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

But I was already in the process of doing so, sparing a moment to take a deep breath of relief as the continuous buzzing caused by the scrambler stopped. It was a momentary relief, though, as it was going to start right back up again when I netted her.

“I know,” I replied in answer to his comment, tapping my indicator over to the net function. “But we have to risk them noticing I was up here. I’ll make something up if it is noticed, because this is more important. She and Eric know the people on Paragon. We need to clue her in. Give me a second. Contact Zoe Elphesian, M1709-C19.”

Leo’s mouth twisted into a frown, but he didn’t say anything. I waited for the net to connect and was rewarded by her voice in my ear seconds later. Where the hell are you guys, and what is taking so long?

I cringed, realizing that I should’ve netted her far sooner, and immediately apologized using the neural transmitter, so as not to clue the others in to what was going on. Besides, they were too busy flipping through the graphic novel Thomas had given us, excitement and rapt awe mirrored on their faces.

I’m sorry, Zo, I thought contritely, feeling the vague pop against my temple that signaled that the message had been sent. Is Eric okay?

He’s fine. I think. He still hasn’t woken up. And he’s very pale. But his breathing is steady, and his pulse is strong. I just wish he wasn’t so pale.

I could hear the tremor in her voice as she spoke, and my heart longed to go to her to comfort her. But I couldn’t.

He’s strong, Zoe. You know how strong he is. And he loves you. He’s not ready to leave you.

I hope you’re right, she replied. There were several seconds of dead space, followed by, So wait, what is going on? Why is it taking you so long to dump a body?

I took a deep breath, preparing to drop a bombshell on my friend. Yeah, well, about that. We have visitors. Remember those people that Roark’s wife saw? Well, their kids are here, and we’ve been helping them out. One of their people was injured.

Zoe didn’t say anything for several heartbeats, and Leo coughed, giving me a questioning look. I held my finger to my ear and signaled for him to give me a moment.

What? Zoe replied. Are you serious?

There’s more, but I’m gonna switch over to verbal conversation. Everyone is here, and you might get a lot of one-sided conversation from me, but bear with me, because I need your insight on this.

Okay… Zoe drawled. I could tell she was confused, which was fair and totally my fault, but we didn’t have time to recap everything.

“Right,” I said, leaning forward in my seat and signaling for the others to focus on me. “So here it is. The aliens have offered us a chance to escape as refugees, and I was thinking we could send the Paragon users to them, to finally deliver on Roark’s plan of escape while relieving stress on our own supply, in case Jasper isn’t able to—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Maddox interrupted, pinning me with a confused look. “What do you mean? You want to send… only the Paragon users? What about us?”

I gaped at her, my mouth still open, and then slowly shut it, leaning back in my chair. It never crossed my mind that we would be talking about leaving ourselves. That… That wasn’t what I had in mind, and I felt completely uncertain of how to respond to her statement.

As far as I knew, we were still fighting for the destiny of the Tower. There were legacies to unearth, and Scipio was still broken. We couldn’t just leave. But as I looked from Maddox to Quess and back again, I realized that it had never occurred to me that they wouldn’t feel the same way.

“Guys,” I said, looking between the two of them. “We need to stay. The Tower… Scipio… All those people will die if we just abandon them.”

Maddox shifted in her chair and took a deep breath, her eyes going to the table. “I know that,” she replied. “But, I mean, look at where we are! We’re standing in the cockpit of a machine that can fly. Talking about a civilization that has overcome its problems already and is willing to accept us because of our situation. Liana, this is beyond anything we could’ve dreamed of or hoped for. We finally have a way out.”

“It’s what Cali and Roark wanted us to do in the first place,” Quess added before I had a chance to respond. “They didn’t want us to fight; they wanted us to survive. Think about it—we can just go, disappear and never look back. We wouldn’t have to lose anyone else, and we could be free to… to pursue whatever we wanted to! Explore, invent, learn about pre-End culture, whatever! Isn’t that better than… than going back in there and facing what we have to face on a daily basis?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. On the one hand, I understood what he was saying. I was tired. We all were. And it wasn’t just about today or yesterday. It was all of the days, every single dark one, rolled up together in the mess that our lives had become. Everything was grimmer than it had ever been, and the future was beyond nebulous.

On the other hand, I couldn’t abandon the people of the Tower. I wouldn’t. I’d made the decision long ago, and I had given my promise to Leo to help him restore Lionel Scipio’s original vision of the Tower, to the best of my abilities. When the Patrians had made their offer, I had only seen it as an opportunity to give those who wanted out their chance while relieving one of my many burdens. I had even thought about taking them up on it myself—but not until after I fixed everything.

I wasn’t leaving. Not until I finished what I started.

A part of me wanted to confront them about leaving, convince them they would be wrong to do so. Another part saw it as futile. Quess and Maddox had never hidden their true aim from me. They had always been perfectly clear. I just wished that I didn’t feel so disappointed that they hadn’t changed their minds. Disappointed and rejected, even.

But I couldn’t order them to stay, not if they didn’t want to.

“Right,” I said, shifting slightly in my seat, trying to regain some small measure of balance within myself. “Well, if you want to be included with the people who go, that’s fine. Zoe, what are your thoughts on all of this?”

You mean other than the idea that I can get my boyfriend out of here and to a place where he will never be hurt again? Yeah, I think the Paragon users will definitely go for it. Although, they’re going to have to get over the shock of learning that there’s life out there. I am totally down with getting the hell out of here before anything else goes wrong. She paused for a second, and then added, Eric’s family is going to need to be included in the refugee group. Or else he won’t go. Probably my mother as well.

I blinked. Zoe’s mother wasn’t a problem, but Eric’s family was large. All of his grandparents were alive, and with the exception of his father, the rest of his family was intact. That meant an uncle on both his father’s and mother’s sides, as well as their wives and children. And I wasn’t even going to start on the in-laws. If we took his family, we might wind up taking an entire farming floor. As much as I hated to say it, Eric was going to have to limit himself in regard to who he took with him. Not to mention, the Patrians would definitely have a say in how many of us they could take.

“Agreed,” I told her. “But there’s gonna have to be a cap on how many family members he can bring.”

There was a pause, and then Zoe sighed, the tone a musical cascade of chimes along my inner ear canal. I understand, but you know he’s not going to like it.

“I know he won’t. But we don’t know how many of our people they’re going to accept, and we already have…” I paused to do some quick math, excluding myself from the equation. “Thirty-six. That’s a lot for any nation to take on, and with Eric’s family, we’ll be pushing it to fifty.”