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

I tried to force a smile onto my face. “Yeah. It’s great.”

My best friend knew me better than that, and she cocked her head and squinted at me. “Liana, you are an excellent liar when you want to be, but that was a really crappy effort. Are you worried about Alex? Dinah said she would make ghost net data into his file so no one noticed he was missing, so I don’t think you have to worry about that. Besides, I read that graphic novel thing after you fell asleep last night, and these people seem pretty great, despite everything they went through. They’re kind of like us, in a way. They found out that people were trying to take power and did everything they could to stop them. I mean, they even tried to keep the queen responsible for everything alive, so they could put her on trial! That’s saying something about a civilization.”

I smiled, in spite of my own sadness. It was good to see her so excited about something. There was a light in her eyes that hadn’t been there in the past few months, and I hadn’t realized how much I had missed seeing her hopeful and looking forward to the future. But her words only made me realize how selfish I was being. I knew what most of them had signed up for: to get out of the Tower. Their goal had been put off time and time again, partially because the situations we found ourselves in called for survival first and escape later—but also because I didn’t want to accept the idea that we would escape before we stopped the legacies and fixed Scipio. Not to mention the fact that we physically didn’t have a way to go. The radiation outside would kill us, and we didn’t have flying machines.

Now the possibility of them achieving their ultimate goal was here, and all I could think about was how it was going to affect me.

“That is great,” I agreed, forcing a little more effort into the lie. “I’m excited.”

She narrowed her dark blue eyes at me, her mouth tightening. “Spill.”

Crap. I was clearly too close to this emotionally, and that was affecting my ability to lie. I screwed on a “seriously, everything is fine” face and opened my mouth to begin reassuring her. “Zoe, I—”

“Cut the crap, Castell,” she barked in a no-nonsense voice. “What. The hell. Is up with you?”

I pressed my lips together and looked away. I hadn’t been planning to tell anyone about my decision to stay and help Leo fix Scipio, and I wasn’t sure now was the time to do it. But Zoe, who was the dearest person in the world to me, was also like a dog with a bone when she sensed I was keeping a secret from her. There was no getting out of it, not without causing a fight.

Besides, in the deepest, darkest part of my heart, I wanted to talk to someone about it. “Zoe, I’m not leaving with you and the others, even if Alex gets us refugee status. I promised Leo that I would stay and help him fix Scipio, and I still intend to do that.”

She stared at me, her face an impassive mask. “But Leo essentially broke your heart last night,” she finally said.

Pain blossomed, but I fought it back, trying not to cry. “No,” I said. “He didn’t.” I wasn’t sure if it was a lie or not, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. It was what I had to say to keep from breaking down, so I said it, and tried not to pay any attention to how my heart ached, or how a voice in my mind was screaming at me to go find him, and then… hit him or scream at him not to do this. The voices were conflicted on that front.

Which was why it was better to ignore them both. I couldn’t afford to break down, not like I had after my mom had died. As much as I wanted to just break down and cry, I couldn’t; there were bigger problems to worry about than some jerk of an AI who had just hurt me worse than any of our enemies ever could.

Zoe’s mouth worked. “Okay, he didn’t,” she agreed in a tone of voice that told me she didn’t agree with me. “But he still hurt you. He lied to you and toyed with your emotions. Why stick around and help him?”

I gave her an incredulous look. “Because the people in the Tower shouldn’t have to suffer because I got my feelings hurt. They deserve better than that.”

“Then they should be the ones doing something about it,” she retorted angrily. “Why does this whole legacy war, saving Scipio thing have to fall to us? Give Lacey Sadie’s files, and the fragments. You said she had one already—Kurt, right? Her family has been keeping him safe for however many years, so have her handle it. It’s her damn war, after all!”

I considered her idea, taking in a deep breath of air in an attempt to not reject the idea outright. Lacey had been a representative of her department for years, and had a veritable army working for her. She had also been fighting in this legacy war her entire life and would jump at the chance to finally put an end to it.

But could I trust her to actually restore Scipio, given the pieces and the chance? What if she got to that point and then decided not to, so she could try to control everything instead? What did I know about her, really? We weren’t exactly close enough for her to let me in on her vision of the Tower, so how could I trust that it was any different from Sadie’s?

More importantly, could I let go and walk away? Leave the job unfinished, the Tower unsaved, and just… go? Start a new life somewhere, free from all of the danger and strife we had been through… I was tired—that much was a constant—and had no clue what to do next. The struggles we had been through had been nonstop, and every time we came close to the enemy, someone wound up hurt or dead. I didn’t want to see my friends hurt or killed. I didn’t want them to die over this.

But me? I had already started down this path, committed to it fully. It didn’t matter that Leo and the others were focusing on separate goals; the thought of leaving everything behind without fixing it ate at me. There were good people in the Tower who didn’t deserve to fall victim to whatever the legacies had in store for them. I knew right then that I wouldn’t be able to just leave them. So why lie about it?

“I don’t have a good reason not to give it all over to Lacey,” I said carefully. “But that doesn’t mean I will. I hear what you’re saying, Zo, but I’m not going. Not until I know the Tower is free from the legacies, and Scipio is restored.”

“What if Scipio can’t be restored?” she erupted angrily. “Liana, you don’t owe anyone in this Tower a damn thing!”

I stared at her for a second, and then looked down at the graphic novel sitting partially under her pillow. She had just been talking about their struggles a moment ago, and how they solved their problems. From the sounds of it, they hadn’t given up. So why were we?

I pointed at it and met her eyes. “They didn’t owe anything to the people they saved, and yet they still did it. It can’t be both ways, Zoe. We can’t admire the things that they’ve done and the world they’ve created while turning our backs on our own. I understand wanting to leave, but I can’t until I know everyone inside is going to be safe.” I paused, and then added a bitter, “Not that anyone is going to want to help with that now.”

Zoe’s eyes widened, and for a second, I thought she was going to continue arguing with me. She expelled a slow breath, puffing out her cheeks. “Crap. That’s a really good point.” I wasn’t expecting that, and her sudden reversal left me a bit speechless. My silence gave her a few more seconds to think about it, and I had a sudden hope that maybe she would find the answer for me. Instead, she finally said, “I don’t see the others really getting on board with it, however.”

She was right. Their hopes were high, and I wasn’t sure the argument would hold weight with them. It was more moral than anything, whereas everything we’d done up to this point had been necessary to our continued survival. This was purely altruistic; I wasn’t doing this because it was what I had to do, but because it was what needed to be done. It was impossible to expect the others to be willing to gamble their lives on something like that.