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

To hell with that. If he wanted to end… whatever it was that we had, that was fine. But he needed to keep this crap between us separate from our real-world problems. The least he could do was maintain some level of professionalism.

“Finding the legacies does help you and the other AIs,” I said, trying to keep my voice free of the anger twisting up inside me. “And we know Lacey has Kurt. I plan to meet with her first, to make sure she’s been treating him well, and if she has, it will mean we can leave you and the others with her, and you can continue to work on everyone. But before I do that, I want to make sure that every single legacy who is after Rose, Jasper, or you is gone. I think you can agree it will be safer for all three of you if they are gone, right?”

He finally looked up from his food and directed his gaze toward me, his brown eyes dark and hard. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “It would make sense to eliminate that threat first. But not until I get both programs up and running again. Their safety and health are foremost in my mind.”

His demeanor was so frosty, I had the urge to wrap my arms around myself to fight off the cold. The presence of it suddenly filled me with despair, and I once again wondered if he had been telling me the truth last night, and he really didn’t care about me. It was like he had shut everything off with a switch and reverted back to something more machine than human. And this wasn’t how he had been when we found him, either. Back in Lionel’s office, at least, he had seemed so bright and hopeful. Now he just seemed… angry. It made me want to break down in tears, but my pride refused to let me.

Instead, I opened my mouth and asked, “How are they?”

“I think Rose may wake up today,” he replied automatically, picking up his fork and returning his focus to his meal. “I’m unsure about Jasper, as his programming is still locked up in a defensive mode.”

“Could Quess and Zoe be of any assistance to you?”

“Actually, I would be the better one to ask, don’t you think?” a gruff voice announced from the speakers. My skin tingled with awareness, and Leo and I both shot out of our chairs. But it was me who spoke first.

“Jasper?!”

“In the proverbial flesh.” A pause. “Or not. So these are the Champion’s quarters, eh? They’re quite nifty.”

“How are you awake?” Leo demanded. “I tried everything I could to reach you.”

“Yes, I am well aware, you impudent little upstart. Who the hell do you think you are to even be touching my coding?”

I raised an eyebrow… and then smiled. Jasper may have been listening, but he hadn’t picked up on the fact that Leo was an AI inside a human’s body. “He’s Scipio, Jasper,” I told him. “But not the one you were bonded with. He’s the original version of the program. We call him Leo, to make things easier.”

The speakers were silent for several seconds. “Whaaaat? Girl, you must be crazy, because that’s not possible. I distinctly remember the council voting to have the backup fragments deleted. And I was there when we got confirmation of Scipio’s backup being deleted along with the others!”

“You remember that?” I asked. Jang-Mi’s and Rose’s recollections were spotty at best. They’d been able to recall only general details, with no specifics.

“Pfft, who do you think you’re talking to? I am Scipio’s memory. I remember it all.”

“You’re his logic,” Leo corrected.

“Actually, I’m his common sense,” Jasper said icily. “How do you get common sense? From remembering your mistakes. It is embarrassing how little you know about us, but no matter. Just acknowledge that I am smart and you are not, and we can finish this little show of intellectual dominance.”

I giggled. I couldn’t help it. Jasper had never been quite this punchy in the Medica, but listening to him interact with Leo and put him in his place was highly entertaining, especially when Leo’s face turned a shade of red that told me he was angry. At that point, I decided to take control of the situation and figure out what exactly had happened to Jasper.

“Jasper, why are you awake now? Why are you talking to us, and what happened to you? Why did you attack Rose?”

“Slow down there, little lady,” Jasper replied. “That’s a lot of questions. Okay, well… hm… I was stuck in that IT bitch’s terminal, resisting yet another one of her torture programs, when I get pinged by something claiming to be Rose. Sadie had used that tactic before to draw me out, so I thought it was another tactic to try to get me to relax my defenses. But when this one started to break through my defenses in a way that shouldn’t be possible for anything but an AI, I panicked and started attacking. I didn’t realize what it was—just that it seemed like Rose, but clearly wasn’t.”

“It was Rose!” Leo said explosively. “She’s damaged because of what they did to her, and you might have made it worse by blindly attacking her! Why didn’t you initiate an authentication process?”

“You have no idea what Sadie has put me through, so don’t you dare attack me for reacting to a perceived threat. I have been in Sadie’s tender loving care for nearly twenty-five years, cut out so they could force Scipio to vote to destroy something the council called a gyroship, using the Tower’s laser defense arrays! I warned them that it could result in retaliation, and that we should try to initiate a diplomatic relationship with them, but noooooo. Sadie’s predecessor had to be one of those Prometheus nutcases hell bent on destroying Scipio. The council thought they’d been eradicated—ha! They just changed names and disappeared into history, until they started cutting us out of him! And for what? So they could reverse his decision to let the visitors go, too worried about outside interference in their stupid little plan. So they could use us to pilot their sentinels? So they could force us to help them destroy our home?”

He tsked, clearly irritated, and I blinked. He had just revealed a lot in just a few sentences: that he had been taken over twenty-five years ago, that he had been ripped out to get Scipio to agree to shooting Violet and Viggo out of the air, and that Sadie’s predecessor was responsible for taking him out. He had also confirmed that Sadie’s legacy group had started as a part of an anti-AI terrorist cell known as Prometheus. They’d reportedly been destroyed by Ezekial Pine, but it seemed that they lived on, in the form of legacies. I had learned about them from Leo—knew that they resented Scipio’s role in determining humanity’s fate—and realized that whatever Sadie was planning didn’t just stop with controlling Scipio. Not if it was a two-hundred-year-old plan they were enacting.

But who were they? Did he have more information about them? Did he know what they ultimately wanted?

“And why are you awake, now?” Leo asked, oblivious to the questions he should have been asking. “When I left you, your programming was locked and you weren’t responsive!”

Jasper’s dry chuckle filled the room. “I’ve got tricks up my sleeve you couldn’t even dream of, whippersnapper. I jammed a small bit of my code into your microphones and cameras as soon as you started building this firewall between Rose and myself, to try to figure out who you were and what you wanted. Really nice work, by the way. That firewall only took me fifteen seconds to break down.”

Leo’s eyes bulged, and he opened his mouth to say something—presumably to tell Jasper that he should stay away from Rose—that he was helping her. I sensed his pride had been hurt on that front, but I held up a hand to stop him.