The Girl Who Dared to Think

by Bella Forrest

  “C’mon, let’s see if anyone has seen our man,” she said, grabbing my hand and pulling me over to the cart. “Akkani-kal,” she said in greeting, and I smiled—it seemed her grandmother had taught her some Cogspeech as well.

  The vendor behind the cart, an elderly man with rheumy eyes and a slight tremor in his hand, looked up at us, and smiled kindly. “Akkani-ko,” he said, his voice, still strong, coming from deep in his wide chest. “What could bring initiates of two different departments into Cogstown? How did you even get here?”

  Zoe smiled and held out her ration card. “One corn cob—and my grandmother is a Cog. She’s given me permission to access this floor for visitation.”

  The older man nodded as he pulled one of the sizzling corn cobs from the fire element. I watched him roll it in something ground up on a plate before handing it to Zoe, and realized he had added some sort of spice mixture. Zoe didn’t wait to bite into it, her white teeth flashing.

  She made a happy sound and passed the rest of it to me. I quickly finished it, and was amazed by the spicy and aromatic flavors there. It was incredible.

  “Just like my nana’s corn,” Zoe said with a smile. “Thank you.”

  The old man nodded and returned her ration card, having swiped it. “My pleasure.” He scratched his beard and held her gaze. “Why are you here, Roe?”

  “We’re looking for someone,” I said, wiping the grease off my lips and discarding the cob. “He’s about six feet tall, dark blond hair, brown eyes, not wearing any uniform. His name is Grey—Grey Farmless. Do you happen to know him?”

  He looked me up and down. “What’s he done?”

  I stepped forward, donning a smile. “Nothing that I know of, but I have some questions regarding his whereabouts a few days ago.”

  “He in trouble?”

  I frowned. This man clearly knew him, but was acting very oddly about giving us the information. I studied him for a long moment, and then realized he was keeping his hand behind the stall, hiding it. I was all too familiar with the gesture—as I constantly felt the need to hide mine.

  “May I see your wrist, Citizen?” I asked, hating myself for even pulling that card.

  The man blanched, then stuck out his wrist. An orange four glittered there.

  I studied it and studied him, then gestured for him to drop his hand. “It’s all right,” I said softly. “I’m honestly not that much higher than you. But you and I both know what it means not to be so low, and what it means if we are of service to the Tower. Grey isn’t a Cog; he’s a Hand. An ex-Hand. Where is he?”

  The man looked at me, and nodded. He jerked his head down a path to the left that had multicolored ribbons dangling overhead, diffusing some of the light filtering in from above.

  “He’s in one of the private rooms—C19, I think,” he said gruffly. “Living with an ex-doctor named Roark. Cogs-bred, that one, so I’m sure he’s not involved with Grey. Just roommates is all. Grey runs errands for him. Follow the path till you get to the quarters. On the other side of Bellows.” He pointed to the massive machine in the middle of the room, the centerpiece of the market.

  “Grandle,” Zoe said to his retreating back.

  “Slep krin tuok,” the man replied.

  I looked over at Zoe, whose eyebrows rose into her exposed scalp as she looked at the man. “We should go,” she said, grabbing my hand and dragging me down the path he had indicated.

  “How could you do that to him?” she asked after she and I had moved a sufficient distance away. “That wasn’t very nice, using his number like that.”

  I shifted guiltily. “I know,” I replied. “I didn’t like doing it either, but he was interrogating us, and I got the feeling that he wasn’t going to tell us anything if he didn’t like our answers. But I’m… I’m not very happy that I did it.”

  Zoe’s mouth turned down, and she stopped. “I thought it was the return of Princess Prim,” she admitted. “You handled it much more nicely than she would, I think, but still… it wasn’t like you. What information does this Grey guy have that you want so badly?”

  “I told you, I can’t talk about it.” For your sake, I added in my head, suddenly feeling guilty for even including her in all of this insanity. What was I even doing down here? I’d already confronted him once today. Now I was going to do it again, with Zoe. She’d know what he looked like—she could identify him if questioned. It put her at risk, especially if they found out that she had met with us. I was fine putting myself at risk, but her? I couldn’t stomach the idea. “You know what? Maybe you should go. You got me down here, but I think—”

  “Liana, what is up with you today?” Zoe asked, her eyes searching mine. “You’re acting really weird.”

  I hesitated, and then shook my head. It was too late to send her back; she was intrigued, and she wanted to at least see Grey. Maybe having her there would keep him from throwing me out, but it would also mean he would have to watch what he said. I’d have to find a way to get him alone—but maybe Zoe could help me with that.

  “All right, look… I need to talk to Grey in private,” I said softly. “The information he has, if I’m right, could be very sensitive, and I don’t want it getting out before I can do something about it.”

  “Oh.” Zoe blinked, and I could practically hear the gears in her head moving as she considered that. “Well, he’s living with someone, right? Maybe I can keep him distracted while you talk to this guy. Speaking of which… you sure you’re going to talk, or are you going to kiss him again?”

  “You’re disgusting,” I said with a laugh, shoving her in the arm. “And yeah, that seems like a reasonable plan. C19, right?”

  “That’s right,” she said. “Let’s get over there. Follow me.”

  I followed her as she began weaving through the people bustling around. She slid through them seamlessly, while everywhere I went I seemed to get jostled and bumped into, like it was some sort of sick game. Then again, it could’ve been my bright Knight uniform, which screamed that I didn’t belong.

  Suddenly the aisle narrowed considerably, dead-ending at a ladder, and Zoe began climbing it, following the signs. We had to climb up two levels, onto a grated floor that bore a resemblance to the other floors in the Tower, with the exception of the exposed girders and absence of walls, which opened the hall up on one side. Doors appeared in the wall every thirty feet or so, at first only on one side, but as the passageway continued it became boxed in by apartments on the other side too, creating a long hall. We followed the numbers into it, the lighting in this area once again dim and red. Eventually, we stopped in front of a door, “C19” emblazoned in orange paint on the front.

  “Do we just knock?” Zoe asked.

  I nodded. “It’s all we can do,” I said, reaching out to do just that.

  “It’s you,” a voice said behind me, and I whirled, my hand going to my chest as my heart began to pound in alarm. I hadn’t even heard anyone come up behind us.

  I gaped at Grey, taking in his spiked, damp hair and the bag of food in his hand, surprised to see him. He stared back, his eyes wary and cautious. After a moment he stepped up to me, and my heartbeat began to thunder in my ears, drowning out everything as he drew inexplicably close.

  For a second I imagined him kissing me, pulling me to him and doing it slowly, gently, tenderly… but then he pressed his palm to the door. It slid open, and I fell in, dragging Zoe with me.

  “Might as well come in,” Grey said as he stepped around us, not bothering to help us up. “You did come all this way.”

  10

  I looked up from where I lay flat on my back and saw his legs retreating deeper into the dwelling, bypassing a door on the right and moving through an archway into a communal living space. The smell of sulfur and chemicals hung thick in the air, and I heard Zoe sneeze twice in rapid succession.

  We helped each other up and dusted off our uniforms.

  “What do you think?” she whispered furtively. “If he is a criminal… We
ll, he is cute. I can kind of see the appeal.”

  “Shut up,” I said, my cheeks heating slightly. “Let’s go.” I tugged on the edges of my uniform to straighten it. A quick glance at my wrist showed me that the war between four and five had started again on the walk over, and I exhaled, stepping into the compartment.

  The house was warm inside, the heat of a furnace sending ripples into the air, but I kept my uniform buttoned, unwilling to show vulnerability to whoever was inside.

  Zoe followed at my heels and quickly closed the door, while I continued deeper into the dwelling. I stepped into the communal living space and paused to take a look around, expecting to see a dining room table or some kind of seating, but finding none of the usual objects one could expect. Instead, I was looking at a small, basic laboratory. A table supporting several machines I didn’t understand and lined with tubes stood in the center of the room, surrounded by tall shelves filled with specimens. An old man was leaning over the table, one eye pressed firmly to a microscope, his mouth moving as he muttered to himself.

  He looked up to grab a mug of steaming tea and take a sip before turning back to his microscope, seemingly oblivious to the two young women darkening his doorway. The old man wasn’t even sweating; he looked as calm as a cat. I heard a rattle just past him and looked up to see Grey in a small kitchen nook connected to the side of the room. That was it—just the door in the hall, and this.

  I stepped farther into the room, letting Zoe in behind me, and Grey glanced up at us as he set a head of cabbage down on a wooden block, knife in hand. “You guys want cabbage soup?” he asked as he neatly cut the cabbage in half.

  “Cabbage soup?” the old man sputtered, looking up and around. “Guys?” His eyes found us, and he paused. Then he zeroed in on my crimson Knight’s uniform, and a flash of anger consumed his face.

  “Who is this?” he snapped at Grey. “Who have you brought into my home, boy?”

  “This,” Grey said, casually pointing at me with his knife, “is Squire Castell from the Citadel. She’s the one who tried to arrest me last week. I’m sure you remember me telling you.”

  “That’s nice,” the man groused. “But that doesn’t explain why she’s here.”

  He looked around, not nearly as good at masking his emotions as Grey, and I could see the nervousness on his face plain as daylight as he examined some rows of samples. I followed his gaze, and saw nothing but liquids in a range of colors in their containers, tiny labels marking them. I took a step closer, trying to study the labels and make sense of the very small print, but he quickly grabbed the tray in front of me and clutched it to his chest.

  “My work is delicate,” he hissed. “I would like you to remove these two from my space. Immediately.”

  Grey sighed as he artfully sliced up a carrot. “She knows where we live, Roark—she could just come back.”

  “Then you need to do something about them!”

  “What would you propose I do?”

  Zoe finally found her tongue and stalked around me to look at them both, her finger pointed. “Excuse me,” she said testily, “but would you explain what the hell you mean by do something about us?”

  “We could kill them and throw them into the Depths,” the old man continued, ignoring Zoe’s statement, and I had to reach out and catch her arm before she could launch herself at him. My other hand went automatically to my baton.

  “Calm down, Zo,” I ordered, and I speared the old man with a look. “Are you threatening a member of the Knights?”

  Grey lifted his hands, knife-free. “I certainly didn’t mean kill you,” he said. “But you’re doing a lot of snooping, and it’s beginning to feel like harassment. I was thinking I should report you.”

  The man stared blankly at Grey, then shook his head and turned to me.

  “Your name,” he said flatly.

  “Squire Liana Castell, designation—”

  “I don’t need your designation,” he said, cutting me off and waving his hand irritably. I noticed the crisp blue ten on his wrist, and a trill of excitement ran up my spine. “I can tell by your expression that you’re not going to let this go, so I’ll keep it brief. My name is Roark. I’m a chemist helping to develop Medica mood adjustment therapy.”

  I blanched, thinking of the pills waiting for me back home, and he must have guessed because he raised one eyebrow. “No, not those pills. I’m conducting research on alternative methods and their effects on a user’s outlook, to see if there are other, healthier ways of helping a person’s ranking.”

  I leaned forward, unable to keep the eagerness off my face. “Have you found one?”

  He shrugged noncommittally. “I have found some interesting chemical interactions, but my work is private, sensitive, and secret.”

  Here he took the time to actually glare at Zoe, Grey, and me individually. I didn’t pay any attention to it, instead looking at the tubes now in his hand. I thought about the pill in my pocket, and Grey’s miraculous rank improvement. About how he was here in Cogstown.

  “Does the Medica have you working from here?” I asked after a moment, and he glared at me.

  “What part of ‘secret’ don’t you understand?”

  “The part where if this was Medica-sanctioned, you’d be doing it in the Medica, and not in Cogstown.”

  Roark glared at me for a long moment, and then looked pointedly at Grey, his expression thunderous.

  “It’s time for both of you to go,” Grey said, turning his gaze to me. “Roark’s tired.”

  A flare of panic rose in my chest, and I realized I might have gotten too aggressive in my questioning. I just wanted to know if there was a way for me to stop the insanity of Peace and Prim, while improving my number.

  “Wait!” Everybody stopped, staring at me. I flushed, but spoke anyway. “You said your name is Roark, right?”

  The old man nodded.

  “Roark,” I said, “I’m sorry for interrogating you, but I’m here because I need help. I want to be a Knight, you see, and the ranking requirement is—”

  Roark raised an eyebrow. “I know what it is, and I don’t care. Shields aren’t welcome in my home. Get out.”

  “Please,” I said, holding out my wrist. “They’ve got me on Peace, and it’s killing me!”

  Roark looked at my wrist for a second, seeming to notice the four/five fighting again, and then looked away. “Get this Shield out of my house, Grey.”

  I wanted to scream at him, yell at him, beg for some semblance of humanity, but Grey’s hand unexpectedly landed on my shoulder and I looked over at him, at the carefully reserved features he was holding on his face. There was nothing I could say that was going to change his mind, I realized. Suddenly, I just felt tired; this was my one chance to get away from Prim, away from losing myself to the meds—possibly even stronger meds, if they found out Peace wasn’t working—and he wasn’t going to help me.

  “Thank you for your time,” I managed after a pause, before turning slowly toward the door. “Come on, Zoe… We should go.”

  Grey just watched me leave, and I moved back out into the cool tunnel. Zoe was quiet beside me as I headed back toward the ladder, pausing when the wall disappeared, revealing the open space of Cogstown some thirty feet below. The entire Tower was one complex machine, everything serving a purpose, everything sharing a goal: keep us all alive. It was something you knew, but rarely got to see in action. All the gears, all the steam, all the electricity feeding in and out of each and every little thing. It all fit together so well, but in that moment I felt like a cog that didn’t quite fit, and I could feel the hammer coming down, trying to force me into place.

  Zoe broke the silence, nudging me with her shoulder. “Hey,” she said. “What’s really going on? You think he’s working on a cure for the Medica and slipped Grey some?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “Honestly, Zoe, this wasn’t even something I planned on reporting to the Citadel. I just was looking for a way out. I think I’m getting des
perate.”

  “I hate to say this, but you have to go to the Medica and report today,” she said with a tight nod. “If you don’t, it won’t be long before you get to two and your parents are forced to drop you.”

  As if I needed the reminder.

  “But if I go to Medica, I turn into something that isn’t me.”

  She reached out and took my hand, giving me a wry smile. “I’d rather have you alive than lose you forever to restructuring. You need to be in a department. No department means—”

  “No work,” I finished for her, looking up and watching some Cog children run fearlessly across a narrow pipe overhead, their bare feet slapping against it as they darted by with a laugh. “No food on the ration card, no service to the Tower, the fall to becoming a one taking a matter of days, depending on how optimistic you can be. I know.”

  “Sounds like a blast when you put it like that,” she quipped, and it brought the shadow of a smile to my lips. “Come on. I’ll walk you home.”

  “Hold up.”

  The voice was Grey’s. He was trotting up the hall behind us, and came to stand before me just as I turned. He was ever so slightly taller than me, and met my eyes with that warm brown gaze of his. I watched him warily, wondering what he wanted, and secretly hoping that Roark had changed his mind.

  “I’ll walk you two out of Cogstown,” he said. “They probably already know you’re here, and they might try to scare you before you leave.”

  “What? Why?” I asked, baffled by his unexpected statement. I looked at Zoe, hoping for clarification. She knew almost everything, it seemed.

  She opened her mouth to reply, but Grey beat her to it. “They don’t like outsiders here, and tend to want to make them leave afraid.”

  I laughed darkly. “You’re an outsider,” I said. “You’re a Farmer, aren’t you?”

  “Not anymore,” he said simply. “But they know me here; if I’m with you, you won’t be bothered. Besides, I doubt you’ll want to hack the elevator right out in the open in front of everyone.”