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

I stared at her for several seconds, thinking. To be honest, I didn’t want to do any of those things. I wanted to handle this quickly and efficiently, not waste time with any of that nonsense. Besides, I wanted to know why they were down here and what they were doing. If there were two guards outside, I was betting there was at least one more inside, if not a few of them. And whether they knew what they were participating in or not was irrelevant: if they were part of IT, I couldn’t trust them.

I pulled out my gun, ejected the clip, saw that I had three bullets left, and slapped it back inside, a very simple plan forming in my mind that hopefully wouldn’t take up more than two or three bullets. I had two spare clips with me, but that was only twenty extra bullets. Not nearly enough for everything we’d come across. Dylan gave me a surprised look when I glanced at her, and then I signaled, Wait here, before moving around the corner and bringing the gun up.

I was five steps in when the first guard spotted me, but I had expelled a breath and squeezed the trigger, a deadly calm coming over me, before he could even open his mouth. The bullet caught him in the chest, and his body jerked backward and down. The second Eye, a woman, started to lift her weapon, a shout of warning forming over her lips, but I sighted down the barrel of the gun, not feeling one iota of remorse as I squeezed off a second shot. The bullet caught her in the stomach, and she staggered back, clutching her abdomen, while I took two more steps forward and shot her in the head, dropping her. I ejected the empty clip and inserted a new one.

The door they were guarding slid open, and I fired a round at the frame causing it to ricochet. A surprised yelp inside told me I had gotten their attention, and I quickly announced, “This is Champion Liana Castell, and you have two options right now: surrender, or I come in there and kill you all. You have three seconds to throw out your weapons and pads. Make your choice now.”

I waited a beat, and then began counting down for them. “Three… two… one…”

My lips were around the “one” when two bags were tossed out, followed by two pulse shields. I gave a satisfied nod and then turned to look over my shoulder at where Dylan, Lynch, and Rose were standing. Dylan and Lynch were looking a little alarmed at my violent display.

I didn’t care. The Eyes had been standing in my way, and were currently the enemy, as far as I was concerned.

“Rose, can you come here and make sure they are being honest for me, please?”

“Of course,” she said in her synthesized voice. “Stand by.”

I moved to one side, keeping my gun trained on the door, and waited as Rose passed me and went in, taking care to step over the two bodies on the floor.

“There are only two of them,” she reported, her voice carrying down the hall. “And they are unarmed.”

I was already moving toward the door, and stepped through it a moment later, to study the server room. It was almost exactly like the ones in IT, but much smaller, maybe only one hundred feet in length, though still filled with cages. The cage on the wall opposite from us was open, and several wires were connected to the computer towers there, which told me the techs had been working on it when we had interrupted them. The two techs, both men, were huddled against one of the cages, staring at Rose with fear in their eyes.

“We are just following orders,” one of them practically wailed when he saw me enter. “We got a message from the Core telling us we had to divert power to—”

“Shut up, Lidecher,” the other man snapped, straightening some. “She knows. She’s the one responsible for the attack on Scipio!”

The first man gaped at me, his eyes wide, and swallowed audibly. I stared at both of them, wondering whether I should even waste my breath trying to tell them they were wrong, but decided against it. The Eyes would undoubtedly blindly believe whatever messages they were getting from the Core, and with Sadie in control of it, and Sage in control of Scipio, there was nothing I could say to change their minds. So instead, I focused on getting information.

“How did you get in here?” I demanded.

“Why should we tell… AH!” He had been cut off by Rose, who had reached out and grabbed a fistful of his uniform, then hauled him off his feet and slammed him against the ceiling, cutting off his cry.

I was so alarmed by her act of violence that I took a step back, wondering if she was malfunctioning again. “Rose?” I asked.

“He’s just unconscious,” she replied pleasantly, setting the man on the ground. “I thought it might be easier to make a deal with that man than this one, and decided to remove him from the equation. I hope you don’t mind.”

I did, a little bit, but one look at Lidecher told me Rose’s ploy had worked; the poor man was damn near peeing himself. “Excellent idea,” I said to her, before turning back to him. “Lidecher, was it?” I asked.

His eyes darted from his companion to me, and he nodded, fast enough that the fat under his chin began to jiggle.

I stepped closer, keeping the smile on my face. “Listen, I just have some questions. If you answer them honestly, I will let you and your friend find a place to hide and ride this out until the crisis has passed. If you don’t, I’m going to let my friend here throw you around. We haven’t tested how dexterous her fingers are yet, so she could use a little practice.”

He gulped, and then vigorously nodded again. “Anything you want. Just please don’t hurt us.”

My smile grew, and it was mostly genuine. “I won’t. Now tell me, how did you get into Cogstown, how are you getting updates from the Core, and what were you trying to do here?”





12





The words spilled out of him as if I had opened the floodgates to his every thought, and I was a little taken aback by the speed with which he answered.

“All the nets that are programmed with Eye credentials are working. Part of our emergency procedure is to immediately divert power to our communication nodes so we can coordinate with the Eyes stuck outside the Core. We were in Cogstown replacing some of the power crystals in a power diverter when our Cog guide informed us that power had gone down to the rest of the Tower. He was escorting us to the upper floors when we received a transmission from the Core through our commanding officer, directly from the head of our internal department. He informed us that the Core was under direct attack from Cogstown, and ordered us to upload a code into their mainframe to divert power to the Core, to stop the attack. To help Scipio survive.”

I stared at him for several seconds, then turned back to the door, intent on getting to one of their pads and having Rose confirm what he was saying, but paused when I saw that Lynch and Dylan had already done so. Dylan had dug through a bag and pulled out a white pad, and was now offering it to me. I grabbed it, tapped it, and then held it out to Lidecher when it asked for a password. He hesitated, but then quickly tapped in four digits: 1-0-9-4. I pulled the pad back and handed it off to Rose. I had no doubt that whatever they had been sent to upload into the computers was meant to take Cogstown offline, but probably not in the way Lidecher and the others had been told.

I wanted to know exactly what it was, so that Lynch could tell the other Cog workers how to defend their department.

“Find the code. If he’s telling the truth, hook the pad up and figure out how far they were into the upload, how much damage they did to Cogstown’s systems, and whether we can help them restore it. Keeping Cogstown’s power away from the Core will slow Sage down.”

“We honestly didn’t get far,” Lidecher offered nervously. “We had just finished connecting our pads to the servers. I swear, we hadn’t even opened the file our lead sent us to upload!”

I stared at him for a long moment, my face revealing nothing. “We’ll see,” I finally said, letting doubt color my tone. If he was telling the truth about the code, that meant he could be telling the truth about his net. And if the Eyes’ nets were somehow still active, then I could use that to my advantage. I looked up at Rose, waiting for her to confirm or deny his story.