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

And, to be perfectly honest, I needed them, too. They were my family, and I couldn’t bear the thought of losing a single one of them.

“We need to move,” I told the others, continuing to head up the flooding stairs, ignoring the water splashing around me. “Tony tells me that Sage is behind this. It’s acting as a cooler for the Tower. Rose, leave the door open. Odds are, someone will come along before too long to close it, but it might slow Sage down; he’s not going to risk drawing more power until he can ensure he doesn’t melt everything at the same time. At the very least, it’ll divert a couple hundred gallons of water.”

“It’ll damage the inside of the shell,” Dylan pointed out.

“Better than letting Sage kill Scipio,” I replied, continuing my climb. Inside, I was already asking Tony which door would put us out over Greenery 3. I had a plan.





18





The door pushed open, letting in a blinding white light that had me squeezing my eyes shut, the contrast with the darkness we had been encased in causing them to ache fiercely. Even with my eyes closed, I could see the glow of it through my eyelids, and I kept them that way for several seconds to let them adjust, before sliding them open.

It took me a second to realize that even though the sun had blinded me, the position of it over the Tower was still casting shade across the door and a small section of the glittering brown expanse of Greenery 3’s roof, stretching out from the side like a massive diving platform. There was no sign of movement from our vantage point, and I felt confident that Sage had his eyes inward, focused on getting control of the Tower.

I stepped outside, taking care not to slip on the smooth glass. The water we’d been walking through had definitely gotten us a little water-logged, and we’d need to take a moment to dry our boots off and make sure our lash ends hadn’t gotten wet.

I scanned the rest of the greenery to make sure it was clear, and then turned around to face the Tower, taking a few careful steps back to examine its edifice. It was forty stories until the next greenery—Greenery 7—which meant almost five hundred feet, straight up. We’d make about three or four feet per line we threw, and if we threw two lines every second…

I looked at my watch and saw that it was nearly noon. Eustice and the legacies had been unleashed on the Citadel nearly three and a half hours ago. They’d had to climb to get to my quarters, but even still, if the Knights hadn’t been able to coordinate a defense against them, they could be inside my quarters right now, trying to get to my friends.

And if Sage had control over Cornelius, the defenses I’d put in place would be useless.

But I couldn’t think like that. Quess and Leo both were excellent coders, and Zoe could do damn near anything she wanted with machines. With Maddox in command, keeping them together, I had no doubt they were holding their own. Hell, the evidence was already there, with the Citadel still having power though the rest of the Tower had lost it. Dinah had said they were mounting a defense, fighting back…

I put my fears into a box and packed them up, then turned back to the wall in front of me.

“I’ve been out here before,” Dylan breathed from beside me, and I glanced over to see that she had moved next to me to stare at it as well. “I’ve gone under a greenery, even climbed a few stories up to help replace one of the panels, but this…”

She blew out a deep breath, and I found myself nodding in complete understanding. If we managed to survive, we’d be famous. No one else had ever tried it in the history of the Tower, partially because the lash technology was still fairly new, but also because it hadn’t been designed with anything like this in mind.

“We’ll change out our lash ends now,” I told her, pulling one of my lashes from my sleeve and unscrewing the end. They were Quess’s special ones, designed to resist the effects of humidity, and were unnecessary for this particular climb. So I tucked them away in pockets—one on each hip, for easier access in case I had to change them out during the climb—and then pulled two fresh ones from a different pocket and screwed them on. As I did this, I kept talking, instructions coming to mind as I considered the temperature of the air, the surface temperature of the glass, the wind’s speed and direction. All the things we needed to do to be safe.

“We’ll stop and change our lashes every seventy-five feet. I’d push it to a hundred, but the sun is going to be overhead, which means the surface temperature is going to increase. When we change, we’ll do it one at a time, using the second line as a safety. Rose, you’ll go beneath us and be prepared to catch either one of us if we fall. We work on a four-foot lash only, and disconnect the secondary line only once the primary one is fully reeled in.” I paused as I tightened the final lash bead onto the threaded end of the line, and gave it a sharp whirl, checking to make sure the end glowed blue with a static charge before letting it retract into my suit. “Questions, comments, concerns?” I asked, looking up and over at both of them.

Dylan was already in the process of doing the same thing I was, and she paused, flashing Rose a good-natured smile. “Sure you can’t carry us up?” she asked, and I could tell she was half joking.

Rose “blinked” at her, and then clasped her hands in front of her body, shaking her head and looking down. “It would be even more dangerous for the both of you. As it is, I might not make it up. There isn’t much of a grip.”

I frowned. I hadn’t considered that Rose might have difficulty climbing the Tower, but she was right: the surface of the Tower was mostly smooth, so Rose would need freedom of movement to try to find the best way up.

“I can’t say that I’m not disappointed, but at least my Champion has some very wise precautions in place, so I should be fine. What I can say is… this is really going to suck. Water?”

“Please,” I said, and she reached into the bag she had taken from Lynch, filled with food and supplies, and handed me a bottle. I drank half of it quickly, using the angle to study the wall some more, and then capped it and tucked it into my pocket. I’d need more on the climb, and stopping to reach into our bags would be dangerous.

Speaking of which.

I unshouldered both the bags I’d been carrying since Cogstown—one medic kit, and the tech bag I’d taken from Lidecher earlier—and set them on the ground, quickly opening them up and readjusting the contents to make them more balanced and secured. As soon as I was done, I zipped them closed and stood up, a bag in each hand. “Rose, do you mind carrying the bags?”

“Not at all,” she said, stepping forward. I had to adjust the straps to fit the sentinel’s wide chest, but we managed, and within minutes, she was carrying all three bags on her back—two just under her shoulders, and one fitted on the small of her back, the strap wrapped tight around her waist. Dylan and I took a few more minutes to stretch our muscles, knowing that the intensity of the climb demanded that we both be limber, and then we began.

To say it wasn’t easy would be a massive understatement.

Each line we placed had to be disconnected first, leaving us dangling by one line from the sheer face, being pushed around by the wind. Then we had only six inches of line to work with to build up a static charge, so we had to spin the lash end faster than we would normally do, to build up enough energy for it to stick fast and hold our weight. After that came the agonizingly short ascent, pulled up by the winch in our harness, only to stop and repeat the whole process all over again.