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

“Tell me,” I demanded. A version of Rose might have been safe and sound in my sentinel, but the other one was still her. “I need to know what Sage is doing if I’m going to figure out how to stop him.”

Lionel sighed heavily and tapped his cane against the floor a few times, the speakers replicating the tapping sound. “Ezekial, as I know him, figured out something about the alpha-series nets that my predecessor had attempted to keep secret.” At my puzzled expression, he tapped the back of his neck and gave me a pointed look. “The white net you’re using to house Tony is called an alpha-series net.”

I blinked, suddenly recalling that Sage had called them the same thing this morning too. “Okay,” I said, not understanding the importance of the information. “What secret?”

“Scipio monitors the citizens of the Tower through everything: grief, depression, trauma, joy—you get the idea. Because every emotion is channeled to Scipio, we needed a way to buffer it somewhat, and scale it down so that the AI program wasn’t overwhelmed. But additionally, we needed a cut-off feature that would prevent Scipio from experiencing each citizen’s death in the moment it happened. The trauma of witnessing that again and again over time would eventually degrade the system.”

My heart grew heavy and hard at what he was saying, and I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. “Are you saying that Sage had the nets changed so that he could remove that buffer?”

Lionel nodded, his eyes solemn. “That’s one of multiple reasons, but yes, it had a great deal to do with it. Ever since those nets were replaced, each death in the Tower, no matter how painless or brutal it was, was fed directly into Scipio himself. The fragments did their best to stave off the pain, but then Sage began removing them, one by one, until Scipio was fully exposed. It’s why he helped create the expulsion chambers and the laws regarding rankings. He’s been slowly trying to step up the process for years, so that he could torture Scipio.”

I closed my eyes, my heart breaking for the AI. No wonder he did whatever Sage ordered him to do. He was undoubtedly desperate for some sort of end to his torment. He was cut off from all the other fragments, alone, and being tortured endlessly. Each person he was forced to put into the expulsion chambers must’ve been agony for him, but with Sadie and Sage the only ones aware of his predicament, there’d been nothing to stop them.

“That’s disgusting,” I finally said, and even though it was accurate, it didn’t seem strong enough.

“It is, but it has made me realize the monumental flaw in the original design. You are correct that the Core can’t properly operate with only one full AI working alone, but it also can’t return to what it was. Most of the fragment personalities have been irreparably damaged. No reset of their codes could fully restore them to what they once were, and without their backups, there is no way to replace them. But Lionel anticipated this problem before he died, which brings me to the solution: a new neural clone must be scanned and combined with the backup version of the original Scipio program. Or Leo, in this case.”

“A new neural scan?” I echoed, once again confused. I knew the AIs were all neural scans from different founding members of the Tower, but no one knew how Lionel Scipio had created them. It had been one of his most guarded secrets. Not to mention, all of the AIs had undergone a vigorous vetting process before Scipio was ultimately chosen, which included psychological profiles and simulations of problems that could occur during the lifespan of the Tower. It seemed unlikely that the new plan was to put a fresh neural clone together with the undamaged one, and hope everything worked out all right. That was too simple. “Why?”

“Toward the end of his life, my counterpart began to realize that his views on the AIs were fundamentally flawed. He tried to parse them down to the very basics of what allowed human beings to survive: determination, instinct, courage, fear, and the ability to view the citizens of the Tower as being worthy of the AIs’ protection, through Rose. But years after Scipio was installed, he discovered that there wasn’t enough symbiosis between the fragments and Scipio. It would have been better to have paired another full AI with him—independent in thought, but united in purpose.”

My eyebrows rose to my hairline, and I rocked back on my heels, considering the idea. It certainly had merit, because the system as it stood was fundamentally flawed. But then… how did we create another AI? What parameters were we supposed to use when creating it? What human did we base the scan on?

“How does this all… work?” I finally asked, unable to come up with a better way to channel all the questions into a single one.

“First, you must go to the integration chamber to initiate the purge of Scipio. The Core must be cleared of his program before you can initiate the replacement. Then, you must trigger the protocol within the backup AI, by giving him the following command: ‘Initiate New Day protocol, alpha-phi-alpha-6233.’ Even if he is in a net, it will automatically trigger a download to send him into the integration chamber and emit a signal, activating a command within all of the alpha-series nets still implanted in any individual in the Tower to initiate a scan of the neural pathways, and construct a clone. The clones will be vetted, and the final one will be integrated with the backup program.”

My eyes widened. The fact that the legacy nets were also the way a neural clone was made was another reason for Sage to do away with them, but I wasn’t so sure he knew about this one. Still, he’d gotten rid of so many of them, and with Strum dead and Lacey injured and possibly dead, I wasn’t sure how many candidates there would be, other than myself, Sage, and whichever of his children he’d trusted with one. If I could reach my friends, I could set them up with legacy nets of their own, to broaden Leo’s chances of finding a suitable—

My knees went weak as I realized that in order to save the Tower, I would have to say goodbye to Leo. Sure, there was a chance my neural clone would be accepted, but without knowing the vetting process, I couldn’t be sure. Not to mention, the clone would be based on me… but I doubted it would be the same. And what if Sage was somehow selected? Or Quess or Maddox?

He would be gone, and I’d never see him again.

I supposed I could ask him to copy himself, but… that felt wrong, somehow? He’d have a twin that was just like him, in love with me like he was, but only one of them would stay with me, while the other…

Scratch that, it was wrong. All of it was wrong. I didn’t want to say goodbye to Leo! I loved him. He was a part of me, as essential as water or food or oxygen. Losing him would be like losing a part of my soul.

And yet I knew it was going to happen. I had always known that it was a possibility. Leo was meant to serve as Scipio’s backup, and it seemed that no matter what we did, we weren’t going to be able to save Scipio. Once I told Leo about this room, and what needed to be done, he’d volunteer immediately. I knew him; he loved me, but his duty to the Tower and to his creator’s dream was stronger than anything, and his will to fix things was just as great as my own.

Somehow, I was going to have to figure out how to let him go.

But first I had to rescue him. Which meant I needed to get to him.

“I told you that you weren’t going to like it,” Lionel said softly, and I looked up at him, questioning. “You and Leo are close. His emotional behavior has been erratic ever since he met you. It’s love, isn’t it?”