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

by Bella Forrest

  Did I think Leo should feel guilty? No, not at all. If anything, I thought he should feel proud of his personal development, how Grey had affected him, as well as his influence over Grey. The two complemented each other, like they were meant to be united from the very beginning.

  I looked up into Leo’s eyes, and offered him a tender smile. “No,” I told him. “I think if Grey’s okay with it, I’m okay with it. I just want both of you to be happy.”

  Leo returned the smile, his eyes glowing with love. “I’m always happiest when I’m with you.”

  The sweetness of his words made me weak, and I lowered myself back down against his chest and snuggled against him. His arms folded tight around me, and he just held me—exactly as I had been needing him to for the past few days—with a strong, steady grip that told me that I was safe and secure. My heart felt lighter than ever, swelling with happiness. Both of them were staying with me. Both of them were willing to make this work. I felt loved and safe and cherished.

  But more importantly, I didn’t feel alone.

  34

  The next morning I found myself winding through the halls of the Medica, Maddox beside me, two cups of a spiced rice drink warm in my hands. We followed the white-clad attendant silently, walking along the pristine surface of the Medica’s walls as he led the way to where Sage would be meeting me.

  I was nervous, possibly even more nervous than I had been yesterday, but I kept it all behind a pleasant face, while rehearsing in my head my premise for being here. I wanted to talk to him about the upcoming council meeting, and the expulsion chamber vote that was about to be delayed for a second time. I knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere, but that was what made it perfect. If I could draw him into an amiable debate, then it might be convincing enough to keep my true purpose—collecting his cup at the end of the meeting—from him. Because if he drank from that cup, I would have some of his genetic material, and could test it against the samples we had gotten from the undocs.

  The attendant stopped short of a door with a little green leaf on it, indicating that I was about to enter one of the greenhouses where the Medica grew medicinal plants, and quickly ushered me through as soon as the door opened. I shot a parting glance at Maddox, who mouthed, “Good luck,” and then slipped into the room.

  The difference between the inside and the outside was like stepping from a freezing shower into a hot bath. The lights in here were warm and yellow, nothing like the antiseptic feeling of the halls outside, and the room was a riot of colors. Green, purple, red, white, orange, lilac—my eyes darted over dozens of different plants hanging from shelves on either side of the aisle the door had deposited me into, drinking in the sight and smell of all the flowers in bloom.

  I let myself just look at it for several long seconds, trying to commit the beauty I was seeing to memory, and then started forward, trusting that somewhere in the room, Marcus Sage awaited me.

  I once again saw various white-clad individuals doing this and that to the plants. From trimming back some of the leaves to spraying them with chemicals, everyone seemed to be doing their duty. I studied them closely, looking for a sign of the elderly man, but he wasn’t in any of the rows that I passed, so I headed deeper.

  Like the previous room we’d been in, the shelves came to a stop at the edge of a wide-open space, where numerous metallic-topped tables were set up in long rows, their mirror-like surfaces spotted with pots of plants. Sage was standing in the middle of it all, studying a rather unique flower that was supported by a single stalk. I started toward him, fixing a congenial smile on my face.

  He spotted me long before I made it to him, swiveling around to face me as I walked down the row, one eyebrow going up when he spotted the cup in my hand. “Is that for me?” he asked as soon as I drew close enough that we wouldn’t be shouting at each other.

  “It is,” I said, coming to a stop before him and offering him the cup. “It’s spiced rice milk.” I knew it was his favorite, thanks to Quess. He was Medica-born and knew more about Sage than I did.

  “My favorite,” Sage exclaimed, a smile growing on his weathered face. “How did you know?”

  “Actually, it’s my favorite,” I lied. “And when I went down to get one, I realized it would be rude to show up with no drink for you, so I got you one, too. I hope that’s all right.”

  “Of course it is!” he exclaimed, reaching out to take the cup. “And such a thoughtful gesture on your part. You really didn’t have to go through all this trouble for an old man like me.”

  “It’s no bother,” I told him. “I’m just glad you like it. Cheers.”

  The wrinkles in his cheeks and eyes grew more pronounced as his smile broadened, and he quickly touched his cup to mine in good cheer, then took a swig of the sweet, creamy liquid inside. I followed suit, hiding my own smile behind the cup. It was only the first step—I still had to get in and out of this conversation without tipping him off that anything was amiss, and then reclaim his cup before I left—but I felt confident that I could do it.

  “Ahhh,” he exclaimed, smacking his lips together as he drew the cup away from his mouth. “That’s the stuff.” He set the cup down and pierced me with a canny look. “Now, I suppose you’re up here to explain yourself. Go ahead, I’m ready to hear it.”

  “Explain myself?” I repeated, the edges of panic starting to roil through me. Scipio help me, had Sage been spying on me? On us? Was he really behind everything, and did he know what we were up to? What if he took the drink because all those people I had passed were legacies, and he knew I wasn’t getting out of here?

  Had I just stumbled into a trap?

  “The DNA samples?” he drew out, giving me an encouraging nod. “The thirty or so samples that didn’t come back as matches to anyone in the Tower?”

  I blinked in surprise, but it only lasted a few seconds before the horror bled in. Of course he knew about the DNA samples. He was the head of the Medica, and all DNA testing happened there. The tech who had performed the tests had likely reported the oddity of all the samples being genetically related and had flagged it in the Medica’s system.

  But how did Sage know about it? Surely he had better things to do than monitor all flagged genetic specimens. There must have been hundreds of them passing through the Medica on a daily basis. I supposed it was possible he was on the lookout for anything odd that came through his department, but what if it was far more insidious than that? What if he was paranoid because he was a legacy? Hell, we were here to test him for just that.

  It was critical that I choose my words carefully. If he was a legacy, then he was trying to pump me for more information on what I was planning, and if this was a trap, getting out of it might depend on my answers. If I made any misstep at all, he would put two and two together, and warn the other legacies.

  “I actually wasn’t here to talk about that,” I told him, putting my cup down on the table and crossing my arms. “Can I ask how you found out about them?”

  He gave me a crooked smile. “You think any one of my people wouldn’t notify me of proof of undocs, especially in such a great number?” He frowned. “Why did you come here?”

  I gave him the prepared story, but quickly readied my next deflection, realizing he had a valid point—the medic who ran the tests would’ve notified him. “I was here to talk about the expulsion chambers. And the samples you’re talking about are part of an ongoing investigation.”

  “Into what?”

  I pressed my lips together into a thin line. “I’m not prepared to make an official statement yet.”

  “I see.” Sage went silent for a few seconds, and then nodded. “That is sensible, if slightly annoying. But then again, I’m an old man who really doesn’t have a lot of patience for these sorts of things. So, let me ask you this: Is the Tower in imminent danger?”

  I considered the question. The truth was yes and no, but if he was a legacy, telling him yes would immediately set off alarm bells, because it would indicate to him th
at I knew more than I should. But if I told him no, he would wonder why I was keeping it a secret. As usual, hedging was the best bet. “Not imminent, no. But yes, some danger does exist.”

  “And are you doing everything in your power to stop it?”

  “Of course,” I said, not bothering to lie. “It’s kind of the biggest part of my job.”

  He chuckled and nodded, his head bobbing up and down in duck-like fashion. “It is, at that,” he said. “You do realize, of course, that I have to report this to the council, however.”

  I sucked in a breath. “You do?” I asked, mildly surprised. “Why? I was planning to report it when I had something substantial.”

  “But you do have something substantial. You have proof that there are a considerable number of undocs running around the Tower. At least thirty of them, unless I miss my guess.”

  I sighed theatrically, trying to blend into my part. “You are not wrong,” I told him. “But I had hoped to keep that under wraps until I could round them up. More people knowing about them means more people potentially messing things up for my Knights.”

  “I understand that,” Sage said patiently. “But the fact remains that any proof of undocs roaming around the Tower needs to be brought to the attention of the council! They are a threat to our very way of life and are somehow able to avoid our sensors. That warrants some serious attention, not just from the Knights, but from IT as well.”

  I could already see where this was going, and realized I needed to stall him. Whatever his intentions—good or bad—it didn’t matter. If Sadie found out that I was looking into a large undoc group, she would know I was on to her and the others. It wouldn’t take long for her to get them mobilized, and she knew where I lived. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they turned around and killed us all to cover their tracks.

  “Sir, I appreciate your feelings on this, but I wonder if you could give me some more time. I have a suspicion that someone high up in another department is helping them, and I’d like to avoid embarrassing a department head by publicly exposing one of their direct inferiors if I happen to be right. Can you just give me another day or two to try to figure a few things out? Please?”

  Sage gave me a canny look that I wasn’t entirely sure how to perceive—like he knew exactly what I was doing—and then sighed and took another sip out of his cup before responding. “Do you really think a citizen of the Tower would help these loathsome creatures?”

  “I think it’s important not to rule anything out,” I replied coolly.

  “Wise words. Very well, I will hold off letting the council know until our next meeting, which I believe is in two days. Do you think you will have something concrete by then?”

  By then, I hoped to be marching everyone who was a part of the conspiracy into the Council Room to face justice.

  “Yes,” I replied, feeling light and hopeful. “I really do believe I will.”

  “Excellent. So now, about these expulsion chambers. What seems to be the problem?”

  “No problem, sir, just wanted to see if I could pick your brain about them more. But unfortunately our time is already up. I’m so sorry to come and go, but I’ve got a debriefing scheduled in about ten minutes.”

  “Of course, my dear,” he replied, waving his hand in the air. “By all means, do not let me get in the way of your duties. I’m just sorry that we didn’t get to talk about what you came to talk about. Next time, though, eh?”

  “Next time,” I agreed. “Are you finished with your drink? I can take your cup if you are.”

  It was risky asking for the cup directly, but given that they weren’t disposable, wanting it back wasn’t an unreasonable request. I just hoped he didn’t do anything crazy, like decide to wash it for me right then and there.

  He peered into his mug, eyeing the contents inside, and then lifted it to his lips and took several strong pulls until the cup was empty. “Exceptional,” he said, holding the cup out to me. “And thank you for your kindness. You spared me from doing any dishes—my most hated of all chores.”

  I forced a chuckle of agreement that I did not feel. I actually liked doing the dishes, but he didn’t need to know that. Besides, letting him think that I hated the chore as well went a long way to show how generous I was being doing it for him. It would tell him that I wanted his approval and put him more at ease.

  He held the cup out to me, and I took it, trying not to look too excited that he was handing me DNA that would prove or disprove his role in the legacies—or at least the undoc army—once and for all. It was hard not to flee from him afterward, propelled by a desire to start processing the test as quickly as possible, but I managed, giving him a polite farewell before heading back the way I had come.

  And with that, we had everything we needed to hopefully figure out who had been kidnapping women from the Tower and forcing them to have children to populate their army. Whoever he was, this patriarch of the family, he was controlling things in some way. I was sure of it.

  All we needed now was to do this DNA testing without him realizing it, figure out where the undocs were hiding now, and round them up—along with all of Sadie’s spies—without drawing Sadie’s attention, and then present them to the council.

  Easy peasy.

  35

  The next meeting I had was with yet another department head, and though I wasn’t quite as nervous as I had been with Sage, I was still slightly apprehensive. Because Sage was an unknown, but the danger from Lacey Green was very real.

  Lacey was a legacy from a different family, one working to protect Scipio. And our relationship was rocky at best. She had blackmailed me and my friends into protecting her cousin Ambrose, and we had failed. She wanted us to find the men responsible, and every day that passed without us taking anything tangible to her was another day that she lost her patience. She still had evidence that proved we had tampered with Scipio’s code to get away with murder, and she was going to use it if I didn’t come through for her.

  But now I was going to give her what she wanted; it was half the reason I had requested the meeting in person. It just required her to give me something as well—not only by adding her forces to my own so we could arrest every legacy as quickly as possible, but also information about Kurt, the fragment AI her family had stolen in an attempt to save him from the other legacies.

  It was risky to confront her on this—she would no doubt kill to keep Kurt’s existence a secret—but we didn’t have a choice. Bringing a case against not one, but two council members, along with over a hundred people, meant exposing what they had done to both the council and Scipio, and the fragments were essential if we wanted to prove that they were guilty. I hoped that once they started testifying, Scipio would finally be forced to acknowledge the damage to his own code. At which point we could start making progress toward putting the Tower back on track.

  I glanced around at the four men and women surrounding Maddox and me—Lacey’s escort—and then back at the hall ahead of me, trying to guess at what Lacey’s reaction to all this would be. The halls were largely deserted, as Lacey had invited us during the middle of a work shift in this section, and that made the entire sub-level feel oddly imposing. Like it was threatening to engulf us.

  I tried to shake the feeling away, reminding myself that we had good news for Lacey. We could finally give her the people who had killed her cousin. We had uncovered, in one of Sadie’s files, the identities of the six individuals who had attacked him, as well as several others who had caused us problems during the Tourney. A few of them were now safely entrenched in different departments, their faces modified by plastic surgery, but the bulk of them were still with the undoc forces, awaiting plastic surgery before they could be reassigned.

  While we didn’t have the location for the undocs yet, I was still hopeful that I could get it from Liam. He didn’t seem to like the people he was related to any more than we did, and I was praying that I could somehow exploit that to get him to tell us where we could find
his family. I didn’t want to have to resort to other measures to extract the information from him, like uploading Leo into his brain to find out what he knew.

  Maybe we’d catch a break, and Dylan or Eric would find something out while they were following Plancett or Dreyfuss.

  Either way, I was going to find the information I needed before I could make this plan a reality, and I was going to need Lacey’s and Praetor Strum’s help executing it. Which was why I had requested a meeting with Lacey right after my meeting with Sage.

  We turned left down one of the side passages and were faced with rows and rows of doors that I knew led to apartments. The halls here were poorly lit compared to the lights of the rest of the Tower, the UV lights flickering periodically, and I frowned when I saw that, wondering why the problem hadn’t been fixed yet. Cogstown prided itself on having everything functioning in their department, so it seemed odd and out of place that they would have ignored this.

  The lead man stopped at an apartment about halfway down and turned around to face us. “In here,” he said with a brusque nod.

  “Thanks,” I replied dryly. I knew from a previous meeting with Lacey that this wouldn’t be her apartment, but one of her workers’, borrowed at random so she could host clandestine exchanges such as these. I hit the button on the door, and it opened automatically, skipping the normal security scan.

  I stepped through the door into a small hallway, which deposited me into a living area that clearly didn’t belong to a family unit. The entire living area was antiseptic, devoid of the small touches that made a place a home. So this was dormitory housing, where young Cogs were placed until they started families of their own.