The Girl Who Dared to Think (The Girl Who Dared #1)

“You’re not hanging back alone,” he said, curling his hands into fists.

I shot a look at Cali, watching her block a blow and land a solid one to Devon’s chest. “Grey,” I breathed, “you need to lead them out—Maddox is worried about her mom, and so are Tian and Quess. They’re going to hesitate.”

“Eric can—” he began to protest, but I cut him off.

“They don’t even know Eric. Please, just do this.”

Grey’s face hardened, and for a second, I thought he was going to keep arguing, but then he nodded—once. “I’ll be back as soon as I get them out. Wait for me.”

With that he turned, and I was already spinning in time to see Devon land a blow with the baton to Cali’s chest. The woman fell to her knees, her limbs locking up as the electricity rocketed through her body.

He yanked the baton back suddenly, and ran a hand through his short hair, panting.

“Dammit, Cali,” he said after a moment, standing over the groaning woman. I looked around the room, and then began to creep toward the far side, trying to get behind Devon. “I should’ve known it was you.”

Cali groaned and coughed, sliding over onto her side, her body curled up in the fetal position. “Hello, Devon,” she wheezed. “Been a while.”

“Twenty years, Cali. It’s been twenty years since I came home and found you gone.”

My eyes widened and I froze, shocked.

Devon and Cali had shared a home? Did that mean... I looked over at Cali, and saw the fear on her face as she stared up at the man who must have been her husband. “You abandoned me,” he growled.

Cali gazed around the room, her eyes slightly unfocused. She locked eyes with me and then looked away, not drawing Devon’s attention to me. Her hand, however, lifted slightly—a flat palm, telling me to stop. I hesitated, uncertain whether it was an order I should really follow. I glanced back at the hallway and saw Grey stepping back in. I met his gaze, and watched as he moved into the kitchen, heading for a knife on a cutting board.

“You agreed to start killing people. You voted with Scipio for it. I wasn’t about to let that go.” I turned back to see Cali struggling to sit up more.

Devon was quiet for a long moment, his hand on his baton. “I can’t stop what’s about to happen, Cali. The Knights are less than a minute away.”

Grey moved onto the glass, his stance low. I moved a few steps deeper in, intending for us to flank Devon.

“Scipio is diseased, Devon, and you know it. You were part of it.”

“This dream of the outside world is a fantasy, and you know it.”

Cali laughed, a bitter sound, and shook her head. “At least I dream, Devon. And that is something that no Knight, AI, or Tower can ever take away from me.”

I met Grey’s gaze, and gave one single nod. Then I began to creep forward, through the pillows on the floor and toward Devon, Grey mirroring me on the other side.

“Everyone in here is going to die. I can’t stop it.”

Cali smiled. “You’re right, but only partially,” she said, and I noticed her fingers moving, and realized she was signing to me in Callivax. L-a-s-h-e-s, she said, and alarm coursed through me. I turned and hurriedly signaled to Grey, waving a hand to get his attention. He looked at me, and I began to sign Cali’s message, translated for Grey: G-r-a-b s-o-m-e-t-h-i-n-g.

“And how’s that?” Devon asked.

“You and I are going to die, at least.”

Grey gave me a confused look, and then movement from Cali dragged my attention back to her as she lifted her right hand up—the one that had been hidden to me behind her body. I got a flash of the small black item in her palm before she slammed it down on the glass floor. There was a high-pitched tone, and then all of the glass shattered, the floor vanishing from beneath all four of us.

I didn’t even get the chance to check whether Grey had grabbed something in time before I started falling, shards of glass sparkling all around me as I succumbed to the laws of gravity. My body worked from muscle memory, so used to the sensation of falling, and threw the line. It hit and connected on the ceiling above, arresting my fall some fifteen feet below where the floor had been.

Immediately I spun around, searching for Grey. To my relief, I spotted him hanging from a thick pipe on the ceiling, his arms and legs wrapped around it. He must’ve grabbed it as the glass broke.

With Grey momentarily handled, I spun around and searched for Cali, finding her tangled in her own lashes, forty feet beneath me, frantically trying to break free from the lines around her body. I grabbed my other bead, intent on making my way over to her, when I sensed something stirring in the shadows above us. It was Devon’s dark form, clinging to a ladder, having apparently used it to stall his fall. He was moving to where Cali’s bead was connected—to the metal framing the glass had been seated in. Cali looked up from where she was dangling, and I could practically see the realization in her eyes as to what was about to happen as he drew closer.

He thrust out his boot and pressed it against the bead that held her in place, disconnecting it.

“No!” I screamed, my lash already spinning out, trying to catch her with it, but it was too late and she was too far. She fell, and I was helpless to do anything at all.

Anything, except for run.

And I had to. Cali was gone, and the others needed me. There was no time to grieve.

I lashed up to where Grey was clinging to the ceiling pipe, already in a panic. Devon wasn’t far away, though at least the humid atmosphere down here meant his lashes wouldn’t work. Grey climbed onto my back as I watched Devon, his back still to me, staring down at where Cali had dropped into the deadly churn of the waters below. It was all I could do to not lash over there and kick him in, but the knowledge that more Knights were coming was too heavy to ignore. There wasn’t anything I could do.

I threw my lash from the ceiling, connecting it to the concrete floor that made up the kitchen and swinging down between the frames of metal where the glass floor had been seated. Grey’s fingers dug in tight as I used faster speeds to propel us across, under the pod that formed Sanctum, dangling under the arm of the greenery, then back up the other side, fighting back the urge to cry.

I caught sight of Quess hanging by his lashes over the pod, Eric on his back, familiar red goggles over his eyes. “Hey!” he shouted when he spotted us, and I shook my head, pressing a finger to my lips.