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

That left the ventilation ducts that fed into the section. Which were numerous, as the entire monitoring station held rooms and offices for the Divers who came in to perform inspections and studies on the hydro-turbines, which often took days or weeks. And because of the station’s proximity to the river below, the humidity rate was high—and lots of ventilation was required to keep the water from eroding the metal of the Tower.

But it was all we had, considering the plan Lacey and Strum had formulated. Even now, they and their teams were moving into position, hauling large canisters of X-21J—a sleeping agent designed by the Medica and the Knights to help stop large-scale riots should they occur—to dump in the atmospheric processors that led into the rooms. The plan was to flood the place with the gas. It was late at night (or early in the morning), and we were banking on most of the legacies being asleep when the gas started pouring through. But there was every chance that some would be awake. And they would have a small window of opportunity to escape, or call Sadie or Dreyfuss for help. Which was why it was critical for us to be in the vents, ready to enter, then secure and restrain every legacy as soon as the gas started to pour in.

But Scipio help me, I hated crawling around in vents.

I shifted slightly in the cramped tube Leo and I were hiding in, trying to relieve some of the pain that had developed in my lower back in the thirty minutes he and I had been here. We were holding position in a junction, listening for Maddox and Quess to confirm troop placement before we proceeded to the next turn.

Because everyone had to be in place before anyone started anything. And in some places, some people had to climb through hundreds of feet of duct before reaching an opening, circumnavigating the entire area. In order to prevent confusion, Maddox was guiding us to our designated placements step by step, but that took time.

Lots and lots of nail-biting, stomach-churning time. It was almost a joy when I finally heard Maddox say, All right, primary teams, go ahead and move forward to the next junction, and then hold for secondary teams.

Even though her words meant that Leo and I would be holding our positions again for several minutes, forward motion was good, and I quickly unfolded myself until I was lying on my stomach. My lower back twinged in protest, but I ignored it as I shuffled onto my hands and knees and began to crawl down the dark shaft.

Leo was carrying the light behind me, and out of habit, I kept as far to one side of the tunnel as possible to let light stream past me and illuminate the path ahead. Even though he was supposed to be in front of me, I was smaller and could maneuver more quickly in the tight confines of the room. We would switch eventually, either in the tunnels if the room we were entering was occupied, or in the room itself if it wasn’t. I spotted a gap between two bits of duct, indicating a duct heading straight down, and I slowed to a stop, settling in the middle of the tunnel to block the light with my body while signaling for him to kill the light.

I stopped at the edge and peeked over into the room below. Darkness greeted my eyes, telling me the room wasn’t being used or was filled with sleeping people, and I quickly crossed over the space, moving as silently as possible. I moved down a few feet and then managed to turn around enough to check on Leo’s progress. My heart raced in my chest as he carefully pulled himself over the gap, taking his time. If the room was filled with sleeping people, the slightest sound from either of us might wake them up and warn them of our presence.

The hand light in his grip made the slightest tapping sound as he reached out with that hand to brace his weight, but it was whisper-soft, only loud in my ears. Within seconds, he was securely on the other side of the vent, and I was moving again. There was another forty feet of duct space before the vent dead-ended, and I turned left, remembering my instructions from last time, and then stopped about ten feet in. Team 2 in position, I dutifully reported.

Teams 1, 3, 4, 5, 7 are also in position, Maddox’s voice buzzed in my ear. Team 6 is taking a detour due to a damaged duct, and estimating another nine minutes until the secondary teams are in their final positions. Hold tight.

I tried not to let out an impatient sigh. This was our third round of troop movements, and the secondary teams, the ones hauling the canisters of gas, took the longest time to get into position. Luckily, this was our second to last movement before we were all finally in our final positions, but unluckily, that meant even more waiting. For a long time. A ridiculously long time.

This time I did sigh, and carefully tried to maneuver myself into something resembling a position of comfort. After three rounds, you’d think I’d have the hang of it, but so far, nothing seemed to alleviate the pain in my back or the occasional bout of impatience that struck me as the seconds marched on into minutes.

Truthfully, I had mixed feelings about how long this was taking. On the one hand, it was to be expected; we had over seventy people in the ventilation shafts, a quarter of them wriggling around with large canisters of the sleeping agent to put into the air processing units. The rest of us were stuck waiting, just listening for the order that would send us wriggling forward.

The wait had helped burn off some of the excited nervousness I’d had when we first slipped into the shaft, eager to finally start putting an end to the legacy threat, but once it was gone, I was only left with the dark, my nerves, and a highly overactive imagination that kept going over how everything could go wrong.

“Stop,” Leo whispered next to me as my shifting weight caused the thin metal beneath us to bend, resulting in a dull thud. I wasn’t too concerned—we still had one more junction to go and weren’t that close to the room yet—but he was right. I needed to try being quieter. The ducts had a funny way of carrying sound, and while our entry point was supposedly just a storeroom, any legacy who was inside and heard a sound coming through the vents might check it out. And we’d be sunk.

“Sorry,” I replied, my voice just as soft. But the pain in my spine intensified in protest at the new position I had just wriggled into, signaling that a vertebra was about to pop out of position. “But I have to do something. My back is killing me.”

I looked over at where he was folded up beside me, his features barely lit by the light between us. We had it set to the lowest setting and would shut it off when we got to our entry point, but for now it was the only thing holding back the claustrophobic darkness. “Me too. I have an idea.”

I watched as he slowly started to unfold himself, sticking his legs behind him until he was laying on his side. It was a little tight for him—his shoulders were squished between the top and the bottom of the vent—but we were both thin enough that we could lie front to back. That was all it took to convince me, and within seconds I was lying pressed up against him, stretching my legs and lower back out. The relief was immediate, and I couldn’t help the small sound of pleasure that slipped through my lips.

Luckily, it wasn’t loud enough to carry very far.

“I feel you,” he whispered, his breath brushing against the sensitive skin of my earlobe and sending shivers down my spine. “Here, move forward a little?”

Scipio help me, Leo was going to give me a back rub. A part of me wanted to argue; after all, we were just waiting for everyone to get into position before we could move again. We should be alert and ready. At the same time, if I didn’t do something to pass the time, I was going to go stark raving mad. Besides, Leo and Grey weren’t going to do anything to jeopardize the mission. And my back was hurting.

I tried to steady myself as I shifted forward a few inches, and then his thumbs were pressing on either side of my lower spine, digging into the aching muscles.