The Girl Who Dared to Think

by Bella Forrest

  I watched as he settled onto the floor and began staring up at the ceiling with a frustrated look on his face. He never gave any indication that he had seen me, confirming my suspicion that the glass was one-way. I felt a brief flash of anger as I realized the Knights not only murdered, but they did it like cowards. Then I put the feeling aside. Anger wouldn’t help me or Grey now. The glass was one-way, and that was a good thing, I hoped. I wasn’t sure how yet, but there was an advantage, I was sure about it.

  I thought of Grey and wondered if he knew that just beyond the vents, a mass of poison was waiting for him. Then I thought of myself and hoped I’d be enough to stop it.

  He’s yours to kill.

  Those words echoed around in my head until they were all I could hear.

  I couldn’t remember walking back to the elevator. Nor getting off at my level and entering my home. I didn’t remember taking off my uniform, crumpling it into a ball, and tossing it away. All I could remember was feeling cold, like an icy needle had been plunged into my heart and frostbite was radiating down into the rest of me, threatening to petrify me to a block of ice.

  I came to in my bed, the blankets hauled up over my head and my knees drawn to my chest. The reality was there, unforgotten, but somehow I managed to channel the ice that had been threatening to freeze me earlier into some semblance of control.

  “Contact Alex Castell, IT47-4B,” I said aloud, tapping the indicator with my finger, and I felt the net buzz under my command. It was dangerous to reach out this way, but I had to trust that Alex would immediately delete the conversation between us as soon as it was finished. He would’ve done it last time, after mentioning the problem with Scipio. And he would do it again.

  The net buzzed, and then a soft computer voice informed me that he was unavailable. I felt a burn of annoyance—he could always remotely activate my indicator to connect his call, but, I didn’t have that ability, which meant, to be fair, he needed to take the damn net whenever it was me. I almost tried again, but stopped when I realized that if I pushed too hard it would draw too much attention. I canceled the order and ran a hand down my face, trying to think of a way to get in touch with him without drawing attention to myself.

  A soft knock on the door sounded, and I looked up, my heartbeat increasing. Gerome changed his mind and is making me do it tonight, I thought, and I trembled and scooted away from the door.

  “Liana?” My mother’s voice was muffled through the door, but I was instantly relieved to hear it. She’ll know what to do.

  I got up and crossed over to the door. I almost threw it open immediately, but caution held me back. I couldn’t explain it, but something told me to wait to see what my mother wanted before blurting out the problems I had with what I had seen today.

  I pushed the button, and the door slid open, revealing both my parents standing there, their faces expectant. I was immediately on guard.

  “Aren’t you both supposed to be on duty?” I asked, realizing the time.

  They looked at one another, then smiled at me.

  “Gerome told us you were performing your first expulsion today,” my mother said, and I blanched.

  “We wanted to be here for you when you got home, but it seems you beat us here,” my father said, his voice soft. He stepped forward, his eyes careful but undeniably excited. “How did it go?”

  I stared at them, too horrified to speak. They knew. They did it.

  “With Gerome,” my father added, tilting his head. “Did I get the day wrong?”

  “No, dear,” my mother said. “It was today. Gerome netted me a confirmation.” She angled her head toward me. “Did something come up?”

  “No.” It was easy enough to get the word out, because I was screaming it on the inside. There was a bitterness to it, if I thought about it. Of course they knew about it. Of course they had done it. They were Knight Commanders, and Gerome’s equals (although Father had trained him). They had always known. Why else would they be so eager to put me in the Medica? They had known the fate that would have been in store for me if I hadn’t improved my ranking. If I hadn’t met Grey and gotten those pills. And now he was going to die, and they expected me to kill him.

  “I didn’t do it,” I finally told them, my gaze meeting theirs headlong in open challenge.

  My mother’s eyes flashed in alarm at the defiance I’m sure she saw there, but my father nodded sympathetically. “Gerome had a hard time at first, as well,” he said. “He’s a compassionate man, as you are a compassionate young girl. Believe me, dear, after this time you don’t ever have to do it again, if you don’t want to.”

  “I don’t?” I asked. “Then what if I don’t want to hurt anyone the first time? Dad, this is wrong.”

  “No, this is as Scipio has ordered.”

  “It’s murder,” I spat, and once again I was rewarded with the fiery brand of a hand across my cheek. And she didn’t hold back.

  “I am ashamed of you,” my mother declared. “You don’t even know all the tragedies this Tower has suffered because of a one’s plot to destroy it. Black lung, a virus created in the first fifty years of the Tower, cost us half the population, most of them children. A one created it. You think when Scipio finally made the decision to start doing this we weren’t all shocked by it? That I wasn’t appalled? But this is the bottom line. This is who we are. We serve this Tower, and we keep it safe, by any means necessary.”

  I stared at her for a long moment, and then looked away. She must’ve interpreted it as a sign of me backing down, but in reality, I just couldn’t look at her anymore without feeling like I was looking at a monster.

  “I’m sorry I hit you, Liana,” my mother said after a pause, her breath coming out as a tired sigh. “I know this isn’t easy for you, but this is what you must do to join the Knights and fulfill your duty to Scipio. He clearly has faith you can do it, so take the time you need, and then do your job. If you cannot, then there will be no home for you in the Citadel, and we will be powerless to help you once you leave for another department. Do you understand?”

  I met her gaze long enough to nod once, and then my hand reached out and slapped the button, shutting the door between us. I heard a muffled exchange of their voices, followed by the sound of them walking away, and flicked on the magnetic lock.

  I walked back over to my bed. Sat on it. Crossed my legs and started to think about what I could do. With Alex unavailable, I had to figure out a way to break Grey out by myself.

  The only way to get them to spare him was to get his number up. I looked over at the bottle of pills he had given me. If I could get one inside, then maybe...

  I dismissed the thought immediately. His ranking would never naturally go up that high under those conditions. It wouldn’t be believable, and they could kill him anyway.

  That meant another trip to Cogstown to talk to Roark. I doubted the old man wanted to see me again, but I was fairly certain I was going to need his help. Which meant I needed to involve Zoe.

  Which meant I needed to tell her everything.

  I sighed and turned toward the window, looking at the view outside, but only seeing the woman’s eyes waiting for me. I put my hand against the window, and as I did so the nine there flickered, blurring... and then cracked. A one appeared on my wrist, bright and red and angry. It took me a moment to realize what was about to happen, and then I was fumbling for the bottle, opening it and spilling several pills into my hands. I got one in my mouth and dry swallowed, then held up my wrist and stared at it.

  “Come on,” I muttered. “Before the alert shows up—come on, come on!”

  The one flickered back to a nine. Good—apparently once it was in your system, it worked faster.

  I heaved a sigh of relief. For the time being, I was safe. But Grey had these pills too, and he had been caught. If I was going to get him out of that place, I needed Roark’s help in more ways than one.

  I stood, well aware that it was late, and got dressed. Tonight was not a night for feel
ing sorry for myself; it was a night for doing something about it.

  15

  I decided halfway down to Zoe’s that I wasn’t going to involve her after all. The closer I got to her, the more difficult it became to breathe, and I suddenly imagined her on the other side of that glass, painting pictures in blood and humming a song that no one could hear. And I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t risk her.

  So I turned away from her quarters and did something a little more dangerous—I took the plunge. As a general rule, no area of the plunge was ever safe. Yet the parts leading into Cogstown were especially perilous. Most Knights never bothered to try, opting to take the elevators to the main halls outside of Cogstown.

  Taking the plunge here required quick thinking, ingenuity, and near-perfect timing. One wrong move and they’d find my body torn apart by industrial cables, or worse. The reason it was so dangerous was that it changed as repairs were made, the internal structure modified, restored, modified again. It was constantly changing, and had been for hundreds of years. As a result, the place was littered with obstacles. Knights over the years had updated the painted signs inside the plunge, adding new ones or removing obsolete ones as they were discovered, but every time a Knight stepped into the Cogstown plunge, they knew there was a chance something had changed since the last time a Knight was in there. And that meant I had to proceed with utmost caution.

  I stepped up to the edge and looked down, already noting the places where light shone, marking the safer path.

  Playing it safe, I lashed over to the adjacent wall and slowly began to lower myself, letting my eyes grow used to the dark. I adjusted my position slightly as I descended, keeping a careful eye out for unknown obstacles as I navigated the metallic jungle that seemed to have grown in all sorts of directions.

  It took a while before I began to grow more confident, allowing myself to pick up speed as I learned to trust the marks. I kept a careful eye on the marks for the landings that led back into the Tower, and eventually spotted a small orange gear mark, and made my way over to the doorway it stood vigil over.

  Boots firmly on the ground, I followed the hall until it abruptly ended at the now-quiet market in the center of town. The lights were dim, replicating nighttime, and the only lighting came from lamps on tall posts deposited haphazardly along the streets of the market. It took me a moment to orient myself, but once I figured out where I was in relation to Roark’s place, I began to move, winding my way through the quiet, still streets.

  I kept my head down and my hands in my pockets, trying not to draw too much attention to myself. Adrenaline was coursing fiercely through my blood now, every shadow or movement setting my heart racing in a wash of fear and terror. I knew Scipio couldn’t read my exact thoughts, but how had he not noticed the high concentration of negativity I was experiencing when compared with my ranking? And what would happen when he did?

  My heart practically stopped when I realized that the Eyes must have figured out something was off. They had noticed the discrepancy of the massive jump from one to nine, and that was how Grey had gotten caught. It wouldn’t take them long before they caught on to me as well. Maybe that’s why Alex hadn’t taken my call—he had realized my ranking had jumped in the same way and was furious with me. Or was covering for me. Or had gotten caught. The thought brought me up short, and I had to fight off the impulse to call him again.

  It took a moment to talk myself down from that ledge, but I managed. The logic I used was harsh, but honest as well: none of that was under my control. If the Eyes came for me, they came for me. Until I had more information, I was being paranoid, and that was counterproductive. I needed to get to Roark to get his help with Grey.

  That did something to lessen the fear, and I began moving forward again. I was determined to see this through, even if it meant going against myself. I managed to get back to the ladder leading up, and chose to lash up the girders onto the third floor. I moved quickly down the hall, the memory of yesterday still fresh in my mind, the ghost of Grey everywhere.

  I knocked, pushing the morbid thought out of my head. Grey wasn’t dead. Yet. And he wouldn’t be, if I had my way about it.

  Silence met my knock for several long moments—until I was certain that he wasn’t in—and then a voice called, “Who is it?”

  “Squ—Liana Castell,” I called. I couldn’t force the honorific out. It just jammed in my throat, heavy and disgusting. I wanted nothing to do with the Knights now that I knew what they were doing to people. “I need to talk to you.”

  I heard a low curse from the other side of the door.

  “I thought I made it pretty clear I’m not interested in what you have to say,” Roark snapped, his voice closer to the door.

  “Grey’s in trouble,” I said flatly.

  There was another pause, followed by a sharp click, and the door sprang open.

  “Where is he?” Roark demanded as he came into view, and I blinked. His hair was unkempt and wild, and it looked like he hadn’t shaved today. Dark bags lay under his eyes, and he seemed nervous and agitated.

  “He fell to a one and got arrested,” I said, unable to meet the man’s gaze.

  His eyes narrowed. “What? How? Grey’s a nine.”

  “We both know that isn’t exactly true,” I said softly, and I pulled the bottle out of my pocket, letting him see it. His eyes widened, and then he grabbed me and hauled me inside. He shoved me hard against a wall and threw his arm over my chest in a surprisingly strong move.

  “How did you get those, and are you alone?” he snarled, glancing quickly out the door. “And what have you done with Grey?”

  I sucked in a ragged breath—the pressure of his arm adding weight to my diaphragm and making the move difficult and strange—and met his gaze. “I’m... alone... Grey’s alive... for now.”

  Roark blinked and then took a hasty step back, his eyebrows drawing together. “So, there aren’t any other Knights ready to burst into this place?”

  “No,” I said, rubbing my sternum with the flat of my hand. “And for the record, they’d be after me as well as you.” I held up my wrist and showed him the nine there, and he gave it a hard look before closing the door.

  “Why are you here?” he demanded.

  “I need your help—I want to save Grey.”

  The old man scrutinized me, before finally nodding. “Might as well come in,” he said gruffly, “and tell me what you know about Grey.”

  “I’m here to see if you can help me help him,” I announced. “But I have some questions of my own.”

  Roark ignored my comment as he moved deeper into the dwelling, and I took a moment to straighten my clothes and run a hand through my hair. Then I followed. Roark was already pulling a set of test tubes out of a small refrigerator with ultraviolet lights shining inside of it. The whites of his eyes glowed under the light as he pulled out another set of tubes, giving him a sinister look.

  He straightened and gently kicked the refrigerator closed, setting the two trays down on the table. Then he looked at me. “How did you get the bottle?”

  “If I tell you about that, and Grey, will you answer my questions?”

  Roark stared at me, and then nodded. “Yes.”

  “Grey gave it to me,” I said, setting it on the table. “Yesterday.”

  His eyes lingered on the bottle and then came up to me, waiting. I realized he was waiting for me to tell him everything I knew.

  “I watched a woman die today,” I said, the words suddenly spilling out of me, and Roark blinked in surprise, and then leaned closer. My eyes darted up to him, and then away. “My mentor killed her. Like she was nothing. Like she was worth nothing.” I paused, and then drew in a breath.

  “Grey was dragged in after her body was taken out. My mentor told me I had to kill him. I refused. Now they are giving me a week to change my mind and conform.”

  Roark’s expression changed. A seething, unbridled hatred formed in his eyes, making me terrified he would somehow make me
combust right then and there. I leaned away from the intensity of it. As I did, he moved, so quickly it startled me, and it took me a moment to realize he was moving over to a pair of chairs against the wall, stacked high with boxes, rolled-up charts, papers, and a general assortment of junk. He started clearing the chairs, and then glanced up to give me a pointed look. It was, I thought, the least courteous offer to sit I had ever received—but considering the circumstances, I stepped in to help. Within a few minutes, we were both sitting down.

  “Give me the details,” he said between clenched teeth, and I recounted each and every detail I could, especially regarding the woman’s symptoms. He asked the most questions about those, but I was unable to answer most of them, because I hadn’t noticed her fingertips or toes or black veins or anything like that.

  We both fell silent for a long time after that—long enough for him to make me a cup of tea and for me to pull myself back together—and then he sat down again, clearing his throat.

  “You had some questions for me,” he reminded me, and I nodded.

  “How could Grey have gotten caught?” I asked. “Is it something I need to be worried about?”

  Roark gave a huff of approval, and leaned forward. “You ask a lot of smart questions, girl. The only problem with smart questions is that they lead to dangerous answers.”

  “I’m here for your help to break someone out of the Citadel,” I replied. “My life is not currently without danger.”

  “Fair point. And to answer your question, yes, I think it is something you need to be worried about. Grey’s close call with you over a week ago proved to me something I had long suspected: the body builds up a resistance to the drug over time. It won’t last as long if you’re taking it every day. The same day you came by, I gave him a fresh bottle just to make sure he would be safe. And that was the only bottle I gave him that day.”

  He gave me another pointed look, and I felt my stomach drop even lower as I realized the implications of what he was saying. I recalled Grey saying that he had sticky fingers, and had assumed that was how he’d get his own pills. Had he failed? Had he run out of time, or thought he had more time than he did? The bottle in my hand felt as though it were filled with rocks, uncomfortably heavy.