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

Nobody said anything for several seconds, and for a moment, I wondered if I had pushed too far. These people were suspicious of us, and from what they were saying, they had a right to be. Devon Alexander had wanted to take their technology and had been pretty outspoken about it. Now I was here instead of him, and I was guessing they weren’t quite sure what to make of me.

And who could blame them? I wasn’t exactly the most upright and loyal citizen to the Tower, so my behavior had to be worlds apart from what they had read about in their little book. It actually bothered me that I wasn’t looking at it even now, trying to find the parts about the Tower and get their point of view. It would help me gauge what they had learned about our life here, and what their perception of us was. They were obviously wary, but I wanted to know more about why.

I resisted the urge, though, and tried to keep my face neutral, if not mildly pleasant, while the two deliberated.

Thomas broke the silence first, with a chuckle that was as rich as it was smoky. My body tingled with awareness, and I resented every moment of it. I already felt like I was juggling two men; I had no room for a third—especially one who looked as arrogant and commanding as Thomas. I could tell he liked being in charge, taking the lead, and that was my job, dammit, not his.

“All right,” he agreed amicably. “If you’re so eager, you go first.”

I regarded him with a coolness, indifferent to the fact that he had called my bluff. I had meant what I told them: I wanted to be honest. There was an opportunity here for us to become friends, maybe even plan our escape, once we had stopped the legacies, restored Scipio, and gotten people used to the idea that other pockets of humanity had survived. Better yet, maybe we could be the first envoys from the Tower, doing what Thomas and Melissa were doing and making allies of other civilizations. I knew it would take time, but the first step down that road was telling the truth.

I started by asking them what they knew, which wasn’t much, beyond a handful of titles and names they couldn’t remember but promised me were in the book. They knew about the bio-foam, and how we repaired our broken bones and had walls that displayed medical information. I was surprised that they didn’t have all of that already, but they assured us they were working toward it, having been inspired by what they saw. I felt uncomfortable about that, like they were stealing our technology. It was something that gave us an advantage—something to trade with if the people of the Tower ever emerged. Something we could use to create relationships with the rest of the world.

Then I realized they hadn’t really stolen it. Just tried to emulate what we had done. In that light, it was a little flattering.

As for my side of things, it was impossible to tell my story in a linear way once I got started. I started by explaining who I was, my position, and my department, and gave them an idea of what we did. But that invariably led Thomas to make a comment about how it was good that we didn’t have gender discrimination, which made me ask if they did, and then they were telling me about Matrus and Patrus, the countries divided by gender. I listened in awe and horror as they told me about what life was like for the women of Patrus—treated like slaves, little better than dogs, even stolen and ripped from their homes—and the boys of Matrus, who were screened for aggressive behavior and weeded out of the populace if they tested positive. They had supposedly been sent to the mines to work, but had actually been experimented on (they wouldn’t go into detail as to how, but judging from Melissa’s and Thomas’s faces, it wasn’t good).

They asked if our society had a lower class, and in response, the three of us held up our wrists, displaying our indicators that showed our ranking. I explained to them how the ranking system worked, about the nets in our heads, but glossed over Scipio and the AIs altogether. I kept the rest of the story much simpler for them, explaining only that we had learned of a secret group that had been manipulating laws in order to gain power over the system, resulting in more and more people losing rank, while those in power remained on top.

Melissa rolled her eyes and said, “Ah, yes, no truer love story than that between people and power,” with a quirky smile that had us laughing.

In return, they told us about the former Queen Elena and her quest for power, in which she had faked Patrian aggression to start a war. In doing so, she had killed hundreds of Patrian males, and it had taken the better part of ten years for the country to rebuild. But rebuild it the Patrians did, with the help of their ally Queen Morgana, of Matrus, and Prime Chancellor Viggo Croft, of Patrus. The latter of whom, of course, was Thomas and Melissa’s father.

The siblings talked about their parents a lot. It was actually kind of sweet, and I could tell by the way they smiled and laughed that they had a very healthy relationship with both of them. I could see the love and pride beaming out of them. I envied that, a little bit, mostly because it started to drag me back to that “what if” place I had been in after my mother died, and I quickly resumed my thread in the story. Even though I omitted the AIs, I told them everything else, the words spilling out of me faster than the water the hydro-turbines sucked up from the river. It felt good to talk about it with someone who was outside of the situation. My friends and I lived, breathed, and slept with this crap on a daily basis, so talking to them about it was pointless, as they knew all of the problems. But Thomas and Melissa were different; they were safe, and neutral. They didn’t have a dog in this fight, no vested interest, and they were very sympathetic listeners, empathizing with our plight as the story unraveled. I could tell they agreed with a lot of the choices I had made.

It took over an hour for us to finish, and by the time we were done, we were all sitting around the conference table, having all sat down at various points in the conversation. Our talk had fallen off, in one of those natural pauses that occurred during lively conversation, when Leo said, “You never told us about the radiation of the Wastes. You indicated you knew what it was caused by?”

That was right. I had forgotten about that in the organic exchange of information. I leaned forward, interested in what Thomas’s answer would be. The radiation was the only thing keeping us from crossing the Wastes outside, and if they knew what was causing it, I wanted to know what it was. Maybe it was a pipe dream, but I had a hope that if we knew what it was, we could figure out how to stop it and finally leave the Tower.

Thomas blinked and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “As a matter of fact, you’re what caused it,” he said flatly, and I blinked.

“What do you mean?” I demanded. “The radiation is fallout, right? From the End?”

Melissa shook her head, her green eyes simmering with sadness. “Your Tower dumps toxic sludge into the river, and it has seeped into the surrounding area, killing everything within a hundred-mile radius, give or take.”

Disoriented by the news, I sank back into the chair. We were causing the radiation that was keeping us here? The entire time… it was our fault that we couldn’t go outside? Did the other councilors know? Was this just some unforeseen byproduct of the Tower that no one predicted? Or worse, was it some sort of deterrent to keep others away from us? What was it doing to the rest of the world?

“The two-hundred-mile radius is also barren, but in the three-to four-fifty range, things start to get interesting,” Thomas added, seeming to read my mind.

I didn’t like this. He was beginning to speak cryptically again, meaning he was hiding something.