The Girl Who Dared to Descend

by Bella Forrest

  I held up my hand light and shone it inside the shaft, checking the duct. The long, tight space seemed to stretch on for eternity, the shadows fighting the light as I swept it around. But it was clear. I hopped down, not bothering to put the grate back on, and moved to the doorway.

  “Your room is next,” I said. “Let me pass.”

  Ambrose scowled at me before moving to the side—at a ponderously slow speed. I managed to hold back an eye roll, and instead pulled out the pad that our assailants in the market had left behind. I pushed it into his chest as I walked by, and entered his room.

  His room had an identical layout to the room across the hall, and was exactly what I’d expected: pristine, with everything in its place, and not a thing out of order. Only the bedding was mussed, presumably because I’d woken him up and he hadn’t had time to make the bed.

  The closet seemed the least invasive as a first place to search, so I made a beeline for it, threw it open, and looked around.

  “What is this?” Ambrose asked from the hall, his tone bewildered. “How did you get this?”

  I pushed aside his extra uniforms and moved the hand light around, checking the back for any sign of a device—or anything else that didn’t belong. “From some people who tried to crush me and my friends in the market earlier. They got away, but they left that behind.” I paused in my search and turned, studying him to see what his reaction would be.

  He met my gaze, and I saw a flash of real fear there, but then it was gone, his face carefully reforming into an expression of nonchalance and bemusement. “This is a prank—”

  “Scipio help me, it is not a prank!” I shouted in disbelief. Why wasn’t he freaking out about this? Someone had found out about his plan to register, despite his attempts to keep it secret. That meant they had resources. And they clearly had people as well, which meant coordination and planning.

  This wasn’t a time for him to be blasé. It was the time for him to wake up and pay attention.

  I squared off with him and let him see my anger and frustration. “They nearly killed me and my friends, and they injured several other people in the process! And the note they left behind? That is not something we take lightly.”

  Ambrose’s bemusement faded, and the anger returned. “You do not get to come in here, push me around, tear apart my house, and then expect me to blindly agree with you based on an attack on you and a pad with a vague threat! You do understand that Lacey is keeping an eye on everything, right? And that if there were a real threat, she would’ve notified me?”

  I balled my fist up and bit back a growl. He was relying heavily on Lacey’s ability to see everything, but the fact that she hadn’t notified us about this threat only proved that she couldn’t handle that particular responsibility alone. Which was probably the reason she wanted me and my friends on the ground with him. Ambrose couldn’t seem to get that, and now we were in danger because of him. And there was a good chance he was in danger too.

  But I wouldn’t be able to protect him if he wasn’t going to listen to me, and trying to get it through his thick skull would only be a waste of breath. I needed to find a way to make him listen—and the only thing I could think of was Lacey. I wasn’t supposed to reach out to her directly, but I was certain Ambrose had a way to do it.

  “No, I’m here because Lacey is blackmailing me to help you. Net her.”

  Ambrose’s brows came together, and he folded his arms across his chest. “No, I’m not going to do that. I’m not supposed to until after the Tourney is done.”

  I ran a hand across my face, trying for calm. I was sure there was a good reason for that, but it seemed moot at this point. If I couldn’t get the person I was trying to protect to work with me, then I was definitely going to fail in protecting him. Lacey was the only way I could get him to see reason, mostly because she, herself, was reasonable. And if she couldn’t do it, then I was quitting this stupid job.

  “I don’t care,” I informed him. “You call her now and tell her I need to talk to her.”

  But he was already shaking his head. “I told you, I can’t do that until—”

  “Damn it, you arrogant jerk! You get her in a net conversation right now, or I’ll spare your enemies the work and just kill you myself!”

  He reared back, surprise and shock on his face. “You wouldn’t dare,” he bellowed, once he realized I was threatening him. “Once Lacey hears of this, her plans be—”

  I grabbed him and shoved him up against the doorframe, hard, giving him a good shake while I was at it. “You don’t get it. Your continued obstinate and arrogant behavior is making my job harder, and threatening to put my friends at risk. Now, so that you understand me, protecting my friends is the only thing I care about. So if it’s between you and them, I will kill you to keep them safe. Get. Lacey. Now.”

  He stared at me, and I glared right back, daring him to test me. In truth, I had no intention of killing him, but he didn’t know that. And I needed him to believe that I would—if only so I could get a hold of Lacey and get her to make him listen to me.

  He glared at me, and then jerked free of my grasp. “All right,” he said harshly. “I’ll get it set up. Why don’t you just finish doing whatever you’re doing and then join me in the living room when you’re ready.” He tugged his shirt smooth as he spoke, rolling his shoulders.

  “Fine,” I replied, turning back and facing the room. I was fairly certain there wasn’t anything inside, but I still had to check. If only for my peace of mind.

  Also, it gave me a better understanding of the layout of the Knight Elite’s quarters, and where the possible ingress points were, in case anyone tried to get to him while he was sleeping and vulnerable. There was only the front door and the vent on the opposite side of the room, but that was a lot. Too much for us just to check once a day.

  No, it was becoming clearer that if we wanted to keep Ambrose perfectly safe, we needed to have eyes on him at all times, whether he liked it or not. Whether I liked it or not.

  I finished my search quickly and efficiently, and then walked back into the common room and turned right into the living room. Ambrose was already seated, two pads—one of them being the one I had given him—placed on the table in front of him.

  “I trust there were no assassins hiding in my laundry hamper?” he said smugly, arching an eyebrow.

  I didn’t rise to the bait. “Did you get a hold of Lacey?” I asked.

  He hesitated. “I passed a message off through one of our contacts. He’ll make sure she gets it, but it might take a few minutes. I still think this is pointless, for the record.”

  “Noted and ignored,” I replied, giving him a withering glance. I looked around the room and dropped into a seat opposite him. We stared at each other for a few seconds, his look one of study, while mine was more sullen and irritated.

  I could only imagine what he was thinking about me, but I was honestly beyond caring. The scrape in the market had shaken me more than I cared to admit, and I wasn’t messing around anymore. Ambrose needed to start taking me seriously.

  Not to mention, I needed information and support. Clearly, Lacey wasn’t able to keep up with everything, but if she could help me pinpoint possible targets—or find out who had attacked us—that would help me keep Ambrose and my friends safe.

  “I’m going to make a cup of tea,” Ambrose announced after the silence between us grew long and strained. He stood up and moved around the table, into the kitchen. A moment later I heard him rattling around in the cupboards.

  I sat in silence as the noise behind me continued, thinking. Something was bothering me about everything that had just gone down, but I still couldn’t quite figure it out. I hadn’t found any listening devices in the room… so how could they have found out that Ambrose was even registering in the first place? Because the message had been very specific about that. Ambrose had told me himself that he was waiting until the last day of registration to put his name on the list—so how had they known?
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  I looked at Ambrose’s pad, still dark with inactivity, and after a moment of debate, I reached out and grabbed it before standing up. There was only one way to find out.

  I crossed the living room and moved into the conjoined kitchen and dining room. Ambrose was in the process of pouring hot water from an electric kettle into a teacup, his back to me. I watched him for a second, and then cleared my throat.

  He jerked around, startled, and then hissed when hot water dropped into his hand. “What?” he snapped, bristling as he turned to run his hand under the faucet.

  “Something’s been bugging me,” I told him, and he flashed an irritated look over his shoulder.

  “What now?” he demanded, whirling back toward me to grab a towel from the island and wrapping it around his hand.

  “How did they know?” I asked him, voicing my question out loud. He gave me a quizzical look, and I took a step closer, placing the pad on the counter between us. “How did they know you were planning to sign up for the Tourney? You told me yourself that you were keeping your intentions secret until the last minute. So I ask again, how did they know?”

  He stared at me for a long, hard moment, and then looked away, his jaw clenched. “I registered last night,” he finally admitted, his eyes coming back up to mine to see how I would react.

  Anger, hot and thick, surged over me. This had been Lacey’s plan, one that was meant to help him, and he couldn’t even seem to follow that! Did he just not care that he had completely undermined her? And why had he done so? What purpose could he possibly have for signing up early, other than to brag or boast about it to his friends?

  On the tail of all that, I had one additional question—one that I asked out loud.

  “With who on your team?” I asked carefully, maintaining my eye contact with him.

  Ambrose glared at me for a long moment, and then exploded. “There was no way you were going to get your friends to test out! So I took matters into my own hands and—”

  “AND WHAT?!” I exploded, my temper finally getting the better of me. “This was Lacey’s plan to begin with, and you couldn’t follow it! Why did you even register now? What possible purpose could you have for doing it early?”

  Ambrose shifted, suddenly distinctly uncomfortable. “When I was with my friends, they—”

  I groaned loudly, amazed by his stupidity. I had known it almost as soon as he said that he had registered early—and even now, I still couldn’t believe it. “You did not do this just to show your stupid friends you were serious about it, did you? How immature are you?”

  “You want to talk about being immature? Your little teammates aren’t going to be able to test out in time for the Tourney! But you wouldn’t look at the personnel files I gave you, so like I said, I took matters into my own hands. If I hadn’t, my friends would’ve been grabbed by another team! We should consider ourselves lucky they came to me before they went looking for someone else.”

  They came to him? And he didn’t see that as suspicious at all?

  “Sure,” I said sarcastically, nodding my head. “And what if they did that to make you choose right then and there to have them because they’re secretly planning to kill you, hm? What is it going to take for you to realize that I have actually thought about this stuff, and am trying to help you stay alive?”

  “You don’t get it,” Ambrose sneered. “You have no place giving me orders, threatening me, or anything! You’re just a pawn, recruited by Lacey because she’s overcautious like that. You aren’t even a Knight, not really. You just got the position because of the lies Lacey told, so for you to march in here and start giving me orders? You don’t have the slightest idea what we’re trying to protect, trying to do, but you have the audacity to—”

  A sharp buzz on the counter cut him off, and I immediately saw that the screen was lit orange. I looked back up at Ambrose, who was now smiling, his eyes on it.

  “Good,” he said smugly, taking a step toward it. “Now I can just tell Lacey that we don’t need you, and finish this once and for all.”

  I watched him reach for it, his words burning an angry hole inside of me. For a second, I was tempted to let him tell her whatever he wanted, and walk away. The only thing keeping me from doing that was Lacey’s threat of turning us over for tampering with Scipio’s memory to get away with Devon’s murder.

  Well, that… and I really wanted to spite Ambrose. If using Lacey to get him to fall in line worked, it would go a long way toward fulfilling my petty desire.

  He tapped a few things on the pad, and then Lacey’s voice filled the air, emitted by the pad itself. My eyes widened—I didn’t even know something like that was possible!

  “Ambrose, I assume Liana is there?” she asked, her voice tiny through the speakers.

  “Yes, she is,” Ambrose began. “Lacey, you need to get her out of here. She’s a nuisance!”

  “Then she’s doing her job,” Lacey said archly. “Liana, what’s the problem?”

  Ambrose shot me a sullen look. “Lacey, I—”

  “Ambrose, you gave your contact more than an earful, and believe me, he got your complaints down and to me. Now I want to hear Liana’s side of it.”

  Ambrose fumed, but said nothing. I listened to their exchange, and the firm way she handled him, and thought back on Ambrose’s words from earlier, puzzling over them, trying to find the right angle. And suddenly I had an idea. And a clever one, at that. One that would help me, and satisfy my curiosity about something else.

  I leaned on my hands on the counter and smiled sweetly at Ambrose. “Ambrose doesn’t respect me,” I announced. He snorted, but I ignored it and barreled on. “As a result, he’s putting his life, mine, and the lives of my friends at great risk. But I think I have a solution.”

  “Oh?” Lacey asked, her tone a mixture of amusement and curiosity. “So quickly?”

  “Well, I don’t like to waste time, so yes. That quickly.”

  “I see. And what is this solution?” she asked, and I grinned.

  “You’re gonna give me a legacy net, and then give me whatever internal rank you use, so that I am higher than Ambrose.”

  I could actually care less about the rank, but Ambrose had made a lot of fuss about me not understanding what he was fighting for, and getting a legacy net and seeing what they were all about might help me convince him that I actually wanted to help his cause. I didn’t, but he didn’t need to know that.

  And getting the legacy net was also important for a completely separate reason: Leo. With his terminal gone, we didn’t have a lot of options for where to put him. But maybe one of these nets had the potential to hold him—or maybe he could be transferred back and forth between the one I was asking for and the one in Grey’s head in some way, so that one could charge while the other kept him alive.

  I didn’t know, but it was worth asking Quess to take a look at.

  “No, she will not!” Ambrose sputtered a second or two later. “Lacey, you cannot seriously be thinking—”

  “Shut up, Ambrose,” Lacey said, cutting him off. “Liana, you can’t possibly expect me to give you something like that. The nets are… precious to us, and dangerous to possess. I don’t even wear mine all the time, for fear of getting caught with it. And neither does Ambrose.”

  “That is really good to know,” I said. “Still, you owe me for those paint samples you took from our home, and this is the price. And you’re going to do it if you actually want me to keep Ambrose alive. It’s the only way to get him to listen to me.”

  Ambrose gave me a confused look, and then looked at the pad and back up to me. After several seconds, Lacey said, “Very well. Meet us in C-19 in Cogstown in thirty minutes, and I will give you one. Bring Ambrose. I want to know more about what’s been going on with the two of you.”

  I opened my mouth to tell her I would, but the pad went off abruptly, the transmission clearly terminated.

  Ambrose stared at me, a frown on his face. “Why?” he asked.

 
; I licked my lips. “You said it earlier: I have no idea what you’re fighting for. Maybe with that net, I can figure out what it is, and then you’ll believe that I’m here to help you. That, and it’s clear that you are a stickler for hierarchy, given how quickly you shut up when Lacey told you to. So if I get Lacey to put me over you, it will mean you listen to what I have to say.”

  “You have no guarantee of that,” he pointed out.

  “Yeah, well. Let’s see what Lacey has to say about that. Get dressed. We’re running late already.”

  For a second, it looked like he was going to act petulant and stand there glaring at me, but eventually he straightened up and headed back into his room to change. I watched him go, and then picked up his untouched cup of tea and took a sip, thinking.

  I had never even considered asking for a legacy net, but once the idea had hit me, I had just gone for it. I hoped it would earn me at least a smidge of respect from Ambrose—and at the very least, it would give Quess something to study… and hopefully modify to help Leo.

  And I could finally figure out what the heck was on them.

  14

  To my surprise, more boxes and belongings had been added to Roark’s former apartment. I stared at them, confused by their presence. When I had met Lacey and Strum here for the first time, they had assured me that the room was for my group and myself as a peace offering. Lacey had even taken pains to leave it relatively untouched, though it had been missing the quintessential touch that Roark brought to it.

  Scipio help me, I missed him terribly.

  I pushed aside the pain and focused, heading deeper into the common space. Lacey was already there, as was another person I didn’t recognize. Lacey was inspecting a beaker left unbroken after my fight with Gerome and our subsequent escape, but she turned when she heard Ambrose and me enter, and the man opposite her looked up from a medical kit he had been tinkering with.