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

“Are you sure this is the best route?” I whispered, intending my question for Lacey. “It’s long, and chances are good that people are going to be passing through. We should find—”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Lacey croaked. “I am literally dying, and you want to waste time arguing about our path? How’s this for a path? Rose, get me to that door as quick as possible. At least before I die.”

Rose’s purple eyes flickered in a way that I recognized as an eye blink, and she looked up at me, cocking her head quizzically. “I am unsure whether I should do what she asks or not, but my sensors are telling me that her blood pressure is dropping steadily. If we don’t get her help soon, she will—”

“She’s right,” I said, trying not to feel angry about it. It was her life on the line, and I needed to remember that. I was just feeling the pressure. “You’re right,” I repeated for her edification. If I kept trying to avoid people, it was going to take us forever to reach Tony, and we had less than two hours to get to him. Lacey still hadn’t told us where she was keeping him, and if I kept us moving this slowly, Sage would activate the transceiver, and have almost everything he needed—save for the secret protocols Leo had hidden in his code.

Once he had him, he would kill Scipio and replace him with Kurt, and then who knew what the hell would happen. We had to keep as much as we could out of his hands, if only to slow things down.

“Lead on,” I told Rose, trying not to feel exhausted.

The sentinel ducked its head and moved past me, disappearing around the corner. I looked at Dylan, who was resting against the wall on one side, and then sighed. “You okay?”

“Great,” she panted. “Just peachy keen. Let’s keep moving.”

I could tell her leg was still bothering her, despite the patch, and regretted forcing her to put any weight on it, but there was nothing else I could do but pat her on the shoulder and then turn and head after Rose.

Rose was moving efficiently down the hall, pausing at each junction to make sure it was clear before going past it. I kept an eye on the hall ahead by walking down the left side, so I could see around the sentinel, while Dylan walked down on the right.

Have you ever stared at a point in the darkness for so long that you become convinced that you’re seeing light, like it’s coming in from the end of a very long and dark hole, from a distance that would have to be miles away? After several minutes of walking, I did.

I fixated on it for several seconds, convinced I was hallucinating. And then a shadow passed it, and another, long lines of them sending the hall into alternating waves of darkness. Instinctively, I drew to a stop, every neuron in my body telling me that running into people during a Requiem Day-level event was dangerous and stupid, but Rose didn’t so much as pause as she headed for the light.

“Liana,” Dylan whispered harshly, and I blinked and saw her a few feet past me, the confusion on her face put there by my sudden stop.

I stared at her for a few seconds, unable to put my disquiet into words, and then just sighed and started moving again, pulling the gun out of my belt and clicking the safety off. I didn’t want to have to shoot anyone, but if the crowd grew angry, I could fire it in the air to scatter them.

I only prayed it wouldn’t come to that.





7





Within a couple of minutes, having a four-hundred-and-fifty-pound sentinel as the vanguard to our little group turned out to be a problem.

“Scipio help us, it’s one of those things!” a panicked voice shouted, cutting through the buzz of the crowd.

A few startled shouts rose up in alarm, and I heard what could only be described as the pre-panic stage: that moment right before people would either flee in terror or erupt in violence against us. Rose halted mid-step in response to it, and I seized the opportunity to dart past her and slip into a hall lit by several hand-held lights, holding both hands high in the air.

“It’s okay,” I told them in a steady voice. “The sentinel is not here to hurt anyone. It’s helping me carry Engineer Green back to Cogstown.”

There was a pause from the twenty or thirty people gathered in the hall, and then a tall, muscular man from the back started to push forward. He was bald—though that looked to be by choice rather than a hereditary issue—and sported a black goatee around his mouth. As he came through the crowd, I realized he was wearing the orange of the Cogs. One of Lacey’s people. Most of the men and women were, but there were a handful of blue-clad Divers, one or two Farmers, who I was guessing had been escorting the Divers and Cogs to whatever area needed repairing (as most shell issues were related directly to the Farming Department), and one Medic. I didn’t see any Knights in the group, but then again, there wouldn’t be any. They would be trying to disperse groups like this one, right now.

“What’s going on?” he demanded, and I had to resist the urge to grab my baton at the hostility in his voice. “The power’s been out for thirty minutes, but none of the emergency systems have kicked on. We can’t get through the doors.”

I stared at him for a moment, uncertain how much I should actually tell him, and then realized that he and the others had a right to know what was happening. Sooner or later, they were going to be fed one story or another, and if Sage wound up beating me, I wanted to give as many people the truth as possible, so that they could figure out how to stop him.

“Marcus Sage and Sadie Monroe have taken control of Scipio and initialized another Requiem Day in an attempt to kill him.”

“What?” he gasped, taking a step back. His shock was echoed by the crowd behind him, as men and women burst into furious whispers. He glanced over his shoulder, taking stock of the group, and then turned back to me, suspicion on his face. “That’s not possible.”

“I can understand why you want to believe that,” I said slowly, knowing full well that if I didn’t convince this group I was telling the truth, they would turn on me for even insinuating there was anything wrong with Scipio. “And believe me, I wish it weren’t true, but it is.”

“Scipio is all-knowing!” someone in the crowd shouted. “He would’ve detected the psychological contamination of anyone who would do him harm and punished them! You’re lying.”

I tried to locate the source of the voice, but whoever was speaking was buried too far in the crowd for me to pinpoint him. Not that it mattered, since as soon as he was done, several people nodded in agreement, all while watching me to see what my reaction would be.