“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.
But I couldn’t feel guilty. Not after everything he had put us through. I reminded myself that if things had played out differently, it could’ve been him where we were standing, and any one of us in the bag. Or worse, it could’ve been Leo and Baldy in the bag.
Still, the situation didn’t sit right with me. It wasn’t guilt exactly, but something more speculative, and I found myself wondering whether Baldy and I were more alike than I cared to admit. I did what I did to protect my adopted family, and I had to imagine that in some dark way, he did what he did for his. He’d been willing to kill himself to prevent Leo from learning his secrets; wouldn’t I do the same thing in his shoes?
Yes, but it wasn’t the same, I told myself firmly. I wasn’t like him. We weren’t like him.
We didn’t kill to try to control things, but to defend ourselves.
And it occurred to me that my brother and I were both culpable in shooting Baldy. Because Alex may have caused me to pull the trigger, but it had been my finger on the gun, tightened to the point that a fraction of a centimeter had set it off. I felt I should tell him that, to let him know that we were both in this together, but I had no idea whether it would even reach him.
I wasn’t even sure where he was right now.
“One,” I breathed, drawing the bag back and then forward with the others. The material of the bag rustled, and I tried to block out the fact that we were dumping a man’s body off the side of the Tower.
“Two.” The weight was awkward, shifting back and forth in a way that made me picture his arms and legs rag-dolling inside, his head lolling on a neck with a bullet hole in it.
“Three.” I let go, the fabric slipping from my fingers as the bag flew up and over the edge, into open air. It hung for a second, and then gravity took hold, gently tugging it down and away.
I flicked my wrist and threw a lash line down against the glass pane behind me, creating a safety line, and then sidled toward the edge and looked down. The bag had already fallen at least a hundred feet and continued to plummet. The trajectory angled to the right slightly, a crosswind clearly pushing the bag and corpse over, but it wasn’t by much.
All too soon, the bag became indiscernible from the velvet darkness below, and I closed my eyes… and truly owned up to my part in Baldy’s death. I had left Leo alone, and hadn’t been there when Baldy had taken control. I had been pointing a gun at him when Alex hit my hand. I had been ready to pull the trigger if he made even the slightest move to hurt me or my friends.
He hadn’t been a good man, and I hadn’t wanted him to die without facing a trial for his crimes first. Still, what was done was done, and we had company coming. The outsiders were going to be here any second, and we needed to be on the other side of the roof before they arrived.
“C’mon,” I whispered to the others, turning my back to the edge. “Let’s go.”
We made our way over to where Leo and Quess were working to disrupt the sensors. If they couldn’t disable them before the aliens arrived in their flying machine, then the entire council would be alerted to their presence, and I wasn’t sure I could keep the other councilors from attacking them.
I continued to scan the skies as we moved, trying to find some shape or shadow to tell me where they were, but as the minutes ticked by, I grew more and more concerned. Had something happened to them? Had they changed their minds and turned back? Was this a ruse just to see if anyone was still inside the Tower, or even a prelude to an attack?
“What’s taking so long?” Maddox breathed explosively, and I realized she was feeling exactly the same way.
“I don’t know,” I said, trying not to let my nervousness show. “It really has been a long time. I think—”
My words were cut off as a sudden gust of wind exploded out of nowhere, strong enough to make my hair whip like tiny lashes against the skin of my face. I threw up an arm to cover my eyes at the stinging dust the wind kicked up, the force of it strong enough to make it difficult to breathe.
I reached out for Maddox and Alex, terrified the wind would somehow push us back or off the edge, but then the wind just died down, softening to a gentle breeze. I straightened slowly and frowned, bewildered by the rapid shift in weather. Looking around to make sure Quess and Leo were okay, I was surprised to see them still hunched over, their own arms held over their heads. Dust swirled around them, their hair still whipping in the chaos. Something about it was off, however, and it took me several seconds to figure out what.
It was the direction of the wind. It had come up so quickly that I hadn’t noticed it—I’d just been concerned about our safety. But now that I was paying attention, I realized that the wind was being generated from above. My eyes looked up, searching the area just over Quess and Leo, and after a handful of heartbeats, I could see it: a dim, dark outline that blocked a patch of the night sky, moving slowly away from the two men to hover over the area we had designated, just beyond where Quess and Leo were cowering under the torrential wind. And I realized that I was looking at a flying machine.
The body was long and wide, reminding me of an oversized boat. I could make out four arms, or wings, as the case may be, and could tell from their glimmer that there were exposed propellers in them, which allowed me a view of the sky through the blur of machinery inside. From nose to tail, it had to be at least fifty feet long. The wings at the side looked positively comical compared to the body—they were so short and stubby that it seemed impossible that they were keeping the heavy underbelly aloft—and yet there it was, slowly sliding forward, dozens of feet above our heads. The body began to turn around in place, and the light of the moon cut a white, reflective light against a glass bubble at the nose. I could see a dark figure backlit by lights inside, though details were hard to make out.
But what impressed me most was that it didn’t make any sound whatsoever. Short of the wind it was kicking up by whatever process it used to fly, there was nothing, not even a whisper of noise.
But then again, we were still fifty feet away from Quess and Leo, and an additional fifty from where the vessel was slowly easing itself down onto the roof, still rotating, the nose disappearing from view.
As fascinating as it was to watch, my brother’s sharp intake of air and Maddox’s gasp jerked my attention from it, and I realized that we were all gaping like a bunch of loons. Any minute, that thing would land, and if we were standing here like several slack-jawed idiots, they would never respect us.
“C’mon,” I told the others, already moving away from them. I glanced back at them, paused when I saw them still staring, and added a quick, “La-dee-dah, they can fly. Bet they don’t have a sweet Tower like we do.” That earned me two surprised smiles, and they poured on a little speed to catch up to me. We walked quickly, and even though I wanted to keep a cool exterior in front of the aliens, I couldn’t help but watch the machine continue to land, captivated by all the details that came into view. It was a dark gray, but there was white lettering on the rear, painted over what appeared to be a door. It read C4-137 in tight, perfect print, and underneath it, in elegant script, were the words The Nautilus. The name of their machine, maybe?
I made a mental note to ask, provided the first exchange went well, and found myself smiling. Today had been long and filled with calamity and chaos, but everything else paled in comparison to what was about to happen. We were going to meet people who weren’t from the Tower. An entirely different group of people, with their own culture and beliefs, and I was betting that I would have more questions than just the name of the ship by the time we were through.
> We reached Leo and Quess as the ship was settling on the top of the roof with a metallic groan that came from some metallic struts at the bottom. The sound was so loud, I immediately cringed. We might have shut off the sensors, but anyone beneath us would definitely hear such a loud noise, and could come up to investigate.
“Liana, do you even see this thing?” Quess asked, his voice filled with the awe and delight of a small child. “Did you see it fly?”
I could tell that his clever mind was already trying to memorize the details and figure out the physics involved, but I needed him focused. “We all did,” I told him. “But let’s not stand around staring at them like idiots. We have no idea what to expect once they come out, so be alert. Watch them, and if they try anything funny…” I trailed off, fighting the urge to look over my shoulder. I was sincerely hoping it wouldn’t come to that. I wanted to believe that they hadn’t lied, and that I hadn’t fallen prey to some sort of elaborate trick.
But I held my breath as the back of the ship began to open from the top, the rectangular door slipping from its groove and opening down and out, toward us, to form a ramp. Bright light streamed from the edges, growing wider, and I took a few steps toward it, drawn by the marvel in front of me.
The light eventually hit the glass panels that made up the roof, creating a halo of light around the opening as the door finished its decent, the edge of it hovering only an inch or two from the ground. Two dark figures stood in stark contrast against the light, one male, one female. I couldn’t see any features because of the light in front of them, save for the woman’s deep, brick-red hair, while the man was just as dark as the shadow he was cutting.
Sucking in a deep, calming breath, I squared my shoulders and moved forward. The others followed, maintaining a tight grouping with me, and the figures at the top of the ramp stepped down, heading toward us.
I was so obsessed with trying to catch a glimpse of their faces that I jumped when Leo whispered, “Liana, they have guns.” My eyes tracked down, and sure enough, I could see the outline of a gun on each of their hips. If I had been anyone else from the Tower, I would’ve ignored them, not knowing what they were.
But I did know, and the realization that they had come out armed did not fill me with a lot of reassurance. We were giving them help, not trying to steal from them.
I slowed to a stop a few feet from the base of the ramp and held up one hand so the others would stop. That forced the two figures to pause, and I pointed at their hips. “Lose the guns,” I told them firmly, in a no-nonsense voice.
The woman, her face still a mask of shadows, cocked her head. “You know what guns are?” she called back. Her voice had been the reasonable one on the radio, I realized. The calmer one. I considered the question, and then met it with one of my own.
“Why do you assume we wouldn’t?”
I asked the question to buy me some time, and to make them rethink things, but based on her question, I was even more certain that these were the same people who had been here twenty-five years ago. The only reason for them to assume we didn’t know was for them to have intimate knowledge of this place, so the fact that they had an opinion on whether we would know what guns were…
Meant these might be the very people Roark’s wife Selka had met.
The two people on the ramp exchanged looks, something silent passing between them, and then they looked down. “We’ll keep the guns,” the man announced in a deep, rich voice that immediately had my skin tingling with awareness.
I turned my attention to him and raised an eyebrow. “I’m not the one who has an injured person needing medical assessment. You’ll lose the guns, or else.”
“Or else what?” he demanded in a voice that was one part arrogance, two parts teasing humor. For some reason, it hit me the wrong way, and before I knew it, my gun was in my hand, my arm stretched out so that it was pointing at him. Maybe I was tired from the extraordinarily long day I’d had, or impatient because I wanted to get home and put everything behind me, but either way, I needed to make a point to them: I wasn’t messing around when it came to the safety of my people.
“This,” I told him, pulling back the hammer of the gun with a sharp click. For a second they stood motionless, and then their hands slowly began to rise into the air. “You don’t know me yet, but let me make this clear. My people’s safety is my one and only concern. If you expect us to help you, then I am telling you to throw the guns away.”
The two were quiet for several long seconds, and I stood there, holding a gun on them both. “If we get rid of our guns, then you must get rid of yours,” the girl finally said, her eyes darting between me and Leo. I glanced over at him and saw he had drawn his weapon as well, but wasn’t holding it as high up as I was, just pointed in the general vicinity.
I considered it, and then shook my head. I wanted to ascertain whether they had been here before, and I had to be certain they weren’t lying about it. It was dangerous, keeping a gun on them, and not exactly inviting, but they could have answers I needed. I was certain that someone from the Tower—one of the people who had been there when they arrived—was responsible for what was going on now. Even more certain that they had escalated the legacy group’s plan for the Tower, based on the visitors from the outside. But I didn’t have access to the records to prove it. And if these people knew and could tell me who was there, then that was something I could use. But I had to maintain a reason for them to tell me.
“Not yet. I have some questions for you.”
“What sort of questions?” the man asked, his tone neutral this time. “We have an injured woman on board.”
I hadn’t forgotten, and I definitely didn’t want to drag this out any longer than I had to. But this was important; it could help me find another legacy, possibly the one who was in charge of everything. “Your people have been here before, haven’t you?”
The two exchanged another silent look. “We have no idea what you’re talking about,” the man replied. “We’ve never been here before.”
He was lying. Or if not lying, manipulating the truth in some way. His last sentence had included the word “we,” which could mean just the two of them, or all the people on the vessel who had never been to the Tower. But it didn’t change the fact that they knew things about our lasers and the lack of guns, which was an indication that they’d had some sort of contact with the Tower. Or they knew someone who had.
“Let me try it like this,” I offered as I lowered the gun some. “Twenty-five years ago, someone you knew or someone famous to you discovered the Tower and then took home stories about it. I’m guessing that the area was made off-limits to you for some reason, but in a desperate moment, you reached out to us because you know that we have excellent medicine. You decided that it was worth taking the risk of being blown out of the sky.”
There was a long pause, and then the man took a few steps closer to me. I kept my gun pointed low, toward his legs, but still high enough that I could shoot him, just in case he tried anything. As he slid closer, the details of his face became clearer, first revealing a square jaw, darkened with the beginnings of a beard, and then a strong, straight nose. Just his sheer physical size was enough to be overwhelming, but as he turned into the light, what made my breath catch and my heart spasm was a pair of light gray eyes rimmed in long, sooty lashes. They sparkled with a deep intelligence and cunning, as if he were sizing me up for signs of weakness. “Who are you?”
I met his gaze head on and offered him a tired and lopsided smile. “Me? I’m just the girl who’s going to save your ass and keep you alive. Now, are you going to answer my question and tell me the truth, or are we going to stand here playing games?”
18
A soft breeze kicked up as the man and I squared off in our silent battle of wills. I wasn’t sure why, but I didn’t feel like backing down was an option at this point. I had laid out my terms, and they knew what was at stake.
But that didn’t stop me from feeling queasy at t
he thought of an injured woman being on board the ship, possibly dying while this exchange went on. I didn’t want anyone to lose their mother, especially to violence. The wound it left was a raw, gaping, thing—even if our relationship hadn’t been that great.
That meant a compromise.
Of sorts.
“While you’re busy pondering that little enigma,” I started, keeping my voice low, “I would like to send my medic and a guard on board. But I need to know how many other people there are before I do.”
The gray eyes boring holes into my own blinked in surprise, and his brows drew together. “You’re… still going to help her?”
I pulled my face into a carefully placed mask, so I revealed nothing, and choked out the only words I could think of that would make him understand. “My mother died less than a week ago.”
His head cocked inquisitively, and I met his gaze without flinching, trying not to let him see how much saying those words had cost me. In fact, my mother had died five days ago, and trying to pretend that wound wasn’t there, on top of being drained mentally, physically, and emotionally, was a herculean effort.
But somehow, I managed.
The girl took a few hesitant steps down the ramp, reached out to wrap her hand around his arm, and stepped delicately around him. As her features came into view, I realized there was a striking resemblance between them. Not in their coloring; her hair was picking up just enough ambient light for me to see that it wasn’t red like I had initially thought, but a rich chocolate color that turned red in the right light, while her almond-shaped eyes were a luminescent green, so bright they practically glowed like a cat’s. She gave me a sympathetic look, but her next words were for the man beside her, and rich with sadness.
“Check out her eyes, Thomas. She’s got the look.”
I frowned and shifted my eyes back and forth between them. “What look?”
The Girl Who Dared to Think 6: The Girl Who Dared to Endure Page 14
