The Girl Who Dared to Descend

by Bella Forrest

  “We should get back,” I said hurriedly, flashing him a smile before turning. I didn’t wait to see if he would catch up, but moved back down the aisles that wrapped around and through food stands. He’d gotten what he wanted—help from my brother—and he’d agreed to aid me during the Tourney.

  And I was going to chalk it up as a success, if only because I needed the win.

  12

  I spotted my friends already sitting at one of the picnic-style tables outside the designated food stall, and moved through the early morning traffic to reach them, trying not to yawn.

  I’d woken up two hours before I was supposed to meet Ambrose again for another riveting round of sparring, followed by another patrol, because I needed to see the team and find out how they were faring.

  I approached them, and Quess noticed me first, smiling and waving a hand at me to come sit down next to him, even scooting a few feet down the bench to make more room for me. For a moment, I was taken aback by his appearance—he had changed his hair color to a deep auburn, and was now sporting a pair of contacts that turned his eyes a bright shade of green. The planes of his face had also been altered somewhat, and I realized he had used makeup to soften the strong lines, giving him a round-faced appearance.

  I dropped down next to him, seating myself across from Zoe, Tian, and Eric. I smiled when I saw Commander Cuddles, arm now reattached, sitting upright in Tian’s lap. Tian herself was looking up at Eric like he moved the stars in the sky, and I was relieved to see that the teddy bear surgery had gone well.

  “Hey, guys,” I said. “Sorry for the early hour, but it couldn’t be helped. You look good, Quess. I hardly recognized you.”

  “Thank you—although it was a total pain getting the hair shade just right. Hold on a second.” Quess held up a finger while his other hand began patting down his suit, clearly searching for something. He produced an object the size of a small bowl, but flat and smooth, with a big gray button on the top. He sat it down and pressed it, and a moment later the noise of the food stalls disappeared. “Noise-canceling generator. It’ll prevent anyone from listening in unless they come within a five-foot radius.”

  I smiled, nodding my head approvingly. “How long have you had that for?” I asked.

  “Oh, I got distracted last night during packing and decided we might need one for the meeting today, so I made one.”

  “It’s clever,” Zoe said, lifting the object up and inspecting the undercarriage. “It’s a little heavy, though.”

  “Well, it’s a prototype, darling. And just because she’s heavy doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with her.”

  Zoe rolled her eyes and leaned into Eric’s shoulder, a smile playing on her face. She’d definitely relaxed some in her interactions with Quess, and was no longer responding to his flirtatious comments. Which was good, because it had been on the verge of becoming downright toxic before they managed to work it out.

  “All right, let’s keep it short, guys,” I said. “I need status updates, and to talk about the next few days.”

  “Well, I’ll just get the bad news out of the way.” Quess turned to me, his normal smile absent behind his grim mask. “I already told Leo this morning before he went off to do his physical trials, but… the terminal is gone. The data crystals have been fried, and several of the smaller parts melted when the virus shut the coolant off. The only thing that’s salvageable is the screen.”

  That meant we definitely had to find or make something to house Leo after he finished with Grey. I had anticipated as much, but wasn’t pleased, as it was yet another daunting process ahead of us. “Thanks for letting me know. Any chance we can build a new one?”

  Even as I said it, I found myself wanting to withdraw the question. Consigning Leo to a terminal again would leave him at the mercy of anyone who came along. I supposed we could find someone who was willing to fight for his cause, but how could we ever truly trust their motivations, especially if we were leaving him defenseless against them?

  It would be one thing if Leo had some sort of autonomy, but… The thought of leaving him inside the terminal left me cold.

  Quess scratched his chin, considering the question. “Probably, but I’ll need Leo’s help.”

  His words brought me back to the present, and after dwelling on his answer, I realized that we didn’t actually have a lot of options. Besides, we would need the terminal sooner rather than later, for after Grey woke up. If nothing else, we could make it a temporary fix only, to be used until we figured out something better.

  “Let me know if there’s anything you’re going to need to make it work,” I said. “How did packing go?”

  “I got the hydroponics packed up, as well as our hammocks and a few other odds and ends. The workroom is a bit of a mess, but I plan to tackle that next.”

  Crap. We had to get Sanctum packed up quickly, but with the Tourney looming and the possible threat it bore, I needed Quess, along with his anonymity and computer skills, helping out. I was going to have to shift a few jobs around to free him up for it, while keeping the goal of getting Sanctum packed up as a top priority.

  “Hold off on that for now. There are a few people I want information on. They’re the stiffest competition in the Tourney thus far, and I want to know more. I want you to get in contact with Mercury and get me some personnel files on Frederick Hamilton and Dylan Chase.”

  “Do you need them followed?” Zoe asked, leaning forward. “Eric and I can dye our hair, and could probably get our hands on a Knight’s uniform or two.”

  I thought about it for a heartbeat, and then shook my head. It had only been three days since our trial; the last thing Zoe, Eric, or the rest of us needed was for one of us to get caught breaking the rules. “It’s too risky for that right now,” I told her. “Besides, I need you to take over Quess’s duties and finish packing up Sanctum.”

  Zoe gave me a wry grin. “I knew not getting to be in the Knights with you was going to pay off with super-fun missions,” she said, a dimple appearing in one cheek.

  “How’s it going with Ambrose?” Eric asked, sitting forward. “What do you think about the future Champion?”

  I rolled my eyes and leaned back. “Might be easier to ask Leo. I’m pretty sure he can summarize it better and more quickly than I can.”

  Zoe arched an eyebrow and tossed her hair over her shoulder before leaning forward. “That bad, huh?” I nodded, and she frowned. “Devon Alexander bad?”

  I considered the question. I didn’t think he was cruel, just arrogant and pretentious. And while those two characteristics did not make for a great leader, that didn’t mean they equaled a bad person, either.

  “No,” I told her. “Not that bad. And if he’s Lacey and Strum’s choice, presumably they can get him to tone it down some once he’s in office. If we even get him that far. The guy is being a real bonehead when it comes to his personal safety.”

  “It’s because you’re a woman,” Zoe scoffed angrily, her fist thumping down on the table. “He’s clearly threatened by you.”

  “Nah,” Quess chimed in, a congenial smile on his face. “It’s because she murdered the last Champion. He’s intimidated.”

  “He’s already in love with her,” Eric said around a mouthful of food.

  “Or it’s that he seems to think that Lacey’s concerns for his safety are unnecessary,” I said back, not even bothering to address Eric’s comment past the dry look I gave him. “I think he genuinely believes that now that Devon’s dead, he’s going to be fine, although I’m not entirely sure why. And I don’t know, maybe he’s right. So far, I haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. Then again, we haven’t registered yet, so quiet is to be expected.” I sighed and began massaging my eyebrow with my finger, trying to soothe my anger away. “I don’t know. I just wish that—”

  “Liana, look behind you. What are they doing?”

  Zoe’s voice held a note of deep concern, and I immediately turned around, scanning the aisle and food car
ts beyond. Quess pointed it out a second later, and my eyes zeroed in on three black-clad figures behind a juicing stall on the other side of the aisle. One had his hands knotted in the vendor’s shirt and was shoving him away violently, but the other two stood on either side of the five-foot-wide stall, their arms held straight out from their bodies, pointed toward the back of the stall.

  I immediately realized they were holding pulse shields, the weapons used by the Inquisitors, which fired a burst of kinetic energy. They were aiming them so that the stall would come slamming across the aisle and directly into us—but whether it was meant as a distraction, or was an attempt to kill us, I didn’t know.

  All I knew was that if they were trying to do the latter, it could work. The cart had to weigh three hundred pounds at least; if it hit us with the amount of force I knew those pulse shields could generate, we were going to be just as liquid as the contents of the blenders in the stall.

  “The table,” I cried, my mind working fast. I leapt over it just as I heard a loud, metallic tearing sound, Quess seconds behind me. Eric and Zoe scrambled out of our way, with Zoe hauling Tian up by her arms to move the girl away from danger. I turned immediately and grabbed the edge of the table, watching as the cart shot toward us at a dizzying speed. People began screaming as it tore through the crowd, but I couldn’t do anything about that. I heaved the table up onto its side, and then immediately ducked down behind it.

  “BRACE!” I shouted, and felt and saw my friends dive in next to me, placing their shoulders and hands and backs against the underside of the table.

  Barely a second later, it slammed into us, violently enough to make it feel like I had been kicked in the back so hard I couldn’t breathe, and then we were sliding across the floor, propelled backward by the cart’s velocity and weight. The floor scraped under my uniform, the grooves stinging against my flesh as they slid under us. My boots scrambled for traction as I glanced ahead.

  There was another stall looming right in front of us. We were going to be crushed between them.

  “BRACE!” I shouted again, shoving my feet straight in front of me and trying to slow us down. I glanced over and saw my friends doing similar things, and as we gained more traction, the cart continued to slow… until we came to a rattling stop, just feet away from the second cart.

  My heart was pounding in my chest, and I could taste copper in my mouth. I looked around, doing a quick check to make sure everyone was all right, and then stood up, sliding my baton out of my belt and pressing the button to charge the electrical node. My eyes surveyed the carnage the food stall had caused: several people were lying on the ground, moaning, while others helped them, and even more stood around gaping in horror at what they had just witnessed. My eyes traversed the fruit-lined path of destruction, searching for the dark figures. But there was no sign of them—or the vendor they had been holding back.

  I came around the table and raced over to where I had last seen them, Quess and Eric flanking me. We quickly found the vendor unconscious behind a neighboring stall, and the two men began checking him over to make sure his injuries weren’t life threatening. I ignored them, my eyes on the dark shadows created by the other stalls, and a tiny, narrow aisle that ran between them. There was no sign of movement, but I didn’t let down my guard as I moved closer, searching.

  “They’re gone,” Quess said softly, after I had watched for longer than I should have. I looked up at him, and then nodded.

  “Liana.” Eric came up behind me, and I turned, immediately noting the pad cradled between his two large hands. He had already turned it on, revealing one sentence: If Ambrose Klein competes, your friends are the ones who will suffer.

  “What did you find?” Zoe asked, somewhat breathlessly. I turned to see her cradling Tian, the young girl’s arms wrapped tightly around my best friend, and realized Zoe’d had to carry Tian all the way over to us.

  “Oh, nothing. Just a big ‘I told you so’ that I get to have the joy of rubbing into Ambrose’s face later,” I replied dryly as I turned the pad around to face her. She read the words, her eyes narrowing, and looked up at me.

  “Screw these guys,” she said, looking around at the damage they had done. “You get Ambrose to start listening to you, all right? I’ll figure out a way to keep Eric and myself safe, but you have got to get us some weapons so we can defend ourselves.”

  I agreed. “I’ll see what I can do. But you’re right. I’m going to get Ambrose to reach out to Lacey as well. Quess, I hate to add more to your plate, but once I’m done showing this to Ambrose, I’m going to need you to—”

  “See if I can figure out who it belongs to, and try to track down whoever is targeting us?” He raised an arrogant eyebrow and grinned. “Of course, although… I might tap Mercury to help me with it. He’s probably got better tools and programs for this than I do. Is that okay?”

  I nodded. Quess was the most ideal for this job, given his time in IT, but if he needed Mercury’s help, I wasn’t going to discourage him. I had to assume that the pad would lead nowhere; our assailants were clearly from the IT Department, or working with them—how else would they have gotten their hands on pulse shields? And that meant they would have covered their tracks with the pad. But we needed to know who was after us, and we needed to know quickly. So I didn’t care if it meant going to Scipio himself—I was determined to find out who they were.

  Until then, however… “I want everyone to have their guard up,” I said. “Let Leo and Maddox know as soon as they finish their tests, or the first chance you get. Quess, can you also use Mercury’s anchor program and modify it so we can have shielded conversations through the nets? I think we need to avoid meetings in the future, whenever we can.”

  “Sounds good,” Zoe replied.

  “Says you,” scoffed Quess, his hand going up to his hair and touching it lightly. “Now I have to change my hair again—and I was just beginning to like this look.”

  Zoe rolled her eyes at him, and then shifted to one side, straining under Tian’s weight. I walked around her to get a good look at Tian’s face, and realized the little girl had dozed off. I was baffled by her ability to fall asleep right then and there, but ultimately chalked it up as another Tianism—one of the little quirks that were just her—and moved on.

  “All right, guys,” I said. “Let’s get out of here. We’ve lingered long enough.”

  Especially considering Knights were beginning to push through the crowds to find out what had happened. We hadn’t done anything wrong—but it was better if they didn’t know we were involved at all.

  There seemed to be too many eyes on us as it was.

  13

  I knocked impatiently on Ambrose’s door and looked both ways down the hall, checking for any sign of movement or possible attack. I felt exposed in the hall like this, but after the event in the Lion’s Den, I needed to get to Ambrose and make sure he was safe. The attack could have been meant as a distraction.

  I doubted it, but I still needed to get into his apartment. Somehow, they had known Ambrose was planning to register for the Tourney, and I wanted to know how. I was betting they had installed some sort of listening device in his apartment, and I was going to toss the place until I found it.

  I knocked again, and was inputting my code, ready to put my override privileges to use, when the door slid open with a pneumatic hiss. Ambrose stood on the other side, his face angry and his mouth already open to chastise me. I pushed past him and into the living space, looking around. The room was configured almost exactly like the Knight Commanders’ apartments, with the exception that it had a small dinette, instead of a whole separate room for dining. But my family’s apartment was just that: one designed for a family with two children. These were designed for two Knights who were single.

  “You better have a damn good reason for this,” Ambrose growled behind me.

  I ignored him. “Which one is your room?” I demanded, pointing to the hall ahead of me, which led to the bedrooms and shared b
athroom. “Is your roommate here?”

  “I don’t have a roommate currently, and you still need to explain what you’re doing here!”

  I glanced back at him. “What I’m doing here is making sure you’re safe,” I informed him coolly. “Once I do that, I will explain. Now, close the door and help me look around. And for Scipio’s sake, get your baton.”

  Ambrose glared at me for several seconds, and then opened the closet by the door and pulled his baton out. I watched the procedure with no small amount of alarm, because the closet was the least handy place to keep a baton. If I had been an enemy, I would’ve had him on the ground long before he could have gotten to the closet.

  I added it to my list of things to yell at him about later, but ignored it for now. I wanted to make sure no one was lying in wait for him first. I went down the hall and opened up the extra room, as the other door was open and clearly in use. The room was empty, with no signs of life, but I went in anyway. I pulled my hand light from my pocket and checked under the small twin bed opposite the door first, clearing it. Standing up, I shone the light around, and then moved over to the closet unit on the wall, pulling open the various doors and checking them for signs of life.

  Ambrose watched me from the doorway, his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Nobody’s there,” he said once I had opened up the last closet.

  I glared at him, then climbed onto the desk to inspect the vents.

  “Oh, c’mon, seriously?!” he exclaimed. “You really think an attacker is going to come through the vents?”

  “You clearly haven’t spent enough time with criminals,” I said as I pulled off the grate. “This is our favorite method of transportation.” Ambrose scoffed behind me, but I continued to ignore him as I set the grate down on the desk. He still wasn’t taking me seriously—but that didn’t mean I was going to stop. Whoever had attacked us knew that Ambrose was planning to enroll, and that meant they had access to him in some way. I wasn’t sure how, yet, but making sure his apartment was clear was the first step to figuring it out.