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

“Stop,” he said, his shoulders hunching.

“That’s not your fault, Liam,” I told him, coming around so that we were facing each other. “I’m not trying to say that it is. But you know about it, don’t you? And you never said or did anything to stop it.”

He cringed, his eyes filling with pain. “That’s not fair,” he mumbled.

“No, it’s not,” I said, in perfect agreement. “But it probably wasn’t very fair for your mother, either. You didn’t have a choice about being born, but you’re old enough to decide for yourself—and now it’s time to do that. Do you want to protect people like that? Do you want to wage war on a way of life that you’ve never even gotten the chance to experience, let alone agree with?”

“Scipio is an abomination!” he spat. “He is content to leave humanity to stagnate and rot, making us fat and lazy, with no dreams for the future. He doesn’t let us survive; he grinds us down, robbing us of the things that make us human! He doesn’t deserve to—”

A pillow hit him squarely in the face, and I blinked in surprise as Tian pulled it back and then unleashed another blow at him, cutting off whatever legacy dogma he was about to feed us. He lifted his arms in defense, blocking it, but it didn’t stop her from pulling it back over her shoulder again, her face flushed with anger.

“You’re so stupid!” she shouted at him, launching another blow with the pillow. “Do you even hear yourself?” Another hit, this time to the solar plexus, forcing him back a few steps. “You let them force women to get pregnant, have babies, and die when it became too much for them!” A shot to his side, partially deflected. I briefly entertained the idea of intervening, but it was only a pillow. Besides, Tian was laying down some serious truth. “You slept on the floor, under dirty blankets made out of old uniforms! You ate food that was made over two hundred years ago! All because you think Scipio is bad for us? Worse than what you were seeing around you? You are a stupid, stupid boy.” Hit, hit, hit, until suddenly Tian stopped, her chest heaving, her blue eyes filling with tears. “You need to do a good thing right now and tell us how to find them.”

Liam’s chin quivered, and he looked away, seeming to fold in on himself. I held my breath for several seconds, afraid even an exhalation would cause him to lock up and shut down on us.

“If our mom dies when we come out, we’re called runts by the others,” he said, his voice hollow, and I knew that his mother had died having him. My heart bled for him, and I longed to wrap my arms around him and give him a hug, but I held off, sensing that he wasn’t finished. Not by a long shot. “The others get taken away from theirs when they’re old enough.” He didn’t explain what that meant, and I didn’t ask. Somehow, I knew that particular detail would only make it worse. Any age was too young to be taken from your mother. “We aren’t raised by a single person, after that. I guess everyone cares for us in their own way, but mainly they leave us alone. As long as we follow the rules, we don’t get a whoopin’ or thrown off the Tower.” He gave me a soulful glance, his eyes shimmering. “I watched them do it twice. Once to a boy who was only six, when he left the main room to explore, and another time to a girl who was sixteen. She’d gone out to meet a boy she was sweet on in the farming department. They killed them. And you expect me to fight against that?”

He made a fair point. “You couldn’t, until now,” I replied. “But if you tell me where your family is hiding, then I will. I promise you that.”

His eyes darted to Tian, questioning.

“Liana keeps her word to the best of her ability,” Tian told him with a sage nod, and I shot her an appreciative smile.

“If they find out it was me…” He trailed off, and I knew he didn’t need to say anything else. The rest might as well have had a big red neon arrow pointed to the words “They’re going to kill me.”

“They won’t,” I reassured him. “Baldy is already dead, so he can’t hurt you now anyway. Now, tell me where they are. Please.”

He absorbed the news of Baldy’s death by growing very still. I couldn’t tell how he felt about the news, and for several seconds, he said nothing. “Really?” he asked at last, and I heard the faintest sound of hope curling through his words.

“Really,” I confirmed for him. He glanced up at me then back down, clearly considering everything in a new light. I could tell he was hovering on the edge of his decision, and it felt like eternity waiting for him to decide. I couldn’t make out much beyond his pensive face, but I felt confident that some of what we said to him had gotten through. Still, the urge to shake him cropped up a half dozen times or so, each one more powerful than the last.

“Our new home is over the hydro-turbines,” he finally said. “Hidden between Turbines 2 and 3, in an unused monitoring facility.”

I looked over at Tian, who was wearing a satisfied smile on her face, her eyes already seeking and holding my own. “I told you there was a good hiding place over the hydro-turbines,” she crowed, her blue eyes sparkling with mischief.

She was right, and while I was happy for her victory, my mind was already whirling. Over the hydro-turbines was perfect; Strum would know how to get in and out of there unnoticed, as the turbines belonged to Water Treatment. We knew who the father of all the undocs was and had enough evidence between Sadie’s files and the three AI fragments to sink them all.

Now all we had to do was round every last legacy up before Sadie, Plancett, or Dreyfuss noticed what we were up to.





37





The hours after Eric’s call and Lacey’s message consisted of a whirlwind of activity, from planning the raid with Lacey and Strum, to meeting all the people who were going to be involved, to finally getting to our starting points and beginning to shift into what would be our final placements before the raid on the undoc stronghold began.

It had taken Lacey and Strum only four hours to formulate a plan of attack, which was impressive, considering the location the undocs had chosen to hide in was damn difficult to get to. The large monitoring station between the hydro-turbines was only accessible from the Tower through doors on the east side of the compartment, and the legacies undoubtedly had guards at those doors. Guards who would buy time for their comrades in the back to escape, and possibly warn Sadie and the others that their cover had been blown.

Meaning a direct assault through the doors was going to be impossible.

Coming at them through the access hatches on the outside was also impractical. The water kicked up there by the hydro-turbines would render the lash beads completely useless, and Quess didn’t have any time to make more humidity-resistant lash ends. So that option had been eliminated as well.