The Girl Who Dared to Lead

by Bella Forrest

  It meant they’d been torn out of Scipio’s code by the legacies, leading to the degradation to his system.

  And if that were the case, that could mean that they were the only AI fragments left in the Tower, and that the originals had been destroyed by the council, just like Ezekial Pine said to Lionel Scipio before he killed him. There were no backups, and we had no idea how to copy them. If they died or the people holding them managed to manipulate their coding too much, we’d never be able to restore Scipio to his former self. He’d die too, and the Tower would fall.

  It was now more important than ever that we recover them all, starting with Jasper. If we didn’t, we could never hope to cure Scipio. Not to mention, who knew what Sadie was doing to him? If Jang-Mi had been driven insane by their treatment, was Jasper not far behind? We couldn’t afford to wait any longer—we had to come up with a way to save them. But that meant getting everyone to understand how important this was.

  “Leo, Jang-Mi isn’t the original AI,” I said, trying to convey my ideas as clearly as possible. “She is the fragment they combined with Scipio. She’s the reason he’s dying—or rather, the lack of her is the reason. The legacies cut her out of him. Just like they cut out Jasper and Karl. They stole her directly from his code in the Core.”

  Leo, whose face had remained a carefully controlled mask for the entirety of my rant, stared at me. I waited, wondering how he was going to react. He had tried to explain to me once how subtle manipulations of his code would feel like a muscle fiber being dragged along the bone to be forcibly repositioned, and even then I had a feeling that his description had been an understatement.

  How would it have felt for Scipio to have vital pieces of his coding actually ripped away, against his own volition?

  Leo shifted after a moment, and then turned his back to me and walked away a few paces. His back was stiff and his fists balled, and my heart ached with empathy. I was only barely able to conceive of what this might feel like for him, not just because of the suffering the fragments must’ve gone through, but because it meant that Lionel Scipio’s creation had been violated and torn apart in such a callous way.

  It had undoubtedly had its effects on them all. Jang-Mi was clearly unstable and prone to violence, as far as I could tell. And I couldn’t blame her. How must it feel to be forcibly torn away from that with which you had once been united? I imagined it to be like fibers being cut, strand by strand, while you were powerless to stop it, trapped in place by the very same connections that were being shorn away. I shuddered at the thought, grateful that I had some autonomy just by having a human body. I had control over my actions, and could fight back.

  Belatedly, my weird line of gratitude also filled me with a pang of guilt, and I looked over at Jang-Mi’s face on the monitor, reality settling in. She’d been ripped from her home, forced into a different one in the form of the sentinel, and then made to murder people. Yes, one of them was my mother, but now…

  Well, let’s just say I hated her slightly less, now, and felt for her a smidge more. But only a smidge.

  Hey, it was progress, right?

  I turned back to watching Leo, concerned by how long he’d been standing there in silence. “Leo?” I asked softly.

  “Yes?” he replied hoarsely. He didn’t turn around.

  “Leo, it’s okay to be angry, or hurt, or upset,” I said. “I can only imagine what you’re going through. But we can figure this out. We have Jang-Mi, we know where Jasper is, and I have a pretty good idea of where to find Karl.” And that was true—provided I was right that it was Lacey’s family who had taken him in an attempt to keep him safe. “As well as an explanation as to why Lacey and her team were able to monitor Scipio’s emotional state, I think.” Because if I was right and Lacey had Karl, it would explain how she was able to detect when he was being manipulated.

  He turned suddenly, his brown eyes piercing. “Do you think she knows what she has?” he asked. “The memory… What happened, exactly? Precise details. Leave nothing out.”

  I did my best, but some of it was jumbled, much in the way a fight would become only a memory once the adrenaline faded. I had to backtrack one or two times when I presented things out of order, but I finally got it all out. I was honestly surprised that the amount of focus I was giving to recounting it didn’t trigger the memory again, but then realized that must be a failsafe—a way to give people time to think about the memory they just saw without diving back into it. And it made sense; otherwise the darn thing would be going off all the time.

  Still, Leo looked satisfied when I finished, if a little grim. “They would’ve had to take Karl first,” he speculated when I was done, nodding slightly. “He was a defender and protector type.”

  “Safe,” Jang-Mi said, interrupting. “He made us safe.” She looked sad and wistful, and once again I found myself manifesting sympathy for her. I, too, knew what it was to crave safety and the feeling of home, and now that I understood more of what she had gone through, I found it harder and harder to be angry at her.

  Thank Scipio. I was finally letting go of this anger toward her.

  “Yeah, well, maybe we can recover him,” I said. “Once Zoe figures out where Sadie’s quarters are—”

  “Jang-Mi can help us with that,” Leo said sharply, waving his hand across his chest in a flat-out denial of my Zoe plan.

  “Yu-Na?” Jang-Mi said, her voice soft and tired. “Oblivion is coming.”

  A second later her face and the purple lighting that had been cutting through the yellow code on the screen disappeared. I stared at it, arching an eyebrow, and then looked at Leo. “What just happened?” I asked.

  He gave me an annoyed look, then leaned over the desk to start typing again. “Her program suddenly initiated a self-diagnostic,” he reported a second later. “I’ll see what caused it and then go through her code to make sure that she isn’t broadcasting anything.”

  “Is she going to be okay?” I asked.

  “I’m… I’m not sure. I’ll need to check her out a bit.”

  I frowned. “Leo… you said she could help us get into Sadie’s terminal. If she’s not able to do that, I need to know.”

  Leo’s fingers paused in their work, and he turned his head to glance at me over his shoulder. “Look, I…” He paused and turned back to the screen, heaving a sigh. “I do think she can do this, I’m just not sure how much time it’ll take to get her ready. I’m not even sure I understand the extent of her problems yet.”

  “Then keep working on it,” I told him soothingly, “and I’ll see if we can figure out another way in, just in case Jang-Mi’s not capable of helping us, okay?”

  He nodded, and I pulled myself out of the chair, moving over to Quess and Maddox. “Quess, does Zoe have anything on the Core yet?” I asked.

  Quess gave me a dry look. “Oh yeah,” he replied. “She’s got some stuff.”

  His sarcasm sent warning signals up my spine. “What’s wrong?”

  He sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. “What’s wrong is that there’s too much info, and it’s all contradictory! Every schematic she can dig up from the Water Treatment and Mechanics servers is either incomplete or completely different from all the other plans. I can’t make heads or tails of it, and I used to live there.”

  I frowned. That wasn’t right; the departments were supposed to have access to any files and schematics they needed to perform their duties, and those plans needed to be accurate, in case of emergencies. “That doesn’t make any sense. What happens if something breaks down and they need to have it repaired by another department?”

  “Inquisitors escort them in, show them where the problem is, and escort them out,” he replied, running a hand through his dark hair. “Or at least they used to. Now they cross-train their Bits in different departments to try to do away with even that. Believe me when I say that they are paranoid about having a citizen from another department inside. If they had their way, the doors would be shut, and food and water
would be shuttled to them from the outside. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were responsible for all the different versions of the schematics on the servers. Once more of their Bits became skilled enough, they probably sent a ton of updated copies out, just to confuse the issue. All of them could be fake, or all but a few are genuine. It’s like looking at a pile of needles and trying to find a shard of glass.”

  I rolled my eyes. Whether it was a paranoia bred from inter-departmental disputes or just their we’re-better-than-you attitude, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that we had no idea how to find Sadie’s quarters without an accurate schematic of the place.

  I supposed Alex could help me. He could download the right schematic from IT’s internal server. If we couldn’t figure out which schematic was the real one—or even if any of them were—then I was betting he could get real ones for us.

  But that would mean getting him involved, and I was not about to do that—not for breaking into Sadie’s quarters. If we got caught or Sadie figured out that someone had been in there, she’d go looking for whoever did it, and if my brother was discovered giving me the blueprints, he would go down as a terrorist. IT’s laws were insanely strict about what they called “proprietary” data.

  “What is it?” Maddox asked sharply, and we all twisted to look at her, equally confused by her question and tone. A second later she glanced at us and pointed at her ear, indicating that she had a net transmission, and then moved away a few feet so her one-sided conversation wouldn’t interrupt us.

  “So what can we do?” I asked Quess, turning back toward him. “What are our options?”

  “Well, I’ve given that some thought, and I think I can draw some rudimentary blueprints of what I remember and feed them into pattern recognition software to find any plans that match. It’ll help eliminate at least seventy percent of the schematics that Zoe recovered, and if I can get Leo to help me refine the algorithm, I might be able to parse that up to eighty.”

  I nodded thoughtfully. “How long do you think it’ll take you to do it?” I asked. We needed to find a way to rescue Jasper as soon as possible, and until we knew Jang-Mi could do it, we had to figure out another way to get to him. Going in was riskier, but if it came to it, we had to try. Jasper was far too important not to.

  “A day,” he replied. “I’ll start drawing now. Hopefully I can sketch enough details of the floors to give the program as many points of reference for comparison as possible. But the Core is huge, and I only had access to a handful of levels. So… yay, pressure.”

  I smiled at him. “You’ll be fine, Quess. You’re literally the third smartest person I know, and the first wins because he’s an AI, and the second gets priority purely because she’s my best friend. I clearly support nepotism.”

  His eyes lightened, and he smiled. “Thanks,” he replied. “I will take the compliment and impress you accordingly. Especially if you promise it’ll put me in competition against Zoe.”

  I laughed at that. “Sorry, Quess, a girl’s best friend trumps just about everything. I will, however, give you a hug and tell you you’re the best in the moment, and only in the moment. Deal?”

  He considered me thoughtfully and then sighed playfully. “I supposed it was too much to hope for,” he said. “But I accept.”

  I chuckled, but it died when Maddox padded back over, an annoyed look on her face. “So… Dylan’s on her way,” she announced. “She wants to report in.”

  Her tone implied that there was much more, and I focused on it, confident that Quess would succeed in his schematic project. Or at least get closer than we were now. “What is it?” I asked.

  “She’s requested that she be allowed to handle this personally, and has threatened to go over my head, directly to you, if I don’t let her.”

  I chuckled in spite of myself. Dylan was driven, and I knew from experience that she didn’t like to lose. It made her a great Knight, and, at times, an excellent leader, if a little overzealous. Still, her request sobered me, and I took a moment to sit back and think about it. Passing the investigation to her was risky because if she was with the legacies or helping them, she would make sure that any investigation stalled out and got nowhere. We would never find the people who had attacked me. Never get any answers from them.

  On the other hand, this would be a good way to find out exactly where she stood. If I handed this over to her and had her watched by someone I trusted, I could learn her true intentions easily through how she conducted the investigation. If it turned out she was covering for the legacies, we could use her to flush out our enemies. If she wasn’t, then maybe she could somehow flush them out for us before they figured out she was onto them. After all, they were probably expecting me to come after them personally, so Dylan might blindside them. It was a win-win in my mind.

  But I wasn’t about to make a move without my Lieutenant’s opinion. “What do you think? How was she at your meeting today?”

  “I mean… not happy that I put her in Water Treatment, but she didn’t argue with me. Now, whether or not she badmouthed us to the Knights she was in charge of, I have no clue. But she was polite and respectful during the meeting.”

  I absorbed that for a second. I didn’t know enough about Dylan outside of the Tourney to gauge whether or not she was as competitive in real life as she had been there, and I certainly had no idea how she had handled the news of my victory. Maybe she was resentful, but I didn’t think so. I’d had the chance to look at her personnel records during the Tourney, and her marks had been exemplary, with no sign of conflict with her superior officers. She had no reports of conflict with other Knights, either, and did have glowing reviews that spoke to her character.

  I supposed it was possible that she had accepted my victory gracefully. That would speak volumes, and made me once again call into question my suspicions against her. Because if she’d accepted it without question, then it would mean I could trust her. It’d be nice to have someone else on our side we could rely on, and Dylan was no slouch—she was a fierce fighter, and smart. We could definitely use more of that.

  I had to test her. It was the only way to figure out if we could trust her. I just wished I could figure out how. Having her watched was not going to be easy for two reasons, the first being that she was seasoned enough to know when she was being tailed. The second was that we all had dozens of balls in the air, and were trying to juggle them all. This was just another burden that required me to free someone up for it. I wasn’t sure it was possible at this point.

  “What are you thinking?” Maddox asked.

  I looked up at her and frowned. “I’m trying to figure out a way we can test her loyalty,” I replied honestly. “I thought about giving her the investigation to see how she handled it, and having someone follow her, but that won’t work. We don’t have enough people.”

  Maddox’s brow furrowed in surprise, but before she could even formulate a reply, Tian spoke. “Yes, you do,” she declared cheerfully, slapping the desk lightly with her fingertips. “You’ve got me. But instead of having me tail her, you tell her she has to take me with her, because I can help find these guys. I can watch her up close while making sure the investigation goes somewhere. If you think about it, I’m really the only one for the job. I can get into places she can’t go, I think like people who want to stay hidden, and Dylan will never see me coming. Couldn’t have come up with a better plan myself.”

  I smiled, amused, and then gently pointed out the major flaw in her plan. “Sweetie, it defeats the purpose if you’re actually making her do the right thing. We want to see if she’s choosing to do the right thing.”

  Tian’s smile faded and she stroked her chin, her eyes growing distant with thought. I turned back to Maddox with the assumption that Tian would see reason, but to my surprise, the young girl spoke before I could.

  “Yeah, I still think this way will work,” she said with a crooked grin. “If Dylan’s with the bad guys, then whenever I’m hot on the trail, she’ll try
to find a way to pull me off. If I play dumb, then maybe she’ll relax and let her guard down. If that works, then I’ll start complaining about you guys—talking about how you all suck and are mad at me because I can’t find the bad guys. She’ll try to recruit me to her super evil group with the idea to turn me against you. I’ll pretend to agree, but then at the last moment, I’ll blow her and all her evil friends sky high. Kaboom!” She smacked the table again, and then looked at us, inordinately pleased with the fantastical narrative she had laid out.

  Quess, Maddox, and I exchanged a very concerned three-way look that was one part amused and two parts doubtful. As hilarious as it would be to watch Tian and Dylan butt heads, without knowing Dylan’s loyalty, we couldn’t be sure Tian would be safe.

  “Tian…” Maddox said, and to my surprise, Tian slammed her little fist on the table and stomped her foot.

  “No! I am part of this team and the only one of us who doesn’t have a job!” she shouted angrily, already incensed that we weren’t buying in to her delusion. And I had to admit, her plan had me going there for a second. Right up until the very dark turn at the end.

  “Finding a new Sanctum—” Quess began, but was cut off as Tian shook her head so violently that the edges of her blond-white bob fluffed out some.

  “No, no, and no! You know we aren’t going to leave our new home until we’re caught or we escape. It’s too late to hide! Liana, Maddox, and Leo are all famous! No offense, but a Sanctum would not be a Sanctum for very long. But this I can do.”

  I struggled, looking for a new reason that was believable, and settled on, “Dylan won’t go for it. There’s no way she’s going to let a young girl go with her in the first place.”