The Girl Who Dared to Rise

by Bella Forrest

  And I might be able to get a read on them to see if they knew more than they were letting on.

  I began to speak, carefully summarizing the trial but revealing the fact that Devon’s crime was tampering with Scipio, and manipulating decisions from the great machine. That part of the trial hadn’t been revealed in detail—only that Devon had been found guilty of sedition against the Tower. The council had decided that giving away more than that could start a panic, and redacted it from the public transcripts. The expectation was that neither Leo nor I would reveal it either.

  Whoops.

  My mom’s eyes narrowed, and my dad’s mouth flattened into a thin line that practically disappeared behind his beard. But I went on, as planned, fudging the truth about Scipio asking me for help (it was really Leo), and prepared myself to talk about Ambrose’s death. But my father never let me get that far.

  “I will not tolerate this any longer,” he said, slamming his fist onto the table. “You will tell no more of these blasphemies to anyone, or I will arrest you for sedition and terrorism.”

  “Silas,” my mother chided, alarmed.

  I ignored her, meeting my father’s gaze head on. “Go ahead and do that. But don’t come running to me when Scipio finally dies and this whole Tower gets thrown into the dark like Requiem Day. Because that’s what will happen if you ignore this, Father.”

  “Enough!” he shouted, standing up so quickly that his chair went flying.

  “No, it’s not enough,” I shouted back, also rising to my feet. “Because you know where you and your precious Knights will be?! Right here in your precious Citadel, sealed in and slowly suffocating to death. Along with everyone else! So go ahead, take me to the prisons, expel me like you have so many others. Oh, did I mention that law, the one letting you kill those poor little undesirable ones you hate so much, was the one that Devon manipulated? Did you know that Scipio never wanted those poor people to die, but only agreed to it because—”

  My father had apparently had enough, because his hand snapped out and grabbed a fistful of my robe and undershirt in a tight grip, jerking me hard. My hips slammed into the edge of the table, but my hands were already reacting, my adrenaline surging from the snapping rage that had come over me, and I slammed my hand into the inside of his elbow and dragged his forearm toward me. My other arm snapped out, hand open, driving my palm into his nose with the full force of my body. There was a sharp snap, and my father released my clothes as he staggered back with a howl. I let him go, and his hands immediately went to his nose, trying to catch the blood that was now streaming out of it at an alarming rate.

  I was shaking like a leaf, terrified of what he was about to do. My muscles screamed for me to press the attack, but my instincts told me to run away as quickly as possible. I’d never fought back against my father, and he had a terrible temper at the best of times. I wasn’t sure I could hold my own—but I wasn’t going to let him manhandle me anymore.

  He spat out a curse as he gingerly touched his nose, then snatched his fingers back with a pained groan. I tensed as he straightened, turning on me with dark, heavy eyes that promised violence. “You stupid—”

  “That’s enough, Silas!” my mother shouted angrily, and my father froze, the anger in his face draining away with the blood dripping from his nose. “You’re lucky Liana only broke your nose. I was going to break your arm if you didn’t let go of her.”

  My head reeled as her words made it through my agitated state, and I relaxed a fraction of an inch, watching her from the corner of my eye. She had stood up as well, and was now looking at my father like he was a rust hawk egg that needed to be crushed under her boot.

  “Holly, you can’t actually believe all this! She’s a liar, and she’s trying to pull off this whole ‘Scipio’s chosen’ thing to add to her standing in the Tourney. She’s always been opportunistic, lazy, and filled with excuses, and this latest prank is nothing short of an attempt to—”

  My mother hit him. More specifically, she rammed her fist so hard into his jaw that he went down in a twisting spill, slamming against the wall halfway down. My eyes widened, and I met my mom’s gaze. Her eyes, hot and heavy with anger, lightened a touch when she looked at me, and then darkened again when my father made a sound.

  “Go home, Liana,” she said, her voice carrying a dangerous note of warning in it. “I will net you later. Your father and I need to have a few words.”

  My heart beat like a steady, rhythmic drum in my chest. I had no idea what I’d just witnessed, but every cell in my body was telling me to heed my mother’s command, so I left—quickly and wordlessly, and with barely a look over my shoulder.

  9

  Every step I took back to my apartment was filled with the image of my mother hitting my father. My father falling. The look in both their eyes.

  If this was a ploy, it was a very good one. It played perfectly to me—the idea of one parent finally standing up for me over another was one I had entertained constantly when I was younger. Although, I had never imagined it being that violent before.

  Then it hit me all over again: my mother hit my father. For me. Because he was attacking me.

  Scipio help me, but I found myself wanting to believe that my mother’s intentions were good. That somehow, in the mess of things that had happened to me, she had finally come around to the idea of accepting me for me.

  This was just too weird. And yet another thing on my plate that I wasn’t… that I couldn’t… Oh, hell. If I was perfectly honest with myself, it was something I wouldn’t think about yet. And possibly not for a while. I needed… space from what had just happened, and I couldn’t just let myself blithely accept that my mother had really come around. I’d waited for almost twenty-one years for her to do so. I could be patient for just a little while longer.

  Besides, I had other problems that took priority. Ones that required my immediate attention. And I’d put them off for way too long already. I wanted to know how Zoe’s conversation had gone with Lacey. I needed to see the data we had collected on Tian. I had to get us moving forward, even if it was at a hobbled pace.

  I entered the apartment as soon as the scanner gave me access, and found everyone, excluding Maddox, seated in the living room looking at their pads. They were so engrossed in what they were doing that initially, no one noticed me standing there.

  “What are you looking at?” I asked softly.

  I hadn’t meant to frighten them, but I should’ve made some noise or something, because Zoe practically jumped out of her skin getting to her feet, and Eric and Quess weren’t that far behind her. Only Leo willfully remained seated, his eyes flicking up to me as soon as I started speaking. He had no other outward reaction, and that made me feel inexplicably nervous.

  “Scipio save me,” Zoe groaned as soon as she realized it was me. She doubled over to put her hands on her knees and suck in deep, calming breaths. “You scared me half to death, Liana.”

  “I’m sorry,” I replied, already contrite. “I really didn’t mean to scare you. I should’ve… I should’ve known better.”

  “That’s okay,” she said, straightening back up and tossing her long hair over her shoulder. “Just… How did it go with your parents?”

  I opened my mouth and then shut it. “Really weird,” I replied. “And… I took a bit of a risk and told them about Scipio’s condition.”

  Zoe’s jaw dropped, Eric frowned, Leo drew his brows together, and Quess stood there, frozen.

  “Why did you do that?” Leo asked, not as alarmed as the others. “I thought you were concerned your parents could be assisting the legacies by putting Devon’s Lieutenant up as Champion.”

  I licked my lips. Honestly, I had no real reason other than “my dad pissed me off, so I started to tell him to wipe that smug look off of his face”. My only saving grace was that I had put some forethought into what I told them, with the idea of gauging their reactions to see if I could trust them. With extremely mixed results.

  “I�
�m not going to lie to you: it was an in-the-moment type of decision, but I watered it down immensely. I basically told them that Scipio himself was telling me what to do. My dad didn’t handle it well, and my mom… Well… She didn’t like that my dad didn’t handle it well.”

  Zoe blinked, slowly picking her jaw up off the floor until her mouth was closed. “Are you okay?”

  “I am really sick of hearing that question,” I replied honestly. I seriously didn’t want to think about me or my problems anymore. “Listen, the craziness with my parents aside, I wanted to say that I’m sorry for running away earlier. It was wrong.”

  “Whoa,” Eric said, holding up his hand to stop me. “Okay, I don’t often say much during our meetings, because I know my place. I’m not a genius like Zoe, Quess, or Leo, and I don’t have much in the way of physical skills like Maddox and Tian. But this time I have to say something. Liana, you have nothing to apologize for. You needed time to get yourself straightened out, and you took it. All of us understand.”

  I frowned. “You do?” If I had been in their shoes and our leader had just walked out on us rather than helping solve our problems, I would’ve probably been infuriated.

  Zoe looked at me like I had suddenly grown a second head. “Liana, I love you, but get over it. We realize that there is a lot of pressure on you, and we weren’t helping with that. But your self-doubt is only taking up valuable time that we could be using to fix our problems.”

  My cheeks flushed, but I was glad she had called me out. I should have let them know in the first place what I needed. I just wanted to give them the best parts of me always, so that I didn’t let them down. They relied on me, and I wanted them to feel safe. But part of that meant being honest with them at all times, even when it came to my feelings.

  “Right,” I said. “What are we tackling now?”

  “Tian,” Zoe said, holding out a data crystal. “This was all of the evidence Lacey’s people could find at the scene. They’ve already had it analyzed.”

  I accepted the data crystal, but held off on asking any questions until I had looked it over. I wanted to see what conclusions I could draw on my own, before comparing it to whatever theories the group had. I also had an equally important question to ask Zoe.

  “So you talked to Lacey?” I asked.

  She nodded, her pouty lips flattening slightly. “I did. It’s why she sent over the information on Tian. But she wouldn’t give us any information on how to unlock the legacy net. She said, and I quote, ‘Liana can have access to it as soon as she becomes Champion and catches Ambrose’s murderers, and not a second before.’ But she did admit that there are protections on it to block certain memories from being remembered past the initial moment of disclosure.”

  A flash of disappointment and sullen anger ripped through me, and I struggled to control my breathing. Lacey had given me the legacy net, which not only contained information about the world as it had been before the End, but also held tangent memories of things experienced by its previous owners. The design was significantly different from that of the nets being created today, in that the legacy nets stored massive amounts of data regarding the pre-End world. They also had the ability to record the memories of their users, which was how the legacy families working against Scipio managed to continue their relentless assaults on him over the ages, picking up where their fathers and mothers had left off.

  Having access to some of the memories from Lacey’s forebearers would help shine a light on what her group’s motivations were when it came to Scipio—and without that, I was blind to what Lacey and her people had been doing to help the Tower. I felt in my soul that I would have also found information critical to Leo’s mission buried on the net.

  Without that information, or a way to access it, our investigation was somewhat stalled.

  We knew Jasper, the AI fragment I had met in the Medica before I even met Leo, had been transferred to the head of the IT Department’s terminal. But breaking into the Core to try to access Sadie Monroe’s personal computer was a suicide mission at this point. Security in the entire Tower had undoubtedly been tightened, especially in the Core.

  Which was another problem for another time. I needed access to the legacy net, and if Lacey wasn’t willing to give it to me, I’d have to find another way in.

  “Quess, Leo, do you guys think you can take a shot at unlocking the legacy net?” I asked, looking between the two men.

  Quess leaned forward, a small frown on his lips. “I could try, but only with Leo’s help,” he said cautiously. “I haven’t had a chance to study it up close yet, so I’m a little concerned about damaging it.”

  “I’d be happy to help you,” Leo said. “I have no small amount of knowledge regarding the earlier versions of the net, and I am certain that we could figure out what they did to modify it.”

  “Go ahead and get started,” I replied. “I’ll be right back.” I ran back to my room to where my uniform was still lying on the floor, quickly got dressed, and then returned to main room, where everyone was waiting for me. I pulled a plastic case from a small pocket on my thigh, and handed it to Leo. The white chip practically glowed against the dark fabric it was nestled inside of, pressed tight under the clear plastic lid of the case. Quess accepted it, and then reached into a small satchel and began pulling wires and objects out of it, handing a few to Leo to untangle.

  “Now,” I said. “Since I took Quess and Leo off the investigation with Tian, I’ll just—” I stopped short when I noticed Zoe giving me a pointed look. “What?”

  Zoe licked her lips and exhaled, glancing at the three men, and then back to me. “There was more that Lacey wanted me to tell you. Basically, she said that if you don’t win, you’d better die trying.”

  From the tone in her voice, Lacey had meant it, too. Poor Lacey.

  “Noted,” I said softly. I looked at the three guys. “I know I didn’t consult with you about the Tourney, but—”

  “Liana, we got it,” Quess said, slowly sinking back into his place on the floor, wires in hand. “It’ll be good for us. You’ll be the Champion, which means that a lot of our problems will get a whole lot easier. You can reroute Knights so that they don’t catch us after awesome raids for the parts that we need to escape the Tower. It’ll be epic. Let’s just please find Tian first.” He picked up the pad he had been using before and started plugging some of the wires into it, clearly done with the conversation.

  I stared at him for a few seconds, amazed at how quickly they were taking things in stride. On the one hand, awesome—a little bit of guilt gone. On the other…

  Nope. It wasn’t the time to get all introspective and mopey. Quess and Zoe were right; no more apologies, no more overthinking. I just needed to focus on doing whatever we could to find Tian. That I could do.

  I went to my room to fetch my pad, then joined the others in the living room. I sat down, attached the data crystal, and began downloading the files. Somewhere inside them was a clue that might lead us to Tian. I just had to go through the files, reconstruct the scene, and see what sprang out.

  I clicked on the folder as soon as the data stick finished downloading, and then blinked when I saw the files. There were at least a hundred of them, if not more. That was a lot to take in, but I was resolved to help. So I started opening files.

  I quickly began to get lost in the technical jargon within the reports. There was all sorts of information on the victims (with pictures attached), most of it medical, but some of it talking about radiation in their clothes. I struggled to read it, trying to puzzle out what it was saying, but quickly gave up and moved on.

  The next few files were crude drawings depicting the trajectory of the weapon as it was used, based on a study of the bodies and the wounds. There were also several reports regarding trace findings of a gallium alloy on either side of the cut area. I didn’t know what that meant, but the trajectory was interesting, as was the floor plan of the condensation room that came with it. I studied the image wit
h the trajectory, my eyes tracing over the confines of the room where we had found the bodies. It wasn’t very big—maybe thirty feet by fifteen—and had several obstructions in the middle of it that provided some cover. There were three ways in and out, if you didn’t count up.

  From the report attached, the investigator seemed to conclude that the four people who had been in pursuit of Tian had entered the same way we had—by climbing up the ladder next to Greenery 7. They had entered the room in question, likely in pursuit of her.

  Regardless, once they entered, they were attacked from behind. The person on the left had gone down first, and then the man to his right. The third and fourth had managed to find cover, but the third had gone down shortly after. The last one had almost made it to the exit before he was similarly dismembered.

  The next two deaths were Lacey’s men, who had entered from a different direction, and had likely split up to check around the machinery in the middle. They were killed before they made it halfway across the room, cut down by the same weapon that had gotten all the others.

  The footprints Leo and I had found led through the third exit, deeper into the condensation room.

  I considered the information, and then sighed. None of this told me where Tian was or who had killed those people, and I couldn’t help but feel like I was missing something.

  I closed up the blueprints and began scrolling through the images. I avoided any featuring severed body parts, instead focusing on the evidence that Lacey’s people had gathered on the attacker.