The Girl Who Dared to Endure

by Bella Forrest

  My best friend knew me better than that, and she cocked her head and squinted at me. “Liana, you are an excellent liar when you want to be, but that was a really crappy effort. Are you worried about Alex? Dinah said she would make ghost net data into his file so no one noticed he was missing, so I don’t think you have to worry about that. Besides, I read that graphic novel thing after you fell asleep last night, and these people seem pretty great, despite everything they went through. They’re kind of like us, in a way. They found out that people were trying to take power and did everything they could to stop them. I mean, they even tried to keep the queen responsible for everything alive, so they could put her on trial! That’s saying something about a civilization.”

  I smiled, in spite of my own sadness. It was good to see her so excited about something. There was a light in her eyes that hadn’t been there in the past few months, and I hadn’t realized how much I had missed seeing her hopeful and looking forward to the future. But her words only made me realize how selfish I was being. I knew what most of them had signed up for: to get out of the Tower. Their goal had been put off time and time again, partially because the situations we found ourselves in called for survival first and escape later—but also because I didn’t want to accept the idea that we would escape before we stopped the legacies and fixed Scipio. Not to mention the fact that we physically didn’t have a way to go. The radiation outside would kill us, and we didn’t have flying machines.

  Now the possibility of them achieving their ultimate goal was here, and all I could think about was how it was going to affect me.

  “That is great,” I agreed, forcing a little more effort into the lie. “I’m excited.”

  She narrowed her dark blue eyes at me, her mouth tightening. “Spill.”

  Crap. I was clearly too close to this emotionally, and that was affecting my ability to lie. I screwed on a “seriously, everything is fine” face and opened my mouth to begin reassuring her. “Zoe, I—”

  “Cut the crap, Castell,” she barked in a no-nonsense voice. “What. The hell. Is up with you?”

  I pressed my lips together and looked away. I hadn’t been planning to tell anyone about my decision to stay and help Leo fix Scipio, and I wasn’t sure now was the time to do it. But Zoe, who was the dearest person in the world to me, was also like a dog with a bone when she sensed I was keeping a secret from her. There was no getting out of it, not without causing a fight.

  Besides, in the deepest, darkest part of my heart, I wanted to talk to someone about it. “Zoe, I’m not leaving with you and the others, even if Alex gets us refugee status. I promised Leo that I would stay and help him fix Scipio, and I still intend to do that.”

  She stared at me, her face an impassive mask. “But Leo essentially broke your heart last night,” she finally said.

  Pain blossomed, but I fought it back, trying not to cry. “No,” I said. “He didn’t.” I wasn’t sure if it was a lie or not, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. It was what I had to say to keep from breaking down, so I said it, and tried not to pay any attention to how my heart ached, or how a voice in my mind was screaming at me to go find him, and then… hit him or scream at him not to do this. The voices were conflicted on that front.

  Which was why it was better to ignore them both. I couldn’t afford to break down, not like I had after my mom had died. As much as I wanted to just break down and cry, I couldn’t; there were bigger problems to worry about than some jerk of an AI who had just hurt me worse than any of our enemies ever could.

  Zoe’s mouth worked. “Okay, he didn’t,” she agreed in a tone of voice that told me she didn’t agree with me. “But he still hurt you. He lied to you and toyed with your emotions. Why stick around and help him?”

  I gave her an incredulous look. “Because the people in the Tower shouldn’t have to suffer because I got my feelings hurt. They deserve better than that.”

  “Then they should be the ones doing something about it,” she retorted angrily. “Why does this whole legacy war, saving Scipio thing have to fall to us? Give Lacey Sadie’s files, and the fragments. You said she had one already—Kurt, right? Her family has been keeping him safe for however many years, so have her handle it. It’s her damn war, after all!”

  I considered her idea, taking in a deep breath of air in an attempt to not reject the idea outright. Lacey had been a representative of her department for years, and had a veritable army working for her. She had also been fighting in this legacy war her entire life and would jump at the chance to finally put an end to it.

  But could I trust her to actually restore Scipio, given the pieces and the chance? What if she got to that point and then decided not to, so she could try to control everything instead? What did I know about her, really? We weren’t exactly close enough for her to let me in on her vision of the Tower, so how could I trust that it was any different from Sadie’s?

  More importantly, could I let go and walk away? Leave the job unfinished, the Tower unsaved, and just… go? Start a new life somewhere, free from all of the danger and strife we had been through… I was tired—that much was a constant—and had no clue what to do next. The struggles we had been through had been nonstop, and every time we came close to the enemy, someone wound up hurt or dead. I didn’t want to see my friends hurt or killed. I didn’t want them to die over this.

  But me? I had already started down this path, committed to it fully. It didn’t matter that Leo and the others were focusing on separate goals; the thought of leaving everything behind without fixing it ate at me. There were good people in the Tower who didn’t deserve to fall victim to whatever the legacies had in store for them. I knew right then that I wouldn’t be able to just leave them. So why lie about it?

  “I don’t have a good reason not to give it all over to Lacey,” I said carefully. “But that doesn’t mean I will. I hear what you’re saying, Zo, but I’m not going. Not until I know the Tower is free from the legacies, and Scipio is restored.”

  “What if Scipio can’t be restored?” she erupted angrily. “Liana, you don’t owe anyone in this Tower a damn thing!”

  I stared at her for a second, and then looked down at the graphic novel sitting partially under her pillow. She had just been talking about their struggles a moment ago, and how they solved their problems. From the sounds of it, they hadn’t given up. So why were we?

  I pointed at it and met her eyes. “They didn’t owe anything to the people they saved, and yet they still did it. It can’t be both ways, Zoe. We can’t admire the things that they’ve done and the world they’ve created while turning our backs on our own. I understand wanting to leave, but I can’t until I know everyone inside is going to be safe.” I paused, and then added a bitter, “Not that anyone is going to want to help with that now.”

  Zoe’s eyes widened, and for a second, I thought she was going to continue arguing with me. She expelled a slow breath, puffing out her cheeks. “Crap. That’s a really good point.” I wasn’t expecting that, and her sudden reversal left me a bit speechless. My silence gave her a few more seconds to think about it, and I had a sudden hope that maybe she would find the answer for me. Instead, she finally said, “I don’t see the others really getting on board with it, however.”

  She was right. Their hopes were high, and I wasn’t sure the argument would hold weight with them. It was more moral than anything, whereas everything we’d done up to this point had been necessary to our continued survival. This was purely altruistic; I wasn’t doing this because it was what I had to do, but because it was what needed to be done. It was impossible to expect the others to be willing to gamble their lives on something like that.

  “I know.” I sighed.

  Her face was thoughtful for several long seconds. “How long until the outsiders come back?”

  “Maybe a week,” I replied tiredly. “Possibly longer, depending on how fast their government works. I’ll get more information from Alex when I call him on that thing.” She bit her lip, h
er eyebrows twitching. “What?”

  She shrugged. “Ask everyone to keep helping you until the time comes. There’s no guarantee that the Patrians will be able to secure a place for us anyway, and I think everyone will agree that the Paragon-dependent population will have to go first, if we can even go at all. That way you can keep moving forward with us, and maybe even inspire everyone to stay.”

  Zoe’s suggestion sounded so easy, but it didn’t change the fact that we didn’t even have a way forward until we had more information. “But there’s no plan, Zo.” It was hard to admit that, but there it was. “We can hope that Sadie was stupid enough to leave the list of every legacy she worked with on her computer, but to what end? We don’t have enough people to go after them all at once, and we can’t completely trust every single one of my Knights, as any one of them could be working for her. If Sadie’s people even hear a whisper that we’re mobilizing against them before we get everything in place, they will figure out that their covers are blown, and disappear! And even if we do manage to grab them all at once, what would we do with them? Dump their bodies off the side of the Tower and keep going as if nothing happened? Do I do that with Sadie? What if there’s another council member helping her? Do I become responsible for the execution of not one, not two, but three council members? What sort of mission is that?”

  Zoe considered this, and then shrugged. “Going after the legacies makes the most sense. And you’re right, going after them all at once is the best way to get them. But why execute them when we can take a page from our neighbors, and put them on trial? We’ve never once stopped to think about how this ends without causing a civil war. But what if there’s another way to do it?”

  She picked up the graphic novel as she spoke and held it out to me. I accepted it slowly, the weight of it feeling heavier in my hands then yesterday. But it wasn’t the book that felt heavy. It was me. Was Zoe right? Could I somehow grab all the legacies and then pass the situation over to the council? If we managed to get them all, and presented a strong enough case against them, then the council would have to step in and handle it legally. I had no doubt that they’d want to implement the expulsion chambers, but in this case I felt that would be warranted. And then they’d be obligated to fix Scipio, and with Leo and me watching them to make sure they did what they were supposed to… Could there finally be an end in sight?

  I wasn’t sure, but it was at least the start of a plan. One that required Sadie’s files to pay off for us, yes. But at least it was something. And maybe Zoe was right; maybe I could get the others to keep working on it with me, on the off chance that leaving wasn’t an option. Either way, maybe we’d make some progress on catching the legacies before they left. Maybe even give my friends a victory strong enough that made them want to stay.

  It wasn’t much—but it was something to hold on to.

  Really the only thing I had, at this point.

  24

  The talk with the others went pretty well, although I didn’t tell them about my plan to stay. I wasn’t ready to talk about it, and a part of me wondered if it would just be manipulative. I wanted them to stay for their own reasons, and I didn’t want my decision to influence them one way or another. I also asked Zoe to keep it to herself before we left the room to grab breakfast with the others, and she had agreed. She warned me that she might spill the beans when Eric woke up, but swore up and down it would be to him and him only. I didn’t like it, but what could I do?

  I was nervous when I explained to them that I wanted us to start searching through Sadie’s files to see if we could find every single legacy and accomplice she and her people had worked with, as well as evidence of the changes they had made to Scipio, in order to build a case against them to present to the council. It was a bold plan, one that I couldn’t accomplish without them, and even though my argument was sound, they still had every right to refuse me.

  Understandably, Maddox had wanted to know why, and I told her the truth: I couldn’t leave without doing something to stop them. I couldn’t abandon the Tower without devoting every last moment I had to trying to make things better. Everyone had been surprisingly understanding, especially after Zoe mentioned the fact that the Patrians might not be able to help us. There was every chance that they would refuse to grant us refugee status, and if we spent a week simply waiting for them to refuse us, then that was a week our enemies could use to get to us or cause further damage to Scipio. We couldn’t allow them to get the drop on us just because we thought we were getting out.

  Things got a little more complicated when Quess revealed that he still hadn’t broken the encryptions on her files.

  “How long is it going to take?” I asked, finally sitting down in a vacant chair at the table. My knees were still a bit wobbly from the conversation, but now, at least, I could sit. Everyone was on board with helping.

  “I don’t know,” Quess replied tiredly. He ran a hand over his face and sighed heavily. “It would move faster if I could get some assistance.” He shot a pointed look at Leo as he said that.

  I followed his gaze, and my breath caught in my throat. Leo looked like crap. There were dark shadows under his eyes, and his hair was mussed and unkempt. He hadn’t even shaved, and his cheeks were roughened with the beginnings of a beard. Even his uniform was wrinkled, which told me he had probably slept in it. Or tried to.

  A part of me felt a savage satisfaction that he looked so rough. Clearly, he wasn’t as unaffected by what had happened as he had seemed last night, which told me that he did indeed have feelings for me. But I shrugged that off, reminding myself that he likely looked the way he did because he’d stayed up all night to work on Jasper and Rose. Grey had also given Eric a lot of blood, and that probably wasn’t helping. I wondered if I should pull him aside and order him to get some sleep, because pushing himself too hard would only hurt him and Grey. But I held back, uncertain of how he would perceive it.

  Leo seemed oblivious of his own slobbish state and took a careful bite of a piece of toast before saying, “Jasper and Rose require my attention,” in a neutral voice, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “With everyone leaving, I want to make them as strong as possible before we are on our own.”

  Righteous indignation shot through me like a bullet, and it was all I could do to keep from coolly reminding him that I had promised to stay and help him fight. The condescension in his voice rankled me, and I wanted to smack him for thinking that he was alone in this. It wasn’t even about him; it was about Scipio, and restoring him to his full capabilities, freeing him from legacy control. I had just spent the last fifteen minutes making an argument for us to continue working on it, dammit! And he had the audacity to sit there and not be a team player?

  To hell with that. If he wanted to end… whatever it was that we had, that was fine. But he needed to keep this crap between us separate from our real-world problems. The least he could do was maintain some level of professionalism.

  “Finding the legacies does help you and the other AIs,” I said, trying to keep my voice free of the anger twisting up inside me. “And we know Lacey has Kurt. I plan to meet with her first, to make sure she’s been treating him well, and if she has, it will mean we can leave you and the others with her, and you can continue to work on everyone. But before I do that, I want to make sure that every single legacy who is after Rose, Jasper, or you is gone. I think you can agree it will be safer for all three of you if they are gone, right?”

  He finally looked up from his food and directed his gaze toward me, his brown eyes dark and hard. “I suppose you’re right,” he said. “It would make sense to eliminate that threat first. But not until I get both programs up and running again. Their safety and health are foremost in my mind.”

  His demeanor was so frosty, I had the urge to wrap my arms around myself to fight off the cold. The presence of it suddenly filled me with despair, and I once again wondered if he had been telling me the truth last night, and he really didn’t care about me. It was like he had s
hut everything off with a switch and reverted back to something more machine than human. And this wasn’t how he had been when we found him, either. Back in Lionel’s office, at least, he had seemed so bright and hopeful. Now he just seemed… angry. It made me want to break down in tears, but my pride refused to let me.

  Instead, I opened my mouth and asked, “How are they?”

  “I think Rose may wake up today,” he replied automatically, picking up his fork and returning his focus to his meal. “I’m unsure about Jasper, as his programming is still locked up in a defensive mode.”

  “Could Quess and Zoe be of any assistance to you?”

  “Actually, I would be the better one to ask, don’t you think?” a gruff voice announced from the speakers. My skin tingled with awareness, and Leo and I both shot out of our chairs. But it was me who spoke first.

  “Jasper?!”

  “In the proverbial flesh.” A pause. “Or not. So these are the Champion’s quarters, eh? They’re quite nifty.”

  “How are you awake?” Leo demanded. “I tried everything I could to reach you.”

  “Yes, I am well aware, you impudent little upstart. Who the hell do you think you are to even be touching my coding?”

  I raised an eyebrow… and then smiled. Jasper may have been listening, but he hadn’t picked up on the fact that Leo was an AI inside a human’s body. “He’s Scipio, Jasper,” I told him. “But not the one you were bonded with. He’s the original version of the program. We call him Leo, to make things easier.”

  The speakers were silent for several seconds. “Whaaaat? Girl, you must be crazy, because that’s not possible. I distinctly remember the council voting to have the backup fragments deleted. And I was there when we got confirmation of Scipio’s backup being deleted along with the others!”

  “You remember that?” I asked. Jang-Mi’s and Rose’s recollections were spotty at best. They’d been able to recall only general details, with no specifics.