The Girl Who Dared to Think 4: The Girl Who Dared to Rise

by Bella Forrest

  Lacey had told me once that Ambrose had been the only legacy of theirs that she’d ever been able to successfully sneak into the Citadel. There wasn’t anyone else there she trusted, and who could blame her? She obviously didn’t trust Devon, who had been Champion for over twenty-five years—more than enough time to cultivate a legion of followers, if he were so inclined. And his followers would no doubt continue with whatever his plans were, which was against what Lacey wanted. That made it difficult for her to trust any other Knight inside the Citadel.

  The more I considered finding someone to replace Ambrose, the less I liked it. I wasn’t comfortable with entrusting the fate of the Tower to anyone else, just like that. How could I ever be certain I had made the right choice? Tens of thousands of lives rested on that position, and if I put someone in there who wound up being an agent for the enemy, then it was the citizens who would suffer. I couldn’t live with that. Couldn’t even stand the queasiness that came with the idea of passing the reins on to someone else.

  No, picking someone wasn’t going to work. It carried too much risk of going sideways—and then losing the Tower and Scipio for good.

  And that left only one solution.

  I stopped on the top of the landing and lifted my wrist up to my face, tapping my indicator. “Contact Zoe Elphesian, 17M-241.”

  There was a pause, and then my net began to buzz as Zoe accepted the net. Good—I’d been a little worried she might not, after the way I left, although I knew it was a silly fear.

  Are you okay? her digitally resynthesized voice demanded, and I could imagine everyone still sitting in the living room, watching her with bated breath, afraid I was under attack.

  “I’m fine,” I said, resuming my trek up the stairs. “I took the stairs to give myself a little time to think. To be honest… I freaked out a little bit back there, and I’m sorry for that.”

  It’s okay, Zoe replied automatically. I mean, you did it in a boneheaded kind of way, but I understand. So what’s up?

  “I want you to reach out to Lacey on my behalf.”

  Why not just call Lacey yourself?

  That was a really bad idea. I had considered it, and decided it was better to avoid direct contact with her for a while, to give her some space to breathe without the constant reminder that I was alive, while her cousin was dead.

  “Lacey’s too emotionally fragile for that, Zo,” I informed her. “If I reach out to her, it could really upset her, and she might decide to turn us all over to the Knights for the stuff that went down at the trial. But you? You’re one of her Cogs. And you’re as empathetic as they come.”

  So, what, you want me to talk to her and try to convince her to back down? The implant in my ear canal managed to convey that she thought it was a bad idea.

  Luckily, that wasn’t my plan. “No. I want you to tell her that I’ll do it. I’ll stay in the Tourney and compete to become the next Champion. That way, she and Praetor Strum will get the support they need.”

  I stopped talking in an attempt not to ramble, and waited. I’d made it all the way up to another landing by the time she responded.

  You want to become Champion? she asked, incredulous. Have you thought this though?

  I sighed, trying not to feel irritated by the doubt in her voice. I knew she knew that I didn’t make decisions on a whim. This was just her way of asking for my rationale.

  “Yes, I have,” I informed her dutifully. “Look, Lacey needs someone who’s willing to work with her and Strum on the council. And she isn’t going to be able to find anyone she trusts before the next challenge. So it has to be me.”

  There was another long pause. I see. I suppose having you as Champion would open a lot of doors for us, as well as helping us keep the Knights off our backs while we start working out ways to leave.

  I hadn’t considered that. But there was a very good reason I hadn’t: I had decided I wasn’t going to leave with my friends. Instead, I was going to stay and help Leo on his quest to fix or replace Scipio. Even though I had told him that I could only worry about the seven people in our group, it had been a bald-faced lie. I couldn’t abandon the people of the Tower to death. It was unconscionable.

  But I wasn’t ready to bring that up to Zoe yet. I hadn’t even had the chance to tell Leo.

  Thinking about him made me immediately flash to the kiss from this morning, and I carefully pulled away from the memory.

  “Something like that. Listen… when you talk to Lacey, tell her that if she accepts my proposal, I’ll help her find Ambrose’s killers. But tell her I also expect her continued help in finding Tian. And she needs to tell us what’s going on with that legacy net, and how to fix it.”

  I added the legacy net as an afterthought, because I realized I was going to need full access to it if I was going to fully understand what was going on in the Tower. It would help me learn about which issues Lacey and Strum were concerned about, and confirm once and for all that they were working to help Scipio, as that net contained tangent memories of the previous users, as well as information on the world before the End.

  All the nets had been like that at the beginning of the Tower’s history, but the IT Department had phased them out, insisting that they needed to for both security purposes and because the resources necessary to create them were too rare to spare on them. Supposedly.

  I was certain tacking on demands was a bit gauche, but I doubted Lacey would entertain the idea of telling me more about the legacy net otherwise. Besides, I was certain Zoe would boil the language down into something softer and more palatable on my behalf.

  All right. I’ll net her and see what she says. Do you have a backup plan for if she says no?

  I thought about it for a moment and then sighed. “Not really. I can’t be certain that it will keep us safe, but the position brings power, which brings security. And… honestly, I don’t think she has any choice. I don’t think we do either. Running isn’t an option anymore, Zoe. We have to take a stand.”

  Zoe was silent for a long moment, long enough for me to wonder if I was pushing them too far on this.

  You’re right, she announced eventually, and I exhaled, relieved. There was a slight pause, and then, Leo thinks we should reach out to Strum as well, and I think he’s right. Lacey’s distraught, but in all likelihood, Strum is not. If we can convince him, he can reach Lacey.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. I knew they were allies, but I’d only seen them together a few times, in our first couple of meetings. Everything thereafter was handled by Lacey. That didn’t smack of closeness. If anything, I worried that his interference could send Lacey over the brink.

  Trust me, they have history. I think he can reach her.

  I stopped in front of the door that led to my parents’ floor, my fingers hovering over the panel. “If you think it’ll work, then do it. Also, get Quess back to the apartment if he isn’t back yet. I want to go over all the evidence we gathered from the condensation room next, and see if we can’t figure out a way to find Tian.”

  He’s already on his way back, she replied. I called him right after you left. I’m glad you seem to have worked through what you needed to. Get to your parents, we’ll get to work here, and you can rejoin us when you’re finished there. Also… good luck.

  “Thanks,” I replied dryly.

  The buzz of the net in my skull came to a sudden stop, and I breathed a little easier. I took a moment to try to relax the tension that had built up… then opened the door, and stepped into the hall.

  8

  Why had I done this again?

  I stared at the door that led to my parents’ apartment, trying to trace the steps that had gotten me here, and realized that I had simply fixed it as a “destination” in my head, and then taken the slowest way there as an excuse to think.

  I hadn’t actually considered that I was going in to see my parents. And now that I was standing in front of their door, part of me wanted to turn around and head back the way I had come. I wasn’t
sure I had it in me to deal with this—not just because of the tangled web of emotions that came with interacting with my parents, but also because I had to be careful. They were on the same team as Lieutenant Zale, who had served under Devon Alexander for over fifteen years. The same guy who had just arrested me—albeit for only a few minutes—and was possibly working to bring down Scipio. There was every chance that he had something to do with Ambrose’s death. If anyone was Devon’s ally inside the Citadel, it was him.

  Which meant my parents could be working for a man who wanted me dead. What was more, they could be doing it knowingly.

  It occurred to me then that I could be walking into a trap, but I dismissed the idea. I hadn’t told them I was coming, and I doubted that they would be reckless enough to attack me in their own home, this soon after Ambrose’s death. It would be too suspicious.

  My stomach churned. I was talking about my parents as if they were planning to kill me. And hey, my mom had offered to once, on the day I was born. Population rules in the Tower were very strict, and normally couples were permitted no more than two children. My parents had given birth to my sister Sybil, and then attempted to have a second child.

  However, biology has a funny way of not always working out, and they had accidentally conceived twins: my brother Alex and myself. As Alex was born first, I was the burden—the extra mouth to feed. Normally, I would’ve been eliminated. My mother had even insisted on it.

  But Scipio had interceded. For a while, my mom had thought Scipio had a destiny planned for me, and that idea had intensified after my sister Sybil died. But I later learned that Scipio had only saved me because somewhere else, an infant had been stillborn, and the population level had to be maintained. Needless to say, my parents had been less than thrilled to find out their youngest daughter was normal.

  I sucked in a breath. Dwelling on the past was pointless, and did nothing to help me with the future. My mom apparently really wanted to see me, and if I didn’t handle it now, she would persist. I’d just walk in, tell her I was all right, and then get out as quickly as possible.

  That seemed easy enough.

  I pressed the button and announced my name and rank to the scanner, enduring a skull-rattling scan that felt slightly harder than normal. I belatedly realized that it probably was; the entire Citadel’s security systems were following more stringent protocols in an effort to prevent any more infiltrators from getting around.

  It ended heartbeats later, but I barely had a moment to breathe a sigh of relief before the door slid open, revealing my mother on the other side.

  I’d never seen my mother looking so frazzled before. Her hair was down in dark waves around her face, and dark blue shadows that were almost black clung to the area under her eyes. She wasn’t even in uniform, and it was already almost seven in the morning!

  As soon as she saw me, relief poured into her eyes, and a second later, my mother—a woman who had found a thousand different ways to make me feel ashamed of myself my entire life—pulled me into a tight embrace, and held me as if she were afraid of letting me go.

  A surge of powerful, mixed emotions reached up and wrapped a steely fist around my heart, and I froze, uncertain of what to do or how to react. A part of me wanted to push her off of me. She’d had her chance to be a mother to me, and she’d failed. She’d treated me more like one of her Squires—and a disappointing one at that. What made her think she was even worthy of holding me now?

  On the other hand… my entire life, since I’d been a small child, this had been all I ever wanted from her. A simple hug, an encouraging word or two here or there. A mother who loved me for who I was, and didn’t despise me for what I wasn’t.

  So I didn’t push her away. But I didn’t return the hug either, and a few seconds later, she broke it, keeping only her hands tethered to my shoulders. She glanced both ways down the hall, as if looking to see if anyone were there, watching us, and then pulled me inside and quickly shut the door behind us.

  Then her hands were squeezing my shoulders, and she was looking at me with an intense gleam in her eyes. “What happened?” she demanded.

  Of course. She just wanted to know my side of the story. It was unlikely anyone not in the investigation knew what was going on outside of a Knight being murdered. They probably knew it was Ambrose. But beyond that, they had no idea.

  “I’m fine,” I assured her, which was weird and made me hesitate for a second, as I tried to figure out what to say next. “I don’t really know what happened. We were out of the Citadel, helping Zoe look for a missing child. When we got back… we found them.”

  My mother gave me a flat look that screamed “I don’t believe you”. And sure enough, she immediately said, “I’m not buying it, Liana. Not after what you said about your lash qualifier. Tell me the truth.”

  “The truth?” I asked, and a laugh escaped me at the absurdity of her request. Yes, I had made a mistake and let slip to her that my lash line had been tampered with during the qualifier. It had snapped, and I had almost died. But for her to be asking me for the whole truth? Even if I didn’t suspect she was secretly working for Zale, I wouldn’t have told her. Because I doubted very much that my mother—the very picture of a model Knight—could accept the truth. “Mom, trust me when I say that neither you nor Dad could ever handle the actual truth.”

  My mother frowned and opened her mouth to retort, but my father spoke first. “Don’t speak to your mother like that,” he growled. I glanced toward the living room, and saw him emerging from the opening, his eyes already narrowed in the familiar glare that always inhabited his face when I was in his presence.

  Over the years, I had studiously avoided engaging my father. I’d submit to his anger rather than fighting back, because it was easier. And I was afraid. But after I had been exonerated for Devon’s murder, I had changed—and I wasn’t willing to put up with it anymore.

  There were several different ways of dealing with bullies. The first was with humor. The second was by accepting their insults without showing any sign that they bothered you. I went with the former, knowing it would only irritate him more.

  “Y’know what, Dad, you are perfectly right. Let me try again,” I said, affecting a wide-eyed and innocent gaze. I turned to my mother and said, “Mom, trust me when I say that neither you nor Dad could ever handle the actual truth.” This time I used an exaggerated, high-pitched voice.

  My father made an irritated noise, but to my surprise, the corner of my mother’s lips kicked up. It was gone within the blink of an eye, but I could’ve sworn I saw it.

  “Silas, enough,” she said harshly, before modulating her voice to a kinder tone. “Liana, let’s sit down in the dining room.”

  I immediately moved to follow her, eager to have a little bit more space put between me and my parents. The entryway was not an ideal place for… whatever was going on.

  We sat down at the table, my mom taking the chair at the head so she could be next to me, while my father sat across from us. He folded his arms across his chest and pursed his lips. He clearly didn’t like that I was here.

  “Liana, I know that Astrid is running point, but she’s being very tight-lipped about the investigation. And there is something going on. People are trying to kill you.”

  Not me. Ambrose. And they had won. But I wasn’t about to tell her or my father that.

  “Mom, I’ve told you all I know,” I said tiredly. “There isn’t anything else going on. I promise.”

  “But yesterday you said that your lash end had been cut,” she reiterated. “That wasn’t a mistake—you said it in the heat of the moment, which means you believe it to be true.”

  I pressed my lips together and said nothing. She had a point, and it was futile to try to argue with her, because she was right. It was true—I had told her that in the heat of the moment. But that didn’t change the fact that I had no intention of telling her what was really going on with Ambrose. She couldn’t handle what was at the heart of the matter,
or what it would do to her perceptions of Scipio and the Tower.

  The silence stretched out for several long heartbeats, while my mother waited for me to respond, and I didn’t.

  It was my father who finally broke it. “You see, Holly, there is nothing more going on than a horrible act of violence. You’re being paranoid. No one is targeting Liana.”

  There was something about his tone that really struck a nerve inside of me. The derisive and dismissive quality of it. And the snide look on his face when he spoke. My blood began to heat, until it felt like it was simmering just under my skin, a barely contained boil.

  He’d used the same tone my entire life, and it had always made me feel less useful than the bin that held the family’s compost. I had developed a certain immunity to it, but that didn’t matter, as it wasn’t actually directed at me this time.

  It was directed at my mother. And witnessing him doing it to her, dismissing her like that… It made me angry beyond belief. He wasn’t taking her seriously.

  And I cared. I wasn’t sure if it was because I didn’t like the idea of him treating yet another member of his family like he had me, or if it was the fact that my mother was finally starting to care about me, but either way, it was insufferable.

  And I wanted to wipe the smug look off of his face. So I told them the truth.

  “Scipio is dying.”

  For several heartbeats, nothing happened. Both my parents sat there wearing the exact same expressions as they had before I uttered those three little words. Then again, I had just stated something that had the potential to give every citizen in the Tower a critical meltdown, so time to process was to be expected.

  It started with my mother. Her eyes blinked several times in rapid succession, and she shook her head. “What? What do you mean?”

  I carefully considered what I was going to reveal. I couldn’t tip my hand as to knowing about legacies, because I still couldn’t be sure this wasn’t a ploy to find out how much I knew, but I could spin a very simple narrative that fit in with most of the events as they knew them. Scipio had set me onto Devon because he suspected something was up. I found out that Devon and several other unknown people had hatched a plot to take Scipio out. I thought it was finished after the trial, but then Scipio came to me again, and told me it wasn’t. He was still under assault, and unsure who to trust. I was doing my best to help him, but Ambrose got caught in the crossfire. I would have to boil down the motivations of his killers to something more digestible for my parents, and omit a lot of details, but in the end, it would fit together pretty nicely.