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

by Bella Forrest

  As my lines drew me up, my mouth was dry, my heart pounding erratically in my chest. I rose up by inches which then became feet—all so painfully slowly, thanks to the murderous robot hanging opposite and above me.

  As soon as the next section of metal was close enough, I grabbed it, hooking it with both hands and then a leg. The frame was so narrow here in general—less than an inch in width—but I spotted a metal strip that was just about broad enough to hide me. I quickly moved over to it, positioning myself out of view.

  Only then could I check to see what was going on, and as I did, my muscles vibrated with tension and fear. The sentinel hadn’t changed its position yet, and hadn’t seemed to notice me, so I quickly pulled my lashes to reconnect them to a higher section of metal, trying not to let my hands shake too much.

  I was in the process of fixing the last one when a shadow dropped down from the top of my vision. A second later, the chandelier shook violently, so much so that I threw my arms and one leg around its frame for fear that the lash ends wouldn’t be enough to keep me on. My stomach lurched as the scaffolding continued to move, and I slammed my eyes shut and held on for dear life, convinced that the entire thing was already plummeting to the ground.

  Several heartbeats of teeth-clenching agony later, the impact still hadn’t come. I summoned up some courage and forced my eyes open, certain that I’d get a glimpse of the ground before impact.

  But the chandelier was simply tilted to one side. And as I peered down across the ground, I saw why. The sentinel had jumped farther down the chandelier’s frame, and was now level with my section of metal. It was clinging to it with one hand, peering over the edge. The cables connecting our section to the one above groaned, and suddenly I heard a sharp, high-pitched twang twang twang sound as strands of the metal rope began to snap under the extra weight.

  Each sound made me flinch, but the sentinel merely glanced at them and then turned its attention back to the arena, clearly searching for its target.

  And for a second, all I could do was gape at it, stunned by its presence and the implications of what its being here meant. There was only one reason that it could be here—the big mission that Jang-Mi had been talking about was the Tourney. Maybe she didn’t know that, but I felt stupid for not putting her disappearance and the expedited challenge together. Whoever was controlling Jang-Mi meant to use her to try to kill off the competition.

  Which meant that one of the candidates was supposed to win—and the sentinel was here to ensure that they did.

  My heart skipped a beat as I thought about everyone I cared about in this arena: Maddox, Leo, Grey, my mother… hell, even my father! I might not miss him if he died, but Alex would be heartbroken, and besides, I couldn’t let the sentinel do anything to hurt anyone, anyway. I had promised Tian that I would do everything I could to stop it without hurting it… and luckily, I still had the shockers on my wrist.

  I just had to get to it.

  The metal continued to quiver under my hands as more and more of the woven strands gave, and I realized that if the cables broke on the sentinel’s side, those on my side would tear free immediately after, and the frame I was on would break off and fall. I needed to get off of this thing so I could find a way to get to the sentinel without killing it—before the sentinel took me down with the frame.

  Tilting my head back, I looked for something—anything—close enough for me to latch onto.

  I caught a fraction of movement on my left, saw the corner of an obstacle coming close—close enough that I was certain I could get to it with my lashes—and quickly pulled the lines back in. I was going to have to jump, and I needed as much power as possible.

  I heard a feminine voice cry out, “Liana!”, desperate fear clinging to it, but I ignored it as I exhaled sharply, tensing the muscles in my legs in preparation for the jump. It was now or never; if I stayed here, I risked being on the obstacle when it tore free. At least if I missed my target, the end result would remain unchanged: I’d fall down and die.

  I inhaled deeply, set the lines to run free, and leapt out into the open space in front of me.

  I shot forward, keeping my arms tight to my sides. My back was to the ground, but I didn’t want to look—I was too busy looking for the obstacle that would save my life. I caught a glimpse of it, already moving away, and threw for it, my breath caught in my chest. The air started to whistle by as I began to fall, but my eyes remained on the lash end, transfixed as it flew away from me, dragging with it the line that would save my life as it streaked toward the dark, metallic structure.

  The lash end hit the apex of its swing and began to fall—along with it my heart—closer and closer to the bottom edge of this new wall-like structure. I watched it, certain it was going to miss by inches.

  Then it hit with a bright blue flash, just as the line reached its end. I jerked hard on the line, the shock rattling down my arm and making my elbow and shoulder feel like they were being pulled in two separate directions, but wrapped my hand around the line anyway, holding on for life itself while fumbling for the hand controls to reel me in. I went weightless for a second, and felt certain that the line would give, but it pulled with a snap, and suddenly I was twirling through the air in an uncontrolled spin.

  I looked up, focusing on the line itself, and saw that it was dragging me closer to the edge of the hanging wall. It teetered for a second as I continued to spin around, and then I felt it give completely, throwing me free. There had been too much jerking on the line itself, and it had broken the connection of the bead. I cast my other line in a panic, but I was still spinning, and had no idea if I was even aiming in the right direction.

  I shut my eyes and made my peace. Dear God… Really? Really? This is how I’m going to die? I thought, at least, I’d figure out what the hell is going on here before the plug got pulled, but noooo… Also, can we discuss how not funny it is that I die from falling, given how much time I spent lashing in the first place? Yes, yes, irony, but screw you—this is just clichéd.

  And… since this is happening now… could you please see fit to strike that thing down and protect my friends and family for me, since I won’t be able to anymore?

  A second later, something struck my shoulder with enough force to make my flesh sting underneath. “Youch!” I shouted, reaching up to swat at the spot.

  “It’s me!” my mother called, and I stopped my hand just before I detached the lash line she had hit me with. I looked up and saw her, hanging from the bottom of the dangling wall I had just been attached to, one lash still connected. The gyros in her suit were already working, hauling me toward her—and her toward the obstacle. “I’ve got you,” she said reassuringly, her eyes blazing with determination and concern.

  I realized it had been her voice I’d heard screaming my name, and felt a moment of relief. She hadn’t been about to let me fall. I let her reel me in, and threw a line of my own as soon as I was close enough, followed closely by a second one, just to be certain. My muscles remained tense until I had my boots on the flat surface of the wall, and I pressed close to it for a second, resting my sweaty face against the flat, cool metal in an effort to transfer some of the heat from my head and body into it.

  “Liana!” my mother said, closing the distance between us, before reaching out to touch my face, her eyes scouring over me, looking for any injuries. She pulled me into a tight hug, and then let me go, her body radiating tension. “What was that thing?”

  I twisted around as her question hit me, but I had lost track of the sentinel. I had to find it. Stop it before it hurt anyone.

  “It’s bad news,” I replied. “C’mon, we have to stop it!”

  “What?” My mother frowned and shook her head. “Sweetie, no. It’s just a distraction, set up by the designers. We need to get you to the bells.”

  “Mom, no!” I said, grabbing her arm as she began to look around. “Listen to me! This thing, it’s not under the test designers’ control. It’s… under the influence of someon
e else—likely the same people Devon was working with and who killed Ambrose. Someone who wants to kill all of the candidates here, except for the candidate they want to win.”

  My mother’s brows drew together as she looked at me. She studied me for half a second, and then drew in a breath. “You’re serious, aren’t you? Scipio help us.”

  She looked around, and I followed her gaze, trying to figure out where exactly we were. I realized that the long, flat wall I was now riding was part of the rotating inner ring. My back was to the outer ring, and unlike many of the other obstacles, this wall structure didn’t seem to spin. Being in the inner circle meant that the column was on the other side of this wall.

  A column I wasn’t going to get to: I was the only one here who had a weapon that could stop the sentinel.

  “All right,” my mother said a few seconds later. “We need to get up to the top of this wall if we’re going to have any chance of spotting it.”

  I was already drawing back my arm, preparing to throw my line up the flat wall, when my mom reached out and stopped me. “We have to climb up the side of this one,” she informed me, leaning back against her lashes and pointing. “This thing was built so that it’ll flip as soon as any weight hits the top of it, but from the side, it’ll stay still.”

  I glanced at my mother, grateful that she had seen and figured out this particular obstacle in the process of saving me. Then I thought about what she was saying, and saw that we also needed to separate, so that our weight wouldn’t offset it. “You go up on the left, I go up the right?” I asked, and she gave me a proud smile.

  “Absolutely.”

  I threw my line, this time toward the right edge of the wall, and swung onto it. I waited for my mother’s “Okay,” and then focused on the climb. I reached the top just as my mother did, and we made our way over to the central pole that connected the dangling wall to the ceiling.

  As I moved, I searched for the sentinel. A flash of crimson caught my eye to the left, and I hurried to the pole, trying to see what it was through the twisting mass of the other obstacles. As soon as I reached the pole, another flash of crimson caught my eye.

  Seconds later, I saw something small and dark—a chunk of one of the obstacles, perhaps—dropping from the air to the arena floor below, one edge glowing a molten red color that drew my eye like a beacon before it hit the ground. I looked back up and held still, watching the swinging mass of structures.

  The sentinel slid into view, now attached to the corkscrew-like structure I had noticed earlier on the outer ring. Its arm was extended in a straight line, the crossbeam of its deadly bolt leveled at the structure swinging past it. At my father and Min-Ha, who were balancing on another wall-like structure which was spinning on the outer ring.

  “We have to get to them,” I said, but Min-Ha was already moving, racing toward the edge of their wall and leaping off in a swan dive, her lashes cutting through the air ahead of her, streaming toward the side of the corkscrew. “No!” I cried—but it was too late. She was already spinning through the air, shooting toward the sentinel, her long black hair waving like a flag of war.

  The sentinel leveled its weapon at her, and I saw a fiery glint of crimson forming in the cross section of its jowls. Then it shot, a crimson beam cutting through the air, intersecting with Min-Ha’s torso and tearing through it. The beam split into two around the bisected form of her body and continued on, stopping only when it hit the wall my father was on. The force of the blow shook the structure back and forth like a rag in the mouth of a dog playing tug-of-war.

  My father stumbled forward, his arms wind milling as he tried to catch his balance, and then fell back, jerked off his feet. He fell, but was saved by the fact that he had attached a safety line to the wall itself. Min-Ha wasn’t as lucky, and I looked away as the two pieces of her once-intact body hit the ground below, trying not to lose my stomach.

  I looked around, waiting for some sort of alarm to go up to stop the Tourney, knowing that the Knights of the Citadel had just seen Min-Ha die, but nothing came. The drones were still there, watching, but there was no other sign of life, security, or even Scipio telling us to clear the field. Whoever was behind this had done something to stop us from getting help from the other Knights.

  It was on me if I wanted to stop this.

  My father hit the side of the wall… but then his line broke free, sending him plummeting down. I watched, helpless for a second, and then exhaled with relief when he threw his other lash, which connected. He hit the wall with a sharp cry of pain, and I saw him clutching the arm that he had used to throw the line. I was already moving, cognizant of the fact that my father was dangling free on a spinning structure easily thrown off balance, with a now-injured arm. My heart leapt into my throat as I realized it was swinging around, and that if he was carried forward, he would be in direct line with the sentinel again.

  It would cut him in half like it had Min-Ha.

  I watched the wall as it swung, studying it and the way it shifted back and forth while it was spinning, analyzing the distance. It was too far away to reach, and it didn’t look like it would swing any closer before we slipped past. We needed to create at least ten more feet before we could jump it.

  I looked down at the wall my mother and I were on. It was at least forty feet high, so if we could get it to start to spin, we’d have more than enough room to get there. There would be a point, toward the middle, where we would have twenty feet of extra room.

  “Mom, help me,” I said, pushing away from the pole and moving toward a point halfway between the center and the edge. “We’re going to force this thing to flip so we can jump over to Dad together.”

  “On it,” my mother replied, her voice tight with barely suppressed rage and sorrow at Min-Ha’s death, and I felt the metal vibrating under my own feet as she moved into place, one equidistant from the middle and the edge, a mirror of my own position. I focused on my own task, knowing that we would only have one chance at this. If we failed, my father would be killed by the sentinel.

  I threw my lash with a sharp pop against the wall, and then looked at my mom, watching as she threw down her own line on her side. She met my gaze and nodded, giving me the go-ahead to give the order. I looked back at the wall my dad was on, watching the spin, and then said, “Now.”

  My mother and I took a step forward into nothingness and then spun, putting our backs to the outer ring to rappel down the wall. I landed a few feet from the top, my mother only a few feet below, and sure enough, the entire wall began to tip toward us and the outer ring. I rode it down, freeing one arm and turning around to lean outward, and watched the oncoming wall, gauging its approach versus the speed of our fall.

  “Get ready,” I shouted, spinning the free lash in my hand, winding it up. The wall swung even closer, and then seemed suspended in place for a moment. “NOW!” I shouted, throwing my lash. I caught a glimpse of my mother’s line flying seconds behind mine, parallel with it, followed by two ghostly blue flashes where they connected to my father’s wall.

  Moments later we were swinging free across the gap, flying toward the wall. I bent my knees and landed hard on the surface, some thirty feet from the top, and looked down. My father had swapped out lines and was reeling himself up, but I could tell by the awkward angle of his arm that he had dislocated it on impact.

  “Mom,” I said, pointing him out, and my mother looked down and spotted him.

  “I’ll go get him,” she said. “You just find that thing.”

  I nodded, and immediately began looking around. The corkscrew structure it had been on slid into view as the wall swung around, but as I scanned the curve of it, peering through the ladder that made up its internal structure, I realized it was gone.

  My heart caught in my throat, and I carefully climbed up on my feet, throwing a lash down and connecting to the ledge I was perched on for more stability. I turned, my eyes scanning the moving structures and searching for any sign of the sentinel.

 
Instead, I noticed several crimson uniforms in the center of the arena, descending down the long, wide column at the center. From this angle, I could see that the column ended in a flat surface with bells hanging at the edge, and realized that to reach them, they would have to swing in from underneath, and use their lashes to ring the bells.

  I realized I would never get the chance. Dylan, Frederick, and Zale were already on the column, rappelling down. I wasn’t sure if they were unaware that we were under attack by the sentinel—or if they were some of the ones secretly behind it. I just knew that in a minute or less, Zale would be at the bottom first, as he was the farthest down.

  Not that it mattered. If I didn’t stop the sentinel, more people than just Min-Ha would die. I had come here to win, but without the shockers on my wrist, the others would be defenseless. I was going to lose the Tourney, and everything was about to go to hell in a handbasket, but I couldn’t let this thing kill everyone. Not when I had a way of stopping it.

  I accepted this with a dull burn of anger, and continued to look around, searching for any sign of movement, and spotted Leo on the wall structure my mother and I had just come from, racing across the top of it toward me.

  “Liana!” he shouted, pointing a finger down. I followed it, leaning into my line to hang over the edge, and saw the sentinel climbing like a cockroach up the side of the wall my mother, father, and I were on. It was nearly forty feet away from them, but as I watched, it paused and leveled the weapon at where my father was awkwardly trying to pull himself up. He hadn’t even noticed the sentinel yet, and it was within fifty feet of him.

  Neither had my mother—and she was still making her way down toward my father.

  “Watch out!” I screamed, letting out the line and running along the wall, angling for the sentinel. I slapped my free lash end down just as a crimson blast cut beneath my feet, and tried not to think about what was happening with my parents. I had to pray that the blast missed. That my mother got there in time and got my father out of the way.