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

“Lucky guess. Also, I saw the pad in your satchel. It’s an IT design, right?”

Zoe raised an eyebrow, clearly impressed, and nodded. “It is. And you’re right—I don’t want anyone to see me doing it. So… thanks for escorting us, and we really should get going.”

“No arguments here. Shall we?” They both looked at me expectantly.

I didn’t want to leave, but I also couldn’t argue that we had to get going before the residents of Cogstown started messing with us. Grey was apparently being kind and offering to walk us out, which I hoped was his way of making up for being a jerk earlier. I remembered the kiss from earlier and felt myself turning pink as I let him take the lead, climbing down after him, the air full of thick steam and the smell of shaved metal.

We reached the elevator without incident, which gave me time to think. Grey’s appearance meant another chance, another opportunity to try to get the truth. I just had to find the appropriate moment, and an idea was already spinning in my head. Grey went to the security box and slipped a little metallic chip into the top. It turned blue, and a platform slid out expectantly.

Zoe stepped forward onto the platform and looked back at me.

“You coming?”

I looked between her and Grey, then shook my head. “I need to talk to him for a minute. Go on ahead.”

She frowned, but didn’t argue. Instead she looked over at Grey and speared him with a lethal look. “I’d better see her soon,” she informed him, and he flashed her a charming smile.

“Hey, she wants to stay to talk to me,” he announced, but she didn’t back down.

“Yes, and you were the one who stole a kiss using underhanded trickery,” she snapped back, and, to his credit, Grey paled slightly. “So I reiterate: I’d better see her soon. I know great places to deposit bodies so that they’re never found. I’m just saying.”

“Zo, it’s okay,” I said. “I’ll be all right.”

Her face softened as she looked at me. “All right, but I expect details. And I want to know more about whatever it is that’s going on with Roark.”

“If I find anything else out, I’ll tell you,” I promised, and she nodded before giving me a hug. She let go at the last possible moment, and I watched her begin to rise.

“You know that if you do find anything out, you can’t tell her, right?” Grey asked casually, and I gave him a sharp look.

“Why not?”

He looked over at me and then shrugged. “Not important. You wanted to talk?”

There was no dismissing what Grey had said, and my mind had already pounced at the opening. He was here, he wanted to make sure I understood that I couldn’t tell Zoe anything… he was going to tell me. I knew it.

He leaned a hip against the elevator console and crossed his arms, looking at me expectantly. I wished he weren’t so handsome when he did that—so free and so casual, as if things in this Tower weren’t messed up and everything was fine. I guessed having a nine on your wrist meant a certain peace of mind. I wanted that. Desperately.

“You have something that could help me,” I said.

He looked away. “Roark said—”

“If I wanted to talk to Roark, I’d have stayed and done that,” I said.

He looked back at me, and some of the haughtiness fell away. “I’m sorry,” he said, “about earlier. You were just pushing me around, and I didn’t like it, but I didn’t want to hurt you. It was the first thing I thought of that might get you to back off. It worked… I just didn’t expect you to take me seriously.”

I sighed, lashed myself up to a beam overhead, and perched on it, needing to sit down. Grey shot me a curious expression, and I tapped the spot next to me, an open invitation. He sucked in a deep breath and began climbing up one of the vertical beams supporting the one I was on, using the tips of his fingers and boots, and doing it with some ease. He walked out to me, confident, even though the beam was only a foot wide, and then paused, giving me a questioning look.

“Don’t make a girl feel awkward,” I said. “Sit.”

He did so, looking at me uncertainly, as if I were a poison he wasn’t certain he had the antidote to, and we sat there together for a moment, watching the machines churn and hiss.

“I’m not stupid,” I said after a long moment. “I know you took that medicine and it made you a nine. I also know that you aren’t acting like a nine—you’ve got far too much personality for it to be believable. Which means that either the meds he’s working on are a genuine cure for negative thoughts, or he’s created something to cheat the system.”

Grey said nothing.

“And I get that you can’t tell me why,” I added. “I live in the Citadel, and am training to be a full Knight. My parents are both Knight Commanders, both ranked ten. I’m the last person you’d want to admit anything to, and I get it. But… I’m not joking when I say I need this. I don’t want to be thrown out of my department, but I don’t want to be a zombie anymore, either. I promise, if you tell me, I won’t tell anyone.”

He looked at me. “If I am a nine,” he said carefully, “then you just asked an upstanding citizen for a way to undermine Scipio. Aren’t you afraid of the consequences of that?”

I let my head fall into my hands. My fingers felt cold against my forehead, every strand of hair like a nerve ending as I tried to hold my anxiety inside my body and stop it from bursting out. Saying it felt wrong—like I was committing sacrilege. It took every ounce of courage I had to answer his questions.

“Yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that I still want to do it,” I admitted. “Because I can’t keep being the version of me that they want. I won’t survive another day on this stuff, Grey. I can’t. The last week is a blank slate for me—I remember nothing, but everyone treats me as if I was walking on water, instead of drowning in it.” I sniffled and scrubbed my cheeks, trying to keep back the tears that were threatening to spill over. “If I have to cheat to get my number and keep my sanity, then it’s worth the risk.”

He looked at me for a long time while I sniffled and snuffled, still fighting back an overwhelming sense of despair. Finally, he sighed heavily and, from out of nowhere, produced a clean handkerchief.

“My parents were eights,” he said. “I was a seven.”

I dabbed my eyes with his handkerchief and looked at him, baffled by his sudden change of topic. “But what does that have to do with—”