somehow managed to fight it off. Then he started speaking again. “Actually, there’s something else in the files you should be aware of.”
“Oh?” I asked, curiosity returning. I had thought Leo’s report had been the end of it, but if he was bringing something else up, then chances were I’d interrupted to go off on a tangent before he could finish. “What is it?”
“It’s about the nets Lionel designed. The legacy ones. As you already know, they were designed to capture memories, but along with that, they recorded muscle memories, to help later generations of workers remember how to repair something even if they didn’t have an exact understanding of how it worked.”
That explained what had happened in Sadie’s apartment, with the net hijacking my body. I’d been in control, but I’d also felt out of control, as if a ghost from the past was prodding at my autonomic systems from the outside. It was weird, but also followed what I knew about Lionel, who had made the nets to try to make life easier inside the Tower. Unfortunately, the legacies had twisted that design in their quest to subvert Scipio, leading to the Tower itself distrusting the tech. So now, the legacy nets were only in the hands of those who had ignored the law and kept theirs.
“What’s more,” Leo continued, leaning back in the chair, “an early report from Samantha Reed, the founder of the Medica, revealed that AIs implanted in the nets could repair most types of neurological diseases, including the onset of Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, and bipolar disorder, and also cure most types of cancer. She proposed that copies of the AIs be inserted into each net, for that reason. It was overruled by a vote.”
“But we knew that,” I replied. “You said the net had special healing properties. That’s why you went into Grey’s head.”
“Yes,” he nodded. “But that’s not the point. The point is that after the suggestion was shut down, Ezekial Pine ran an experiment, using his neural clone, Karl. In the process, he realized that an AI can also extract information from a criminal. With complete accuracy.” He looked up from the file and grimaced. “I wasn’t going to bring it up in front of your brother, but it means we have a way of getting all the information we need out of Baldy, without having to ask.”
10
I did not like the sound of that one bit and could already tell where this was going by the determined look on Leo’s face.
“No,” I said with a firm shake of my hands. “Absolutely not. You’re not putting yourself into that monster!”
Leo cocked his head at me and then stood up. I curled my arms around myself, sensing that he was going to make a logical speech about why he should do this. But I really didn’t want to hear it. I did not like the idea of someone I cared about going into the mind of a killer.
“Liana,” he said soothingly, coming to stand before me. “You know it’s going to take some time to sift through Sadie’s files and dig out what we need. You also know that whatever their true aim is, it might not be in there. We don’t have time to waste trying to find every scrap of evidence, especially not when we have the means to find the answers within a few hours.”
“I don’t care,” I said stubbornly. “It’s weird.”
He gave me a lopsided smile. “Weirder than me inhabiting the body of your boyfriend?”
I knew he was trying to make a point, but that was different. Leo was doing that to help Grey, while Baldy was still whole—and our enemy. “Yes! It’s different! What if you can’t control him, or he somehow manages to resist you? What if you get trapped, or he finds a way to hurt you? And what about Grey? Is it safe for you to come out of him? Is he… restored?”
As soon as I asked the question, I wanted to snatch it back. One of the biggest unanswered questions between us—and there were many—was what would happen once Leo finished healing Grey. It ranked right up there with my own confused feelings toward Leo, and the slow realization that I was growing closer and closer to the AI, and not in a platonic way. Because of that, I thought, we had avoided the subject completely.
But with Leo’s revelation, and his desire to try, I had to ask. I wasn’t going to let him do it if it risked his own safety. Or Grey’s.
Leo pursed his lips, his brown eyes shuttering against showing any emotion. “I’ve moved on to recov
ering his teenage years, but no, he’s not fully restored. But it won’t hurt him if I go for a few hours. I’ll try to leave him sleeping, but there is a chance that he could wake up, and if so, he won’t remember you.”
That would make things a little less awkward, but it did nothing to assuage my concerns. “What about Baldy? Leo, Grey is damaged, but Baldy’s mind is intact.”
“I’m an AI, Liana, made from a human mind. I understand how to navigate it better than most, as it’s a pattern I was built from. I promise you, I will be fine, and doing this will get us information we could use. You brought him here for a reason; let’s use him to figure out what’s going on. At least get an idea who he is working with. It could give us some direction.” He paused and speared me with a pleading look. “Please, Liana. He might know where Alice and Tony are.”
I felt myself soften to the idea and knew that it was already inevitable at this point. Leo had clearly made up his mind to do this, and judging from Maddox’s face, she didn’t think the idea was half bad. If I resisted, it would only be because of my personal feelings for Leo, and not for anything remotely resembling logic. And I couldn’t let myself be ruled by my emotions. “Maddox, can you get Quess back in here?”
She gave me a surprised look but didn’t argue. “Yeah, I’ll go get him. Also, Zoe and Eric are finally on their way up and should be here in a few minutes.”
I let out a sigh of relief at that. Zoe and Eric had decided against living with us, but now that we had made a direct attack against Sadie (even if she wasn’t aware of it), I wanted everyone I cared about to be as close as possible for the next few days, until I knew we were in the clear. It was doubly imperative now, considering that we could potentially learn everything we needed from Baldy himself, and finally track down all of the legacies. It would be dangerous until we could carry it out, and we would have to be very careful about whom we trusted with the information, but if we could pull it off…
Well, there wouldn’t be a need for us to do safety sleepovers like this in the future. At least, I hoped there wouldn’t be.
“Good,” I said. “Get them up to speed on everything and see what they can help out with.”
Maddox nodded in acknowledgment. “I’ll be right back with Quess.”
Glancing over at Leo, I realized I still had doubts. “I still don’t like this idea,” I told him.
He reached out and cupped my cheek, a soft, sad smile on his lips. “I know. But it’ll be okay.”
It took us all of fifteen minutes to get everything set up, and somehow, I managed to keep the rest of my distaste for this plan closely guarded. I’d sat with Leo while Quess had extracted the net from his neck—which was eerie, because I had never before realized that Leo could make Grey just close his eyes and go to sleep—and then cleaned it and carried it to Baldy’s room.
He was sleeping when we entered, and Quess administered the same light sedative that he had given Sadie, in the form of a pneumatic injection. Together, we rolled him onto his side, and I watched, throat tight, as the net containing Leo was jammed into the wound and the opening sealed shut.
We started to flip him back over, but Baldy suddenly jerked awake and looked around, causing me to snatch my hand back with a startled sound. Quess moved in front of me protectively, forcing me back a few paces, but I refused to cower and came to stand by his side.
The man on the bed looked around for a second, and then shook his head. “So disorienting,” he muttered as he carefully maneuvered himself into a sitting position using his bound hands. The normal malice on his face was gone, leaving only a deep concentration peppered with mild distaste. “His body feels weird,” he commented, rotating his shoulders inside their sockets.
“Leo?” I breathed, and Baldy looked up at me with an expression that was pure Leo.
“Yes,” he said with a nod. “I’m sorry. I should’ve said something. Are you okay?”
No, I was not, I decided a second later. There was something distinctly uncomfortable about knowing that Leo was inside the man who had cut my throat, and it left me slightly nauseous. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t Leo.
Neither is Grey, the dark voice inside of me pointed out, and that left me feeling cold.
Quess shifted beside me, his crimson uniform creaking under his weight, and I looked up at him and realized that I had taken too long to answer. Which meant there was no lying about it now. “Not really,” I admitted.
Baldy cocked his head at me, and I looked away. It was weird—I had been able to look the man in the eye when he was tied up earlier, but now? Knowing that Leo was inside of him? I didn’t like it. How was I supposed to see Leo through the man who had hurt me? What if I couldn’t? What if I hurt his feelings by freaking out if he went to hug me or something?
I wasn’t entirely sure I was equipped to handle this, but I didn’t want to run away screaming from him, either.
There was a sigh, and then, in Baldy’s voice, Leo said, “Quess, can you give Liana and me a moment?”
“Sure,” he said. He checked his watch. “I should probably go look in on Grey, anyway.”
“And maybe get some alone time with Doxy,” I teased, trying to diffuse some of the tension in the room. She was still in the room where we’d left Grey, monitoring him in case he woke up, and I could tell Quess wanted to be with her.
“Hey, our boss is an impossible task mistress,” Quess shot back, his dark blue eyes radiating warm humor. “And she stuck me in a room with Sadie Monroe, where I was harassed for almost the entire time! That woman was like a cat in heat, and it took all of my considerable effort just to keep her off me. So yeah, I’m going to go see my girlfriend and see if she can’t make me feel better!”
I instantly felt bad. His tone had started out jokingly, but toward the end it got a little too real—enough to tell me that the interaction with Sadie had left a mark of its own. “I’m sorry,” I said, giving him a hug. “I can’t imagine how awful that was for you.”
He rolled his eyes. “No, I’m being dramatic. It’s been a big day for all of us.”
I nodded in absolute agreement, suddenly feeling tired. I took a deep breath and pushed it aside, letting go of Quess. “Go ahead. I’ll call you if anything comes up.”
“And I’ll let you know if Grey wakes up. Not sure what we’re going tell him if he does, so… I’m kind of hoping he doesn’t.”
I hated to admit it, but so was I. I didn’t have the faintest clue what I would tell him either, so hopefully we’d never have to cross that bridge. “Go ahead and get some time in with Maddox,” I told him.
“Oh, believe me, I will,” he said, adding a lecherous waggle to his eyebrows that had me laughing. Then he exited, leaving Baldy and me alone.
No, Leo and me. I forced myself to look at him.
“It’s me,” he said, as if sensing my need for confirmation.
I wanted to tell him that I knew that, that I didn’t see Baldy’s face when I looked at him, but it was too hard. “I know that logically,” I hedged.
Leo frowned, and I could tell that he’d picked up on my careful word choice. “But emotionally?”
I shook my head, not wanting to lie to him. “It’s freaking me out a little bit.”
It really, really was. Each movement he made sent a nervous tremor down my spine, a signal that an adrenaline rush was pending, my fight-or-flight instincts right at the surface. It was illogical and emotional, and I couldn’t shut it off, just like I couldn’t stop the running train of questions in my brain.
What if Leo got stuck in there? Would I be able to see through the skin and muscle and bone to the being within? Would I ever be able to get over the memory of the cold bite of the knife and the gleam in his eyes as he did it?
“Close your eyes,” he said softly. “Listen to my voice.”
I let them drift closed, but he barely got to “I—” before they snapped back open and I was violently shaking my head no. Hearing his voice only made it worse. Before the cut of the
blade, he had struck me several times in the head, and his voice had been all I could focus on in the darkness.
“That’s not going to work for me,” I said flatly.
Leo paused, his mouth open, and then leaned back, his face adopting a contemplative look. “Would this help?” he asked in a high-pitched, singsong voice. “I suppose I could talk like this forever. Perhaps the vocal cords will even adapt to it.”
A surprised laugh escaped me, and suddenly, just like that, Baldy ceased being Baldy and started being Leo. Maybe it was the lopsided smile on his face or the hopeful gleam in his eyes, but I saw him. It was Leo.
Relief poured through me, and I returned the smile. “Hey,” I said, a small laugh in my voice. “I think it works.”
“Really,” he sang in his affected voice. “Then consider the change permanent.” I giggled at the very idea that he could do that, and then paused, a dark thought occurring to me.
“Wait, can you actually make his voice like that forever?”
He met my gaze directly and nodded once. “Normally, I wouldn’t suggest it,” he said, his voice normal again. It bothered me less than before, especially when he looked at his own bound hands with undisguised hatred. “But this disgrace of a human deserves it. These hands held you down and cut your flesh, and I could very easily make it so that he never used them again. I could do so much to him from the inside, and a part of me would feel that it was justice.”
As terrifying as it was to learn that he could do all of that from the net, his revelation filled me with a strange sort of warmth. Still, I had one too many people trying to protect me at the moment.
“Don’t,” I told him with a shake of my head. “Just focus on whatever information you can get out of him, so we can move you back as quickly as possible.”
He nodded and then gave me an apologetic look. “Then do you mind leaving me alone for a bit? I can’t tell if it’s because he’s not like Grey, or if it’s the sedative, but it’s hard to maintain a conversation and go through his memories.”
The Girl Who Dared to Endure Page 8
