The Girl Who Dared to Endure (The Girl Who Dared #6)

Eric’s chest rose and fell with each breath of air I shoved into him. His body jerked up and down as I pumped on his chest. But his eyes continued to stare up at the ceiling. Empty and devoid of life. Panic set in, and I redoubled my efforts.

“No,” I said, bending over him once again. “C’mon, Eric!” I cried. I blew more air into him, getting steadily dizzier from breathing too fast, but unwilling to stop. Unwilling to let him go. “You don’t want to die like this!” Blow. “You have to propose to my best friend.” I changed over to compressing on his chest and kept talking. “Invite me to your wedding.” Push. “And then make me little nieces and nephews I can spoil and love on!” Push. “So you’re not.” Push. “Allowed.” Push. “To die!” Push. Push. Push.

I could hear Zoe sniffling behind me, see the broken look on Maddox’s face, and feel the defeat rolling off Quess.

“Liana,” Quess said, his voice a hesitant string of pain. “He’s…”

“He’s not gone,” I said between clenched teeth. “I’m not losing anyone else. We’ve already lost Cali, Roark, Ambrose, my mother… I’m not letting him die.”

To prove it, I balled my hand into a fist and slammed it down on his chest. Over and over again, trying to force his heart to pump, to draw blood from Grey, to—

Eric gasped so unexpectedly that I jerked my hands back and toppled over onto my butt. His eyes fluttered open and closed, and he began to cough.

“Quess!” I called, afraid that Eric was going to stop breathing again. But he was already there, fitting a filtration mask over Eric’s nose and mouth, holding the other man’s head still.

He looked up at me, eyes wide, even as Zoe wrapped her arms around me and began to cry.

“Don’t you stop working on him,” I muttered, but it was a plea more than anything. I wasn’t arrogant enough to assume that I had brought Eric back. I had just refused to quit—and it had paid off. Eric was still pale, and there was every chance in the world that he wouldn’t make it if Quess couldn’t figure out where the damage was and fix it quickly. But I had bought him some time.

I only prayed it would be enough.





14





I wasn’t sure how long I had been holding Zoe before Maddox suddenly stood up. I had been watching Quess work, fixated on the blood that seemed to be everywhere, but jerked when she let out a sharp curse.

I looked up to see her standing over my brother, bent at the waist and holding his wrist. She looked up at me, her eyes round with fear. “Liana, his rank is falling.”

My heart sank into my stomach as I pulled away from Zoe, practically leaping over Grey to get up the stairs to Alex.

My twin was still sitting, his eyes now fixed on Baldy’s blank gaze, a lost and horror-filled look in his eyes. He was shaking slightly, his skin pale and clammy, and I realized he had gone into shock.

But that didn’t stop his number from dropping, and my heart skittered along my breastbone, placed there by the terror of watching the eight on his wrist click to a seven with a sharp snap. I met Maddox’s gaze, and realized that although Alex had thought he was defending us, Scipio had somehow read his emotions and decided that this was cold-blooded murder.

That was bad. Murderers were considered an anathema to the Tower, a danger to productivity, and were automatically reduced to the rank of one. We were witnessing it now, here, with my brother. And as soon as the system registered his fall, the alarms would begin to go off, and the Knights would come running. If they found him here, with Baldy’s dead corpse, it would be a done deal, and he would be shipped to the expulsion chambers.

And I wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop it.

I stood up and shoved Leo’s net toward Maddox. “Get Leo back into Grey as soon as you can,” I told her. “I don’t care what you have to tell Grey about what you’re doing and why—just get him in there.” I needed to know he was okay, that he hadn’t been hurt when Baldy was shot, and the fastest way to do that was to get him into Grey’s head. Hopefully Leo wouldn’t have the same problems with Grey as he had with Baldy.

A dark fear rose at the thought of that, and I wondered if Leo would be able to reestablish control with Grey. What if the process only worked when someone’s waking mind was resting, or in a comatose state, like Grey had been? Maybe the design was intended for the AI to only aid in the healing process, not take control. Now that Grey was back, what if Leo could only be in his thoughts and healing his mind, rather than actually taking part in the outside world? Pain rippled through me at the thought, but I quickly shoved it inside, deciding to worry about it after I saved my brother.

Maddox nodded and accepted the chip, but I could see the uncertainty in her eyes. No doubt she was wondering what she would even say to Grey, and I didn’t know how to help her. I wasn’t sure what to say to him either. All I knew was I had two major problems before me, and one of them needed my immediate attention. Namely, my brother.

“What about him?” she asked, pointing at my brother.

“The Paragon,” I reminded her. “If I get it in his system fast enough, it’ll boost his rank back up, and keep him off the sensors. Where did we leave it?”

“In the kitchen,” she replied without hesitation. Her eyes flicked down to my brother’s wrist, and I followed them in time to see the seven morph into a bruised and bloated six. He was falling fast, and if anyone in IT was monitoring or recording his rank status, they would see that something significant had happened.

And I knew for a fact that Sadie was having him watched. I had to get him up and moving and get a pill down his throat as quickly as possible. It might already be too late if someone was watching right now, but I had to try. I couldn’t risk them taking my brother away.

I grabbed his arm and yanked. To my surprise, he allowed himself to be dragged up and forward, but his movements were stiff and laborious.

“Where are we going?” he asked, and the hopeless sound in his voice made my heart ache.

I wanted to turn around and comfort him, but as soon as his rank hit three, the alarms would go off. With Quess working to save Eric, and Leo trapped in the net until Maddox got him back into Grey, I couldn’t count on them to shut off the sensors in the apartment to buy us time, and I doubted Cornelius would be able to obey that request without some AI help, which meant I had to make it to the Paragon before he hit three.

“To the kitchen,” I told him, hauling on his arm and pulling him forward, practically dragging him behind me. I urged him both orally and physically, trying to get him to understand the urgency of the situation through the tightness of my grip and the insistent tugging on his arm. His feet picked up the speed, from a stiff-limbed lumber to a slight jog, but it still wasn’t fast enough. “Hurry up, Alex!”

“Huh?”

We were making our way around the hairpin turn now, and I chanced a glance back to his wrist—and felt a spurt of adrenaline as the six slid into a sickly orange five. The alarms were going to go off as soon as the sensors in the area registered the three, and they’d already be picking up the fact that he’d dropped all the way to five.

But he didn’t even notice. His eyes were blank, hollow, and empty, his half-hearted burst of speed already flagging.

I knew I had to snap him out of it. He had to get moving or we were going to lose him entirely—because if he dropped down to a three, I wasn’t going to be able to do anything to save him from Scipio and those expulsion chambers. So I did the only thing I could think of.

I slapped him. Once on the cheek. Then again at the blank-stare look he gave me, and again at the dazed and confused one that followed.

The third time was the charm, because he shook his head, his hand going to his cheek. “Liana?”

“Come on.” Squeezing his arm in what had to have been a most painful fashion, I continued pulling him along the hall, picking up the speed as he followed my impatient urgings.