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

She glanced up at us long enough for me to see the black circle around her mouth, which indicated a mask, and then quickly turned back to her comrade. She had cut open his neck to pull out his net, and my eyes widened when I realized that she hadn’t been able to call anyone—because she didn’t have a net of her own. The mask was a mystery, but maybe she had just happened to have one on hand, recognized what was going on, and got to it before she was affected? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I stopped her from making any transmission. I sprang into motion, stepping through the door and pressing the button on my baton to charge it.

She shot to her feet and darted away, lifting her hands to the back of her neck, where a small white line in her skin shone brightly against the red glow of her body in the goggles, indicating that she was already bleeding—and was now trying to shove the net in. It was a smart move; she knew that they were under attack, and was trying to reach her people to warn them. It was damned lucky that she didn’t seem to have a net of her own, and hadn’t been able to net anyone else yet, and I quickly closed the distance between the two of us, my grip tightening.

She finally whirled around to face me, her fingers moving away from the cut on her neck, and I could hear a muffled intake of breath that told me she was getting ready to speak. I swung my baton low, hoping to catch her in the mist, and she leapt back with a muffled, “No!” that was tinged with panic and fear. I could only imagine what she was thinking, but it didn’t matter—I had to stop her.

I stepped closer, ducking under a wild haymaker, and brought the baton down on her shoulder. She froze for several seconds, the thermal display in my goggles showing me that her eyes were wide open in surprise as the electrical current locked her in place. I held it for a space of three seconds and then pulled it away, and she dropped to the ground. A quick check of the room told me the other three occupants were fast asleep, although two of them had masks of their own over their mouths that I quickly pulled off. Neither one of them had moved from their hammocks, which told me the girl had put those masks on them, to try to get her comrades up, before donning one of her own. Leo was already quickly pulling them off, but it didn’t appear they had worked.

Not in time, at least.

Five more in room three, I reported. All secured.

Then that’s it, Maddox replied, and I blinked, surprised. That’s fifty-five people in total.

What about the women? I asked. Any sign of them?

Negative, Maddox said, and I could feel her ire through the line. There’s no sign they were ever here. Wherever they are being kept, it has to be somewhere else. There was a pause, one that I filled with a silent prayer that we would be able to get their location from one of the legacies when we questioned them, and then she said, Everyone, begin removing nets now, while secondary teams come in to move prisoners to the Citadel. Masks remain on until we get the all-clear from Team 20.

I swallowed and got to work, but I couldn’t shake the sensation that this felt way too easy. I knew it was stupid—it was just as possible that everything had gone according to plan, for once. Maybe I just wasn’t accustomed to victory.

We had a good plan and the element of surprise, I told myself as I knelt down to begin collecting the nets. It worked because we had enough people to make it work. Calm down. You still have a bajillion more arrests to make today, so freaking out now is not going to help.

The words offered little comfort, even with the fruit of our success lying on the ground in front of us. Somehow, I just hadn’t expected it to be this easy.

Then again, how could it be easy when we still had to collect Dreyfuss, Salvatore, and the spies embedded in the other departments? Plus Sadie and Plancett?





39





With the first step of our plan completed, and Leo supervising the transfer of our batch of prisoners to the cells in the Citadel using Lacey’s tried and true method of laundry bin transportation, it was time to move on to the next step: cleaning our respective departments of the spies that Sadie and Dreyfuss had put there. We couldn’t get to the ones in the Medica, IT, or the Farming Department yet, as taking them would undoubtedly draw the attention of the councilors who presided over them, but plans were in motion to capture them as soon as the council meeting was underway. Maddox was already rousing the Knight Commanders we knew we could trust, along with Theo—a boy I used to have a crush on—and debriefing them on the mission, and soon they would be moving against the legacies in the Knights Department.

And I would be joining her, just as soon as I got what I needed from Lacey.

I was in one of the front offices by the gate of the Citadel, waiting—rather impatiently—for the two of them to show up, and I had to remind myself to be calm. A quick check of my watch told me it was 6:15 a.m. There was still plenty of time to get the data to Quess in central command, but I was growing more and more uncomfortable with how everything seemed like it was “hurry up… and wait.” I wanted more action than all this endless waiting, but then again, I was about to go after Salvatore, the man who had made a pact with the legacies to win the Tourney and gotten my mother killed.

A flash of blue and orange caught my eye, and I looked up to see Strum and Lacey coming to a halt a few feet from the entrance to the Citadel. I quickly exited the sentry shack and headed down the metal ramp to meet them, waving off the few guards on duty, who were confused by the presence of the heads of both the Water and Mechanics Departments.

“Took you long enough.” I huffed when I reached them.

Lacey rolled her eyes, reached into one of the deeper pockets of her toolbelt, and pulled out three pads. “It took Tony a second to figure out the logistics of running three different pads patched with three different feeds from three different departments.”

This time, I rolled my eyes. “I’m sorry, what were the three different things again?” I asked, unable to keep the sarcasm from my voice.

She growled, but before she could say anything, Strum gave a harsh, “Enough”—and it held a note of command that had an effect even on me. I looked at the bald man, the Diver’s marks on his scalp a harsh black under the bright spotlights overhead, and he speared us both with a pointed look. “Now is not the time. We have work that needs to be done before the council meeting starts. Lacey, give her the pad.”

Lacey scowled, but shuffled through the three pads and then shoved one at me. “Here. Tony is hacked into the feed of the Citadel, has been since last night. He’s kept every single one of them under watch since you gave us their cover identities.”

I accepted the pad and turned it on. I was immediately greeted with a split-screen view of four different camera angles. Three of them were thermal sensor readings from the bedrooms, showing the subjects sleeping, while one was monitoring a Knight on sentry duty at one of the rear bridges leading to the shell. I slid a finger across the screen and saw four more thermal viewpoints of subjects asleep—one of them in the Academy dorm rooms, no less, sleeping on the bottom bunk.

It was beyond impressive. Tony was giving us nonstop coverage of our targets—something even the most adept tech would struggle with, given the numerous cameras in the Tower. Never mind using the sensors.

“This is amazing,” I said, studying it. “Tony is doing this?”

“He had to learn how to, but yes. He’s gotten quite good at it over the years. This is a bit of a nightmare for him, though; he’s still monitoring the other three departments, as well.”

I couldn’t wait to meet him. The way he was handling all this at once told me he was special indeed. I just wished that Lacey had let me do it before we had started moving against the legacies. But she had been adamant about waiting until the council session, and I couldn’t blame her. I wouldn’t want to expose his location to anyone I didn’t fully trust, and I doubted that even Strum knew where he was being housed. I wanted to believe it was as simple as a terminal in her quarters, but knowing how resourceful Lacey could be, I doubted it. Maybe she had him in the Cog server somewhere? It was possible, but then again, I doubted she would be so obvious.