The Girl Who Dared to Think 6: The Girl Who Dared to Endure

by Bella Forrest

  Critical and redundancy systems? That meant water, air, locks on the doors, sensors, elevators, and any of the machines crucial to the survival of the Tower. Was she planning to tamper with them in some way? Shut them off in order to ensure departmental compliance when she and her group seized full control over Scipio, maybe? I wasn’t certain, but it wasn’t outside of the realm of possibility.

  “It certainly does have something to do with that,” Jasper replied, his voice grim, confirming my suspicions. “I was in the Medica in order to bring it down if they needed me to. Seal it up, suck out the air, overload their power cells. The works.”

  “But you were able to resist them,” I said, confused. “You helped me.”

  “She didn’t tell me I couldn’t help you. Your problems were outside of the parameters she set me up with, which gave me a little wiggle room. It wasn’t until the two intersected that she became aware I was helping you. But I digress. My part in Prometheus was to hold the Medica captive should Sadie and her people need me to. I don’t know much about the specifics, but I do know that the goal is to replicate Requiem Day, so that they can kill Scipio once and for all.”

  I sat down. I had to. All of the air had disappeared from the room, and my legs had turned watery with fear. They wanted to replicate Requiem Day? The three-day period when Scipio had gone offline, when all essential Tower functions had shut down and the entire population had dissolved into chaos? Departments were looted, people were killed, and the entire Tower had almost come crashing down. I had studied it avidly when I was at the Academy. It had been a source of fascination and horror for me.

  Why would they even want to do that? What would it accomplish? I supposed they had some plan that would put Scipio fully under their control, and needed him offline to do it, but without more information, I didn’t want to speculate.

  “When are they going to try to do all this?” I asked no one in particular. I knew they probably wouldn’t have an answer. If Sadie had kept some files separate, then the timeline was probably missing from what we’d stolen.

  “We don’t know,” Zoe replied. “We also don’t know where the legacies are staying. We do know that this whole thing is probably happening soon, given some messages exchanged between Salvatore Zale and Sadie. She’s been telling him to get ready for their next move, but it’s all vague.”

  “Salvatore?” Anger, as white hot as it was ice cold, bloomed under my skin, making me harden. Jasper had mentioned him being involved yesterday, but it seemed that Zoe had found evidence of what, exactly, he had been involved with. I searched Zoe’s face for confirmation that he had a hand in killing my mother, and her eyes were full of sorrow for me as she nodded.

  “He was the one meant to win the Tourney,” she said hoarsely. “It was a deal set up between him and Sadie after Devon died. Having him in charge of the department is apparently instrumental in their plans—I’m guessing because the Knights are the only department given access codes to manually open doors in case of a power loss. She’d need them to free her and her people from IT once they shut Scipio down. I’m not sure why, yet, but that’s the gist of the messages. And you know the Knights. They’d follow their Champion’s orders to hell and back without questioning them, so it makes sense that Sadie would want it under her control in some way.”

  I kept a tight lid on my anger and focused on the problem at hand. It seemed like we had uncovered a lot about what they were planning, but nothing about how many of them there were, or how to find them. “So what do we have?”

  “The list of every legacy spy embedded in the other departments,” Leo replied. I grimaced. It made sense for her to need people inside the other departments to sabotage their efforts to fix Scipio when everything began, in order to keep anyone from interfering with their plans. “As well as a full roster of the entire legacy group. There are exactly 105 of them, excluding Sadie and Mathias. Fifty-three are stationed in other departments, leaving the rest to act as support and secret forces. And before you ask me, there are a few people whose names start with P, but obviously we can’t tell which one is which.”

  “One hundred and five,” I exclaimed, my eyes bulging. “How is that even possible? Where’d they come from? Are they biologically related, or are they being recruited from somewhere?”

  Leo opened his mouth, but I could tell by the shrug in his shoulders that he didn’t know. I waved him off and leaned forward, trying to think. When I had asked everyone to go after the legacies, I had assumed there would be fifty people, at most. Now I knew there were twice that. Catching them wasn’t going to be possible alone; we were going to need help. We were going to have to coordinate our attack so that it happened simultaneously. It would require a lot of moving parts, and that meant letting more people in on what was going on.

  But I was getting ahead of myself. First, we needed to focus on finding the other fifty or so legacies who were missing. Then we needed to—

  My thoughts cut off abruptly at the sudden sound of something hitting the table. I twisted in my seat in time to see Leo slumped against it and sliding down, taking with him a column of Maddox’s carefully stacked files in a flutter of noise.

  28

  “LEO!” I cried, my heart leaping into my throat as I leapt from the chair and raced around the table to where he had fallen. A thousand questions sped through my mind: Was he injured? Had Baldy hurt him? Or was it Grey? Did we take too much blood from him yesterday? Was sharing the one mind hurting them somehow?

  He was on his stomach, his head pillowed by one arm, and I quickly sank to my knees beside him and flipped him over. “Cornelius, tell Quess I need him!” I shouted, my fingers going to Leo’s neck. His eyelashes fluttered against his cheeks, and he gave a soft groan, his hand weakly flopping next to him.

  “Fine,” he wheezed. “I’m—”

  He stopped midsentence, his head lolling to one side. I could still feel his pulse under my fingers, but it wasn’t as strong as I would like. It wasn’t dangerously weak, but definitely weaker. It didn’t make any sense. “Cornelius,” I repeated, looking around. “Where is—”

  “I’m here,” Quess cut in, the sound of running feet filling the room. “Can’t we go two minutes without having a medical emergency?”

  I slid to one side to give him room, letting him fall into place beside Leo, and then watched impatiently as he pulled out his scanner and ran it over Leo’s body.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” I told him, glancing up at where Zoe and Maddox were standing, hovering just to the side of us. “Did either of you see? I just saw him drop to the table and then fall.”

  Zoe shook her head, but Maddox nodded. “He started weaving back and forth, this really dopey look on his face. I was about to ask him what was wrong, but then he sort of toppled forward, onto the table. It looked like he fainted.”

  “That would make sense. His electrolyte readings are dismally low. Jasper, can you confirm?”

  There was a pause. “Oh yeah. Hm. Hold on a second, I’m going to remotely interface with the net and… Oh.” He went silent for a second, and I had to bite back the urge to snap at him to explain what was going on. I knew that electrolytes were really important, but how would Leo have depleted them all? Minerals were put into our water supply to make sure we were healthy, so anything he’d drunk would’ve replenished them. Not to mention, deficiency would only happen if he had been exercising nonstop for several days, without taking in liquids to deplete his dwindling supply.

  “What is it?” I managed in a calm-ish voice, when the silence had gone on for too long.

  “Quess is correct. Grey’s body has been depleted of its mineral content. He will require fluids and several hours of rest.”

  I frowned. “But how did this happen? You know it’s really difficult to have an electrolyte imbalance.”

  “You will have to ask Leo that question when he wakes up.”

  Odd. Was it because Jasper didn’t know, or because it was s
omehow Leo’s fault that Grey’s electrolytes were out of balance? It didn’t seem like Jasper was going to say, so the only thing I could do was follow the doctor’s advice and get him in bed.

  I looked down at Leo, and then back up to Quess. “Help me move him?”

  “Fine,” Quess groaned theatrically. “We’ll get him to bed and I’ll hook him up to some fluids.”

  “I can hook him up,” I told him, reaching out to grab one of Leo’s arms. “I learned that much at least from the cross-departmental training courses.”

  “Sweet,” Quess said as he grabbed the other. “Then I can come back here and do more research! Yay!”

  I laughed at the faux enthusiasm in his voice, but sobered immediately afterward, my concern for Leo and Grey overriding everything.

  Quess and I lifted Leo up together, each draping one of his arms across our neck, and carried him out the room, down the hall, and into his bedroom. He remained out of it the entire time, even when we placed him on the bed in the corner. I waved Quess off when he started to help, and he shrugged, leaving the clear plastic bag with yellow fluid inside for me to give Leo before he departed.

  I stood staring at the door after he closed it, and then sighed and cast a look at Leo’s unconscious form on the bed. This was awkward. I hadn’t thought twice about wanting to take care of him in the moment, but now that we were here, I was suddenly thinking about last night, and how everything was between us. I certainly didn’t want him waking up while I was taking care of him, because I wasn’t exactly ready to deal with cold Leo yet. Hopefully his lowered electrolyte levels would keep him unconscious long enough for me to get him ready for bed and hooked up to the bag.

  Besides, I had other things to do than have another confrontation with him. And I knew waking him up would lead to one, as I wanted to know exactly why Grey’s levels were off. If Leo was harming him in this sudden more-machine-than-man routine, I was going to tear him a new one.

  And I wanted him fresh and alert when I did.

  Setting the bag down, I quickly got to work stripping him of everything save for his underclothes. The boots went first, followed by his socks, and then the uniform—which required some struggle. When it came to a particularly stubborn pant leg, I was certain I would wake him, but there was no response in his face. Next came his lash harness. First, I undid the buckles that held the harness in place, and then I rolled him onto his side and worked the gyro in the back out from under him.

  I carefully put everything away, and then sat down on the edge of the bed to hook him up to the saline bag and press the transfusion patch into the crook of his elbow. Finally, I sat back to wipe my forehead. I had developed a sweat from trying to move so quickly, in spite of the chill in the room. I looked down and noticed goosebumps forming on Leo’s arm, and reached to grab a blanket to pull over him.

  “Hey.” His breath was soft against my neck, and I froze for several horrifying heartbeats before turning my head a fraction of an inch to meet his gaze. I had wanted to be gone before he woke up.

  His eyes were bleary and slightly unfocused, but directed fully at my face, and he wore a lopsided smile that confused me. This was different from the icy demeanor he’d been showing me before. Now he seemed warm… and affectionate. I considered the juxtaposition for several heartbeats and came to two conclusions: either Leo had reconsidered what he said earlier, or Grey was now in control. And as much as I wanted it to be the former, the more I peered into those warm brown eyes, the more I realized that this was Grey, not Leo.

  “Hey, Grey,” I said haltingly, gently pulling myself into a sitting position, using the pretense of draping the blanket over him to carve out some distance between us. I wasn’t prepared for this little scenario and wasn’t entirely sure how to react. “How are you feeling?”

  “Tired,” he said weakly. “But I’m glad I woke up. I wanted to talk to you.”

  I paused in fussing with the blanket and chanced a glance at him, my curiosity getting the better of me. “You… were aware of what was happening?”

  He gave a soft huff of laughter. “More than you know. Leo and I were arguing about it when the lights went out.” He frowned, a crease forming on his brow. “Don’t be mad at him, but it’s his fault we passed out. He, um… didn’t get any sleep after you two had that conversation last night. He kept working all night, trying to get Jasper and Rose online, and the exertion from yesterday and giving blood… He just pushed my body to its limit.”

  This was weird. He was talking about his body as if it weren’t his own, and in a way, he was right. But there wasn’t any resentment in his voice, like I would expect there to be. After all, he’d just told me Leo had put his personal health in jeopardy.

  Well, he might not be angry, but I was. First Leo flipped on everything he had been telling me, then he decided to push Grey’s body in some mindless pursuit to get Jasper and Rose online last night! How could he be so irresponsible? What was going on with him?

  What was worse than the anger, however, was the pain. It hurt that Leo had treated Grey so callously. I had trusted him to take care of him, and now it seemed he was trying to show how much he really didn’t care. Or maybe he was resentful toward Grey because he had been so confident that his feelings for me were genuine, so he was overreacting toward him?

  I wasn’t sure, but it needed to end.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him carefully, around clenched teeth. “I’ll make sure to talk to him about it when he wakes up.” I moved to stand up, but he made a small sound of protest that had me settling back down.

  “Please don’t go,” he said softly. “I can tell you’re getting angry at him, and you need to understand… He’s hurting, Liana. He’s convinced himself that what he felt for you wasn’t real, but I think he’s wrong. I think—”

  “He told you,” I gasped, descending the few inches I had risen during my first attempt to leave, suddenly needing to sit down. My stomach churned, his betrayal stabbing even deeper. He didn’t have the right to do that; it was my responsibility, my conversation to have with Grey. Everything in my mind went blank, until I couldn’t even think of how to respond. “He shouldn’t have done that. Your memory isn’t even fully restored!”

  Grey gave me a lopsided smile. “I don’t have all of my memories of us yet, but I’m sure you know me well enough to understand how I can be when someone’s keeping a secret from me. Besides, you have no idea what this is like—how intrusive it is on both our sides! I’m awake, which means I know what’s going through his mind, and he knows what’s going through mine. Believe me when I say he had to tell me, because he couldn’t keep himself from thinking about you. I told him—”

  I turned my face away from him in a move that was completely reflexive, but one I was grateful for. I couldn’t listen to Grey trying to validate Leo’s feelings for me. The guilt was too strong, the situation too weird, and I had no idea how to interpret it. He should be angry with me! Furious at my betrayal, sickened by the very sight of me. I was pretty sure that was how I would react should our positions be reversed, but here Grey was, defending him.

  Scipio help me, what if Leo was only giving Grey bits and pieces of his memories with me? Could he do that? Would he? If so, it would certainly explain why Grey wasn’t as angry as he had every right to be.

  I needed to stop talking with Grey. I needed answers about exactly what Leo was doing to him before I could have this conversation with him. But Leo wasn’t up, which meant leaving, and not coming back until Leo was awake and could account for his actions.

  “Liana?”

  I steadied myself and turned back to face him, forcing my mouth into something resembling a smile. “I need to go,” I told him. “You need to rest.”

  Grey sighed and flopped his head against the pillow in irritation. “Stop treating me like a child. You and Leo clearly have feelings for each other, even though you and I had something going on when this first happened. It really wasn’t that difficult to put together.”


  My cheeks flushed in abject humiliation, and I once again looked away, too embarrassed for words. So Leo had given him all his memories. Guilt slammed into me that I had doubted him, and then remounted when I realized that meant Grey did understand what I had done to him.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “I’m so very sorry.”

  “Stop it.” His words and tone confused me, and I risked a glance over my shoulder to find him watching me, his eyes brighter and clearer than they had been a few moments ago. “Don’t you ever apologize for developing feelings for someone. I’ve been with Leo for a little over twelve hours, and even I think he’s pretty cool. He certainly made better use of my body than I ever did.” At my questioning glance, he explained, “Leo showed me some of the vid files from the Tourney when I didn’t believe that I had joined the Knights to participate in it. He… He certainly can fight. It makes sense that you started to rely on him.”

  I didn’t understand him. He was taking this so casually, like it wasn’t a big deal at all. This was really out of character, considering how bossy and jealous he had been before. “Why aren’t you more upset about this?”

  The mattress squeaked slightly under his weight as he rolled to his side, making sure not to disturb his fluid bag. “Well, I’m not going to lie and tell you that I haven’t changed. It’s weird… I have these memories of being afraid, being alone, being abandoned, and having those feelings driving some of my reactions, but now… they don’t seem to affect me as badly as they used to.” He chuckled. “Then again, I don’t know. Maybe almost dying changed something in me, or maybe it’s the way that Leo is giving me back my memories. I feel more level-headed and self-aware then I ever did before, and it’s nice to have that sort of clarity. Puts things into perspective.”