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

People screamed as a sentinel stepped into the light, the golden eyes glowing like twin suns. “Citizens of the Tower,” Alice said. “Scipio is being attacked by dissidents. We are here to remove them from your ranks. Fear not, for if you have served Scipio well, you will not be harmed.” And then she reached into the crowd, grabbed a screaming woman in Diver’s blue, with short auburn hair, and lifted her up in the air. “You have been deemed a dissident,” she reported, wrapping her other hand around the woman’s jaw. “You will now be purged.”

Alice jerked her hand to one side, taking the woman’s head with it, and a sickening snap silenced the woman’s panicked cries.





9





Several heartbeats of stunned silence greeted Alice’s casual brutality, but that silence was broken when she lazily dropped the body to one side and began to reach into the crowd again.

“RUN!” I shouted, unable to watch as the crowd stood frozen in terror. I pulled out my gun and fired a round at Alice to punctuate my command, and just like that, the pandemonium began. The shot hit her in the head, and she staggered back, one hand reaching up to grasp the side of her face.

A woman screamed, but the sound was lost quickly as the entire crowd began to cry out in panic, viciously clawing their way toward the door. I saw several people halfway back break off from the bulk of the crowd to dart down the side halls, but seconds later, they were thrown back in by sentinels emerging from the side.

“Do not panic,” they announced in one united voice, which could barely be heard over the panicked cries. “If you are a true servant of Scipio, you will be safe.”

Within moments, they were diving into the crowd, seemingly picking people up at random, and then killing them in the most grotesque fashions. I hung, transfixed and horrified as I watched them pull men apart, sending blood and viscera spraying into the air, spattering the crowd with the remains of what had just been one of their comrades, and practically fold others in half. A man in the back of the crowd slipped in the blood as he tried to get away, and I watched one of the golden-eyed, blood-soaked monsters reach down and pluck him into the air.

He screamed, his legs kicking wildly, and I recognized him as Dalton, the Engineer whose rank-obsessed idiocy had almost gotten him killed outside the Tower when I was a lowly Squire. I probably wouldn’t have remembered him, but everything about that day was burned into my memory, as it was the day I met Grey. It seemed a lifetime since I had seen Dalton, and while I had wished more than my fair share of ill will upon him at the time, I had never wanted anything like this to happen to him—to anyone. It was too horrible.

I was starting to look away, to disconnect my lines, when the sentinel holding him flipped him over, gave him a cursory glance, and then set him down roughly on his feet. “You are free to go, citizen,” she said, finally using only one voice. “Please remain here until we have finished, and we will guide you from the shell back to your department.”

Dalton remained stock still as the sentinel stepped past him, moving toward the final few people trying to escape through the door. Moving toward me.

I suddenly realized how close they were getting to me, to Dylan, and I quickly twisted around, scanning for Dylan’s crimson uniform in the crowd. I spotted her trying to fight the tide pushing through the door and waving at me, and I disconnected the line, intent on making for her and getting through the door. As much as I wanted to stay and fight them—stop them—I knew that there were too many for me to handle. Not to mention, if they saw me, they would alert Sage that I was still alive. That was the last thing I wanted.

I landed heavily on my boots and then plunged into the group of people shoving their way through the door. “MOVE!” I roared, shoving the people in front of me low in their backs, stabilizing them even as I urged them forward. I realized instantly that it was a mistake to try to get to Dylan; there was only one way the crowd was going to let me go, and that was forward. The heavy steps of metal feet on the corrugated flooring filled the hall over the sound of panicked crying, and I grunted as the press of bodies grew even tighter, the crowd becoming a mass of nothing but torsos, elbows, knees, and feet. If I went down, I would be trampled to death by the others in their panic to escape.

But I kept upright, pushing out with every ounce of strength I possessed to keep from getting overwhelmed, and nearly tripped over the lip of the door, my toe catching on it. I grabbed a fistful of somebody’s uniform to keep from falling, but I was already getting pushed farther down. I reached out with my other hand, seeking something that would help me reestablish balance, and found a strong hand instead. It wrapped around my forearm and hauled me up and forward.

I gasped as my rescuer and I suddenly stumbled free of the crowd, the numbers thinning out once we were past the threshold, thanks to the Cogs directing traffic. Glancing up, I was a little bewildered to see that it was Dylan who had saved me, and then was instantly relieved to see that she was all right. And, oh yeah, she had saved my life.

“Thanks,” I gasped.

She nodded, but her pale face was angled toward the door. I turned to see that the sentinels were closing the distance, and even though they were being slowed by whatever selection process they were using as they decided who lived and who died, they’d be at the door in thirty or forty seconds. Long before we got everyone through it.

I looked around and quickly spotted Neela by the door. She had some sort of wrench jammed into a large gear in a compartment behind the wall. As I watched, she flexed her arms and placed her weight on the long arm of the wrench, pushing so hard that her feet lifted off of the ground as she forced the gear to turn. As it shifted, the door began to close, moving an inch for every inch the wrench moved. When her feet hit the ground, she’d start the process again.

I realized then that she had come to the same conclusion I had, and was sealing the door manually, cutting off access. A part of me wanted to tell her to stop—to not close the door until everyone was safe—but I knew, deep down, that she had to do it. There were more people in Cogstown than in that hall, and we had a duty to serve the greater good.

So instead of wasting time fighting with her, I moved over to the door and began helping pull people through, grabbing the arms of bodies that were closest to the door and yanking them out of the mass, ushering them along. At one point a child of about four or five, his face red and screaming, was passed over the crowd and practically thrown at me. I barely got my arms around him before a large man who could barely squeeze through the narrowing space reached out and snatched the boy’s leg, grabbing for something to pull himself forward. It took me a second to recognize Cyril, the fear carved into the line of his face making the man look rabid, and I realized he didn’t understand what he was doing; the fear of death was blinding him to his actions, leaving him with a desperate compulsion to survive no matter what.

But the boy in my arms howled in pain as Cyril started to pull, trying to find leverage to get through, and, reacting purely on an instinct to keep the boy safe, I lashed out with a foot, kicking him right in his armpit. He shouted in pain, but let go of the boy, and I stumbled back, keeping my arms locked tight around the panicked child.

Dylan caught me, and I quickly handed the boy to her before racing back to the man and trying to grab one of Cyril’s arms to help him.

“PUSH HIM OUT!” I heard Neela yell from behind me, but I ignored her and planted a foot on the door just as I got a grip on his forearm with both hands. I had long enough to catch a glimpse of the orange five on his indicator, and then began yanking. I couldn’t let Cyril die. His decision to support me and Lacey had kept the crowd from killing us, and he had worked hard to get everyone organized and working. He had helped me, helped all of us, and he didn’t deserve to die after he’d worked so hard to save so many people.

“OPEN THE DOOR!” I shouted as I managed to get a few more inches of him out of the confined space.