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

I frowned. “So then when I killed Sadie…”

“You just killed her neural clone. She’s very much alive, and currently locked up in the cells under the Citadel, thanks to your Lieutenant, and AI counterpart. Things got a little strange once you reached the integration chamber. You knew you were going to die, but because you were aware of the New Day protocol and what it was going to do, you unintentionally copied your code, against the design of the system. That action destroyed the simulation and triggered a download of the remaining AIs and fragments into the integration chamber, which you saw as the datasphere. Everything that happened in there… it was real. The protections of the simulation were gone, but your psyche was there controlling your actions, learning what it was to be an AI. It was also exposed to everyone else who was there, and able to die just as easily. The servers in the integration chamber were never built to handle so much data, and I thought you would die within moments from an overload, but in microseconds, you stopped Kurt and Sage, and absorbed the source codes of three of the fragment AIs. So… technically you didn’t pass the simulation. You destroyed it.”

I stared at him. There was so much there to try to wrap my head around that I wasn’t even sure where to begin. I had broken the simulation by copying myself? I had no idea how to do that! All I knew was that Lionel had told me to start the New Day protocol, and I had. Could it be… Had my assumption that I would become a neural clone caused me to not accept the death the simulation had chosen for me? Had my imagination overwhelmed the simulation?

From what Lionel was saying, it seemed as good a guess as any, but then… What had he said? What happened in the datasphere had become real—so when I killed Kurt, I had destroyed his entire code. The same with Alice, and… Sage? What did that mean? Had I killed him in real life, from floors and levels away, all through what was quintessentially a shared hallucination? That was the most far-fetched thing I had ever heard of, and I told him so.

“That’s ridiculous.”

He shrugged. “I think you’ll reconsider that word choice after you see what you did to Sage. Oh, he’s still alive, but he’s nothing but a drooling vessel. You destroyed all vestiges of his personality.”

“All I did was crush his source code!” I said in disbelief. “How did that—”

“The net,” Lionel interrupted angrily, thumping his cane against the ground. “Your action triggered an energy surge that doubled back and translated through his net. The old man’s brain is fried, and he’ll be that way until he dies. Which won’t be long.” He sighed irritably and ran a hand over his face, before adding, “I’m sorry for getting frustrated. I already answered these questions for your neural clone, and she was every bit as belligerent and obstinate as you are now.”

I blinked. “She was?”

He snorted. “As soon as your clone came into the system and realized that everything had been a simulation, she was fit to be tied. Luckily, she could use the Tower’s cameras to confirm what I was saying, so she calmed down quickly enough to realize that there was still work to be done. She got in touch with Maddox, and after having to explain the situation a few times, finally convinced the woman to go on the attack. They got everyone.” He paused for a satisfied chuckle, and then glanced at me.

I could only imagine how I appeared. I was rattled by what he was telling me, unable to emotionally separate myself from the things I had seen and experienced in the simulation. My heart ached with Zoe’s loss, and even though he had assured me she was alive, I didn’t quite believe it. I couldn’t shake the memory of her in that bed, slowly bleeding to death.

“I need to call my friends,” I said abruptly. “I’m sorry, but I just need to—”

“Check on them, yes,” Lionel replied, nodding knowingly. “System requests visual connection to Cornelius’s cameras in the war room, as well as an open channel.”

For several seconds nothing happened, but Lionel didn’t seem concerned by that, his expression mildly bored. Behind him, the wall suddenly flickered, and a screen appeared on it, revealing several angles of the war room in my quarters. I immediately spotted Zoe sitting in one of the chairs in the conference room, her head resting on Eric’s massive shoulder, and her boots kicked off on the floor. Her mouth was partially open, and as I watched, a soft, sharp snore sounded through the speakers.

Tears spilled from my eyes, and I pressed both hands over my mouth to keep my cry of relief from getting out. They were all there—all perfectly alive and whole. Maddox was standing with Quess behind the desk, going over something on the computer, while Tian was lying on the floor in her usual Tian-like fashion, her legs resting on the wall. Liam was lying next to her in a more conventional way, but neither one of them was sleeping—they were talking. Chatting as if everything in the world hadn’t fallen apart and then somehow put itself back together. The only person who wasn’t still was Grey. He was prowling a circle around the room, his hands clutched tightly behind him.

I sobbed silently, the tangled web of unnecessary grief and relief leaving me weak and shaken. I was happy they were alive, grateful I hadn’t lost them, yet scared at how real it had felt and how close I had come to losing them.

After I had taken several moments to let it all out, I quickly started to pull myself together, wanting—no, needing—to hear the sounds of their voices. It took a few shaky breaths, accompanied by several swipes of my finger under my eyes to sweep away the wetness, before I eventually managed to steady myself enough to say, “Hey, guys.”

Several heads jerked up and looked around, searching for the source of my voice, and then Maddox pointed to one of the screens, where I could see the smallest image of myself.

“Liana!” Tian cried, and I watched her quickly scramble to her feet, race around the conference table, and launch herself up the stairs using her lashes, her patience at an end. Grey was a few steps behind her, walking at a fast pace, while Liam trailed behind them, his fists in his pockets. The only two who didn’t move were Zoe and Eric—and that was because Zoe was still out like a light. I felt mildly annoyed at that, given that her simulated death had caused me so much pain and trauma, and then smiled to myself.

She was alive. She was breathing. I could get over her sleeping through this.

“Thank God you’re okay,” Maddox said, bringing my focus back to her. “I knew you were recovering from becoming an AI, but we were getting nervous. Your counterpart wasn’t giving up your location because apparently coming out of the neural cloning process can be quite traumatizing, and too much stimulation could overwhelm you and cause you to suffer a psychotic break. After seeing Sage… I felt inclined to follow her lead.”

It didn’t take me long to figure out that she meant my neural clone, and it suddenly sank in that Liana—the other Liana—had already gotten to work cleaning up the mess that was left in the onslaught of Sage’s plan. I wasn’t sure how much she’d gotten done, but there was a way to find out.

“What all has… my counterpart been up to?” I asked.

“Let’s see… She helped us track down every single legacy that got out when the cells opened up, notified all the departments that they pretty much need to find a new representative for the council, and had the sentinels dragged down to the furnaces in Cogstown and melted down. Oh, Lacey’s fine, by the way. Dylan as well. Did you really make her climb the side of the Tower?”

I paused for a second, taking a moment to recall when that happened in that timeline, and realized that we had started climbing in the real world before Tony threw us off the Tower, and she had obeyed my orders and continued up.