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

I understood why Dylan wanted to run, but I was curious. Curious enough to do something reckless.

I took another step toward the line and lifted my light. I hadn’t done much to mask the intensity of it, so the sentinels should’ve noticed it already. But when I raised my arm, taking the beam from the corrugated floor to their feet, legs, hips, arms, necks, and heads, they completely ignored me and continued their steady march down the hall. Their eyes were dark, completely unlit, and staring straight ahead.

Three passed us, then five, then eight, their pace keeping them within ten feet of each other.

“What is this?” Dylan breathed, finally coming forward to stand next to Rose, her tone bewildered.

I studied them, my mind already wrestling with that question. I considered for a second that maybe they were damaged in some way, but there were too many for that. Sentinels were almost impossible to damage with conventional weapons, so I’d expect only one or two, even if someone had managed it. Not this many. No, whatever they were, it was for something else. Maybe it had something to do with Alice, or maybe they were being used to retrieve something Sage needed, but either way, I wanted to know.

No, scratch that; I had to know. If Sage was using these sentinels for something, I had to know what. If I could figure out how to stop them or slow them down, then maybe I could also keep him distracted—or better yet, force him to call some of the legacies from the Citadel up here, to help him handle it.

And though it was keeping me from getting to my friends, I made the decision in a split second, seeing the benefit of at least figuring out what Sage was up to. “We’re going to follow them,” I announced to the others before turning back to face them.

Dylan was frowning at me, and as always, Rose’s face was difficult to interpret. But it was Dylan who spoke first. “We have to get to the Citadel, remember? Sage needs your boyfriend, and every moment we take away from that is a chance for those legacies to grab him!”

I nodded, swallowing down the uncertainty her words created. “I know that, but whatever is happening here is part of Sage’s plan, too. We have to figure out what it is, and whether we can disrupt it somehow. It’ll distract Sage, and maybe get him to pull some of the legacies out of the attack to fix it, or complete whatever task these things are meant for. At the very least, it’ll slow him down and give us more time to save the others.”

“Yeah, if there’s anyone left to save,” Dylan said, exasperated. “You’ve been pushing for us to get to the Citadel and your friends since all this started!”

“I know,” I grated out, annoyed that she was acting like I had completely forgotten about my friends or the Citadel. “But this is important too, and I’m doing it. You can continue on to the Citadel if you want, but as you said, we need to trust that they can take care of themselves. Besides, the sentinels are heading in that direction anyway. What can it hurt to kill two birds with one stone?”

Dylan frowned and looked up at Rose. “What do you think?”

“I think that the last report we had of the Citadel showed that the Knights were fighting against the legacies, and that power was still on inside. That bodes well for our friends, but not for long. Liana is right: these sentinels are nothing but shells with basic instructions programmed in. For all we know, they are being utilized to manually cut the power to the Citadel. Stopping them would buy our friends more time.”

The tall blond woman sucked in a deep breath and looked back and forth between us, her face torn. “I really do not want to die up here,” she said tiredly, giving me a pointed look. “But you both have excellent points. How do we do this?”

I turned back to the line of sentinels marching past, and then shrugged. “Let’s just join the convoy,” I suggested. “Rose, they aren’t going to stop us, are they?”

“They shouldn’t,” she replied, taking several steps toward the line to examine them closer. “It appears they aren’t really programmed to interact with anything. Like I said, just basic instructions.”

She moved into the line between two of them, facing the next one, and I held my breath, waiting to see what it would do. It continued to march toward her, but slowly began adjusting its course, until it was moving past her and then back into line. She looked at us, gave a thumbs-up, then turned and started to follow the one that had just passed.

Dylan sighed beside me and unzipped a pocket in her uniform to draw out the gun. “If these things’ eyes turn yellow for even one second…”

“I know,” I said, a thread of fear crawling up my spine. “But it’s a risk we have to take.”

I strode forward, with more confidence, hoping to hell that this gut instinct of mine didn’t get my friends killed, and led to something we could use to stall Sage.

The sentinels continued to march forward, completely ignoring our presence as they proceeded in a straight line down the hall. We passed by massive doors leading to storage bays, the numbers increasing the deeper we went into the Tower. I kept a careful eye on the sentinels on both sides of us, looking for any glimmer of a golden glow to signal that Alice was inside, but their eyes remained dark, their movements stiff and clunky.

The line made several turns during our trek, and after a few passageways, I worried about how far we were drifting from the Citadel.

Until we took an unexpected turn back toward it, down a hall that had a glow emanating from ahead, courtesy of the overhead lights that were on. I quickly pulled up a mental picture of our route and realized that we were actually closer to the Citadel than I had originally thought. In fact, it was seated beneath this floor. Power from there must also be feeding into this section.

Or Sage had allowed power to be diverted here for some other reason.

Either way, we were going to have to step carefully. If there was light here, that meant there might also be people. More importantly, it meant the cameras might be running. I prayed they weren’t, but if something important was happening up here, then it seemed likely the Core was watching. I looked up and spotted the camera mounts, studying their position. We could disguise our movement behind the sentinels if we alternated where we walked as we passed the cameras, using the machines to hide us, but there was a chance someone would notice our movements, or even pick up on the fact that Rose was different from the other sentinels, making it risky. But we had to do it. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to follow them or get into the Citadel.

I motioned to Dylan, flashing her a few hand signals in Callivax to explain the problem and my plan. As soon as my hand stopped moving, she looked up at the approaching cameras, and then nodded, dropping back to the left side of the sentinel behind us and leaving me to get close to Rose. She glanced down at me, her head cocked quizzically, and I quickly signed a message to her as well, letting her know what was going on. She nodded and returned her gaze down the hall, trying to assume the same walk that the sentinels around her were using. I tucked up next to her, walking in short steps, but quickly enough to keep up without being noticed.