The Girl Who Dared to Rise

by Bella Forrest

  If only I had been able to keep Ambrose safe. If only Tian hadn’t been attacked by a group of men. If only I’d spared five minutes to go and get Maddox and Ambrose, instead of racing off with Leo on my own. Would he still be alive? Had this all been a ploy to draw us away from him… and had I stupidly fallen for it?

  Lacey stopped in front of Lieutenant Zale and speared him with a look. “What is going on?” she demanded again.

  He gave her a considering look, his eyebrows drawing together. “Ambrose Klein has been murdered, and we found Liana Castell and Grey Farmless with the body after the alarm went off.”

  I frowned. Now that he mentioned it, I realized I hadn’t heard the alarm that rang whenever anyone died unexpectedly. It should’ve been blaring through the entire section… but the halls had been silent when we arrived, and they were still silent.

  So then… how had he known that Ambrose was dead?

  Lacey picked up on it, too, and lifted a slim black eyebrow into an arched point. “Alarm?” she asked, looking around.

  Zale frowned and blinked. “Somebody must have turned off the speakers on the floor,” he said. “I’ll have the techs look into it. In the meantime—”

  “You’ll have the techs look into it,” Lacey repeated slowly. “This isn’t something you’d already thought of? Your investigation must be ongoing, then, if you’re still exploring answers to questions like that.”

  “Yes, our investigation just started, but it seems to me that—”

  “Seems?” she cut in, one brow twitching slightly. “I assume that whatever you tell me next will be delivered in the form of cold, hard evidence. Otherwise, I’m going to question your role in this investigation.”

  Lieutenant Zale opened his mouth and then breathed deeply in and out, slowly, as if summoning patience. “Lacey, I do not appreciate—”

  “It’s Engineer Green,” she spoke over him smoothly, giving him a faux smile.

  I was impressed; she seemed so cool and unaffected, but I was watching her closely, and I saw the tightness around her eyes and lips, her face a touch paler than normal. She was keeping a lid on it… but Lacey struck me as a still-waters-run-deep kind of woman, and I could only imagine how much self-control she was using.

  Why was she doing it? She had every reason to let Zale drag me away. I had failed to keep Ambrose alive. I had failed to prevent her cousin’s murder. And she had planned for this contingency—had fabricated evidence that I was certain would stick. She’d told me she had. All she had to do was turn it over, and she’d get her revenge.

  Maybe that’s what she was still planning on doing, after she had an opportunity to gloat. A part of me hoped that was the case; at the very least, I would be able to plead for the lives of my friends.

  Oh God, my friends. Zoe and Eric had been with her when I last saw them, and that had only been half an hour ago. They had still been looking for Tian after her panicked net transmission that someone was after her—which had led us to a mess of dead bodies. Leo and I had just made it back in time to discover that Ambrose was dead.

  How had Lacey found out and made it up here so fast?

  My eyes dropped to her overalls and shirt, and to my surprise, I saw a light dusting of sweat coating her neck and the exposed areas of her chest. The short-sleeved white shirt she wore had clear signs of staining around her armpits. That would have been fine on anyone from the Mechanics Department, but considering I had seen her not too long ago, in an entirely different part of the Tower…

  My instincts told me she had run up here. But how had she known to do so?

  “Engineer Green,” the Lieutenant said woodenly. “I appreciate your interest in this case, but this is a matter for the Knights. You’re out of your jurisdiction.”

  “Correction, Lieutenant,” Lacey said smugly. “With the Tourney still going on, the council oversees the day-to-day operations of the Knights. We act as the Champion until a new one can be selected. Now, I assume at this very early stage in your investigation, you have at least gotten Ms. Castell’s and Mr. Farmless’s alibi. What do you need from me to confirm it? Will a written statement do?”

  Zale’s frown deepened, and he blinked several times in confusion at her sudden shift in questions. “Confirm… it?”

  I was equally baffled, and I looked up at Lacey, wondering where she was going with this. Concern rippled through me at the idea that she was going to reveal our relationship in order to save me. I had been with her before coming back and discovering Ambrose’s body. She had been helping me and my friends search for Tian—but that had been as a favor to us, to keep Tian out of the hands of our enemies.

  She would risk exposing our relationship by admitting to being my ally, and I honestly couldn’t understand why. It was unexpected, really, really unexpected considering the circumstances, because it could expose her to her enemies. Especially if Lieutenant Zale was what I thought he was: Devon’s former ally. She had to have a better idea up her sleeve. She was clever.

  And has just lost a family member, a voice inside me whispered, and I realized it was right. Lacey might not be thinking clearly. If she slipped up…

  “Indeed. One of the Cog children wandered away from a class tour today, and his net malfunctioned. The child was lost, and I ordered my men and women to start looking for him, before he got hurt. Liana’s friend and one of my Cogs, Zoe Elphesian, reached out to her to ask for her help, and she came to do just that.”

  It was hard not to gape at her. She lied beautifully, giving the information with just the right emotional tick—but not so much that it seemed forced. Almost tired, slightly annoyed, but mainly just matter of fact.

  Zale regarded her for a long moment. “There was no report of a missing child.”

  “Because I thought it more expedient to move quickly, rather than file a report.”

  “And did you recover him?”

  “Yes,” Lacey said with a firm nod, not even batting an eye. “He was fine, and should be on his way to the Medica right now for a new children’s net. Now, would you like me to provide you with witnesses, or are you willing to admit that Ms. Castell and her friend here are victims of circumstance?”

  Zale stared at her, and I held my breath, watching him and trying to get a read on him. If he was disappointed or angry, it could be a sign that he was working with a legacy group—and had failed at his attempt to fix their little “Liana” problem.

  Then again, he could just hate me for killing Devon.

  Either way, though, he wouldn’t fight her—that much was clear from the now-relaxed grip on my arm. The other Knight was still holding it, but barely, and I could have broken free if I wanted to. Lacey and I had together convinced the Knights, so if Zale pressed, he risked not only revealing his bias against me, but also his standing in the Tourney. Part of the Tourney was a popularity contest, and toward the end, the Knights would be given an opportunity to vote on who they wanted to lead them next.

  If he insisted on arresting me, he would lose them. Because they’d realized he was wrong.

  But his face never really moved beyond that slow, considering look. “I suppose they are,” he said, giving a nod to the Knights flanking Leo and me. Seconds later the cuffs were off, and I was rubbing my wrists. I wanted to give Lacey a grateful look, but knew that she hadn’t done it for us.

  If Lacey wanted us free, it wasn’t because she wanted to be nice to us. It was because she wanted to punish us herself.

  And I really couldn’t blame her. Ambrose was dead, after she’d gone out of her way to free me, to give me a new life and the mission of keeping him safe in the Tourney.

  I had failed. She had every right to be angry.

  Lieutenant Zale cleared his throat and gave her an expectant look. “Has the council been notified?”

  “I am filling them in as we speak,” she replied, her tongue darting over her lips. “Scipio is processing and researching the protocols, but we’ve already decided that we will have to find someone else
to run point on the investigation. You were Devon’s Lieutenant, and you’re a candidate in the Tourney, so the consensus is to hand it over to someone else.”

  She spoke as if the conversation were really happening, and then I felt like an idiot, because of course it was. At one point in our history, citizens had had implants that allowed them to make net calls without using their vocal cords. But creating them was difficult, and the crystals they had used were hard to cultivate. They’d been slowly phased out over the years. My parents had received them when they became Knight Elites, but now they were only available to the highest positions in each department, and the council members themselves. Which meant that while she had been getting us freed, she had also been holding a completely different conversation with the other councilors. And we hadn’t even noticed.

  Zale’s jaw tightened slightly, but that was it; the rest of his face might as well have been granite. “I understand. LaSalle?”

  The Knight next to me took a step forward. “Yes, sir?”

  “Please take over the investigation, and pass all findings on to Scipio for the council, until they notify you who will be taking point on the investigation.”

  LaSalle straightened his back and saluted with a fist over his heart. “It will be done.” He spun around and marched back toward Ambrose’s apartment, already giving orders on how to properly collect the evidence.

  Then he moved to one side, and the Medics emerged, a gurney hovering between the two of them bearing Maddox’s form.

  They had put a mask over her face, and it was fogging up with her sharp pants. The Medics were leaning over her as the gurney moved forward, talking over each other as they administered aid.

  “—Punctured a lung—”

  “—Administering adrenaline—”

  “—Air in chest cavity—”

  “—Need to hurry—”

  They raced by, their hands moving over her and opening her suit, and my heart leapt into my throat. Her one good eye was still open, a look of fear and confusion on her face. She kept reaching up toward the mask and gasping in sharp pants, but the male Medic pushed her hand away, keeping her from speaking. My heart ached, and I realized that she wanted to try to tell us who had done this to her, but they weren’t letting her. Which meant they didn’t think she was going to make it—not if they didn’t get her to the Medica quickly.

  And then they were gone, racing down the hallway toward the elevator bank. My feet were already moving of their own accord, the compulsion to follow her, to be there with her so she didn’t have to go alone, too strong for me to ignore.

  But I didn’t make it three steps before Lacey was in front of me, blocking my path. “You are going to tell me what the hell happened to Ambrose,” she ground out evenly, her eyes flashing with the promise of a great and terrible anger, the likes of which I had never seen before.

  2

  Her voice was like a loud shout in my ears, and I took a quick glance around the corridor, checking to see if anyone else had heard her. Zale had moved a few feet away with the Knight who had been escorting Leo, and the only other people in the hall besides us were the two Knights fiddling with the security panel on Ambrose’s door.

  I stared at them for a second or two, idly wondering if they would find anything of significance, and then turned back to Lacey. “We shouldn’t talk here,” I said, my voice coming out more confident than I expected. “C’mon.”

  In truth, I was terrified. Even as I turned, my knees were beginning to fill with gelatin, making them weak and wobbly. My heart pounded hard in my chest, and I could feel the force of it in all of my extremities, making everything quiver inside.

  I summoned up the icy coldness that had helped me stand against Zale, using it to add steel to my spine. I knew I couldn’t keep this up for long—cracks were beginning to form in the shell I had crafted around myself. But I had to keep going. Lacey was another threat, and until I knew what she planned to do with us, I couldn’t give in to the pain that was threatening to tear me apart.

  Also, she didn’t need me breaking down on her. She was already hurting, and had more of a right to be than I did. I needed to keep it together for her sake. And beyond everything else, I owed her an explanation. I owed her an apology—not that there were enough words in the world to make up for the pain my mistakes had brought her.

  Besides, I needed to make sure that no matter what she did to me, my friends would get out of this alive. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get her to agree to that, but I was going to figure it out.

  I opened the door to my apartment and stepped in, sliding my back against the wall in the entryway to let her and Leo through. Leo gave me a concerned look as he stepped past me, and for a second, I wanted nothing more than to stop him and pull him in for a hug.

  I squashed the impulse almost immediately, attributing the momentary weakness to my exhaustion and shock. Thinking things like that about Leo was wrong, and I had to remind myself, over and over, that Leo wasn’t Grey.

  Don’t mistake me—I liked Leo. He was a source of calm in the chaos of our world. Watching him unfold and learn to enjoy all the little things that humans did… It made me exquisitely happy for him, even if it came with a touch of sorrow. I had come to rely on the steadfast machine, both as a moral touchstone and as a genuine friend.

  Especially given his sacrifice in implanting himself into Grey’s body. The terminal that made up his home was now gone—destroyed by a virus that Ezekial Pine had downloaded into it, in order to kill Leo and keep him from interfering with his plans to kill Scipio. By placing himself inside the net and then inside Grey’s head, Leo had left that terminal to its fate, and put his own existence in jeopardy.

  Because without a place to sustain him, he would eventually die.

  Just like Scipio was doing at this very moment. It seemed Ezekial’s plan had paid off, albeit hundreds of years later, because the great AI was now failing. My brother had discovered that massive chunks of data had been ripped away from Scipio, leaving only fragments of his personality to hold everything together.

  Of course, Leo wanted to do something to help him, but knew he couldn’t do it alone. He had asked me to help him, and, in spite of my desire to leave the Tower for good, I had agreed. It turned out I couldn’t leave—not when I knew that everyone inside the Tower would die if something wasn’t done.

  Suddenly I realized I had been staring at Leo a touch too long, and the concern in his eyes had deepened considerably. He opened his mouth, my name forming on his lips… and something inside warned me that hearing my name in Grey’s voice right then would put a crack in the cold armor I had built for myself. I needed the sweet embrace of logic if I was to focus on what was in front of me—and only that. I had no more room for pain, even an old one.

  So I turned a cold shoulder to him, ignoring him completely. It was rude of me, and I would apologize later, but for now… it was going to take every scrap of strength I had left to deal with Lacey.

  My eyes found her frame in the doorway, but she had paused mid-step over the threshold, her head swiveled around and staring through the open door of the opposite apartment. I shifted my gaze past her, into the apartment, and paled when I saw Knights moving Ambrose’s still form, loading him into a body bag.

  The sight of them touching him, moving his body, without any protest or argument from him, made my heart seize up in spite of the walls I had crafted around myself. A protest at the clinical way in which they were putting him in the bag half formed in my throat, but I swallowed it down, focusing instead on Lacey. If I was upset, then she was probably devastated—and she definitely didn’t need to be seeing that.

  On impulse, I reached out and grabbed her wrist, jerking her inside, past me. She was so absorbed in watching Ambrose that I caught her off guard, and she stumbled across the threshold. I hit the panel next to the door and sealed it.

  “You don’t need to see that,” I said roughly, my throat tight.

  I turned and fac
ed Lacey. The woman’s back was now to me, Leo as still as a statue a few feet from her. She stood motionless for several long heartbeats, and then whirled. It was all I could do not to break down and cry at the look of heart-wrenching loss in her dark brown eyes. The edges of the mask that she had maintained in the hall were cracking.

  “What. Happened.” The words were squeezed out through a tight throat, raw and vulnerable and angry, and Lacey’s face told me she wouldn’t tolerate any more delays.

  And yet, I couldn’t make the words form. I kept trying to find a starting point, but couldn’t pick a place. I had lost my grip on that ice-cold determination, and was now floundering. I had to get control back. I couldn’t break down here.

  Luckily, Leo was there to buy me time. “We returned to the Citadel, as you requested,” he began formally. “We decided to go talk to Ambrose and Maddox about the challenges for the Tourney tomorrow.” He shifted his gaze from Lacey to me, Grey’s warm brown eyes quizzical. I knew what he was asking: he wanted to know if I was going to jump in.

  I was. I couldn’t be a coward about this. “Whatever we missed, we missed it by mere minutes,” I announced softly, somehow managing to summon up that frozen demeanor. “When we entered, the room showed signs of a struggle. I found Maddox first, near the kitchen. She was confused, and tried to fight me. She couldn’t give me any details about what happened, but I could see she was badly injured. Then Grey called me from the common room. Ambrose was there, lying on his back. He…” I trailed off, my voice suddenly deserting me.

  Lacey’s face hardened and she stared at me intently, tears glistening in her eyes. “Say it,” she said through clenched teeth.

  I sucked in a shuddering breath, trying not to get sick. “He was…” Again, my throat tightened, constricting around the last word. I clenched my teeth together, curling my hands into fists. “He was already dead.”

  Lacey’s face was transfixed, but a tremor ran through her body. Her stiff arms and rigid spine lost their tension as the trembling continued. I watched as the planes of her face morphed from anger to terror, and then despair, the edges of her mouth, her nose, her eyebrows, her cheeks, all pulling inexorably down, reflecting the collision course her heart was undergoing. She hadn’t wanted to believe it, not even staring it in the face. But now… now she had to.