The Girl Who Dared to Lead

by Bella Forrest

I almost caved. Almost. The hurt in his voice was so raw it touched me, and I felt myself start to soften.

  But I couldn’t do it. My brother was already too close, and now in danger due to how much scrutiny he was under. Better to keep him away and let those who might be watching think we’d had a falling out, so they wouldn’t go after him to get to me.

  I had to keep him safe.

  “I’m sorry, Alex. I know you think I’m going after this, but I’m not… I promise you I’m not.” I looked up as Zoe entered, a bag thrown over one shoulder. She’d recently re-shaved the sides of her head, as the hair there had been getting too long, but the center mass was still long and held back in its customary braid. Her face was curious as she put the bag on the ground, but she didn’t interrupt me. “Look, I really have to go. I love you.”

  There was a long pause on my brother’s end, followed by a soft, Coward, said in a bitter and angry tone.

  The single word was like a slap to the face that also cut right down to the bone, flaying me open. I knew he wanted to be involved, but that was a bit harsh, even for him. Not to mention uncalled for—I was doing the best I could. And he should have understood that.

  “Alex, I—”

  “He has terminated the call,” Cornelius said, just as the buzzing in my skull suddenly cut off, confirming what he was saying. I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose between two fingers.

  “That jerk,” I muttered, frustrated by my brother’s response to things.

  “Your brother is many things,” Zoe said carefully, straightening up from where she had deposited the bag onto the floor. “But a jerk isn’t one of them. What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “He just wants to be part of the investigation into what happened with…” I trailed off, my throat tightening around her moniker. It felt wrong saying it now that she wasn’t here.

  “Of course he does,” she said, running her hand over her braid and fidgeting with the end of it. “And we’re doing one, right?”

  I blinked, surprised at her. “You want to? I would’ve thought…”

  “Hey, going after Jasper is also very high on my list, because of the Paragon, but knowing who these people are will help us understand what their goals are. And that will help us figure out what we can do to stop them.”

  I was opening my mouth to reply when Quess and Maddox entered, both of them carrying multiple bags. They came to a stop on the top of the stairs I had created at the end of the hall, and Tian pushed between them, darting down the stairs right toward me.

  “Liana!” she said, leaping into the air, her arms spread wide.

  I opened my arms and braced myself, and seconds later the body of a fourteen-year-old girl slammed into mine, knobby arms and legs going everywhere. I hugged her tightly to me for as long as I could hold her weight, taking solace in the feel of her warmth and vibrancy, and then gently eased her down onto the floor.

  “Hey, Tian,” I said quietly. “What do you think of our new home?”

  She placed a finger on her chin and looked up and around, drawing her lips and eyes tight in a severe and speculative expression. After a second, she smiled broadly and went up to her tiptoes, raising a hand to the side of her mouth. “I love it,” she whispered loudly.

  I smiled, pleasure radiating from her praise, and then looked up to where Maddox and Quess were coming down the steps, Leo and Eric right behind them.

  “Yeah, I have to agree with Tian,” Quess said. “This place is pretty killer. Not sure about Cornelius, though. Do you want me to check him out?”

  “You and Leo both,” I said, relieved to know that Quess and I were on the same page, security-wise. “Lacey assured me that the entire terminal was wiped after Devon died, but I want you to make sure. I also want you to see if you can find any ghost servers that might store the previous Champion’s vid files. Apparently, this apartment is always monitored, but it’s supposedly as private as private can be. Find out if that’s true.”

  Quess raised his eyebrows as he slung his bag onto the floor, next to where Zoe had set the one she was carrying. “Well, hello there, stranger,” he said roughly. “That’s more than you’ve said in the past three days. Are you…” He paused and fidgeted before meeting my gaze, a mixture of hope and hesitancy in his eyes. “Better?” he finished.

  I looked up for a moment, and then exhaled slowly, the answer too complicated. “Let’s just not worry about how I am,” I said. “There’s too much going on to dwell on that. Can you get started on Cornelius, please?”

  He frowned, and then nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said, his voice filled with caution. “Whatever you need, Liana.”

  “Thank you,” I replied. I looked at the pile of bags that was rapidly growing at the foot of the stairs. “You guys packed up the apartments?”

  “Oh yeah,” Eric said with a grunt, tossing his three bags into the pile. “We figured it would be more efficient this way.” He looked around for a second, his hands on his hips. “This is some living space.”

  “Came with the job,” I said dryly, and his lips twisted into a shadow of a smile, some of the concern in his eyes lightening. “Well, I’ve got a room set aside for Zoe and you, because I figured you guys would want to share, and then Quess and Leo are sharing, as are Maddox and Tian, so you can pick out rooms and move your stuff into them while Quess and Leo take a look at Cornelius.”

  Silence met my statement, and my brows drew together. Clearly I had missed a beat and they had already made decisions about their sleeping arrangements without me. I waited, looking around expectantly, and it was Zoe who explained.

  “Eric and I are going to stay in Cogstown,” she said, lowering her eyes. “I think it’s better if we stay as close to Lacey as possible.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her as I considered what she was saying. I knew there was more to it than that, but wasn’t entirely sure why she was being so cagey about telling me. “Okay,” I said, drawing out the syllable to add an implied “and?” to the tone.

  “And…” She trailed off again, looking oddly guilty. Her blue eyes lifted so she could look at Eric, and suddenly it clicked: Zoe wanted to be alone with her boyfriend, and I could understand that. She probably just didn’t want to hurt my feelings, which explained her behavior.

  “You know what, it’s okay,” I said softly as she grew more and more flustered. “I get it. You and Eric are just starting up, and this stuff is definitely a source of stress. If you think you’re safe there, then I’ll trust your judgment.”

  I expected her to smile, but the look she gave me made me feel as if I were being peered at through a microscope, getting pressed flat by two pieces of glass so everyone could see right through me. I suddenly felt awkward under that gaze, and added, “Don’t look at me in that tone of voice.”

  This time she did smile, and relief poured through her eyes. “You’re back,” she said, stepping close and wrapping her arms around me. I stood stiffly for a second, and then returned the gesture.

  “In a manner of speaking,” I said gently. I let her hold me for a second or two longer, and then pulled away. “Anyway, I can leave the room open for you, or I can change the rooms to make them a little bit bigger if you all want.”

  “Actually,” Maddox said carefully, dropping into a chair at the tactical table, “Quess and I are going to be sharing a room for a little while.”

  She brushed her fingers lightly across the tabletop, but a dull blush formed in her cheeks. I swiveled around to look up at where Quess was standing on the dais to see him staring down at us, both his thumbs raised high and a broad smile revealing all of his teeth. My jaw dropped, and I looked back and forth between the two of them several times.

  I wasn’t sure why I was so surprised. Up until the last challenge, he and Maddox had been sharing a room. That had changed after my mother had died and I shut down, but now it seemed they wanted to go back to that arrangement.

  “And that means I can have my own room!” Tian chirp
ed excitedly. “And so can Leo! And we’re single, so we don’t have to share!”

  I looked over to where Leo was kneeling behind the desk, a screwdriver in hand, and saw him already watching me, his eyes a warm brown. Something passed through me—a jolt of electricity—and I quickly moved my gaze away, afraid he would see it. I was lonely, and he was curious.

  Or at least, I hoped that was all it was on his end. I couldn’t even consider how I would feel if it was something more than that.

  I took a moment to clear my throat, and with it my thoughts, and then looked around. “Okay. Well, I think we should just jump right in, if that’s all right with everyone. We’ve got a lot to talk about and some decisions to make, and as always, there’s not a lot of time. So let’s start with what we’ve got.”

  I held up my pad and hit the Project button, and a second later, the table began to glow.

  8

  Moments later, a three-dimensional representation of a timeline that I had been working on earlier was projected into the air, marking what I thought were the most mission-critical events.

  “Whoa,” Zoe said, taking a step closer to the table and leaning her hands against it. She studied the lines and my handwritten notes, and then her eyes narrowed. “Why’d you start the timeline twenty-five years ago?” she asked, her head swiveling around to look at me.

  “Two reasons,” I said. “First of all, because of something Alex told me before we first met Cali and everyone: that the number of accidental deaths in the Tower showed a five percent increase around that time period, and that it’s been steadily increasing since then. I know it seems strange, but I think it has something to do with the alien girl Roark’s wife met.”

  “In what way?” Maddox asked, leaning forward. “I mean, someone popping by the Tower for a visit doesn’t immediately equal a higher death rate.”

  “Except I think it does,” I said hurriedly. I had given this a lot of thought, and I was convinced that the visitor to the Tower had, for some reason, kicked things into overdrive for our mysterious legacy group. The timing was just too perfect for it to be unconnected. There was every possibility that I was wrong, but something about the way Roark talked about what had happened afterward—his wife disappearing, council members dying—made me suspect that a cover-up had been implemented. “Cornelius, can you add Head Farmer Raevyn Hart’s death to this timeline?” I asked.

  “Searching,” he replied a moment later. I looked over my shoulder to where Quess and Leo were still hunched over my terminal, presumably going over Cornelius’s code with a fine-toothed comb, and was pleased that they hadn’t taken him offline to do it. I didn’t want to delay this conversation while we waited for him to come back online.

  “What does the death of my department’s previous leader have to do with anything?” asked Eric, his dark eyes meeting my own.

  “She was one of two councilors who reportedly met with the alien girl that day, along with two Knights,” I explained. “The other was Devon Alexander. They wound up taking the girl to a Medic station where Roark’s wife, Selka, was working. Selka was taken from their home some time later, when they were trying to plan their escape, and was never heard from again. Roark assumed she was dead, and I think he was right.”

  It seemed so obvious to me now—they must have killed her to keep the alien girl’s existence a secret. They couldn’t risk the citizens of the Tower learning that there was life beyond the Wastes. They might want to leave.

  “Head Farmer Raevyn Hart’s death, ma’am,” Cornelius interrupted while I was taking a breath. “Will there be anything else?”

  I paused when I saw Raevyn’s name added to the timeline, the date marked right at the start of it, just past where I had written “visitor”. I looked at it, and then took a shot in the dark. “Yes, I’m also looking for the recorded death of a Medic by the name of Selka, married to another Medic named Roark—last names unknown to me, but it would have been within weeks or months of Raevyn’s.”

  “Searching.”

  “That seems like a bit of a leap, Liana,” Maddox said doubtfully. “I still don’t see the connection. Are you sure you’re not just… trying to manufacture something?”

  I stared at her for a long moment and then sighed. I knew it seemed half baked, but I was following my gut on this and trying to piece together an explanation for what was going on. She had a point, but in my mind, Raevyn’s death had happened too early—too close to when this all started—for it to be coincidence. I wasn’t sure what had made her a target, but whatever it was, I was going to figure it out.

  “You may be right, but just hear me out. I think that all these things are actually related, once you consider who is behind them.”

  Her black eyebrows drew together, forming a tight line over the bridge of her nose, and she wore a pensive expression for a moment or two. “Okay,” she said, drawing it out. “I’m gonna need more than that.”

  “Then give me a second to explain,” I said, trying not to let my exasperation show. “Cornelius, any luck?”

  “There’s no death record for anyone matching the first name Selka,” Cornelius replied. “Perhaps the individual is still alive?”

  “Or Liana’s right and they didn’t want a death record for her,” Leo said casually from behind me. “Maybe you could use her personnel records? Are you sure you don’t remember her surname?”

  I considered his question for a second, and realized that I did have the date of Roark’s death. I quickly asked Cornelius to run another search, hoping it would lead to his surname, but was unsurprised when Cornelius replied with a, “No searches match your query.”

  Even though I wasn’t surprised by his response as it had been a long shot to assume that Devon had even reported him dead, I was still aggravated that I had never asked Roark’s surname—not once in the entire time I had spent with him and Grey. I crossed my arms and rocked back on my heels. Grey would know it, but he wasn’t in a position to remember much at the moment.

  “No,” I said with a weary sigh. “Roark never told me. Only Grey knows.”

  I swiveled around to look at Leo, and saw him wearing a small, pensive frown. “I’ve only just started repairing Grey’s memories, but what I’m working on is mostly his childhood. Those neural pathways are the most important to restoring his personality as you knew it. If you want to know the name of the piglet he grew attached to when he was young, I can help you. But anything from his older years is beyond his or my abilities at this time.”

  “Grey was attached to a piglet?” Tian asked, leaning forward. “That’s so cute!”

  Leo gave her a sad smile, but when he met my gaze, I saw darkness there, and I knew that at some point or another, Grey’s parents had likely forced him to kill the poor creature. The idea was to indoctrinate children to the harsh realities of the Tower, but my heart broke for him a little bit right there.

  For him and for Leo both.

  “The piglet was indeed very cute,” Leo informed Tian softly. “The fact remains that I cannot rush this process. I don’t know Roark’s last name.”

  That sucked, but it was okay. I had other things that would add to the timeline. I was resolved to find out what had happened to Selka and Raevyn, somehow—but now wasn’t the time.

  “Don’t worry about it right now,” I said. “There are other things that factor in. Like the date when Scipio passed the law that condemned anyone who fell to a rank of one to the expulsion chambers. Cornelius, can you show the date when that law passed?”

  It came up, and I felt a grim sense of satisfaction. It had happened almost exactly a week after Raevyn’s death, when Head Farmer Plancett had been elected. “That’s not a coincidence,” I said, already wondering if that election had been tampered with like the Tourney had been. If that were the case, there was every chance that Plancett had been working with the enemy and was still doing so now—he was still the current leader of the Hands. I opened my mouth to add that speculation, but decided to hold it b
ack, worried that it might be too much for them to swallow.

  It was already a lot.

  “But that’s not evidence, either,” Zoe replied carefully. I looked over at her, surprised by the fact that she couldn’t see the connections like I could. The people we were up against had more than proven that they were capable of a cover-up, given that they’d never even been caught. The connections existed purely in the events themselves, the things they had changed, the ways events had happened. “It is suspicious,” she added as soon as my eyes hit hers. “But there’s no evidence, and her death is attributed to... Cornelius, help me out?”

  “A heart attack,” he replied a moment later, and she gave me a look with a raised eyebrow that said “beat that”.

  I stared at her and then shrugged. “Look, you and I both know that a heart attack can be medically induced and easily covered up, and the legacy group we’re after is good at that! They certainly proved it with the Tourney. But I’m certain about this—I think they escalated their plans for the Tower after the visitor came.”

  And I thought they did it because they wanted to get as much control as possible to make sure that no one else left. Why, I didn’t know—but I was going to find out.

  “Escalated?” Zoe asked, looking up at me. “You mean they didn’t just start getting control a few years ago—that they’ve been working on it for centuries? I thought Lionel said that it would take centuries for them to even get into the Core in that vid we watched!”

  She was talking about the vid where Ezekial Pine had murdered Lionel, and they’d been talking about a terrorist cell called Prometheus—the progenitors of the legacies—who didn’t believe an AI should control humanity’s destiny. During the conversation leading up to the attack, Lionel had admitted that it would take centuries for Prometheus to hack into Scipio, but I figured he’d been wrong. It hadn’t taken the legacies all that time to break in—it had taken them that long to break apart what he had created so they could slowly tighten up the reins of control. They didn’t have it completely yet, but I felt certain that they would, soon, if we didn’t do anything.