The Girl Who Dared to Fight

by Bella Forrest

  And I wasn’t betting there were too many of the latter. I was too new as Champion and hadn’t had time to cultivate relationships with the Knight Commanders under me. My father was likely already organizing extermination squads against me, and Salvatore, now out of the cells, was going to recruit any of the Knight Commanders left over from Devon Alexander’s days. As the former Champion’s second in command, he knew most of them. Had spent nearly two decades developing relationships with them.

  And he had been let out with the rest of the legacies, courtesy of Sage.

  “I don’t think accessing the Citadel just anywhere is the best idea,” I hedged. “We should try to get to the emergency exit that feeds directly into my quarters. That’s where the others will be.”

  Dylan frowned, a deep line forming between her eyebrows. “But we’d have to navigate nearly nine hundred yards of halls just to get there! It would be faster my way and get us to the others sooner! We should make for the closest entrance. If the power’s still on once we’re inside, we can take the elevators right to your quarters. If not, we can still get to the elevator shaft and go down. It’ll be faster than trying to navigate the Attic itself.”

  I frowned. Her plan sounded reasonable, but she still wasn’t accounting for human nature. I could see in her eyes that she couldn’t imagine a world where Knight turned on Knight. It just wasn’t in her. Her sense of loyalty to the Citadel was too high.

  It was actually a little odd to realize that for all her sardonic and earthy ways, Dylan was still an optimist at heart, and had turned a blind eye to the faults of her fellow Knights. In fact, it made me a little jealous of her; I wished I could believe as easily.

  But I couldn’t.

  “Sorry, Dylan, but we can’t go through the Citadel,” I said, adjusting the strap of the plasma rifle across my chest. “Scipio broadcast to every department that the Knights were deemed psychologically contaminated because of me, and I’m betting that anti-Liana hit squads have already formed, fully intent on presenting my corpse to Scipio in the hopes they can get a pass. We can’t rely on anyone we encounter in the hall. We’ll be stepping into a civil war.”

  Her frown deepened. “You can’t honestly believe that’s true. The Knights voted you in! The younger ones love you, and the older ones see you and think of your mom! They aren’t going to turn on you!”

  I pressed my lips together, meeting her words only with disbelief. I honestly couldn’t see it. There was no way every Knight was going to come down on my side. There were too many factors that made it unrealistic.

  “They can, will, and probably have,” I said, suddenly tired all over again. Whatever boost of energy I had gotten from my most recent adventures was fading fast, and I was already too emotionally drained to explain to Dylan that no matter how she felt the Knights should be in this situation, no matter how she would be, she couldn’t expect the same behavior out of everyone. “Look, let’s just get inside the Attic and see what that situation is like first. Then we can argue about the best way in, okay?”

  Dylan pursed her lips, but then nodded once, tightly. I suppressed a sigh and remained perfectly still as she turned and moved toward the door, past where Rose was standing off to one side, waiting for both of us. Dylan ignored the sentinel entirely as she stepped through the dripping portal, keeping one hand up to prevent the water from drenching her outright, and then turned to one side of the staircase inside and then the other, checking to make sure it was clear.

  “We’re good,” she called a second later, her back to the door. “Gonna need that code to open the door, though. Forgot the doors to the inner shell didn’t have hand wheels.”

  I moved up to join her, stepping through the doorframe. A trickle of water managed to sneak past the arm I put overhead, running right down the back of my suit and proving that an arm did not make for a good umbrella, but I ignored it as I approached the door. “Command override, Lionel Scipio 001-001-A.”

  For a long second, nothing happened. Then the lights in the door flickered on, and the door popped open, a robotic voice announcing, “Authorization code accepted. Welcome home, Lionel.”

  I blinked in surprise, then exchanged a look with Dylan. “That’s a nice touch,” I said, when all other words escaped me. “Think they should’ve left that one in for everyone to enjoy?”

  It was a weak joke, but Dylan gave a snort of amusement. “Oh yeah, maybe added some variety to it. It would add a nice homey touch to the place, for sure.”

  I smiled at that, and then stood aside to let her lead the way.

  Going back into the Tower felt like being swallowed by an enormous monster. After the fresh air and bright sunshine outside, I was now cast back into the claustrophobic darkness, with only my hand light to serve as a thin shield against it. Walls and pipes cropped up suddenly without warning, and every creak and groan of metal contracting and expanding set my skin twitching like I’d been electrocuted. I had to resist the urge to flash my light around wildly, trying to find the source of the noises in the darkness.

  It didn’t help that the halls in the Attic were wider than the ones down below. If anything, it only made the environment scarier. If I turned the light to one side, I couldn’t make out the walls on the opposite side, which meant that every step forward gave the monsters hiding in the shadows time to pursue us.

  I knew I was being ridiculous, jumping at imaginary things in the darkness. Then again, I’d never known an inky blackness like this. There had always been light in my world; even when they were set on nighttime settings, the lights of the Tower generated some light, so people out and about could see. And when I turned my lights off to go to sleep, there was always something on in the room, to keep the darkness from blanketing me entirely.

  But this was different—grander and eerier. It gave off the sense that it was watching me. The hairs on the back of my neck rose as we traveled deeper into the Tower, the feeling that something was off increasing. It was possible I was imagining it—the experience in the shell after Sage had cut the power was likely coloring my outlook up here—but at least there had been people down below.

  There was nobody up here. Which was sort of the idea in using the halls of the Attic to get to our destination, but now that I was fully experiencing it, I couldn’t help but feel that we were already too late. That the Tower and everyone inside of it had perished in the few hours we were on the outside, making our way up, then down, then up again. I knew it was silly, that my mind was playing tricks on me, but that did nothing to stop the feeling of wrongness.

  It crept along my spine like a slow trickle of water, making me hyperaware of every sound, every movement around me.

  Which was likely why I heard it first: a dull, rhythmic beat.

  I froze in the middle of the hall and held perfectly still. Many noises had given me pause since I entered, but this one was so striking, so familiar in its call, that it had to be real.

  Rose came to a stop behind me, and said, “Liana?” in a quizzical tone, but I ignored her, shutting my eyes so I could focus on what I was hearing. I heard Dylan come to a halt in front of me, the sound of her boots on the floor stopping, and I took in a deep breath and held it, listening.

  Several seconds passed before my heartbeat began to slow after my initial jolt of surprise, but as soon as it did, I could hear it. Clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp.

  So could Dylan, apparently. “What is that?” she whispered softly, alarm rich in her voice.

  I hesitated, looking over at the other woman. “I’m not sure,” I finally said, unable to produce an answer. I’d never heard anything like it before, other than the familiar rhythm, which I was having difficulty placing. “But we should keep moving, and hope that whatever it is won’t even know we’re here.”

  Dylan nodded and resumed walking, this time a hair faster, her light swinging back and forth in a slow arch.

  But it didn’t matter. The deeper into the Tower we went, the louder the rhythm became, until I was cert
ain that we were heading right for it. Dylan must’ve sensed it too, because she suddenly turned left down a junction, clearly trying to get away from the pounding, and I kept up, my mind whirring at what the source of it could be and settling on someone or something trying to use hammers to straighten out a sheet of metal.

  We sped down the second corridor as the sound increased and intensified, and then Dylan came to a sudden halt, throwing one arm out to block our path. I came to a stop a moment later, following the line of her light into the darkness to see what she was looking at, and almost gasped when I saw the light catch a silver gleam some thirty feet away, revealing a sentinel in the next junction.

  24

  The sentinel wasn’t facing us. It was marching down the cross hall, heading toward the center of the Tower. Dylan quickly clamped her hand over her light, cutting the beam off in a mad attempt to shield us from notice, but I knew it was too late. I was already shouldering the plasma rifle, intent on taking it out, when my light caught a shadow forming on the wall behind it.

  Another sentinel entering the junction behind the first.

  I took an alarmed step back, even as Rose moved forward, planting a hand on each of our shoulders and shoving us back a few steps, then creating a barrier between us and the sentinels. “Run,” she instructed, her stance becoming defensive.

  I hesitated, not wanting to leave Rose behind to deal with two sentinels when I had a perfectly good rifle, but it finally dawned on me that the sounds we had been hearing were them—the sentinels. They were marching, likely from wherever Sage had stowed them to whatever department they intended to hit next. And it wasn’t just one or two or three of them, but a seemingly never-ending army of the mechanized monsters.

  We had to run. At any second, they were going to spring on us like ants defending their colony.

  Dylan got there faster than me, her hand grabbing my shoulder and forcibly pulling me back. I took a few stumbling steps in her direction, my mouth dry and heart racing, then cast a look at Rose, watching as she activated something in the sentinel to make the lines of it start glowing purple, acting like a beacon. My heart was ripping in half at the thought of her sacrificing herself for us when something about the darkness beyond her gave me pause.

  Where were Alice’s golden eyes?

  “Wait,” I said softly, the absence of them intriguing enough to bring me to a halt. I knew that if I was wrong, I could delay our escape by precious seconds, but this was important. When Rose was in control, her eyes glowed purple nonstop. So why weren’t the other sentinels the same?

  In fact… I cocked my head, listening intently. The sound of their feet marching was still there, thundering down the hall, but there was no other sound of movement on top of it. No sets of feet running out of rhythm with the marching, or anything that signaled pursuit. No sounds of voices calling for us to stop.

  “Liana!” Dylan hissed, urgently tugging on the shoulder of my uniform.

  But I shook my head, shrugged out of her hold, and moved back toward Rose. Even her posture was relaxing some, her head cocking quizzically as she peered down the hall. She glanced at me when I stepped up next to her, and then gazed down the hall.

  “I don’t understand,” she said softly, shifting her weight nervously. “Why are they not chasing us?”

  “Maybe they didn’t see us,” Dylan whispered, taking a few steps forward before stopping again. “We need to run.”

  I understood why Dylan wanted to run, but I was curious. Curious enough to do something reckless.

  I took another step toward the line and lifted my light. I hadn’t done much to mask the intensity of it, so the sentinels should’ve noticed it already. But when I raised my arm, taking the beam from the corrugated floor to their feet, legs, hips, arms, necks, and heads, they completely ignored me and continued their steady march down the hall. Their eyes were dark, completely unlit, and staring straight ahead.

  Three passed us, then five, then eight, their pace keeping them within ten feet of each other.

  “What is this?” Dylan breathed, finally coming forward to stand next to Rose, her tone bewildered.

  I studied them, my mind already wrestling with that question. I considered for a second that maybe they were damaged in some way, but there were too many for that. Sentinels were almost impossible to damage with conventional weapons, so I’d expect only one or two, even if someone had managed it. Not this many. No, whatever they were, it was for something else. Maybe it had something to do with Alice, or maybe they were being used to retrieve something Sage needed, but either way, I wanted to know.

  No, scratch that; I had to know. If Sage was using these sentinels for something, I had to know what. If I could figure out how to stop them or slow them down, then maybe I could also keep him distracted—or better yet, force him to call some of the legacies from the Citadel up here, to help him handle it.

  And though it was keeping me from getting to my friends, I made the decision in a split second, seeing the benefit of at least figuring out what Sage was up to. “We’re going to follow them,” I announced to the others before turning back to face them.

  Dylan was frowning at me, and as always, Rose’s face was difficult to interpret. But it was Dylan who spoke first. “We have to get to the Citadel, remember? Sage needs your boyfriend, and every moment we take away from that is a chance for those legacies to grab him!”

  I nodded, swallowing down the uncertainty her words created. “I know that, but whatever is happening here is part of Sage’s plan, too. We have to figure out what it is, and whether we can disrupt it somehow. It’ll distract Sage, and maybe get him to pull some of the legacies out of the attack to fix it, or complete whatever task these things are meant for. At the very least, it’ll slow him down and give us more time to save the others.”

  “Yeah, if there’s anyone left to save,” Dylan said, exasperated. “You’ve been pushing for us to get to the Citadel and your friends since all this started!”

  “I know,” I grated out, annoyed that she was acting like I had completely forgotten about my friends or the Citadel. “But this is important too, and I’m doing it. You can continue on to the Citadel if you want, but as you said, we need to trust that they can take care of themselves. Besides, the sentinels are heading in that direction anyway. What can it hurt to kill two birds with one stone?”

  Dylan frowned and looked up at Rose. “What do you think?”

  “I think that the last report we had of the Citadel showed that the Knights were fighting against the legacies, and that power was still on inside. That bodes well for our friends, but not for long. Liana is right: these sentinels are nothing but shells with basic instructions programmed in. For all we know, they are being utilized to manually cut the power to the Citadel. Stopping them would buy our friends more time.”

  The tall blond woman sucked in a deep breath and looked back and forth between us, her face torn. “I really do not want to die up here,” she said tiredly, giving me a pointed look. “But you both have excellent points. How do we do this?”

  I turned back to the line of sentinels marching past, and then shrugged. “Let’s just join the convoy,” I suggested. “Rose, they aren’t going to stop us, are they?”

  “They shouldn’t,” she replied, taking several steps toward the line to examine them closer. “It appears they aren’t really programmed to interact with anything. Like I said, just basic instructions.”

  She moved into the line between two of them, facing the next one, and I held my breath, waiting to see what it would do. It continued to march toward her, but slowly began adjusting its course, until it was moving past her and then back into line. She looked at us, gave a thumbs-up, then turned and started to follow the one that had just passed.

  Dylan sighed beside me and unzipped a pocket in her uniform to draw out the gun. “If these things’ eyes turn yellow for even one second…”

  “I know,” I said, a thread of fear crawling up my spine. “But it’s a
risk we have to take.”

  I strode forward, with more confidence, hoping to hell that this gut instinct of mine didn’t get my friends killed, and led to something we could use to stall Sage.

  The sentinels continued to march forward, completely ignoring our presence as they proceeded in a straight line down the hall. We passed by massive doors leading to storage bays, the numbers increasing the deeper we went into the Tower. I kept a careful eye on the sentinels on both sides of us, looking for any glimmer of a golden glow to signal that Alice was inside, but their eyes remained dark, their movements stiff and clunky.

  The line made several turns during our trek, and after a few passageways, I worried about how far we were drifting from the Citadel.

  Until we took an unexpected turn back toward it, down a hall that had a glow emanating from ahead, courtesy of the overhead lights that were on. I quickly pulled up a mental picture of our route and realized that we were actually closer to the Citadel than I had originally thought. In fact, it was seated beneath this floor. Power from there must also be feeding into this section.

  Or Sage had allowed power to be diverted here for some other reason.

  Either way, we were going to have to step carefully. If there was light here, that meant there might also be people. More importantly, it meant the cameras might be running. I prayed they weren’t, but if something important was happening up here, then it seemed likely the Core was watching. I looked up and spotted the camera mounts, studying their position. We could disguise our movement behind the sentinels if we alternated where we walked as we passed the cameras, using the machines to hide us, but there was a chance someone would notice our movements, or even pick up on the fact that Rose was different from the other sentinels, making it risky. But we had to do it. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to follow them or get into the Citadel.