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

His smile widened, and he turned the gun away to scratch his chin. “Actually, you came very close to catching me. That was a neat trick with the cup. I really wish I had been paying more attention to your thoughts. I expected you to settle down after your mother’s death and move with the slowness that comes with caution. Instead, you were bold, and moved with a speed that only the young seem to possess.” He gave a rueful laugh and shook his head. “Perhaps it’s my own fault. I have been working at such a slow pace for the past few centuries that I can’t anticipate the zeal of youth. But, either way, you should feel proud of what you have accomplished.”

I sorted through his ramblings and backhanded compliment, and focused on the comment about the cup, frowning. I had collected that cup for a DNA sample to figure out who the father of the legacies was. We had learned from Dylan that the mothers were all women who had been kidnapped from the Tower, and then repeatedly impregnated by one man to give birth to his small army. But all the evidence had pointed to Jathem Dreyfuss, not Sage. “But we ran that test independent of the Medica,” I whispered. “There’s no way you could’ve switched out the file.”

“Of my own DNA? No. But you ran the original samples through the Medica. Funny thing about DNA when it’s entered into a digital format: it becomes a series of ones and zeros that are completely unique. It’s easy enough to create a program that automatically switches the paternal results to match someone else—a man I’d purposely left alive in case someone stumbled onto Scipio’s rapid mind change twenty-five years ago, when I punished him for his defiance and took Jasper. Of course, I set the man up with a plush little side job as an intermediary for delivering new nets to my legacies, just in case anyone got close to him. You’d be surprised what people would do for some extra ration cards. How did dear Jathem take his little incarceration? I’m sure he was very surprised.”

My mouth tightened as I looked down to where Lacey was lying on the floor. I couldn’t see her face from this angle—only her legs and a puddle of blood that was pooling around her. “I don’t know,” I told him honestly. “Lacey killed him. She said he resisted, but I…” I paused, needing a second to accept the guilt over having told Lacey that Dreyfuss was the one who ordered her nephew Ambrose’s death. “I told her that he was the one who killed Ambrose.”

Sage chortled at that, and then snapped his fingers. “So that was the connection. Oh, she hid herself well, didn’t she? I had no idea she was a legacy. Is she alive? Go ahead and check, dear. Scipio will keep an eye on you, won’t you?” I narrowed my eyes, knowing full well Scipio could tell him if Lacey was alive or not, and then realized he was making me do it in an attempt to be cruel.

“Of course,” Scipio replied, his tone mildly robotic. The blue holographic image looked up at the ceiling, and there was a heavy whirring sound as four large objects began to descend from above us. At first, they looked like oblong eggs, but as they drew lower, small bits of the shells began to peel away, revealing bright purple circuitry, slits in the sides for ventilation contrasted by flat black, heat-repellant material, and an opening at the front like a mouth, glowing with a purple so bright that it was white at the center. As soon they came to a stop, I recognized the design. They were guns. Guns that used plasma instead of bullets.

And all four of them were pointed at me. I swallowed the excess saliva in my mouth, feeling exceptionally vulnerable and exposed.

“Don’t keep me waiting too long. I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

I cast a look at the door, noting that Dylan was about halfway through cutting her hole, and then turned to Lacey, stepping around the desk to take my first full glimpse of the injured woman.

Her eyes were wide open, and her mouth was twisted in a grimace, one hand cupping the wound to her abdomen, the other reaching for what looked like a medical kit under the desk. I quickly ducked down behind the desk to grab the kit, ripping it from the wall. “I’m just taking her pulse,” I called.

“Mm-hmm. Take your time.”

I rolled my eyes and quickly unzipped the bag. “Arrogant bastard,” I said in a low voice as I pulled out the silver canister that contained the bio-foam, a dermal bond that would hopefully stop Lacey’s bleeding.

“You’re one to talk,” Lacey whispered hotly, snatching the canister out of my hand and giving it a quick shake, a pained expression on her face. “As soon as you knew Sage might be involved, you should’ve given us the original samples to test as well!”

I grimaced. She wasn’t wrong. If we had given her the DNA we had collected from the legacies, rather than running them through the Medica, we would’ve caught Sage, and arrested all of them at the same time. But I ignored the comment and held my gun out to her, knowing now wasn’t the time for what-ifs. I’d screwed up but couldn’t get lost in it.

Lacey’s brown eyes darted down to it, and then she shook her head. “You’ll need it,” she whispered. “Just… keep him talking. I’ll handle this and see if I can’t hack into Scipio’s system. And, Liana, don’t lie to him. Scipio knows I’m alive.”

I stared into her eyes for a moment, and then nodded slowly before carefully rising to my feet and placing the gun into my waistband. “She’s alive,” I reported. “But there’s a lot of blood.”

“I hit her kidney, unless I miss my guess. Nasty place, too. Lots of intestines in the way. Not to mention, if it ricocheted inside her, it might’ve hit her liver. That would kill her in minutes, but the kidney… death could take days, without medical treatment. Now, Tony, if you please?”

Okay, it was official: I hated Sage. He spoke so casually about what he had done to Lacey, as if it was nothing. As if she weren’t experiencing pain and agony right now. Savagely, I realized I wanted to shoot him in the head. But it would’ve been suicide to draw on him now, with Scipio’s guns trained on me. So instead, I tucked my gun into my belt behind my back, hoping Scipio wouldn’t notice, and then picked up the hard drive containing Tony and made my way back down the stairs toward Sage.

I kept alert for any sign of Rose and what she was doing. I was certain she had downloaded by now, and the fact that she hadn’t made herself immediately known was good. It meant she recognized the danger we were in and was acting accordingly. If I was lucky, she was figuring out how to control the plasma weapons that were following my every movement.

I descended to the final step, and then crossed the floor to the table where Jasper’s and Rose’s hard drives were sitting and deposited it next to the others. Then I took a slow step back, carving some distance between Sage and myself. He seemed to lose all awareness of me as he gazed at the hard drive I had just put down. “Finally,” he breathed. “I can finally put things right.”

I opened my mouth to reiterate that his plans and ideologies were stupid but was interrupted by yet another sound coming from the roof. Only this time it was the distinct noise of metal tearing. I recognized it all too well, and my heart sank to my stomach as I looked up and saw the roof above—once smooth and unblemished—marred by dents, a long crack running across it.

I caught the gleam of something silver wriggling its way through the gap, and then suddenly the hole widened, allowing the bright blue light of the Core to shine through, except for a hulking shadowed form in stark silhouette. My mouth went dry as I recognized the shape of it from my nightmares, and took another step back as the sentinel lifted its arms and dropped into the hole, angling to land between Sage and myself.





3





I broke for cover, my instincts taking over a brain frozen with horror as two more hulking dark shapes dropped through the hole behind the first, and raced for the stairs leading to Lacey, my hands covering my head. I felt the impact as the first one landed, the vibration strong enough to rattle the bones in my legs, and almost stumbled.

I caught my balance again as the second sentinel, and then third, slammed into the ground in rapid succession, darting behind the wooden partition. I kept low on the steps and moved partway up, then paused, pressing my back against the wall.