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

“Leo and Quess were by the terminal with Tian and Liam when the power went off,” she called, pausing long enough to land a series of hits with her baton as a woman tried to come over the table at us. “Leo thinks he can get the emergency power on if he can pull the burned circuits!”

I grated my teeth together and threw open the box, digging around for a magazine and thinking. The emergency power could help us, in that it would mean we still had defenses in this room, but it was a waste of time at this point. I had taken out almost half their number, and the defenses in the room weren’t going to help us as much as Leo would like. If anything, they were going to catch us in the crossfire, especially if Cornelius wasn’t there to guide them. And I had a feeling that whatever attack Sage had just launched from the Core had taken my virtual assistant offline permanently.

I could try to buy Leo some time, but I could feel Tony’s concern that I was already pushing too hard. My body had been on the verge of crashing for the last few hours, and this particular push was going to be it for me before I hit oblivion. We needed to get out of here, and the only way for us to do that was to make a hole and get out through the halls.

“LEO!” I called, pushing from my diaphragm to make my voice stand out over the cacophony of noise. “LEAVE IT AND RUN! WE WILL COVER YOU!”

“ONE SECOND!” he shouted back in a slightly singsong voice, and I felt a rush of irritation at him that was swallowed by my fear for him. The legacies were after him on Sage’s orders, but I had no idea whether they’d actually take him alive or try to shoot him if things got too heavy for them. I had to get to him and get him out of here.

“We gotta move,” I told the others, slapping the magazine I found into the gun and chambering a round. “We’re going right for the dais. You three charge, and I’ll shoot anyone who comes behind. Get Leo and move. Sage needs him for his plan.”

“Got it,” Zoe said, shaking off whatever shock she was feeling with a sharp nod. Her eyes were wide, but they were also focused. “Ready when you are.”

I nodded and took a few steps to the right of the table, checking the gap to make sure no one was there. After a quick look, I nodded to the others and waved them forward, then turned back to check the other side of the table while Maddox crept past, heading for the gap. I kept one eye on her and the others as they went through, the other on the open gap, and then backed away from the spot as soon as Eric, who was last to go, moved.

I was turning back to race across the floor after them, when a man stepped around the table and threw his baton at me. Tony and I reacted quickly, leaping back so that the baton missed us by a matter of inches, and then shot him in the head, dropping him to the ground like a bag of bricks. I quickly followed Eric, racing after him toward the steps and scanning for any targets. Bodies lay all around the steps, but there was a thick crowd of people at the top, all legacies, surrounding my desk.

“I GOT IT!” Leo cried from the thick of things, and a second later, the lights in the room flickered on, momentarily blinding me.

Several things seemed to happen at once in my momentary blindness: the sound of something heavy hitting the ground, a sharp gasp from Eric, beside me, and then something slamming into my chest hard, too heavy to be just a simple baton.

It threw me back, riding me down, and as I blinked against the weight of it, Tony was already responding for me, curling my spine and lifting my feet up. My boots hit something solid, and Tony pushed as I slammed into the ground. I rolled with the blow, flipping the attacker over my head with a strong push of my legs. Whoever it was grunted and lost their grip on my uniform, and I skidded to a stop. I scrambled to get my legs under me and looked up at the dais, where I could now see Leo being physically dragged away by not one, but four legacies, each holding a flailing limb while a fifth began walking toward… me?

I frowned, confusion washing over me at why they would come at me when I was on the opposite side of the room from the door, and then I shrugged it off and scrambled to my feet. I made it halfway there before something heavy fell on my shoulder, and I heard Zoe scream behind me.

Stupidly, I turned—just in time to see a chrome fist flying toward my head.

Then I saw nothing.





31





My eyes jerked open and darted around the darkness, searching for any sign of the sentinel that had hit me. I was already panicking, and that sensation doubled when I realized I was no longer in the war room.

Was I a prisoner? Had the sentinels grabbed me to take me to Sage? If so, where was he, and why wasn’t I tied up? Where was I? Where were my friends? The softness beneath me told me I was lying in a bed. I started to sit up, trying to find some clue as to where I was, or hint of who I was with.

A wave of nausea, accompanied by a throbbing pain in my head, had me lying back down for a moment while the world spun rapidly on its axis. I cried out as the pain in my head intensified to a sharp stabbing and my vision spun faster and faster, and closed my eyes against the sensation, reaching up with my hands to grab my head as if I could somehow contain the agony by pressing them against my scalp.

It’s okay, Tony said softly, his voice somehow modulated to be as gentle as possible, making him sound like he was standing on the opposite edge of a distant shore, calling his message to me. You’re suffering a severe concussion, but I’m working to correct some of the damage. Just hold on.

Wait, I thought, ignoring the pain that focusing brought. Where am I? What’s going on? How long have I been out?

I’m not sure where we are. Unlike that time in Cogstown, I was inside your head when you went out, and the shock of it took me offline as well. The only thing I can tell you is that we’ve been out for two hours. Now stop thinking so hard; the pain is unbearable.

I ignored the last part, my mind still in shock over the fact that I’d lost two hours and had no idea what had happened to Leo or my friends, or where I even was! I needed to get up, figure out what was going on, and maybe contact Dinah again to figure out how far along Sage was—

Seriously, stop it, Tony snapped, and as soon as he broke my thoughts, I suddenly became aware of an intense pressure making my entire head feel like it was swelling, while simultaneously being squeezed by a vice. So I lay there and let him work, my skull feeling like it was shattered into pieces and digging into my brain. I knew if I tried to move again, I was going to lose the meager contents of my stomach and then pass out, and I couldn’t let myself do that. I needed to know what had happened and where we were.

So I exercised patience, trying to focus on my breathing and not the searing lines of agony crisscrossing my brain. Tony worked slowly and methodically as he did whatever it was he was doing to correct the damage to my head. It started with a slow lessening of the pain, making my tense muscles relax and my breathing come easier. Then he corrected my balance, sending electrical impulses through my brain to my inner ears and doing something to them that made the world slow until it felt still again. My stomach was last, and after a few moments, the only thing I was left with was a mild headache and a bone-deep exhaustion.

I was so tempted to just let myself fall back into the pillow, and my eyelids started getting heavier just thinking about it, but I jerked them open and slowly worked myself into a sitting position. My entire body felt like a giant bruise, and I winced at an ache in my ribs that I hadn’t noticed through the agony of my head, and then cried out as the muscles on the left side of my face erupted in fire at my facial twitch, the pain damn near blinding.