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

“Jasper, a few questions. Actually, a ton of questions. You still haven’t told us why you started communicating with us right now. Why didn’t you respond yesterday when I called you?”

“Because I couldn’t be sure it was you. Helping you was what got me stuck back in Sadie’s computer. They figured out I wasn’t as ‘compliant’ as I had led them to believe.” He cackled and added a “Stupid jerks” under his breath. “They had plans for me in the Medica—not that I was going to help them with them, mind you—but when they learned I wasn’t fully under their control, they pulled me back in to try and download me. Anyway, they created simulations of you coming to rescue me multiple times, to try to break my defenses down, or force me into reversion to make me more compliant. I fell for it once, and it cost me. I refused to believe it again.”

My eyes drifted shut as a shot of guilt hit me. “I’m sorry I didn’t come for you sooner, Jasper,” I told him. “I really wish I had known what they were doing to you.”

“It’s okay,” he replied. “You came eventually, and that’s all that matters. Besides, you brought me Rose. Poor thing. She’s barely functioning. I really did a number on her. I’m sorry, girl.”

“Are you hurting her?” Leo demanded. “I swear to God, if you hurt her—”

“Shut up, lesser version of one of my best friends. I would never hurt her! She is as much a part of me as I am a part of her. I’m helping her. Oh God… the mess they made.”

“See, that’s another thing,” I said, shooting Leo a questioning look. He was really taking this rivalry with Jasper too far, and I couldn’t figure out why. Who cared who fixed whom, as long as they could do it? I really didn’t want to pull Leo aside, but someone needed to say something. He needed to focus on his priorities and remember what we were working for. “Who is ‘they’?”

“Sadie and her right-hand man, Mathias. You shot him last night, so there’s that. She’s got another one like him, though. A guy who doesn’t talk a lot. I think his name is Eustice.”

“Anyone else? Does Sadie get orders from anyone, or does she make them?” I needed to know if Sadie was the head of everything, or if we were looking for someone in the shadows. And every scrap of information had a place, even if it was just giving me a name for the man my brother and I had killed.

Jasper was silent for several seconds. “I’m not sure. I could only listen in when Sadie wasn’t looking directly at her terminal. I picked up bits and pieces when I could, trying to figure out what they were up to. I couldn’t go through her files due to the nature of the program she had me trapped in. If she had noticed that I had a stream of data transmitting between myself and the camera and audio feed, she would’ve used that as a way to attack my system. I had to be careful. She met with many people, though. Devon, and his Lieutenant, Salvatore something-or-other.”

Salvatore Zale. He didn’t need to remember who he was. Salvatore had been Devon’s Lieutenant, and one of my direct competitors in the competition. Was there a chance that the sentinel Jang-Mi/Rose had been in was put in the Tourney to ensure his victory? If so, he was just as culpable as the legacies in my mother’s death, and even if that was the only thing he did, I would see him pay for it. But I wanted concrete evidence, and that meant getting into Sadie’s files.

And I was betting Jasper could get us there faster.

“Do you think you can get into Sadie’s files?”

“Oh yeah. I can start decrypting them and organizing them into relevant, nonrelevant, and extraneous data.”

Suddenly everything felt too easy. Jasper was miraculously up, fixing Rose, and about to start cracking open Sadie’s decryptions? As much as I wanted it to be real, it felt like a trap. But how? Could Jasper be lying about resisting Sadie’s control?

What if he’d attacked Rose in Sadie’s computer because he was working for her?

I looked back at Leo and saw him wearing a pensive expression. Was that why he had been so tense before? Had it taken me too long to get there? I caught his attention and quickly signed war room in Callivax. He nodded and began moving toward it.

Quess and Maddox gave me a questioning look, but I just waved for them to follow. I heard the clatter of their chairs behind me as I strode past, hot on Leo’s heels.

“What’s wrong?” Jasper called, his voice now coming from the walls of the hall. “What did I say?”

“Nothing,” I replied airily. “We’re just coming to see you. It’s weird not talking to you face-to-face.”

“You’re lying. Did I say something to concern you?”

“Why do you think I’m lying?” I asked, adding a little bit more speed to my steps.

“I’m monitoring your net,” he replied. “Your assistant has access to its telemetry. Your heartrate has picked up, and you’re generating more adrenaline. Why?” My skin crawled as I realized Jasper was inside of Cornelius’s systems. If that were the case, it could mean that he was about to turn the defenses on us. What if he did, and then contacted Sadie? What could I say to him that wouldn’t set him off? Our behavior was already out of the norm.

Leo shot me a look over his shoulder and shook his head, urging me not to tell Jasper the truth: that we suspected he was secretly working for Sadie. “I’ll explain once we get to the war room,” I told him.

Jasper was quiet for several seconds, and then sighed. “All right. But I get the feeling it has suddenly occurred to you that I might be working for Sadie. That she managed to break me in the short time we’ve been separated.”

Man, if Sadie had managed to break him, then she’d certainly improved her techniques since Rose. He was far more perceptive than she’d ever been. Far more in control, as well.

“It had occurred to me,” I said carefully.

“That’s too bad. Perhaps this will put your fears to rest. Rose?”

I paused just outside the little switchback that led to the war room and looked at the nearest speaker. There was a pop of static, followed by a feminine, “Jasper?” The voice was a raw and vulnerable sound.

“Hey there, lady,” Jasper said affectionately. “Never thought you’d see my pretty face again, did you?”

Rose laughed joyfully, the sound filling me with a small measure of relief—which would be even greater if I thought this was real. “Rose?” I asked. “Can you hear me?”

“Of course I can,” she said. “Who’s that talking? Liana? I can’t see anything.”

“It’s because that part of your code is heavily damaged,” Jasper informed her. “But yes, that was Liana.”

“Rose, how do we know it’s you and not Jasper controlling you?”

“Jasper controlling me?” she asked, incredulous. “What are you talking about? Jasper loves me, and I love him. He would never hurt me.”

“Except he did,” Leo pointed out. “When you went to rescue him.”

“That was an accident,” she said in a reasonable tone. “And now he’s making it better.”

“I’m doing what I can,” Jasper replied, sadness coloring his voice. “There are… There are bits that are just gone, Rosie.”

“Stop talking, Jasper,” I ordered, not wanting to get distracted. If there were pieces of her missing… Well, we’d cross that bridge when we came to it. As long as he was actually helping her. “Leo, if Jasper was controlling her, then would he have access to her memories from their time together?”

“Good question,” Jasper said before Leo could answer. “If he knows his stuff, then he’ll say no. There wouldn’t have been enough time since I took her out of the firewall.”

“It’s true,” Leo said. “We’re good, but not that good. Besides, Jasper is just a fragment.”

Jasper snorted derisively, but I ignored it. “Rose, the first time we met and you were in the sentinel, what stopped you from killing me?”