The Girl Who Dared to Think 7: The Girl Who Dared to Fight

“HOLD THE LINE!” Dylan roared through the smoke and fire, and I grew very still, realizing that the sentinels were going to tear through Dylan and the Knights to try to get Sadie out, as per Sage’s orders. I needed to do something to stop them, and quickly.

I swallowed and then peered through the smoke toward where I had seen the last round go off. What I was thinking about was stupid and risky, but it was the only thing I could come up with to save as many of those people as I could. After all, those were my Knights in the next room.

I stood up and spun the lash line in my hand around several times, then threw it up over my head. I didn’t see so much as feel the end hit, and I used the hand controls to launch myself into the air. I flew straight up, and then threw the second line to connect a few feet away, continuing upward.

The smoke here was thicker—which was only one half of the stupidity of the equation—so I held my breath and threw one more line, this time toward the shadowy outline of one of the plasma guns. The lash end hit right next to where the gun was mounted in the ceiling.

I let go of the other line and swung toward the gun, both legs outstretched. It continued to fire, the gun shifting back and forth as Scipio followed Sage’s orders and expended the power reserves of the room, and I landed on it with my feet against the side, then shifted with it for a second while I examined the mounting. The gun was maybe half my height, but I could tell it was made of a lightweight material, given how easily it swung back and forth. There was about three feet of space between the top of the gun and the ceiling, and I quickly straddled what I deemed to be the safest part: a piece of metal just before the ventilation ducts that were radiating heat from the plasma being pumped inside. The vents were angled back, away from where I was sitting, but it was still warm enough to tell me that I couldn’t hold this position for long. The gun sagged under my weight—a promising sign—and I quickly threw a second lash line a few feet away, and then retracted the line.

The gun bucked under me as it fired a shot through the smoke, but I dragged it to the left, moving toward a purple glow that I could barely make out through the haze. The smoke was starting to make my eyes water, and my lungs were already begging me to take a breath, but I ignored all that and continued to move the gun into position. It bucked again, the glowing glob of super-heated plasma cutting a hole through the smoke.

My heart beat once, twice, and then the ceiling across from me erupted in purple flames, illuminating the lines of the opposite gun through the explosion of plasma that I had set off right next to it. I had missed, yes, but the plasma burst had exploded, and lines of plasma were dripping along the sides of the gun. It shook in its mount, starting to swing around to me, but I could see that the plasma was cutting through the metal. The gun was halfway through the spin when it suddenly gave a hard shudder and froze in place, then exploded, chunks of metal and a plume of smoke erupting from where it had been.

I didn’t waste any time resting on my laurels. In fact, I was already retracting the other line and dragging the gun back to the right. Any second, Scipio was going to realize that—

A glimmer of purple to the left of me caught the corner of my eye, and I yelped, detaching the line on that side just as a volley of plasma erupted from the smoke, and threw myself to the right. The burst slammed into the opposite side of the gun, and I had just enough time to throw a second line and start to surrender my weight to it before the gun exploded, the heat and concussive force physically changing my trajectory.

I cried out as the world spun for a second, and then sucked in a deep breath, my lungs begging for oxygen.

I immediately began choking on the smoke filling the air and took a moment to reach into my pocket for the black rubber mask. I hadn’t wanted to use it earlier, knowing that the mask would show up as a dark spot on thermal scans. My body heat would be difficult for Scipio to see through the plasma fires, and a black moving spot on his sensors would only give him a target, but I needed to breathe. The mask went on smoothly, and I took a breath of fresh air as I threw another line, knowing that every second I was still was a second for Scipio to target me.

I was two lash lines away from the gun behind me when another shot came for me, but it missed narrowly, and I could see my next target looming up ahead. It was swiveling toward me, but I was faster, and I slammed into it with both legs, putting as much force as I could into the blow.

It worked. The gun turned away from me—and toward the gun that was shooting at me. There wasn’t much time to aim, but the plasma burst was large. Hopefully large enough to hit the other gun. As long as the containment chamber was breeched, it would explode like the others had.

The gun jerked, firing a round, and I held my breath as I watched it. For a second, it was swallowed up by the black clouds now filling the room. Then another explosion rocked through the decimated Council Room, clearing some of the smoke long enough that I could see that the gun was still there, the shot having missed by several feet.

I gritted my teeth and pushed off the gun, expecting Scipio to take another shot at me, but instead I heard a static pop, followed by, “Liana, I’ve got control of the guns.”

“Rose!” I exclaimed, surprise rippling through me as I threw another lash. “I thought Scipio took you!”

“He did. I willingly copied myself before he could take me, so that a version stayed here. I thought you might need some help.”

I was descending when a serious concern hit me. “Rose, why isn’t Scipio stopping you?”

“He’s distracted. Now, hurry up. Three out of the seven humans in the other room are already deceased. You let me handle my sister.”

I dropped to the floor and landed in an inferno. The fires here raged, the color no longer purple but a bright orange that seemed to consume everything. I could see the door. The hole Dylan had been cutting was open and had been made wider by the plasma shots Alice had been urging Scipio to make.

I didn’t see any sign of the sentinels as I raced across the floor toward the hole, but that didn’t stop me from grabbing my gun from where I had stuck it in my belt earlier, and chambering a round. I only had seven left in the magazine, and I doubted that my little gun would do much against one four-hundred-and-fifty-pound death machine, let alone two of them, but my Knights were dying, and Sadie was going to make her escape. I had to do something.

I stopped just short of the hole and peered through the flaming wreckage to the scene beyond.

“Carnage” was the only word to describe it. The table in the center had been overturned—likely by Dylan, in an attempt to create cover—and smashed to pieces. Blood was splashed everywhere, along with the limbs and body parts of the Knights I had brought with me to help make the arrests.

A wet gurgle caught my ear, and I took a few steps forward and saw Dylan on her back, Emmanual Plancett straddling her. His hands were locked around her throat, the veins on his muscular forearms practically jumping out from under his skin with the intensity with which he was strangling her. She was grabbing his wrists, her legs and hips struggling beneath him, but I could tell she was losing strength.

Standing with its back to me was one of the sentinels. I couldn’t see the second one, but I couldn’t see Sadie, either. They were either hiding in a blind spot on the other side of the room, or they had already escaped.

It didn’t matter. I raised the gun, took a slow breath in, and then exhaled and squeezed the trigger.

I caught Plancett right behind his ear. The effect was immediate. He went limp and slumped to one side, tumbling off Dylan like a puppet whose strings had just been cut. The blond woman jerked to her side, exhaling sharply, but then the sentinel was turning.

The red of the fire behind me turned the silver lines of its body crimson, and they glinted wetly, as if it were dripping rivulets of blood. The gold of its eyes flared.