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

“I’m not telling you anything,” Grey said. His voice was weak, but the defiance was there. “Not a damned thing.”

“You sure?” Sage asked, smiling like the madman he was. Grey narrowed his eyes and pressed his lips closed, his nostrils flaring as he met Sage’s gaze headlong. I felt a savage rush of pride, at least knowing that, no matter what Sage did to us, Leo wouldn’t tell him anything, but then swallowed it back, knowing Sage would eventually lose his patience, kill us all, and implant Leo in a new human. Leo would eventually break, all without him knowing about the New Day protocol or having a chance to enact it.

And Sage would win. Kurt would become the new AI, and Sage’s legacy would be complete.

“That’s too bad,” Sage said with an indifferent little shrug. “Alice?”

There was a wet snap to my right, and I looked over to see Alice releasing Eric’s head, his neck now bent at an angle that shouldn’t have been possible. His eyes were wide, open, and… vacant. The light from them had been extinguished by Alice as soon as she had broken his neck. I gaped, horrified at the casual brutality of the action, and the pain of losing yet another friend so soon after all the others slammed into me, breaking me. I fell back to my hands, trying to fight the urge to sob, the urge to vomit, the urge to scream, and struggled just to breathe without losing my crap.

A scream tore out of someone’s throat, but it wasn’t from mine. It was from Maddox. I looked over to see her boots scrambling on the floor, trying to fight the hold of the sentinel grabbing her. “You son of a bitch!” she screamed. “You dirty coward! Hiding behind your machines and your broken AI fragments and playing God! We’ll never give you anything you want, you hear me? Leo, New Day protocol alpha-phi-alpha-6—”

A gunshot cut her off, and her boots jerked. I looked away, unable to see another friend die, but a second later, she was thrown to the floor next to me, her body landing with a boneless thud. I winced, a shudder tearing through me as another friend lay dead beside me, all the fire of her green eyes suddenly extinguished.

But I held on to the first number she had said, trying to focus on it and remember what the code was. 6323? 6332? 6233! That was it!

“Stop it!” Grey cried, and I heard the desperation in his voice, and knew he was about to break.

I couldn’t let that happen—not even for me.

“Grey…” I breathed, intent on finishing Maddox’s order. But a cold metal hand wrapped around my throat, cutting me off with a vicious squeeze, and seconds later I was hauled into the air, my feet dangling helplessly below me, the life being choked out of me by the sentinel.





43





I wrapped my hands around Alice’s metal wrists and planted a foot on her chest to try to physically force myself from her grip, but she only tightened her hands. I immediately went lightheaded, my vision blurring as I heard a wheezing, choking sound that I realized was coming from me. The blood trapped in my skull was beginning to pool into my face and around my eyes, making them bulge and water.

I was dying. Alice was choking me to death.

My vision went gray, and I felt the strength in my hands start to fade, my feeble thrashing growing weaker. Darkness began to pour into the edges of the world, encircling the sentinel’s shadowy face, ensuring its nightmarish visage would be the last thing I saw before I died.

“STOP! STOP! I’LL TELL YOU! JUST LET HER GO!”

The voice sounded like it was coming from the end of a long, dark tunnel behind me, barely carrying over the sound of my heartbeat slowing, but I recognized it as Grey’s.

A moment later I was falling into oblivion, the darkness rushing up to meet me. I felt myself wonder what was coming next—whether I was going to see my friends or my brother again, how the citizens of the Tower were going to survive someone as sadistic as Sage, what was going to happen to Leo and Grey…

And then I hit the ground. And suddenly realized I could breathe.

My lungs were already pulling air in, through a constricted throat. I had a brief flash of consciousness as my eyes popped open, revealing the lights of the ceiling above, and then the sudden intake of oxygen coupled with the rush of blood out of my head left me spinning, my vision going gray. I released a shaky breath, my body terrified to release the air for fear it was only a brief reprise, and then took another one, trying to keep it slow and prevent myself from hyperventilating.

I lay on the ground for what felt like eternity, the world spinning on its axis and tumbling this way and that. I became aware of a ringing in my ears, the agony of my arm and shoulder, all in slow degrees, like a dial being twisted up.

But the pain helped me focus and prevented me from just drifting off to sleep, which was my battered body’s current desire.

In an effort to try to arrest the spinning, I slowly rolled to my good side and opened my eyes. Focusing on something stationary would help sort my equilibrium out and give me an idea of what was happening and where I was.

Opening my eyes was hard. Both felt inordinately heavy, like someone had attached tiny weights to each eyelash in an attempt to keep them closed. What was weirder, the right one felt disproportionately heavier than the other one, like it had not only been weighted down, but also taped for good measure. After trying to raise both eyelids and failing miserably, I eventually just diverted my efforts to the left eye, figuring the lighter eyelid was the easier one to open.

Success. I cranked my eyelid open about halfway. The first thing I noticed was the flooring; it obscured nearly half of my field of vision and seemed to be rocking back and forth. I picked a spot a few feet away and kept my gaze on it, keeping my breathing heavy. The rocking began to still, which made some of the queasiness in my stomach lessen. I let out another heavy breath, inhaled, and opened my eye even wider.

I was facing the dome. It was the next thing I noticed: the smooth, white, egg-like surface cutting into the dark flooring. I let my gaze wander—slowly, of course, for fear of throwing the world out of alignment again—and immediately caught a glimpse of movement to the far right. I tracked it, and saw two… no wait, three sets of legs. Two sets, one white and one gray, seemed to be dragging the third—crimson—through an opening I hadn’t noticed before. It must’ve been there all along, across from where Sage and Grey had been.

As I watched, the room started to glow brightly, and I sensed that Sage was about to win.

Something inside of me refused to let that happen, and I began to scan the floor, looking for something, anything, I could use to stop him.

I spotted my gun lying just a few feet to the right of the door. For several seconds, I stared at it, confused at how it had gotten there. I had been holding it when Sadie hit me. Had they kicked it over here and just missed the fact that it was right there?

Wait, where were the sentinels? Did I risk looking for them and alerting them to the fact that I was conscious, or did I just go for the gun? Did I have the time?

“Dammit,” Sage cursed loudly. “He passed out!”

I knew he meant Grey and wasn’t sure if he was feigning unconsciousness to slow Sage down, or if he was unconscious because he was about to die, but it didn’t matter. He was buying me time to act. It was worth the risk.