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

We looked back at the window in time to see Dylan and Rose peering down, and Tony continued to tap out the message with one hand, flying the escape pod with the other. There were several seconds in which neither of them moved, and then Rose stuck one hand out and flashed a thumbs-up signal that would’ve been indiscernible if it weren’t for the red line around it.

The next thing I knew, she had reached over to pluck Dylan off the wall. Dylan’s legs kicked, her arms flailing, and I could only imagine her terror at suddenly being jerked off the wall. The sentinel ignored the blond woman’s struggles, pulling her tightly to her chest and eyeing our trajectory. Tony continued straight ahead, his hand tapping out a countdown that I was barely aware of—because I was more obsessed with what I was witnessing. We hurtled straight for them, and though I was certain Tony was about to turn, he didn’t, instead flying closer and closer to my friends. Just when I thought that he’d miscalculated, he flipped a switch and jerked the column to the right, rotating the pod so that the door was angled toward them. The sudden press of gravity had panic spreading me thin, as did their rapidly approaching forms.

If I had had full control over my lungs, I would’ve sucked in a deep breath as Rose let go of the wall and started to fall toward us. For several seconds, I knew that she would miss, that we would miss, but then the pod shook with a violent tremor, and she was inside of it, holding on to the frame of the door with one hand while letting Dylan go with the other.

“What the—” Dylan shouted as she stumbled, clearly shaken from her short fall. But she cut off when she saw me. “Liana?”

The chair I was sitting in swiveled, so Tony twisted my body around to face her, smiled, and said, “More or less. I’m in control for the drive, but Liana’s here too.”

She blinked her blue eyes at me several times, and then pressed a fist to her forehead, sighing heavily. “This AI stuff is really weird,” she finally said.

Tell me about it, I thought, wishing I could share my own experience with her.

“Liana said, ‘Tell me about it,’ which I think is rude, considering how helpful I have been!” Tony retorted, turning back to the windows to correct our course.

“I’m sure she doesn’t like sharing her body with you,” Rose said. “And you should be mindful of that. Now, tell us what happened!”

“And how you got a ball that can fly,” Dylan added wryly.

“You guys are going to love this,” Tony announced, and I could tell from his thoughts that he intended to inform them of everything we had experienced since we had jumped. “So, after I disconnected the lines, Liana was all like ‘Aaaaah, we’re going to die,’ and I was like, ‘Naw, girl, we got this.’ We fell—”

If I had had control over my own mouth, I would’ve shut him up. Not because I didn’t want to tell the others what had happened, but because I knew Tony was about to over-embellish the story.

But since I couldn’t stop him, I did my best to distract him with corrections whenever the opportunity presented itself.





22





“So, let me get this straight,” Dylan began as soon as Tony had finished his explanation. I wasn’t surprised. Tony had gone above and beyond, crafting the adventure to be more fraught with action and adventure then it actually was, and I had no doubt that Dylan could smell something fishy in the air. “You rappelled down the Tower face at unimaginable speeds?”

“Right,” Tony said with a nod, flicking a switch and repositioning the pod as it continued to head up, fighting the pull of gravity. We had long since passed Greenery 9, but I had told Tony to ignore it and head higher, to Greenery 13. The only reason we had been angling toward Greenery 9 was that it was on level 85, which would’ve given us access to the bridges. It had been the best option for us at the time, considering we had to climb nearly seventy-five stories to get there. Adding another fifty would’ve just been insanity at that point and added another two or three hours to our trip.

But now that we had the pod as an option, I wanted to get to the next one up, as Greenery 13 was on level 125—the starting level of the Attic. To me, it made the most sense tactically. Not only were those levels mostly deserted during normal Tower operation—meaning they should definitely be deserted now—but if I could just get to the right storage room, I could use the escape hatch into my quarters to get in and avoid the Citadel altogether.

“And you got into Lionel Scipio’s secret office under the Menagerie, and found a holograph of him, and it gave you orders for replacing Scipio with the backup and a new full neural clone to make a stronger Scipio.”

“Check and check,” Tony said, scanning the multitude of dials and digital displays and pausing on a blue one. He leaned forward and tapped the blue glowing panel, and suddenly I felt a surge of urgency coming from Tony. “No more questions,” he said abruptly, and sent me a picture of us running out of fuel faster than he had anticipated. “Are you strapped into the chair?”

“Yes,” Dylan replied, suddenly nervous. “Rose is, too. What’s going on?”

Tony was opening my mouth to tell her when the entire pod wobbled, and then we were falling. A moment later the thruster caught again, and we were slammed into our seats and hurtling upward.

“Hold on!” Tony shouted, grabbing on to the controls and shoving the rudder forward, giving it more juice. But the fuel reserves were almost depleted, and before I could even ask why, he sent me a picture of how much weight we were hauling with Rose, as well as several complicated algebraic and geometrical questions that I didn’t fully comprehend but got the gist of.

Gravity had already been weighing us down due to the design of the pod, and Rose was only making it worse. Compensating for both those things had started eating our fuel at a catastrophic rate.

And Tony had missed it. But whatever savage satisfaction I had that the fragment wasn’t as perfect as he made himself out to be was dwarfed by the colossal terror that we were going to die.

Suddenly my great idea to land on Greenery 13 didn’t seem so great anymore.

I agree, Tony thought sourly as he started to pull away from the Tower, creating some distance for a landing. I made a mistake by not taking Rose’s weight into account! Now hold on, this is going to get rough!

Through the window on the door, I could see the bright brown of the side of Greenery 13’s farming floor shooting past, and then we were over it, and Tony was rotating the pod and turning us away from the Tower to angle for a landing across the roof. The trajectory we were on gave us at least two hundred yards of space to land on, but even as Tony began yanking back on the stick to slow us down, I could tell we wouldn’t need that much. Because the fuel reserve was almost dry.

As if my thoughts lent power to action, the roar of the thrusters behind us suddenly cut out again. For several seconds, we continued to glide forward, as if we hadn’t just lost our only source of propulsion, and then we slammed down on the greenery arm.

Tony grabbed on to the harness as we were suddenly thrown to the right side of the escape pod, bouncing once, twice, then a third time, and then rolling through the air. My stomach lurched, and I could tell Tony was overwhelmed by the sensations my body was experiencing, because the AI quickly receded into the back of my mind, giving me control (at the worst possible moment, I might add), and I felt, more than saw, the world spinning all around me. In my head, I could see us careening off the side of the greenery—and dropping to our deaths.

There was a loud scraping sound as we hit for the fourth and final time, and I squeezed my eyes shut as sparks exploded from somewhere within the walls. I could vaguely hear Dylan shouting something, but it was mostly inaudible due to the terrible screeching sound that was now surrounding us as we slid across the greenery roof.