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

“I’m taking you all up to Smallsville,” I said, and Grey shot me a look. “You can hide with Sarah. She’ll shelter you both for a few days.”

Tian looked up, craning her neck quizzically as she tucked another bottle of pills into a bag. “Why go there,” she asked hesitantly, “when we can go into the Depths? I have a place there, and it’s secret. Safe. Oh! You can even meet my friends. My Cali. My Quess! Doxyyy! Oh, I’m sure you’ll get along and be the brightest friends in no time.”

She smiled, completely in earnest, and it was all I could do to keep from taking a step back. I felt powerless to argue against such a sweet yet decidedly odd creature. She seemed so fragile, even though she had knocked Gerome out cold. I felt like questioning her too intensely would cause her to run away, without explaining to us why she was even here. But the idea that this girl had a home in the Depths was so foreign to me, it was hard not to. She had to be mistaken, or misusing the name to refer to something else. There was no way there were people living at the bottom of the Tower. It was impossible.

Yet, as my eyes passed over Roark, the old man looked unsurprised by Tian’s declaration.

“Sorry, Liana, but it’s too exposed between here and Smallsville,” Roark said, his gaze apologetic. He slung a bag weighted down with equipment and pills over his shoulder and nodded. “And, Scipio knows where you are, or at the very least that he sent you here. It’s going to look awfully suspicious if we just miraculously escape, especially after you were supposed to kill one of us not too long ago. We’re going with Tian. And you’re coming too.”

Tian let out a little crow of victory, and I watched as something familiar slid into her hand. She had her own set of lashes. “This is going to be so much fun!” she shouted, and with a flick of her wrist she was airborne, lashing down the hall and out the door. “C’mon!” she shouted eagerly.



We followed Tian as she lashed down the hall ahead of us, her lashes and body spinning to and fro in a way that made me feel a little bit intimidated. I might have lived for lashing, but Tian had taken to it like a bird in flight or a fish in a stream, her movements so natural and graceful that they belied the gawkiness of her frame.

She led us to an elevator shaft and stood waiting as we rushed up.

“I haven’t taken an elevator in so long,” she said excitedly as we approached, hopping from one foot to another. “We can take it now!”

I looked at her wrist and was shocked to see that the wristband and display were missing. The microthread was impossible to cut. “Where’s your—”

She reached into her shirt and pulled out the indicator, which was hanging by a braided bit of cloth around her neck. The number showed a cool, glowing blue nine, and it reflected on her face, illuminating her excited smile. “This means I can go to the Lion’s Den,” she exclaimed happily, clapping her hands together.

“Tell us about it later,” I said. “We have to go... to what level?”

“Five,” she replied, skipping up the ramp and then performing a little twirl in midair. “You’re going to like it there.”

Five? That was unexpected, and not at all where I had thought “the Depths” should be. In fact, it was where Greeneries 1 and 2 were located. Why were we going there? What was she planning?

I exchanged a look with Grey and discreetly handed him Gerome’s baton. Tian seemed nice, but this was all happening too quickly for us to put any brakes on. Still, that didn’t mean we couldn’t be prepared if the other shoe started to drop.

We all got onto the elevator, and it began to descend. Beside me, Tian looked up, her face watching the shaft above in childlike wonder. “It just keeps going up and up and up,” she breathed. “Does it go to the very top? I’ve always wanted to go to the very top.”

I frowned, my brows furrowing. “You’ve never been to the top?”

Tian shook her head, her features melting into sadness. “My parents fell asleep one day... and they wouldn’t wake up. When the bad people came for me, I ran away, and Cali found me. I’ve lived with her ever since.”

Cali. It was the second time she’d mentioned her. “Tian, who is Cali?”

She shrugged. “Someone who takes care of me. And people like me. She keeps us safe from the Knights. She created Sanctum.”

“Sanctum?” I asked sharply, and she nodded.

“Sanctum,” she said simply.

Grey barked a laugh. “Sanctum isn’t real,” he announced. “It’s a myth, made up by the Knights to try to justify the need for so many Knights—more, even—in spite of the fact that there’s no proof of an undoc civilization living in the Depths. It would be impossible.”

“That’s not exactly true.”

We both turned toward Roark, who stood, wearily holding the bag of medication in his hands.

“Sanctum is real,” he said.

“How do you know?” I asked, my mind racing. If there were people living down there, maybe we didn’t have to wait to leave. Depending on what skills they had, maybe we could start working on figuring out how to get out of here as a group, instead of trying to recruit. Maybe we could start planning to leave now.

“My contact told me about it,” he said, giving me a guarded look. “Told me that we would be approached eventually, and that Cali was a good person.”

Tian smiled. “And the walls have eyes, but so do we, because without our eyes we couldn’t see,” she sang off-key, trailing off into a happy little hum. The elevator came to a stop, and we quickly got off. Tian led us through the complex network of hallways in the shell, taking us around until I started noticing the signs for Greenery 1—the Menagerie, where animals were kept—on the doorways, showing we were close to the bulkhead. A few seconds later, the hall abruptly ended, and Tian bent over to pull on the grated floor. It lifted up easily, but it was still heavy, and the little girl staggered a little as she slid it to one side. She leaned into the hole, and I heard a beep, followed by the pneumatic hiss of a door opening. I realized she had opened a hatch, just as a blast of hot, dry air shot out past her, immediately invading my lungs and making me cough.

“Dry heat is the best heat,” Tian exclaimed as she shook out her arms. “C’mon!” The little girl immediately began climbing down into the hole. A moment later, she stuck her head out, her mop of white-blonde hair standing on end. “Lots of lights in here, but don’t touch. And close the door behind you.”

She dropped back down and out of sight, and I sighed, hefting the bag on my shoulder around to my front to make pushing it easier.