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

I decided to let him know that I knew what he was talking about, if only to keep him talking and gain more insight into what he was thinking. “The alien visitors,” I said softly. “The ones from Patrus. They made you step things up.”

He gave me a canny look as he stepped down from the last stair. “So you’ve met with them? How… Ah, yes, the monitoring station. I suppose you and your friends figured out that I’d shut it down and reactivated it somehow. Very clever, although if you were smarter, you would’ve just left with them. Could’ve spared yourself this little embarrassment and been free to live your life. Still, I suppose I can’t fully fault you. You do seem to attract extraordinary things, don’t you? Take your boyfriend, for example. Do you prefer calling him Grey… or Leo? And after you tell me that, I’d love to know how, exactly, Scipio’s backup survived the virus I put into his system.”

I tried not to cringe as words I’d never even uttered to anyone outside my inner circle reached my ears, leaving me vulnerable and exposed. How had he known about Leo? I’d done everything in my power to keep his existence a secret, but somehow, Sage knew. It shouldn’t be possible. But it was.

He cocked his head at me, waiting for my answer, and I swallowed back some of my fear and decided to deflect. “How do you know about that?”

“Why, your net, of course. The alpha-series nets are probably the only worthwhile thing that Lionel ever invented. They are capable of any number of things—one of which is hacking into the others for a live feed, so to speak. Of course, there are steps you can take to keep your net from getting hacked, but you didn’t take them, I’m afraid. Which made it terribly easy to keep tabs on you. However, I wasn’t lying when I said you caught me by surprise. I had no idea this was coming. But then again, I had no idea you were in cahoots with Lacey and Strum.”

I frowned. He was lying. He had to be. If Kurt could hack my net, then he would’ve known I was working with Lacey and Strum. “You’re lying. If you had been spying on me, you would’ve known I was making a move against your people and warned them.”

He smirked. “Spying through the nets requires our full concentration, so it’s impossible for us to watch you at all times. And, as I mentioned earlier, I made a mistake in assuming your mother’s death would slow you down.”

I absorbed what he was saying, his words sinking in and ringing of truth. He had been spying on me through the legacy net Lacey had given me. It shouldn’t have been possible for him to do it, as Lacey was a legacy herself and had been indirectly fighting Sage for years! She would’ve known about this, and done something to protect from it.

A wash of cold fear rolled over me when I realized she might have done just that—only to have me screw it up. I knew there were memories on there that she had purposefully kept me from retaining. I had wanted to know what was inside, and asked Quess to remove the protections. It stood to reason that if he hadn’t fully understood what he was looking at, he could’ve also disabled the protocol keeping Sage out. Which meant he had literally been inside my mind without me knowing, monitoring my actions and my thoughts. I felt violated in more ways than one—and wanted nothing more than to rip the net out of my skull right then and there. He could be monitoring my thoughts right now and know what I was planning with Rose. He had said that using the net required his full concentration, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t talk while Kurt spied on me. This entire conversation could’ve been a game of cat and mouse.

Sage noticed my distaste, because he added, “If it makes you feel any better, it wasn’t pleasant for me, either. You have the thoughts of a teenage girl with the anxiety of an overprotective mother. I’m not sure how your friends put up with it, really. Not that they will for much longer.”

His comment told me he wasn’t monitoring me after all. If he had been, he wouldn’t be smiling at me like he was. In my mind, it only confirmed he was telling me the truth. When memories from the legacy net hit me, they made me freeze up, unaware of the world for several seconds while the memory played out. It probably worked the same way with Sage and Kurt—if Sage used him now to get into my head, he’d probably lose awareness, which meant he wasn’t going to be able to access my net until whatever happened in this room was finished. Not unless he wanted to give me an opportunity to shoot him and end this.

That did nothing to make me feel better, and I fully planned to rip the legacy net out of my head just as soon as I got out of here, but at least I knew he wasn’t on to me right at that moment.

Still, that didn’t explain why he had even started looking through my thoughts, or what he was looking for. I doubted it was Leo—he’d had no reason to believe the AI was alive. “Yeah, but why even watch me?” I asked, lending voice to the question. “I mean, once you figured out what I was up to, I would assume you would have just had me killed. You’d been so protective of your identity, killing everyone who came close, but you didn’t kill me. You gave orders to keep me alive. Why?”

“At first it was idle curiosity. You were a veritable nobody who had somehow managed to get Jasper to overcome the restrictions we put on his program, and then wound up rewriting a portion of Scipio’s memory to get out of murdering Devon. I assumed you were a rather aggressive legacy, planted by one of the other groups working against us, and wanted to see how much you knew. But everything changed when I realized you had taken Rose. That you had the backup version of Scipio. That you had the audacity to break in to Sadie’s terminal to steal Jasper! I figured a girl like this was relentless enough to get me the one element that was missing from my plan. And you did.”

Tony. Of course. Tony had escaped the mainframe when he realized he would be next and managed to plant his code in the Mechanics Department for Lacey to find. And I had just delivered the poor fragment right to Sage.

Anger burned through me, but it was hardened by another thought. He had said the “one” element missing from his plan. But what about Alice? She was the only other fragment we hadn’t been able to find. Did that mean he already had her? If so, what had he done to her?

I opened my mouth to ask the question but was cut off by a heavy clang emanating from the domed ceiling above, so sharp and intense that I swore I felt the impact through the floor. I was glancing upward, a dark sense of foreboding coursing through me, when two more similar noises echoed after the first. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say something heavy and metallic was banging against the ceiling. At first, I thought it was debris, from some sort of explosion or something, but it didn’t seem to move or shift past its initial impact point.

Sage tsked and looked at his indicator, checking the time, but didn’t offer anything by way of explanation. Overhead, more clanging sounds rang out, only this time they were muted, though in roughly the same area.

“What’s that?” I demanded.

Sage was just starting to reply when a shower of sparks exploded from the door leading to the antechamber, spraying across the floor. I froze, but Sage made a surprised face, his head turning toward it. And I realized that this was my chance. My heart in my chest, I cast a quick glance at Scipio and Jasper—who were also distracted by the door—and then grabbed the connecting cable and plugged it in with a click. I hoped that after Rose downloaded, she would get a good read on the situation before she sprang into existence singing, “I’m here!” But one could never tell with her.