“You’re in luck that we need males in the population,” Thomas added with a wry smile.
I frowned and gave him a look, uncertain how to interpret that remark. Was he saying that women wouldn’t get in? I wasn’t sure of the numbers offhand, but if they were offering refugee status to our people, the top of my list of applicants consisted of the Paragon-takers we had been supporting. But I didn’t know how many males there were versus females. I narrowed my eyes at him, about to ask.
His sister smacked him again before I could even open my mouth, this time with a slap loud enough that his gasp of pain was believable. “Ouch,” he said, rubbing a spot on his shoulder. “Brat.”
Melissa ignored him. “My brother didn’t mean that as it sounded,” she told us. “All people are welcome. We just have to screen them for any potential threats, and then give cross-cultural training classes to prepare them for Patrian society.” She paused and gave us a small smile. “If you’re interested, of course.”
I considered her offer and didn’t hate it. Our Paragon supply was already waning, having been diluted in our attempt to manufacture more for the people we were supporting, and now that my brother had been added to the list of people who needed it, we would be out sooner rather than later. Jasper had taken a pill to run a chemical analysis on it, to help us get the formula, but he wasn’t awake, and we had no idea when he would be—or if he even still had any analysis he might have run.
Not to mention, I had been wanting to do something to help those people for a long time, and this was an opportunity to actually free them from this life. I had once considered asking them to join in the fight against the legacies, because I needed people I could trust to help us (and dependency bred a form of trust, I supposed), but this solution was far better. And it helped get that particular loose end off my plate, so I could have more worrying time for the other problems.
Maybe it was a little callous of me, but I really could use a break. This seemed like a good one, but it also wasn’t only on me. “Can we have a few minutes to talk about this, please? Alone?” Thomas and Melissa nodded and stood up. I watched them go for a second, and then on impulse asked, “Can you send in my other people while you’re at it? They need to be included in the conversation as well.”
“I can tell you’re used to being in charge,” Thomas said laughingly. “But yes, Your Championess, I will summon your people for you.” He executed a courtly bow while I flushed bright red with embarrassment. I could’ve gotten up and retrieved Quess and my twin myself, but it was habit to ask someone leaving the room to do things for me.
The privilege of power, I supposed. Had to be careful of that in the future if I was going to be dealing with a sovereign ally.
I kind of liked the sound of that, and found myself wondering what the future would hold if I could manage to pull off saving the Tower and eradicating the legacies. There were so many things that I wasn’t certain of, but one thing I did know: the intrusion of Thomas and Melissa had brought a sliver of hope into our lives. We hadn’t had that in a long time… and the future was starting to look brighter by the second.
21
“Hey, so Amberlynn Sassabee is going to be okay,” Quess announced as he entered.
I smiled at his mispronunciation of her name, and automatically corrected him with a soft “Ashabee” directed at him.
“Whatever, her name is a mouthful,” he said, dropping into the chair Thomas had been sitting in just a few moments ago. “So tell me about these aliens. I kept trying to get Helena to talk, but that girl is prickly.” He drew out the last syllable significantly, and I shot him a look.
“I hope you were nice. That was her mother you were working on,” Maddox chided, giving him a significant look. “Also, you’re one to talk, Quessian Brown.”
The look that Quess gave her was two parts smug, one part loving adoration. “Of course I was. My mama raised me right. And hey, ‘Quessian’ is exotic and cool, and brown is the best color in the world. My name rules.”
I rolled my eyes at their antics, but inside I was amused. We were all caught up in the excitement of our secret visitors, and after a long day, it was nice to be able to relax and talk about something that wasn’t legacy-related. Still, I was ever cognizant of the time. Eric was still injured, and now that Amber was stabilized, our new friends needed to leave before anyone inside the Tower took notice of them.
Which meant we had to quickly come to a decision about what to do.
“All right, guys, here’s the deal,” I told them, pausing when I saw that my brother hadn’t sat down yet. In fact, he hadn’t moved from where he had stopped when he first entered the room. “Alex?”
He looked up from the flooring of the cockpit and blinked his eyes at me a few times, as if trying to remember where he was. I shifted in my seat, preparing to get up and go to him, but he shook his head and made a halfhearted attempt to smile. An attempt that was heart-wrenching.
“Sorry,” he said, shuffling over to the other vacant seat and sitting down. “What’s going on?”
“Wait a second,” I said. “I’ve got to get Zoe in on this call.” Zoe knew the Paragon users best. She would be an invaluable source of insight for this conversation.
Leo frowned and shook his head. “That would mean removing your scrambler,” he said.
But I was already in the process of doing so, sparing a moment to take a deep breath of relief as the continuous buzzing caused by the scrambler stopped. It was a momentary relief, though, as it was going to start right back up again when I netted her.
“I know,” I replied in answer to his comment, tapping my indicator over to the net function. “But we have to risk them noticing I was up here. I’ll make something up if it is noticed, because this is more important. She and Eric know the people on Paragon. We need to clue her in. Give me a second. Contact Zoe Elphesian, M1709-C19.”
Leo’s mouth twisted into a frown, but he didn’t say anything. I waited for the net to connect and was rewarded by her voice in my ear seconds later. Where the hell are you guys, and what is taking so long?
I cringed, realizing that I should’ve netted her far sooner, and immediately apologized using the neural transmitter, so as not to clue the others in to what was going on. Besides, they were too busy flipping through the graphic novel Thomas had given us, excitement and rapt awe mirrored on their faces.
I’m sorry, Zo, I thought contritely, feeling the vague pop against my temple that signaled that the message had been sent. Is Eric okay?
He’s fine. I think. He still hasn’t woken up. And he’s very pale. But his breathing is steady, and his pulse is strong. I just wish he wasn’t so pale.
I could hear the tremor in her voice as she spoke, and my heart longed to go to her to comfort her. But I couldn’t.
He’s strong, Zoe. You know how strong he is. And he loves you. He’s not ready to leave you.
I hope you’re right, she replied. There were several seconds of dead space, followed by, So wait, what is going on? Why is it taking you so long to dump a body?
I took a deep breath, preparing to drop a bombshell on my friend. Yeah, well, about that. We have visitors. Remember those people that Roark’s wife saw? Well, their kids are here, and we’ve been helping them out. One of their people was injured.
Zoe didn’t say anything for several heartbeats, and Leo coughed, giving me a questioning look. I held my finger to my ear and signaled for him to give me a moment.
What? Zoe replied. Are you serious?
There’s more, but I’m gonna switch over to verbal conversation. Everyone is here, and you might get a lot of one-sided conversation from me, but bear with me, because I need your insight on this.
Okay… Zoe drawled. I could tell she was confused, which was fair and totally my fault, but we didn’t have time to recap everything.
“Right,” I said, leaning forward in my seat and signaling for the others to focus on me. “So here it is. The aliens have offered us a chance
to escape as refugees, and I was thinking we could send the Paragon users to them, to finally deliver on Roark’s plan of escape while relieving stress on our own supply, in case Jasper isn’t able to—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Maddox interrupted, pinning me with a confused look. “What do you mean? You want to send… only the Paragon users? What about us?”
I gaped at her, my mouth still open, and then slowly shut it, leaning back in my chair. It never crossed my mind that we would be talking about leaving ourselves. That… That wasn’t what I had in mind, and I felt completely uncertain of how to respond to her statement.
As far as I knew, we were still fighting for the destiny of the Tower. There were legacies to unearth, and Scipio was still broken. We couldn’t just leave. But as I looked from Maddox to Quess and back again, I realized that it had never occurred to me that they wouldn’t feel the same way.
“Guys,” I said, looking between the two of them. “We need to stay. The Tower… Scipio… All those people will die if we just abandon them.”
Maddox shifted in her chair and took a deep breath, her eyes going to the table. “I know that,” she replied. “But, I mean, look at where we are! We’re standing in the cockpit of a machine that can fly. Talking about a civilization that has overcome its problems already and is willing to accept us because of our situation. Liana, this is beyond anything we could’ve dreamed of or hoped for. We finally have a way out.”
“It’s what Cali and Roark wanted us to do in the first place,” Quess added before I had a chance to respond. “They didn’t want us to fight; they wanted us to survive. Think about it—we can just go, disappear and never look back. We wouldn’t have to lose anyone else, and we could be free to… to pursue whatever we wanted to! Explore, invent, learn about pre-End culture, whatever! Isn’t that better than… than going back in there and facing what we have to face on a daily basis?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. On the one hand, I understood what he was saying. I was tired. We all were. And it wasn’t just about today or yesterday. It was all of the days, every single dark one, rolled up together in the mess that our lives had become. Everything was grimmer than it had ever been, and the future was beyond nebulous.
On the other hand, I couldn’t abandon the people of the Tower. I wouldn’t. I’d made the decision long ago, and I had given my promise to Leo to help him restore Lionel Scipio’s original vision of the Tower, to the best of my abilities. When the Patrians had made their offer, I had only seen it as an opportunity to give those who wanted out their chance while relieving one of my many burdens. I had even thought about taking them up on it myself—but not until after I fixed everything.
I wasn’t leaving. Not until I finished what I started.
A part of me wanted to confront them about leaving, convince them they would be wrong to do so. Another part saw it as futile. Quess and Maddox had never hidden their true aim from me. They had always been perfectly clear. I just wished that I didn’t feel so disappointed that they hadn’t changed their minds. Disappointed and rejected, even.
But I couldn’t order them to stay, not if they didn’t want to.
“Right,” I said, shifting slightly in my seat, trying to regain some small measure of balance within myself. “Well, if you want to be included with the people who go, that’s fine. Zoe, what are your thoughts on all of this?”
You mean other than the idea that I can get my boyfriend out of here and to a place where he will never be hurt again? Yeah, I think the Paragon users will definitely go for it. Although, they’re going to have to get over the shock of learning that there’s life out there. I am totally down with getting the hell out of here before anything else goes wrong. She paused for a second, and then added, Eric’s family is going to need to be included in the refugee group. Or else he won’t go. Probably my mother as well.
I blinked. Zoe’s mother wasn’t a problem, but Eric’s family was large. All of his grandparents were alive, and with the exception of his father, the rest of his family was intact. That meant an uncle on both his father’s and mother’s sides, as well as their wives and children. And I wasn’t even going to start on the in-laws. If we took his family, we might wind up taking an entire farming floor. As much as I hated to say it, Eric was going to have to limit himself in regard to who he took with him. Not to mention, the Patrians would definitely have a say in how many of us they could take.
“Agreed,” I told her. “But there’s gonna have to be a cap on how many family members he can bring.”
There was a pause, and then Zoe sighed, the tone a musical cascade of chimes along my inner ear canal. I understand, but you know he’s not going to like it.
“I know he won’t. But we don’t know how many of our people they’re going to accept, and we already have…” I paused to do some quick math, excluding myself from the equation. “Thirty-six. That’s a lot for any nation to take on, and with Eric’s family, we’ll be pushing it to fifty.”
Silence met my remark. I said I heard you, Liana. I’ll do my best to explain it to him when he wakes up. What do you need from me?
I paused and recalibrated. It took me a moment to get my bearings, because I was still reeling with the sudden feeling that I was losing everyone. Zoe, Quess, and Maddox all wanted to go, and I was betting that if Grey was himself again, he would choose to leave as well. And their decision was out of my hands—had never been in my hands in the first place. My friends had already made up their minds. It didn’t matter what I thought.
But I could dwell on that later. For now, we needed to choose an emissary to plead our case to the Patrians. “So who’s going to go?” I asked.
“You mean, who can go,” Quess said dejectedly. “Obviously it can’t be Maddox or me, as we’re both a part of your staff and will be missed. And clearly not Leo, since he won’t want to.”
“I am perfectly content in the home my father built,” Leo agreed. “But there is a chance that Grey would like to go. He’ll certainly be able to tell us soon.” He met my gaze and then looked away, and a massive lump formed in my throat. He couldn’t be saying what I thought he was saying, could he? “I predict he’ll be awake by the end of next week, his memory fully restored.”
Scipio help me, I did not need that news right at this moment. Everyone was looking to me, seeing how I would respond, and it took far longer than it should have. “It’ll be good to have him back,” I said, forcing a fake smile to my lips. Don’t think about Leo leaving you, too, I thought to myself. I cleared my throat, trying to dislodge the rock that had formed there, and then sighed. “So Quess, Maddox, and Leo are all out. What about Zoe?”
No way, she replied automatically. I’m not leaving Eric’s side until he’s on his own two feet and coming with me wherever I go.
Of course she wouldn’t leave him behind for this. Not to mention, Lacey would notice her disappearance and think that maybe we were making a run for it. That wouldn’t be great, as she had damning evidence that seemed to prove I had tampered with Scipio during my trial against Devon Alexander (even though I hadn’t).
Alex sighed heavily and shifted in his seat. “I should be the one to go.”
My spine straightened, and I immediately began to shake my head. “Alex, no. You need to stay here, with me, so I can help you—”
“What, figure out how to keep surviving day-to-day Tower life? Or continue to be paranoid that everyone in my department is spying on me, waiting for me to mess up so they can report it to Sadie? I hate what my life has become. I hate this stupid Tower, and I just want… I want to get out. I want to do something productive for once, rather than staring at lines of code, watching Scipio degrade. Besides…” He met my gaze, his eyes filled with infinite sadness. “I’m going to drain your Paragon supply, now that I’m on it. Let me do this. Arrange a transfer for me to move into the Knights, and have Dinah push it through. No one will even notice I’m gone.”
There was a rap on the doorframe, and before I could ev
en begin to form a counterargument to my brother’s statement, Thomas was there. “So, not to rush you guys, but we really should be going. We gave you as much time as we dared, but we know the destructive force of those lasers, and we don’t want to get caught. Have you made a decision?”
I looked pleadingly at my brother, but his eyes remained fixed on his lap. “Yes,” he told the Patrian man. “I’ll be going with you. I’m Liana’s brother, Alex Castell.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, the whole world dropping away from under my feet. My brother was leaving—had decided to leave. What if he never came back? What if their flying machine failed and they crashed? What if they killed him once they took him away? What if the council turned the Tower’s defenses against them while they were leaving, and blew them out of the sky? Or worse, he got there and decided he didn’t want to come back to us? To me?
“Here,” Thomas said, close to my ear, startling me out of my despair. There was a black box cradled in the palm of his outstretched hand. “This is a communicator that will allow you to have conversations with your brother, even from this far away. Although, you might have to be outside for it to really work. But yeah, you’ll be able to talk to him whenever you want. I promise we will be back within a week, even if the council hasn’t made its determination. I’m sure they’ll side in your favor, in which case we’ll be bringing more… flying machines for an evacuation.”
I stared at it blankly. He was taking my brother and leaving me with this box. This was moving way too fast. Still, my hand reached up to numbly pluck it out of his, with a hollow “Thank you.”
He gave me a warm look, and I slowly stood up, my bones leaden. I looked at my brother, and he managed a tentative smile. “Alex, I…”
“I love you, too,” he said. And as if to prove it, he came around the table to throw his arms around me in a massive hug. “Don’t worry. I’ll figure out what kind of people they really are and make a deal for us to get out of here. Imagine it, Lily; we can be free of this awful place for good. Won’t it be great?”
The Girl Who Dared to Endure Page 17
