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

His patience was clearly at an end, and his speech grew rapidly angrier and angrier the longer he talked, until it seemed he was spitting. I still couldn’t get a good angle on him, and I knew my time was running out. Any second, the other sentinel would be rounding the corner, and I’d be caught. I had to fire at Sadie if I wanted to create an opportunity to kill Sage. He could get out of the way before I could get him, but it was worth the risk.

I was tightening my finger on the trigger, aiming directly for Sadie’s head, when Sage suddenly stood back up, his face contorted into an angry mask. My eyes flicked to the sudden movement, and my gaze met his clear blue one. His eyes widened, and I quickly adjusted my aim for his head, my finger pulling the trigger.

The gun jerked in my hand, the gun casing ejecting from the slot at the top, and I felt like time slowed down, my every hope and prayer for the future inside that small bullet.

Sage was already throwing himself behind Sadie with more speed and agility than a man in his third century of life should have, and there was a spark against the far wall where the bullet had ricocheted, missing him. I gritted my teeth together. Tony was already readjusting our aim for Sadie. The redheaded woman was turning, and my shot was hurried, but I hit her. Her slim form went down in a spinning fall and a spray of blood. Sage was still moving in a low crouch, racing away from Sadie’s falling form toward where I could now see Grey sitting. I fired two more shots, then had to stop when Sage hunkered down behind Grey, using him for cover.

Grey’s head was down, his blond-brown hair partially covering his face, but I could see blood dripping from his chin into his lap, mingling with the blood that was oozing out of two holes in his stomach. I aimed my gun toward him, waiting for Sage to move so I could shoot the asshole in the same places he had shot Grey before adding one to the head. I knew that Kurt was still inside Sage’s net, but at this point, I didn’t care. Kurt had been letting Sage get away with this sort of behavior for long enough. He could die with the man.

“Come out here!” I shouted, knowing Sage was just buying time for the sentinels to get there. I darted a quick glance behind me to make sure the coast was still clear, and then took a few steps forward, now on guard. “I’ll make it painless,” I added. “One right in the head. You deserve worse, but I’m eager to get this done!”

“I admire your bravery, Liana. If I’d had even one child with your mettle, I might’ve let him or her breed instead of sterilizing them. But I’m not going down today. I have Alice to protect me.”

I took another glance behind me and saw the gleaming hulk of the sentinel striding confidently around the curve of the dome, heading right toward me, golden eyes blazing. I quickly shifted targets and fired at one of her eyes, scoring a hit, but she continued to lumber on. I was starting to dance back, ready to throw a lash to somehow get behind Sage, when a sudden volley of crimson lancer fire erupted from overhead, tearing into the back of the sentinel. I ducked down on impulse and then looked up to see Maddox dangling from her lashes in the center of the ceiling above the dome, firing down on the sentinel. There was a sharp spray of sparks from the sentinel, arcing down across the floor and toward me, and it went slack, its eyes going black. For a second, I stared at it, stunned that we had managed to take it down so easily.

And then the room exploded into chaos.





42





“Get to Leo!” Maddox shouted before twisting around to fire at something down on the other side of the dome, and I moved, taking a few steps backward and then spinning around to follow Maddox’s instructions. She was undoubtedly firing at one of the other two sentinels in the room, but the third remained unaccounted for.

A sentinel rounded the corner just as I was spinning a lash bead in my hand, as if an echo of my fears and nightmares manifesting into reality, but Tony kept me from panicking, throwing my line for me and hitting the ceiling overhead. We ran straight for the sentinel, but at the last minute, retracted the line and flew upward, using the momentum to start running along the side of the dome. I took three steps at an angle heading up, aware that the sentinel was reaching to grab me from the movement in the corner of my eye, and then pushed off the dome, flipping myself backward. I disconnected the line as I somersaulted through the air, and landed heavily on my boots, dropping to one knee. My gun hand was already thrusting out, my aim for the shape of the black box seated between the sentinel’s shoulders, but the machine twisted, one arm whipping toward me. I squeezed the trigger just as it slammed into my forearm, and the shot sparked off one of the machines.

The pain in my arm was explosive, but I still had a grip on my gun, so the arm couldn’t be broken. I threw myself back as the sentinel’s other hand came around to grab me, barely avoiding the grasping metal fingers, and brought my gun back up, aiming for an eye. It ducked back, one hand going up to shield the orbs from the bullet, and I cursed. Alice had learned my little trick.

Still, her flinch gave me a moment to carve out a few more feet between us, and at that moment, a blur of movement leapt from a gap in the machine, attaching himself to the sentinel’s back. It was Eric—and he was giving me a chance. He had a baton in his hand, already charged, and I knew he was trying to buy me time to get to Leo. I spun around, intent on shouting the New Day protocol at Leo and shooting Sage at the same time.

He was still behind Grey, but he wasn’t crouching anymore, and I quickly came to a stop when I saw the flat, matte-black nose of the pistol pressed against Grey’s vulnerable throat—below where the net sat in the back of his skull, ensuring Leo would survive. One gnarled finger curled around the trigger. I stared at it for a second, and then up at Sage, my hand tightening on my gun.

“Do it,” Grey said hoarsely, his brown eyes finding mine. “Shoot him. Don’t worry about me.”

I pressed my lips together against the wave of emotion his statement generated in me, and started to lift the gun up, intent on following his orders. I knew I was risking his life, but he knew what was at stake and what he was asking. Hell, he’d been taunting Sage to try to get him to lose control and kill them both, to prevent Sage from getting the codes. I couldn’t let that be in vain.

Sage’s eyes widened as I brought the gun up to sight on him, and then he rolled his eyes and shook his head, looking utterly irritated with my reaction. I grated my teeth together at the man’s arrogance right up to the end and started to squeeze the trigger.

A flash of movement from my right was the only warning I had that I had been flanked. Pain erupted from my wrists as a metal bar was brought down on them, and my hands suddenly went numb, the gun slipping from nerveless fingers. I looked up to see Sadie’s slim figure emerge from a gap between the machines, her green eyes blazing with malice as she drew back for another strike with the pipe.

I got my arms over my head, but part of the bar hit my forehead, and I stumbled back, the blow to my skull enough to break through the drug cocktail Quess had fed me earlier to keep the concussion at bay. Immediately my balance faltered, the sickly sensation in my stomach telling me that gravity was shifting to the left, and I slammed against the dome before going down.