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

I kept a tight lid on my anger and focused on the problem at hand. It seemed like we had uncovered a lot about what they were planning, but nothing about how many of them there were, or how to find them. “So what do we have?”

“The list of every legacy spy embedded in the other departments,” Leo replied. I grimaced. It made sense for her to need people inside the other departments to sabotage their efforts to fix Scipio when everything began, in order to keep anyone from interfering with their plans. “As well as a full roster of the entire legacy group. There are exactly 105 of them, excluding Sadie and Mathias. Fifty-three are stationed in other departments, leaving the rest to act as support and secret forces. And before you ask me, there are a few people whose names start with P, but obviously we can’t tell which one is which.”

“One hundred and five,” I exclaimed, my eyes bulging. “How is that even possible? Where’d they come from? Are they biologically related, or are they being recruited from somewhere?”

Leo opened his mouth, but I could tell by the shrug in his shoulders that he didn’t know. I waved him off and leaned forward, trying to think. When I had asked everyone to go after the legacies, I had assumed there would be fifty people, at most. Now I knew there were twice that. Catching them wasn’t going to be possible alone; we were going to need help. We were going to have to coordinate our attack so that it happened simultaneously. It would require a lot of moving parts, and that meant letting more people in on what was going on.

But I was getting ahead of myself. First, we needed to focus on finding the other fifty or so legacies who were missing. Then we needed to—

My thoughts cut off abruptly at the sudden sound of something hitting the table. I twisted in my seat in time to see Leo slumped against it and sliding down, taking with him a column of Maddox’s carefully stacked files in a flutter of noise.





28





“LEO!” I cried, my heart leaping into my throat as I leapt from the chair and raced around the table to where he had fallen. A thousand questions sped through my mind: Was he injured? Had Baldy hurt him? Or was it Grey? Did we take too much blood from him yesterday? Was sharing the one mind hurting them somehow?

He was on his stomach, his head pillowed by one arm, and I quickly sank to my knees beside him and flipped him over. “Cornelius, tell Quess I need him!” I shouted, my fingers going to Leo’s neck. His eyelashes fluttered against his cheeks, and he gave a soft groan, his hand weakly flopping next to him.

“Fine,” he wheezed. “I’m—”

He stopped midsentence, his head lolling to one side. I could still feel his pulse under my fingers, but it wasn’t as strong as I would like. It wasn’t dangerously weak, but definitely weaker. It didn’t make any sense. “Cornelius,” I repeated, looking around. “Where is—”

“I’m here,” Quess cut in, the sound of running feet filling the room. “Can’t we go two minutes without having a medical emergency?”

I slid to one side to give him room, letting him fall into place beside Leo, and then watched impatiently as he pulled out his scanner and ran it over Leo’s body.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know,” I told him, glancing up at where Zoe and Maddox were standing, hovering just to the side of us. “Did either of you see? I just saw him drop to the table and then fall.”

Zoe shook her head, but Maddox nodded. “He started weaving back and forth, this really dopey look on his face. I was about to ask him what was wrong, but then he sort of toppled forward, onto the table. It looked like he fainted.”

“That would make sense. His electrolyte readings are dismally low. Jasper, can you confirm?”

There was a pause. “Oh yeah. Hm. Hold on a second, I’m going to remotely interface with the net and… Oh.” He went silent for a second, and I had to bite back the urge to snap at him to explain what was going on. I knew that electrolytes were really important, but how would Leo have depleted them all? Minerals were put into our water supply to make sure we were healthy, so anything he’d drunk would’ve replenished them. Not to mention, deficiency would only happen if he had been exercising nonstop for several days, without taking in liquids to deplete his dwindling supply.

“What is it?” I managed in a calm-ish voice, when the silence had gone on for too long.

“Quess is correct. Grey’s body has been depleted of its mineral content. He will require fluids and several hours of rest.”

I frowned. “But how did this happen? You know it’s really difficult to have an electrolyte imbalance.”

“You will have to ask Leo that question when he wakes up.”

Odd. Was it because Jasper didn’t know, or because it was somehow Leo’s fault that Grey’s electrolytes were out of balance? It didn’t seem like Jasper was going to say, so the only thing I could do was follow the doctor’s advice and get him in bed.

I looked down at Leo, and then back up to Quess. “Help me move him?”

“Fine,” Quess groaned theatrically. “We’ll get him to bed and I’ll hook him up to some fluids.”

“I can hook him up,” I told him, reaching out to grab one of Leo’s arms. “I learned that much at least from the cross-departmental training courses.”

“Sweet,” Quess said as he grabbed the other. “Then I can come back here and do more research! Yay!”

I laughed at the faux enthusiasm in his voice, but sobered immediately afterward, my concern for Leo and Grey overriding everything.

Quess and I lifted Leo up together, each draping one of his arms across our neck, and carried him out the room, down the hall, and into his bedroom. He remained out of it the entire time, even when we placed him on the bed in the corner. I waved Quess off when he started to help, and he shrugged, leaving the clear plastic bag with yellow fluid inside for me to give Leo before he departed.

I stood staring at the door after he closed it, and then sighed and cast a look at Leo’s unconscious form on the bed. This was awkward. I hadn’t thought twice about wanting to take care of him in the moment, but now that we were here, I was suddenly thinking about last night, and how everything was between us. I certainly didn’t want him waking up while I was taking care of him, because I wasn’t exactly ready to deal with cold Leo yet. Hopefully his lowered electrolyte levels would keep him unconscious long enough for me to get him ready for bed and hooked up to the bag.

Besides, I had other things to do than have another confrontation with him. And I knew waking him up would lead to one, as I wanted to know exactly why Grey’s levels were off. If Leo was harming him in this sudden more-machine-than-man routine, I was going to tear him a new one.

And I wanted him fresh and alert when I did.

Setting the bag down, I quickly got to work stripping him of everything save for his underclothes. The boots went first, followed by his socks, and then the uniform—which required some struggle. When it came to a particularly stubborn pant leg, I was certain I would wake him, but there was no response in his face. Next came his lash harness. First, I undid the buckles that held the harness in place, and then I rolled him onto his side and worked the gyro in the back out from under him.

I carefully put everything away, and then sat down on the edge of the bed to hook him up to the saline bag and press the transfusion patch into the crook of his elbow. Finally, I sat back to wipe my forehead. I had developed a sweat from trying to move so quickly, in spite of the chill in the room. I looked down and noticed goosebumps forming on Leo’s arm, and reached to grab a blanket to pull over him.