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

Cyril frowned and looked over the small group, seeming to count it over in his head. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “But to what end? We don’t know what we’re looking for.”

“You’re watching for her,” I said, pointing at Rose. She darted a quick glance up at me, her purple eyes lightening some in surprise. “Well, not her, exactly,” I said. “The ones we need to be afraid of have yellow eyes. If anyone sees them, they should get back here as soon as possible to tell us that they are coming.”

Cyril took a deep breath, and then nodded. “I’ll get it set up, Champion. Just, please, do whatever you can to get that door open. I don’t want to be trapped here if any more of those things come calling.”

“Me neither,” I told him honestly.

He nodded and then moved off to put people into groups. I stood watching him for a second, and then turned to head back to Lacey, pausing when I saw Dylan watching me from the hall we had just exited, leaning against the wall.

“You handled that quite well, Champion,” she said with an approving smile. “And you were worried.”

I gave a half-hearted chuckle, and her smile broadened. “See? There’s a smile. Could that be some optimism?”

“Unlikely,” I said dryly, though my smile had grown under her teasing. It felt wrong to smile, given that even now, my friends could be getting killed by Sage’s psychotic family, Jasper had been taken by Sage, and we were heading in the wrong direction for me to do anything to fix either problem. It suddenly made me wonder how Dylan was able to do it, despite having her leg broken and being halfway strangled to death. “How are you able to be optimistic at a time like this?” I asked, unable to keep it in.

She cocked her head at me, smiled, and said, “Because I’m alive, Liana. And I know that as long as I’m alive, I’m going to fight to my dying breath to help stop this. And that’s enough for me.”

I stared at her for a long moment, and then nodded. Maybe it could be enough for me, too—if I let it.

At least, that was what I resolved to try as I moved over to the door to see what I could do to help Lacey.





8





I resisted the urge to abandon my place against the wall to pace the tight confines of the hall, but it was difficult not to chaff at how much time we had lost to the door. Lacey had spent the last twenty minutes trying to redirect power from the Cogstown side to the controls on this side, and thus far had made little to no progress, other than to exile me to this spot after I had tried to help, when I became, quote, “too much to deal with.” I was the fifth in a long line of assistants and had determined that Lacey was just better off doing it on her own. No one could do anything right under her watchful eyes, and it had prompted her to take command, no matter what objections were raised.

I tried not to let out an irritated breath as she began to talk to the door again, moving the slim pen that helped redirect threads of power over the glowing red lights. “All right, buddy,” she gasped. “Not to rush you, but I’m getting a little tired of this door being closed. So why don’t you just do Ms. Lacey a favor and open it up for me.” Beside her, Anna made a displeased murmur of protest, trying to get Lacey to put the instrument down and let her work, but Lacey ignored her.

It was more than I could stand, and given that it had been my irritation at Lacey’s refusal to let me help her—in order to let Anna work—that had caused her to send me out here in the first place, I stood up and moved away, not wanting to start another fight. I walked down the hall, pausing to chat with the lookouts Cyril had stationed there and making sure that they still had line of sight on the others, who were spread farther out into the adjacent junctions, before moving down the hall, aiming for the big man himself.

He was at the second position down, nearly a hundred feet from Lacey and the door, keeping a steady eye on the lights in either hall. “How’s it going?” I asked softly.

His dark eyes flicked to mine and then back to the hall. “It would be going better if I knew Lacey was making progress with that door. Anything?”

I shook my head, trying not to show my own worry and agitation that it was taking so long for her to get it open. “Can we cut through?” I asked. “Surely a cutter could open up the bulkhead. It’s not ideal, but—”

“We treat the walls with a special sealant that makes it impossible to cut them. It’s to avoid structural damage should any of the machinery suffer a catastrophic explosion, and it makes it impossible for the cutters to cut through the walls. There are specific areas that are left untreated, and I was just about to lead everyone there when you showed up. Maybe we should start pulling people back, and—”

“Excuse me, Champion?”

I looked over to see Anna standing behind me, nervously tucking some hair behind her ear. Her brown eyes flicked to Cyril and then to me, and she cleared her throat. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but it’s about Engineer Green. She needs blood, which means I need to know if anyone here is a universal donor, or B negative or positive, so I can administer a transfusion.”

I stared at her for a moment, and then shook my head. “I’m neither,” I told her. “Cyril?”

“A negative,” he replied grimly. “Frank, Zeke?”

“AB positive,” one of them replied. The other one simply shook his head.

I looked at Anna. “We’ll ask around. In the meantime, can you tell me how she’s doing?”

“She’s going to die,” Anna said solemnly. “She needs surgery. She has a metal fragment lodged dangerously close to her spine, and I think she’s going to lose her kidney and her spleen, but I’m not entirely certain. I’d feel much better with an experienced doctor.”

“You’re doing fine,” I reassured her, but inside, I felt very much the same way she did. Lacey was growing weaker by the minute and would pass out soon due to blood loss. If we didn’t do something to stop the bleeding, she would die.

And as much as she pissed me off, I didn’t want her to. Not just because I still needed her to tell me where Tony was, but because she could mobilize her Cogs into a veritable defense force and work to keep the power being generated in Cogstown from going to the Core—and hopefully keep Sage’s plans from becoming reality.

That, and as far as human beings went, she wasn’t awful. Sure, she had blackmailed me and my friends and thrown us all into danger, but she had done it with the good of the Tower at heart, so I supposed I could forgive that.

Then again, I felt like I could forgive a lot of things if I got through this alive.

“You’re her only hope,” I told her softly. “And I know that you can do it. And we’ll make sure you don’t do it alone, okay?”

Anna nodded and expelled a slow breath. “Thank you,” she said. “And… I’ll do my best. Should I go down one of the halls to ask about the blood?”

I exchanged looks with Cyril, and then nodded. “Go ahead and check with the lookouts in the left one. I’ll take the right. And Cyril? Do you mind taking the farther position and asking around?”

He nodded. “I’m on it. Have one of the workers tap twice on the large pipe running down the center of the ceiling if you find someone first, so I can send a replacement for him.”

I flashed him a thumbs-up and then moved down the hall, heading for the two lone lights glittering in the distance. Even though they looked far away, I only walked fifty feet before I hit them. It was a man and a woman, both Divers from Water Treatment. They glanced over their shoulders from the halls they were directing their lights down, giving me a curious look.

“Are either of you a universal donor, or B negative?” I asked. At their perplexed looks, I added, “Engineer Green needs a blood transfusion.”

The woman glanced at her counterpart, and then back to me. “I’m B negative,” she replied, and I expelled a breath of relief. That had been easier than I’d thought it would be.