The Girl Who Dared to Endure

by Bella Forrest

  “Yeah,” I lied, not wanting to destroy his sudden optimism with the truth. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  22

  And just like that, my brother was leaving. We said our goodbyes and took out his net so Quess could modify it to prevent the Tower from registering him leaving or dying, and Hela thanked Quess and then gave him something called a blood patch. I overheard enough of their conversation to understand that it was something that caused bones to increase production of red blood cells and was evidently an advanced piece of medical technology that surpassed our own. Apparently Quess had told her about Eric, and the fact that he had lost a lot of blood, and she was gifting him the patch in return for saving her mother’s life. Seemed like a fair exchange, but I trusted Quess to know.

  Instead of feeling relieved, though, I simply felt empty and adrift. And the feeling persisted, even as they disappeared onto the ship, the ramp drawing back up behind them, and long after they disappeared into the blue light.

  It wasn’t until we turned to leave that it hit me. My brother was gone. And Quess, Maddox, Zoe, and Eric were going to leave soon, too. Grey was going to be fully restored in a week’s time, and then Leo was going to leave me too, in a way.

  If ever there was a time to fall to pieces, this was it. Something that I had first seen as a blessing had actually been a knife blow to the heart of my little group. We were unraveling, falling apart, and soon we would be going our own separate ways.

  How was I ever going to do this alone?

  It was a wonder I made it back to our quarters, so dark and bleak were my thoughts. If I hadn’t been following Leo the entire way, I would’ve wound up wandering around the Attic for hours. Instead, I stopped when he did, and started when he did, letting him guide our every move back down to the Citadel.

  Once we were home, Quess went to check on Eric and give him the blood patch, and Maddox went to tell Tian the news and get ready for bed. That left Leo and me alone.

  For several heartbeats, I could only stare at him, my heart breaking. I was going to be losing him soon. I mean, I wasn’t… but… what kind of relationship could we have once he was back in a computer?

  I didn’t realize how much I had been dreading that day until now, when it was nearly here. Suddenly I needed his arms around me. Or maybe not suddenly—I had been thinking about it off and on—but now it was visceral. We had broken into Sadie Monroe’s quarters. Killed four people. Cut Leo out of Grey to put him into Baldy, only to have Baldy himself break free and shoot Eric. We’d shot Baldy in return, and then thrown him off the side of the Tower. Met aliens—and then lost my brother.

  All in a single day.

  To say I wanted to wrap Leo around me like a blanket and fall asleep feeling safe was an understatement. Especially now that I knew this could be our last night together. It was selfish and wrong, but I couldn’t stop myself.

  “Leo, will you come to—”

  “Stop,” he interrupted, and I froze, cocking my head at him. He stared back at me for a second, a deep look of concentration in his eyes. Uncertainty rippled through me, and I took a step closer.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  He shook his head, sandy-brown hair waving back and forth, and swallowed. “Wait,” he said, and his eyes begged me to heed him.

  I worked my mouth back and forth, still uneasy, but nodded and wrapped my arms around myself. Leo closed his eyes for a moment and took a couple of deep, even breaths. His facial muscles changed microscopically, and if I didn’t know any better, I would say he was having a net call with someone. He had the ability; I just couldn’t imagine whom he would be netting. Maybe Dinah, to apprise her of the situation with Alex? If so, it would be an odd time to do so. Unless he was just trying to be helpful and take something off my plate.

  But no, he would let me handle that. I frowned and continued to keep quiet. He would tell me when he was done. After what felt like an eternity, his eyes opened, and he gave me a furtive look.

  “I’m sorry,” he said with a sigh. “I… I could guess where this was heading, and there’s something you need to be aware of. A few things, actually.”

  There was a quality to his voice that I didn’t like, and all my instincts were telling me that whatever he was about to tell me wasn’t good. Maybe I was overreacting, given the day I’d just had, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Had he been damaged when Baldy was shot? Was something wrong with Grey? He’d said we’d have to talk about him later. Maybe he was going to fill me in on what happened.

  “Okay,” I said, drawing it out. “You going to tell me what those are?”

  He gave me a look that was filled with pain. “Maddox and Quess had to tell Grey what was going on. It was the only way he would accept the net—and me—without a fight.”

  For several long seconds, I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Then I did, and I swallowed, hard, fighting against the nausea that was forming in my stomach. “They told him the truth.”

  “Yes. Well, parts of it. He didn’t understand a lot, so they tried to summarize as much as possible.” He paused and then shuffled his feet. “He asked them about you—whether you knew each other—and Quess told him that you did. He didn’t go into detail, but basically… Grey demanded to be awake while I was working on him, and they agreed. They told me about the deal, and—”

  “They didn’t get your consent,” I said, thinking that it wasn’t fair of them to make a deal on his behalf without his permission. He had been stuck inside the net at the time, unable to communicate anything, and they had just blithely agreed to Leo sharing his consciousness and thoughts like that. Then my eyes widened, and I cupped my hands over my mouth, horrified at what I had said. Not for Leo, but because I knew Grey was watching us right now. Which meant he had just seen me basically denying his right to know what was happening to him while he wasn’t in control. All because I didn’t want Grey knowing about what was happening between Leo and me.

  What an awful, selfish person I was.

  Leo gave me a broken smile. “It’s okay,” he said soothingly. “That’s why I asked you to wait, earlier. I was talking with Grey, asking him to give us some privacy so I could tell you what was going on.” He pierced my soul with a single look. “I wanted to give you a moment to adjust to the news.”

  “I see.” I closed my eyes, trying to find some semblance of peace with what he was telling me, and then flat-out refuted it. If this was the last moment that Leo and I could talk, unmonitored by Grey, then I wanted to tell him the truth about what I felt for him. How I felt for him.

  “Leo,” I started, using his name as a starting point for my chaotic emotions. “I—”

  “It’s probably for the best,” he interrupted. He moved to say more, but I wasn’t going to let him get the final say in this.

  “No,” I said flatly. “It’s not. Leo, I have things I want to say to you. Need to say. And you should hear them.”

  “To what end?” he asked bitterly. “Grey will be back in your life soon, and—”

  “I don’t care,” I told him. And I didn’t. Because now that I was this close to losing him, I realized that I couldn’t bear it. “We can figure something out, find you a new body. Someone who is in the Medica, maybe, braindead. You wouldn’t have to restore them, you could just—”

  I was babbling, and it was only the weight of Leo’s hands falling on my shoulders that managed to bring me to a stop. “I couldn’t do that, Liana. You know I couldn’t do that.”

  Tears started to form in my eyes at the sadness in his voice, but I blinked them back, refusing to give it up. “Yes, you can,” I insisted, reaching up to cup his face. “If not one of them, then a legacy, one who didn’t attack me. I don’t know what happened before, but I’m certain you could figure out how to keep it from happening again. And, I mean, we’d just have to kill them anyway, so it’s not like you’d be doing anything bad!”

  But Leo’s sadness grew even more obvious, his reluctanc
e and refusal showing on the planes of his face.

  “Please!” I begged, wanting to shake him. “I’m sorry I denied my feelings for you all this time. I’m sorry I was so confused. Just… please don’t leave me!”

  He closed his eyes. “You don’t understand,” he breathed. “I can’t give you what you want, Liana.” His eyes snapped open, and he abruptly moved away, taking a few steps to carve some space between us. “I think you were right all along. Grey was influencing the way I felt about you. My feelings for you were never really my own.”

  I could’ve heard a pin drop with how silent and still I was at his revelation. For a long moment, I didn’t feel anything. I just stared at him like an idiot. Then it hit, and I met it with a wall of flat-out denial. I couldn’t accept that as the truth, not after all the beautiful things he’d said to me. All of the wonderful ways he’d made me feel, in spite of my own grief.

  “No,” I said, taking a step toward him. “You’re confused. Baldy’s crazy thoughts freaked you out, and we had a really long day. After we get some sleep we’ll—”

  “He held a gun on you, Liana. He was going to shoot you, and I couldn’t do anything to stop him. I should’ve been enough. How I felt about you should’ve been enough to stop him, but it wasn’t. I was trapped in his mind, unable to stop him as he threatened you! As he shot Eric and threatened our friends! And there was nothing I could do to stop him! All I could feel was his hatred and fear. What I thought I had clearly wasn’t strong enough to fight what he felt. Ergo, it wasn’t mine.”

  “You’re not being fair to yourself,” I said to him. “It’s not your fault you lost control, and of course you felt what he was feeling. That’s what the net does! I’m not sure why he was able to resist you, but that’s not your doing! And it certainly doesn’t mean your feelings toward me aren’t real! Dammit, Leo, you spent all that time convincing me they were! Why are you doing this?”

  He shook his head, his eyes closing again, as if he were fighting against pain of his own. “It wasn’t enough, what I felt. Maybe I was just kidding myself, thinking I could understand the complexities of human emotion. Lionel said I had the capacity, that growth came from experience, but I think maybe he was wrong. The fragments never change, so why would I? I am nothing more than determination, a will to succeed in the face of adversity. Maybe that explains why I pursued you with such intensity.”

  “Leo,” I said, reaching out for him, my heart breaking. “You kissed me, on the bridge. You said all those things about thinking about it, dreaming about it, but never having any memory of it until you made one with me. I resisted you for so long, and you still came after me. You protected me and made me feel safe. Leo, I feel things for you that I don’t want to let go of. Please don’t do this.”

  “I have to,” he choked out, squeezing his hands into fists. “I’m sorry that I confused things for you, Liana, but it’s now clear to me that all of this… between us… was due to Grey’s elevated hormonal response to your own natural pheromones, and nothing more.”

  Pain radiated from my chest. His words, so decidedly clinical, sliced deeper than anything he had said thus far. He’d spent all this time convincing me that it was him, making me see him through Grey’s body, and now that I finally had, he was taking it away from me.

  Anger, slow and biting, came over me, and I swallowed down my pain, shoving it behind a carefully placed mask. It was a dark and bitter thing that would only put me on attack if I gave it any freedom. I didn’t want him to see how much this devastated me. My pride wouldn’t allow it.

  “Of course,” I said, trying to force a pleasant smile to my lips, only to feel the corners of my mouth lift barely a fraction of an inch. “Right. I will… go sleep with Zoe. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier.”

  Scipio help me, my voice sounded tinny, like it was coming from the other end of a long, narrow pipe. It was as if I were shrinking, growing very small and insignificant while the rest of the world warped and expanded, on the verge of implosion.

  Leo blinked at me, his brows furrowing in wary confusion. “Are you okay?”

  Not even remotely, I thought to myself. Out loud, I said, “Perfectly fine,” manifesting a little bit more volume. I struggled to find something else to say, something that wouldn’t show that I was breaking on the inside, and floundered. The conference room was the largest room in my quarters, but I could feel the walls as if they were millimeters from my skin, slowly pressing in. My uniform felt hot, tight, and irritating, and there suddenly wasn’t enough oxygen in the room. I needed to get out. Now.

  “Excuse me,” I managed thickly.

  I made a wide berth around him, heading for the closest set of stairs—ones that would lead to the hall beyond, and straight to freedom from him. And I was almost there, when his voice stopped me.

  “It really is for the best, Liana,” he told me, and I was glad my back was to him. It meant he couldn’t see the first tear that slipped from my eye, burning a hot line down my cheek. “Grey will be back to you soon, as good as new. You don’t have to tell him anything. We can just pretend—”

  I couldn’t let him speak any more. Every word that came out of his mouth was like an extra twist of the blade. Besides, if he thought he was doing this to spare me telling Grey what had happened while he was injured, then he needed to know that he was wrong.

  “I won’t lie to him, Leo. Much like you won’t take a person’s body against their will, I won’t lie to someone I care about. I owe him more than that.”

  I resumed walking, and sped up a little, needing to retreat. Luckily, Leo didn’t say anything else, allowing me to make my escape.

  23

  I woke up the next morning and experienced several disorienting seconds in which I wasn’t entirely sure where I was. The sensation was so strong that I shot out of the bed, almost afraid I had slept so deeply that the legacies had snuck in and taken us. It wasn’t until I noticed Zoe jerking straight up from where she had been sleeping next to Eric, her eyes wide in alarm, that everything came rushing back. The talk with Leo. Crying on Zoe’s shoulder. Zoe crying on mine. Eric sleeping through it all.

  “What is it?” she asked, and I pressed a hand to my heart, trying to still the erratic pounding my fear had caused. I took several deep breaths, and then gave her an apologetic look as she added, “Liana, what’s wrong?”

  I shook my head. “I just… I was confused as to where I was, that’s all,” I explained, shaking some of the excess adrenaline from my limbs. “How’s Eric?”

  She shifted up to one arm and leaned over him, her thick brown hair swinging forward to hide her face. Her hand reached up to check his pulse, and then cupped his cheek as she studied him. “Eric,” she said lightly. “Baby?”

  His chest lifted up and fell, but his eyelashes were still. There was no sign that he was waking up, but that didn’t mean much this soon after being shot. Zoe sighed and scooted up on the bed, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes and taking a shaky breath.

  I moved instantly to her side and reached over Eric to pull her into a hug. “It’s okay,” I said, stroking a soothing hand over her hair. I glanced down at Eric’s still form, noting that his skin color was much better than it had been last night, and that his breathing was steady and sure. The blanket over him had been pulled down enough to reveal the bullet wound on his chest, just below his pectoral muscle on the left, the flesh bright pink and shiny after the rapid regeneration, thanks to the bio-foam. There was no bruising on his stomach to indicate internal bleeding. All very excellent signs.

  Besides, him not waking up yet wasn’t necessarily cause for alarm. He had lost a lot of blood, and two of his internal organs had been punctured by the bullet. What he needed was rest, and time for his body to recover from the shock.

  “He looks much better this morning, Zo. I really think he’s going to be all right. He just needs to sleep right now.”

  She nodded against my shoulder, taking a shaky breath. “I know.
I just… I can’t imagine him not in my life, and when Quess said there was no hope… Oh Scipio, I never thanked you, Liana. You didn’t give up on him. You brought him back to me.”

  Tears sprang into my eyes as she clutched me tighter. “I’m not letting anyone else I love die,” I told her.

  She sniffed and gently pulled away from me, a tremulous smile on her lips. “But now we don’t have to,” she pointed out. “We just have to hold on long enough for Alex to negotiate a place for us in this Patrus place. If we can just keep our heads down—”

  My spirits, which were already low, plummeted the moment she brought up the Patrians. I had managed to put them out of my head, though I had spent half of last night idly thumbing through the graphic novel Thomas had given us, reading about Violet and Viggo’s story. Now that she had brought it up again, it was all I could think about. All of my friends—my entire support network—were going to disappear, and soon I would be on my own for the rest of this battle.

  Yesterday, my entire focus had been on damage control and figuring out our next step in this fight. Today, I wasn’t even sure I could ask the others to help me go through Sadie’s files to see if we could figure out what she was up to and who she was working with. I wasn’t sure they would want to, now that they had hope of getting out of the Tower. If I were them, and was hoping for escape, I would want to put my head down and wait for rescue, not go borrowing more trouble by helping me figure out what we were dealing with.

  “Hey,” Zoe said, giving my shoulder a little shake. I blinked up at her and realized I had missed everything she had been saying. “Why do you look so sad? Isn’t this good news?”

  I tried to force a smile onto my face. “Yeah. It’s great.”