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

Eric’s hands flashed in Callivax, signing for me to follow them, and I nodded, keeping pace as they lashed away. Quess wasn’t a terrible lasher, but with Eric’s heavy frame on top of his own, he was struggling a bit to keep their balance and momentum going. Still, he managed.

We lashed for what felt like forever, moving farther and farther away from the Tower’s walls and into the open air beneath the greenery’s arm. The farther we got from the hydro-turbines, the quieter and clearer the atmosphere became. Catwalks cut this way and that, and Quess took a route that allowed us to avoid swinging over or under them, just in case anyone was around to notice.

It all seemed to blur together after a while, and I just focused on keeping up with his shadowy figure. A deep weariness had settled into my bones, making me feel numb and robotic. Eventually, we stopped and crawled into a hatch where the rest of our group was inside, waiting. I looked at all of their faces, and then looked away.

“Cali’s gone,” I announced hoarsely, bracing myself.

Tian started crying first, softly in the beginning and then faster and harder. Maddox immediately pulled the girl into her arms and held her, rocking her back and forth. The larger girl was struggling not to cry, but her eyes were filled with anguish and horror. She looked so lost, and in that moment, so very small and vulnerable. My heart ached for her. For them both.

Quess was less overt—his expression stony, his jaw tight. I could tell he was hurting too, because he shuffled up to Maddox and Tian, clearly needing to be close to them. I wanted to cry with them, wanted to ask Maddox about her mother’s marriage to Devon, ask how it had been kept so low-profile that I hadn’t known about it, ask whether Devon was her father, but it wasn’t the time. We still had to find a safe place, and this small room on the other side of an external hatch was not it.

“Maddox?” I said gently, and she jerked her head up to look at me, her eyes haunted. I stopped, suddenly uncertain as to what I should say, what I even could say. She’d just lost her mother.

“We have to keep moving,” Grey added, and I shot him a grateful look before glancing around the room to see where we were exactly—another relay hub, but one of the vents had been pried from the wall.

“Do we need to go through the vent? Is that where we’re going?” I asked.

“I want to go to Sanctum,” Tian sniffled, and Zoe reached over and took the young girl’s hand, holding it firm. Zoe met my eyes, and I could see that the guilt was weighing on her too. But it wasn’t her fault. It was mine. I had led Devon back to them. I had thought I was smart and clever, but I wasn’t. I hadn’t been from the start.

“The safe room’s through... through these ventilation ducts,” Maddox choked out. “Mom... She made sure... There’s supplies...” She broke then, and began to cry, long, slow sobs that seemed to twist out of her against her will. Her hands immediately went over her face, like a shield to try to push everything back inside, but it was impossible—the dam had been broken.

“It’s a tight fit,” Quess managed, his arms around Maddox and Tian both. “It’ll be difficult to get some of the bags around the corner.”

“We’ll figure it out,” I said. “Let’s just get somewhere fast.”

Quess gave me an angry look, his eyes jerking down to Maddox and Tian, both of them crying hard. I understood—I really did.

Kneeling, I placed one hand on Tian’s knee and one on Maddox’s, and began slowly calling their names in a calm and even voice. It seemed to work, because after a few tries, they had pushed back the fog of grief some, and were looking at me.

“I know you need to cry right now, and I understand that, but we have to keep moving, okay? Once we’re inside the safe place, we can mourn... but Cali would’ve wanted us to keep moving.”

Maddox stared at me stonily, and I hated myself for saying it, even though it needed to be said.

“Come on, Tian,” the statuesque girl said hoarsely, her voice raw and bearing the weight of crippling exhaustion and shock. “Liana’s right. We have to go.”

The little girl nodded, her blue eyes vacant, and then sat up shakily, as if she were a ninety-year-old woman. “’Kay,” she whispered, heaving herself onto her feet and swaying slightly, teetering on the precipice of breaking down.

“It’ll be okay,” I told her, the lie like ash in my mouth. She sniffled as she moved toward the vent, taking a light that Grey handed to her. We all got one, myself included.

The vents were tight, but manageable, and I brought up the rear, which meant replacing the grate from the inside of the vent. It took me a minute or so to get it done, and by the time I looked up, Grey’s legs were disappearing around the corner some twenty feet ahead.

I exhaled and began pulling myself forward, using my palms and arms. My arms were exhausted after all the lashing I’d done, and were now starting to shake from the exertion, but I kept moving forward, not wanting to lose anyone. I clenched the light that Quess had handed me between my teeth to illuminate my way, and hurried to catch up.

I made up the distance quickly, and then slowed to a crawl. Moving the bigger bags took time. Maddox was using her lashes to help, but it was stop and go, as she had to move, then retract the lashes slowly, dragging the oblong bags forward. On corners, Eric had to go up and help shift them around before we could start all over again.

Every time we stopped, I remembered the look on Devon’s face as he disconnected Cali’s lash bead, and immediately was ill, wracked with guilt, terror, and horror. It took everything I had not to vomit at the fact that he had just done it—like it was nothing, like she wasn’t a mother or a person who took care of the people who needed it most.

Each time I had that thought, it grew harder and harder not to break down right there in the ventilation shaft. The only thing that kept me going was the fact that I owed it to the people here to keep it together. So I did.

I couldn’t say how far we had gone or how long we’d been crawling, when I suddenly tuned in to a noise.

There were lots of noises in the ducts, generated by all of us, but this one caught my attention.

“...—ere...”

It was so soft that it would be so easy to excuse it away as a figment from on overtired and emotionally overwrought mind.

“...—low...”

I closed my eyes and exhaled, trying to stay perfectly still, and listened intently.

“...—am...”

It was a voice. Coming from a vent opening just behind me. I looked back over my shoulder, the light still clenched between my teeth, and searched, half expecting to see Devon right there, grinning like a madman with the promise of death in his eyes. But the vent was empty.