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

Finally, a crack started to form in the shield he was generating for himself, and I felt a dark seed of excitement humming through me as I continued to hammer my will into that spot, in the form of bullets. There was a sharp snapping sound, and a brilliant glow burst through the crack in a stream of pure white light. I could make out the orange lines of Jasper’s code and see that they were trying to stitch the break together, and though I knew I could damage whatever was left of that code, I had to seize the opportunity. I fired, directly at that spot, and Sage cried out as the shot tore through his back and out of his chest.

He fell forward with a pained cry, one hand going out to catch himself, and I shot it out from under him, and then formed a floor beneath him to keep him from altering gravity and racing away from me again. He hit the ground with another gasp of pain, and then rolled over to face me, his hands already regenerating. I drew back my arm to stab him, but he rolled to the side and somehow managed to push off the ground until he was spinning to a stop on his feet.

“Really, Liana?” He sneered, beginning to grow as a long tube formed in his hands. “Is your imagination that limited?”

He hefted the tube over his shoulder in time for me to see a white light glimmering in the depths of it, and on impulse, I shot my gun at it, aiming for the center.

Sage hadn’t been expecting that, and a second later he threw it away with a surprised yelp. There was a small amber explosion inside the tube, and Sage began to scramble away from it, indicating that he knew it was going to blow. I followed him, intent on not letting him out of my sight—and then the tube exploded, throwing us both up into the air.

I quickly centered my gravity and looked around, trying to locate Sage and go after him again. I spotted him thirty feet away, rising to his feet, and aimed my gun at him, intending to take him out.

“Liana!” Leo cried, his voice suddenly very close. “Look out!”

I caught a green flash of a toe from a massive foot from the corner of my eye and had only a fraction of a second to realize there was nothing I could do to stop it before it slammed into my side, sending me flying. The hit didn’t hurt so much as stun me, and for several moments I couldn’t move or think, every part of me going deathly still and locking up. I had no awareness of what was going on, and no ability to do anything except wait for control to be restored.

“Liana!” a voice cried sharply in my ear, and I opened my eyes, suddenly aware again. I was lying on my back, staring up at a purple dome overhead. I saw a shadow cross over it and come crashing down. I flinched as it impacted with a shudder, expecting the shield to shatter, but it didn’t. Instead, an arm that I hadn’t even known was draped across my chest tightened protectively, as if trying to shield me from harm. I opened my eyes again to see that my head was pillowed in Rose’s lap. Her purple form was hunched over me as she tried to use every bit of her broken code to protect me.

“Rose?” I called, wondering how the fragment AI’s strength was holding up.

“I can’t hold the shield for much longer!” she cried, and a second later, her code flickered in and out. Her eyes grew wide with alarm, but she was already moving. “Here!” she said as she slid her hand down to mine and shoved something into the palm of it. I looked down to see a small crimson orb glowing brightly. It was Tony—or whatever Sage had taken from him and been about to eat.

Rose pushed impatiently at my shoulder, and I sat up, still staring at the orb, confused at why she was giving me this. Did she expect me to swallow it like Sage had done with Jasper’s? Because there was no way I was going to do that.

“What do you want me to do with this?” I demanded, shifting around to look at her, only to find her kneeling next to Scipio. I felt a momentary confusion, wondering how I had gotten back to them so quickly, and then realized Kurt’s kick must’ve thrown me farther than I had thought possible, clearing me from the fight, and dismissed it as another odd feature of the datasphere.

I hadn’t even realized that the AI was still here, but now that I knew, it was hard to look away. His code was spliced with a slick, oily blackness that ran alongside the bright blue lines, clearly corrupting him with its taint. As I watched, black lightning sparked from the inky rivulets and tore through his code, striking against the lines of blue, and he moaned and writhed in agony. His hands were pressed into his hair, clutching his head, and he was rocking back and forth in the fetal position, his eyes wide.

“Please,” he moaned, staring up at Rose with open desperation. “I can’t take it anymore. The pain…. The pain is too much. They’re my responsibility, and I’m losing them! Let me die… please.”

Rose’s code flickered again as she reached out to touch his face, trying to smooth away the anguish there. “Shh. It’s going to be okay. I’m going to help you.”

Scipio gave a small sob and nodded jerkily. “Please, I’ll do anything… Just make it stop. I can hear their voices crying for me to save them, but I can’t… He won’t let me!”

It was hard to watch the great machine begging like that, and on impulse, I reached out to take his hand, offering him comfort. Touching his code was gross, like sticking my hand in greasy water, but I held tight, trying to send him anything that would make him feel better.

“Liana,” Rose said, catching my attention, and I glanced back up at her, frowning when I saw her putting her hand over Scipio’s chest.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking out of Scipio what Sage stole from Jasper and tried to steal from Tony. Our source codes—our memory units. Sage took Jasper’s against his will, but Tony, Scipio, and I are giving you ours freely. You’ll need them, too; they have all the records of what Sage subjected us to, which will help you in this fight.”

“What?” I asked, shaking my head as if to clear it from a punch. “I don’t understand!”

“After I… kill Scipio, the New Day protocol will start,” Rose continued, as if she hadn’t heard me. “You’ll have only a minute to eradicate Sage and Kurt’s codes—like you did with Alice. If they kill you, their codes will merge and they’ll be injected in the Core. If you don’t kill them, and all four of you are combined, then the size of the AI you will create will overload the system and destroy the Core and AI forever.”

Overwhelmed by her information, I was still sifting through everything she had just said, trying to find a starting place for my litany of questions, when she reached her hand

out to smooth over the lines of Scipio’s face, staring down at him with a mixture of hopelessness and love.

“I’m sorry I didn’t do a good enough job taking care of you,” she told him, her voice quivering. “I wish I had protected you better.”

Scipio’s face softened, black tears pouring from his eyes. “You did what you could,” he whimpered. “Please… just end this.”

Rose nodded and put her hand over his chest.

“Wait,” I said, trying to stop her from killing Scipio. I wasn’t ready; she needed to wait until we had killed Sage and Kurt first. “Don’t!”

But it was too late. Rose plunged her hand into Scipio’s heart, and the AI released an unearthly note of pain and suffering, his anguish like a sonic boom throughout cyberspace. Cracks appeared in the dome, and then the force of his cry shattered it outward, the sound of his death knell blowing everyone but Rose and me back. I saw Leo’s blue streaking away, tangled with Sage’s white, and started to get up to go after him, but Rose’s tired voice brought me up short.

“Liana, you have to take it,” she said, and I turned back to where she was sitting, cradling Scipio’s disintegrating form in her lap. Next to her sat a blue orb with crackling lines of black electricity rimming it. Her code flickered again, the distance between each blink growing shorter and shorter.

“I don’t know what to do with it,” I said, lifting the hand that already held Tony’s orb.

Or rather, had. Because it was gone and had left in its stead a crimson glove that stretched up my arm in strange overlaying segments, forming blood-red armor over my skin. The individual plates were highlighted by my own amber code, and the entire thing felt smooth under my hands, and lighter than air. It was Tony—what was left of his code—protecting me from harm.