The Girl Who Dared to Endure

by Bella Forrest

  I gritted my teeth, focusing on the steps leading up and trying to ignore the trembling of my legs. My palms were sweating, and the microfiber body bag felt like it was slipping from my grasp.

  “We could’ve sent him out with the laundry, like she transported you and Leo, and just dumped him into an oven at the smelting factory. No evidence, no muss, and definitely—” He grunted, and the bag jerked slightly in my grip as he tripped on a step. The bag smacked into me, and I lost my balance and slammed into a wall with my shoulder, a sharp cry of pain escaping my throat before I could stop it.

  It didn’t hurt past the surprise of the impact, and embarrassment flooded through me that I had made such a big spectacle about nothing. I started to tell everyone that I was fine, but Leo had moved down the handful of steps between us, brushing by Quess a little rudely to do so.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, cupping my cheek.

  I nodded, trying to flex the shoulder in question, even with Baldy just swinging between Quess and me. “Yeah,” I said tiredly. “We almost there, Maddox?”

  I looked up at where she was climbing the last few steps to the next landing in the square staircase. “The door is here,” she announced. “Just a few more steps.”

  “C’mon, Quess,” I panted, pushing off the wall and planting a heavy boot on another step. “We got this.”

  “No, I’ve got it,” Alex said, coming up a few steps from where he had been trailing behind us. There were dark smudges under his eyes now, and I could see exhaustion lining his face, but he took the bag from me and resumed the climb.

  “Also, shut up, Quess,” Leo added as he took a step back to let us by.

  Quess snorted but fell silent, and the sound of our steps on the stairs resumed. It took ten more steps—each of which I felt all the way from the soles of my feet into my hips—before we were on the landing. Maddox was already twisting the pressure handle open, and a moment later a gust of pressurized air from the Tower burst through with a hiss, swinging the door open.

  Revealing another set of stairs that led to a star-laden, inky black sky. I sucked in a breath of the air—air that was free from the regular tinny smell always present inside the Tower—and sighed.

  My hair tugged in the cross breeze, and I took the promise of there being fresher, cleaner air in just ten short steps, and used the motivation to hobble up the remaining steps.

  The stairs stopped at the surface of the roof with a transition from concrete to solar panel at the end of the last step. There were no lights up here, but the moon was out, shining brightly just over the horizon to the east and coating the world in a myriad of blue shadows that made everything look like a quilted blanket. Everything from the Tower seemed so far away standing here, peering out at a world that I only ever got to see when I was outside.

  But there was no time to appreciate the beauty or splendor of it, and I turned to help Alex and Quess up the stairs, grabbing the bag and hauling it up and over the edge to set it down on a solar panel.

  “Take a break,” I told everyone, wiping a hand over my forehead. The frigid night air was already beginning to cool my flushed cheeks and heated skin, but soon it would be biting, and the moisture on my skin would only make it worse. It was rare, but the wind chill could cause frostbite, if there was enough moisture on the skin. We’d have to be mindful of the cold and finish up quickly, before it could take effect.

  Everyone stood around to catch their breaths and stretch, and I followed suit, trying to relieve some of the lactic acid that had built up in my muscles. I knew we couldn’t linger for long, but given how easily we had managed to make it up without being spotted or intercepted, I felt confident that we could spare a minute or two.

  I was walking in a slow circle around the gap where the stairs came up, not wanting to stay still for too long lest my muscles stiffen, when Quess suddenly jerked up from where he was bending over to touch his toes, his eyes going wide and looking into the sky. The abrupt movement caught my eyes, and I immediately started looking around, trying to figure out what he was looking for.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Leo, are you getting this?” Quess asked, ignoring me completely.

  I turned to where Leo had been standing a few feet behind me, doing some side stretches. He didn’t seem as shocked as Quess, but his expression was pinched, eyes hard. “I am,” he replied.

  “Getting what?” I asked, looking between the two men. Then I glanced at Maddox, who shrugged, clearly as baffled as I was at their strange behavior.

  Quess turned to me, his eyes glistening brightly. “Liana, things just took a turn from bad to weird,” he told me.

  I frowned at him and sucked in a deep breath, wondering if he said crap like that just to drive me crazy. I was too physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted for these games, and after everything I’d been through today, the last thing I wanted was for my life to get weird. “What. The hell. Is going. On?”

  “Do you remember the monitoring station that Leo was talking about a few weeks ago? The one meant for watching for outside transmissions that showed human life?”

  I closed my eyes and tried to summon up the conversation. It took me a minute—I was tired, after all—but I did. We’d been talking about trying to find out if there was even life outside the Tower, and Leo had mentioned the monitoring station. I’d made a mental note to check it out later, to see if there were any incoming transmissions that were somehow being blocked, but had never gotten around to it.

  “Yes,” I bit out. “Why?”

  He licked his lips. “Well, after the Tourney… during those days when you…” Trailing off, he looked away guiltily, as if he realized that he was treading into dangerous lands.

  He wasn’t, though, because I didn’t deny what had happened those three days after my mother’s death. Didn’t deny that I had been untethered from reality for most of it, or that it had been full of misdirected hatred toward the AI fragment who had been controlling the sentinel that killed her. “When I wasn’t doing my best,” I told him, motioning somewhat impatiently for him to proceed.

  “Well, I had a lot of free time on my hands. I made the spray, tinkered around with a few designs… but on day two I was stir crazy. So Leo and I went out, found the monitoring station, and hacked into it. I meant to tell you about it, but everything’s been so—”

  “Crazy,” I finished for him with a nod. “That should be our motto.” I took a deep breath and considered what he was saying, and the brief exchange between him and Leo, and then realized the only way he’d be bringing it up was if something had changed. And there was only one thing that could’ve changed. “Are you telling me that someone from out there is transmitting? And that you can somehow hear them?”

  He nodded enthusiastically. “Not just transmitting blindly, either. They’re transmitting to us. To the Tower. Asking for us by name, really.”

  I blinked several times, trying to wrap my head around what he was saying. It didn’t make any sense. Why would they be transmitting to the Tower? How did they even know we were here? Was it to someone specific, or—

  “What do they want?” Maddox asked, cutting off my questions with perhaps the most important one of all.

  “Hold on a second,” Quess said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his pad. “I set the feed up to come here, and Leo and I have been monitoring it using some auditory receivers that I whipped up.” Auditory receivers were the implants in our ear canals that translated net transmission into a human voice. He must’ve synced it up with his pad and not his net, which would have explained why he was receiving the signal. “I’ll put it on speaker. I’ll mute the mic, though, so they won’t hear us.”

  I held still while he started tapping things on his pad, but inside, my mind was ablaze with the implications. Because if they were contacting the Tower, it meant they knew the Tower was here. And that might mean they had been here before. Could it be? Was it possible that these were the people Roark’s wife
had encountered? The ones that had filled them with dreams of escape, and had ultimately led to her death, twenty-five years ago?

  I tucked my questions away, knowing that the call would start soon. I wanted to be focused, and that was hard given how tired I was. The rush of adrenaline and excitement had helped, but not for long, and I needed my wits about me.

  “… Receiving me? This is Melissa Croft transmitting in the blind, trying to make contact with the Tower. We are in need of medical assistance. We—”

  The soft, almost desperate voice was cut off by another one, the burst of static that accompanied the transition making me wince. “My mother has been injured, you born-in-a-box idiots,” she said, a whipcord of anger making each word snap on the speakers. “We know you have advanced medical skills. We need help now and are coming to you whether you like it or not.”

  There was a pause, and I felt that some words were being exchanged on their end, probably to get the angry girl off the line, to keep her from threatening us. Still, I’d heard the undercurrent of pain in her voice, and the fact that she had mentioned her mother… It hit a very sensitive chord with me. I looked at the others, who were also looking a bit bewildered, and waited to see what they would say next.

  Then the first voice came back on the line. “I apologize for the previous message, but my shipmate is correct. We have an injured woman, forty-three years old, suffering from severe electrical burns in the chest and torso area. We are aware of your advanced medical practices and request diplomatic clearance to land and seek medical attention. We are armed but will not harm anyone so long as we are not threatened.”

  My mother had been forty-three years old when she died as well. I thought about the girl from before, the desperate anger in her voice, and remembered that feeling all too well. It hadn’t exactly left me in the days since her funeral. I imagined what I might do if my mother had only been injured, as opposed to killed, and I couldn’t find medical help. I imagined what I would have tried to do to save her if I had been given the opportunity.

  And then I imagined how it would feel if I went to a place that could help, and they denied me the chance. I didn’t want to be the person who made a girl watch her mother die because of an accident or violence—not when I could do something about it. I reached over and hit the mute button, turning on the mic.

  “This is Liana Castell,” I transmitted, ignoring everyone as they whipped around and gaped at me, shocked. “Come to the northeast corner of the roof, and we will give you medical assistance.”

  “What are you doing?” Quess asked loudly.

  I opened my mouth to reply, but Maddox beat me to it. “She’s not letting another girl lose her mother,” she told him, and I shot an appreciative look at the raven-haired woman, who gave me an understanding smile before motioning to Alex to grab the bag with Baldy inside.

  I realized she was going to handle that problem while I sorted out this new one, and I couldn’t be more grateful to her and my brother. I didn’t exactly want these outsiders to show up and see us transporting a dead body. Or throwing it off the roof.

  The pause on the other line dragged on for long enough to make me wonder if I had made a mistake, but then the line was filled again by a rich masculine voice that was a strange combination of purr and growl, as if the threat it carried gave him the utmost pleasure to give. “If you fire any of that laser crap at us, we will retaliate with extreme force.”

  Then the call ended abruptly.

  Confusion radiated through me, and I looked at Quess and mouthed “laser crap” to him. He quickly explained. “The solar panels can be used as a laser weapon. It’s under IT’s jurisdiction and is very hush-hush. Only supposed to be talked about when there’s a need for it, and never with another department. I don’t think anyone is really aware of it outside of IT.”

  IT had access to a laser weapon through the solar panels of the Tower? And this was the first I was hearing about it? Could that sort of weapon be turned on the Tower? I imagined it could be used to cut off the arms of the greeneries or something and hated the idea of Sadie having all of that destructive power at her disposal.

  It was a horrifying thought, but it was matched by excitement as I realized that those people could only know about the laser if they had been here before. It had to be the same group; everything they were saying showed that they knew about us, knew about our advanced medicines, knew that we had defensive capabilities that could be used against them, and—

  Wait. Did that mean that the council had decided to use the lasers on them the last time they were here? If that were true, then that meant the council had already established precedent for how to deal with them, which was by shooting them down! And if the council found out they were here—if Sadie did—then… I cursed and smacked my hand over my head, suddenly realizing that I had no idea if the call had been delivered only to us.

  “Quess, please tell me that you did something at the monitoring station so that the transmission wasn’t picked up by Scipio or anyone else.”

  “Of course I did.” He scoffed. “What do you take me for?”

  There was little time to feel relief, not with the threat of the council learning about this and trying to shoot them out of the sky after they left. “Will sensors on the roof pick them up?”

  “Yes, but we can knock them out,” Quess replied. “There are fewer up here, anyway, so I’m betting I can find a power relay somewhere and shut off power to the grid.”

  “Will anyone notice?” I asked, thinking about aftermath. I was surprised my brain was even working this fast with as tired as I was, but grateful nonetheless.

  “Yes, but they won’t come up to check it out until tomorrow, so our guests will have to be gone before then.” Quess frowned, then, as if the whole thing suddenly dawned to him. “Are you sure about this?” he asked me. “We don’t know anything about them. What if they are here to scout us out for an invasion?”

  I shook my head at the thought. “I don’t think so,” I told him. “I know what the fear of losing a mother feels like, and she sounded exactly like it felt. Besides, I think they’ve already been here. I mean, if they knew about the lasers, then it makes sense that these are people who have been here before, right?”

  “That is my interpretation,” Leo announced, finally breaking his silence. “But it would be good to see what they know. Perhaps they have more information from that day for us, and we can use it to figure out what really happened, and who else was involved at that time. It might help us figure out who else is behind this. Who else has been working with Sadie and Devon.”

  Quess still looked doubtful, but he gave a tired nod anyway, combined with a dry smile. “Why not?” he asked. “It’s not like I did anything super important today. Besides, it’s just a handful of sensors, right? Easy peasy.” He winked for effect, and I smiled and gave a wry chuckle.

  “I think this has literally been the longest day of my life,” I told him.

  “And it’s only eleven,” Leo added helpfully.

  If looks could kill, Leo would’ve been obliterated by the twin glares Quess and I gave him as we moved away, him to the sensors and me to help Maddox and Alex dispose of Baldy before our totally random guests showed up.

  17

  I reached to grab a corner of the bag on Alex’s side, but he shrugged it out of my grasping fingers with a jerky shake of his head. “I’ve got it,” he said.

  Curling back my fingers, I hesitated at the empty quality of his voice. Once again, I was left with a messy feeling that things were spiraling out of control, and I was letting something—someone—important to me fall to the side in all the chaos.

  The urge to pull him aside and force him to talk to me was just about overwhelming, and pushing it back only caused my guilt to grow. I couldn’t do what I wanted, because once again, life had thrown us a curveball, and I had to take care of something else instead of taking care of my brother.

  Which meant that I had to grit my teeth and just
try to handle this as quickly as possible. I could, would, get Alex through this. Just not at this moment.

  I grabbed the bag on Maddox’s side, and the three of us hauled Baldy’s corpse to the corner of the building, trying to move as quickly as possible.

  The Tower’s width was approximately half a mile, which meant that making our way across the roof, even at the light jog I pushed us to, and with no walls to slow our path, would still take us eight to ten minutes.

  I searched the sky whenever I could, trying to find some glimpse of the machine they were using to carry them through the air. How big was it? How many people could it hold? I tried to imagine what their machines looked like and kept conjuring up images of mechanical bees and dragonflies. The bee one was kind of ridiculous, but the dragonfly one, that would be a sight. I wondered if they would have mechanical wings that moved, or wings that were stationary, attached to some sort of propulsion device. I hoped for the moving ones, wanting them to be clear enough to see through to the stars above. What would it be like to fly in the air? To touch the clouds and marvel at the world below? The closest I had ever come to flying was with my lashes, but the real thing had to be so much more exhilarating. To feel nothing above and below you, suspended only by science and human engineering, free to roam in whichever direction the wind could take you…

  On and on I looked, stealing glances toward the sky, but the inky night revealed nothing, not even under the bright blue light of the moon.

  My ribs were aching by the time we approached the edge of the roof, and my legs were beyond shaky. Actually, they felt like bundles of spasming nerves that were about to shut down in protest. But I didn’t stop as we shifted our position and angled ourselves into a spot where we could heave him sideways over the edge. We slowed to a stop a few feet from the very edge, and I turned to Alex.

  “On three?”

  He nodded, his eyes fixed on the bag between us. His face was an indiscernible mask, but I knew what he was feeling. I was feeling it too, to a lesser degree. Inside the bag was somebody’s son. Somebody’s brother. Maybe even somebody’s father. He’d attacked me, yes, and played a part in the deaths of other people, but he still had a family. He still had people who would wonder after him and miss him.