“No, it’s not! Run! She can’t control what she’s doing!”
She? Man, this was getting weirder and weirder. But I couldn’t do much with that weapon trained on me, so I said nothing, and waited. Why was it taking so long? Where was that owner of the other voice I had heard, and why wasn’t she in here calling the shots?
“Orders confirmed. Kill the Knight.”
“What? NO!” Tian screamed, kicking her legs frantically.
I stared up at the weapon in the thing’s hand, time spinning into slow motion as a single point of light bloomed in the seam between the two flat parts. I threw myself back behind the counter—but knew that it was already too late.
That weapon, if it was the same one from the condensation room, would cut through the counter like butter to get me.
Before I was even fully behind the counter, though, the sentinel jerked one leg up into the air and interrupted the action. Tian screamed as a beam of crimson light streaked over my head into the corner, shooting up sparks as it hit the ceiling above, and leaving a trail of red, molten metal in its wake. And then the entire floor shook as the sentinel—four hundred and fifty pounds of metal—crashed onto the floor in the kitchen.
I jerked to my feet, shaken, but a quick check of my arms and limbs confirmed that the blast from the weapon hadn’t hit me. “Grab Tian!” I shouted to my brother as I came flying around the counter. I was going to take its weapon; if it was that powerful, maybe it could cut through the sentinel’s limbs.
Alex suddenly appeared, bent over, and yanked a dazed Tian from the sentinel’s arm. The sentinel lay there stunned, and I stepped closer, swallowing my fear. Its arms and legs twitched and jerked, gears whirring internally as it tried to move. The hand holding the weapon was lifting up and down, but I quickly jammed my baton into the thing’s face and released the charge.
The sentinel seized up, and there was a harsh pop, followed by a bright spark from its mouth. I held the baton there until the charge was expended, and the sentinel collapsed back on the floor, the glow in its eyes shutting off. I withdrew my baton and quickly bent over to grab the only thing I could: the flat bar that made the mouth of the weapon.
I started tugging, trying to wrest the object from the sentinel’s grip, and I heard Alex grunt, followed by a skidding sound. A quick glance showed me that he was already carrying Tian away from the kitchen. “Get Mercury!” I told him before resuming my attempt to get the weapon away from it. An inch of it slipped out of the closed fist. That was a start.
I placed my foot on its wrist and continued to tug, fighting its powerful grip.
“Liana?” Tian said softly. Alex hadn’t left yet.
“Not a good time, sweetie,” I said, gritting my teeth. The weapon gave another fraction of an inch. Almost there.
“Liana. Stop what you’re doing right now.”
The note of urgency in her voice brought me up short, and I looked up to see the little girl staring at us both with alarmed eyes.
Then I got the distinct impression that I was being watched. I looked down at the sentinel’s face, which was inches away from my foot, and saw that its eyes were now glowing again, only this time it was an angry lilac color—and it was glaring at me. I barely had a moment to register that before it shoved the hand I was gripping forward, driving it into my chest. Hard.
I stumbled back, my breath exploding violently out of my lungs, and hit the counter behind me. I fought to keep calm, though my body was screaming at me that I was suffocating, and opened my eyes in time to see it kick off its back into a standing position, facing me.
It brought its arm up, leveled at me, and without thinking, I dove in between its wide legs, ducking under the cloak it was wearing and rolling forward to my feet. Relying purely on instinct, I jumped up and over the counter, trying to put some distance and objects between us.
Alex was already two steps in front of me, Tian in his arms, and he threw himself down into the lowered sitting area, taking cover behind one of the sofas. I followed, leaping for it rather than running, and hit a center table with a crash, bouncing and rolling off of it into a couch. I opened my eyes to see the sentinel marching out from behind the counter, and slid into the gap between the couch and low table. I pushed the edge of the table up, creating cover behind it, and then cowered below it.
Seconds later, streaks of crimson fire shot over us, across the room, in bursts. Sparks exploded from the impact sites, showering down on us, and I covered my face with my hands, trying not to get singed by the hot, molten slag.
“Hey!” my brother shouted, and I looked over to where he was hiding behind the other couch to see Tian scrambling out from where he had curled protectively around her.
“Tian!” I shouted, but she slipped away, heading up the stairs toward the sentinel.
“Jang-Mi, STOP!” she screamed as she reached the top. I slid out from behind the table in time to see her come to a stop in front of the sentinel, both arms raised and legs spread wide.
The sentinel immediately ceased using its weapon and looked down at the small girl, who was nodding encouragingly.
“Your mission here is done.”
The sentinel was still for several seconds, and then suddenly sprang into motion, picking Tian up with one hand and placing her on its shoulder. Then it began to run—and I did mean run—out of the room. It was gone before I could even think to stand up.
I stared after it for a long moment. “What the hell just happened?” I asked no one in particular.
15
My brother coughed and slowly picked himself off of the floor. “That was insane,” he said, shaking his head and dusting off his dark gray uniform. I noticed that his hands were shaking, and went over to him immediately.
“Alex?” I said, reaching out tentatively and placing a hand on his shoulder. “Are you hurt?”
He looked up at me, his eyes large. “No,” he said harshly, running a hand over his body. “No, I’m fine. I’m…” He trailed off and looked around the room. “Whoa.”
I looked up and followed his gaze. The walls of the apartment were still glowing with heat from where the weapon’s blade had hit them, and bore the brunt of dozens of long slashes that cut through the dark metal. Pictures and shelves had been ripped apart, and debris now littered the floor. The entire place looked like it had been turned inside out, which was a shame—Mercury had had a nice home. Before.
Mercury! I turned toward the hall, my heart pounding. The door at the end was still there, but had been partially cut through before Alex and I had lured the sentinel out. A quick scan showed me that there was nobody else there; the owner of the mysterious voice must have either slipped out while we were hiding, or been absent from the start. Perhaps they had been talking through a speaker?
I didn’t know, but that could mean reinforcements were close behind. The sentinel was clearly being monitored. It had waited for orders to kill me before trying to—and I hadn’t heard the order come through like I had heard that other voice. Did that mean that there was something inside of its programming, or its head, making it able to fight off the compulsion to kill? Or did it merely need the order before it would act?
What had it said? I thought back, trying to untangle the web of events that were jumbled up in my memory, and remember.
It came to me seconds later: Cover your eyes, Yu-Na.
I licked my lips. Tian had called the sentinel Jang-Mi. Was that its name? It made sense, in the context that Tian had used it, but why would a sentinel have a name, and why would Tian think talking to it would make it see reason? Was she talking to it… or whoever was controlling it?
The questions kept coming, but without Tian there to answer them, there was nothing I could do about it in the moment. They would have to remain unanswered until we could track the sentinel down again.
Speaking of which… I left my brother and climbed the three steps up out of the sunken floor that had partially shielded us, heading for the door. This one was muc
h sturdier than the ones in the Citadel, but still had a line cut through it almost halfway down. Hardened metal hung in rivulets along the side of the gash, and through it, I could see the narrowest slice of a bedroom. I pressed the button on the side, but was unsurprised when it didn’t open.
I placed my mouth near the hole and said, “Mercury? It’s Liana. The sentinel is gone. You can come out now.”
There was a rustling noise, and I peered through the hole, trying to catch a glimpse of the mysterious Mercury. Dinah Velasquez. A half dozen images of what she must look like danced through my head, and I settled on a middle-aged woman with dark brown hair and eyes and pale skin. Mysterious and probably much taller than me.
A shadow passed over the hole, and a moment later the door began dragging to one side. It stopped halfway, the ridges of once-heated-and-now-cooled metal preventing it from sliding into the narrow sheath in the side.
The gap was still wide enough for a person to squeeze through, and that was what Dinah did, easing out sideways into the hall.
I backed up to give her a little room, and couldn’t help but gape when she came fully into view, several things becoming apparent at once.
Dinah was old. In her mid-sixties to early seventies, easy. Straight white hair with silver streaks hung down her back, cutting a sharp contrast against the dark gray of her suit. Slim wire spectacles sat in front of her eyes but did nothing to disguise the wrinkles, some of which almost connected to the lines around her mouth. Some women, like Astrid, grew softer and rounder when they aged, but not Dinah. She had gone the other direction, her body painfully thin and frail looking, even under her uniform. Her eyes, however, told a different story; they were a dark hunter’s green, sharp, and filled with an intellectual gleam.
The second thing I noticed was that she was short. Much shorter than me—probably by about six inches, putting her at about five feet even. Yet that didn’t seem to bring her any pause as she regarded me, her chin lifting up to give me a judgmental look.
“What took you so long?” she snapped before brushing past me.
That was when I noticed the third thing: a black cane in her right hand, and a pronounced limp in her gait. I looked down at her legs, and realized that one of her feet was deformed. It was pointed inward, toward her other leg, which forced her to step sideways on the appendage.
It clicked. That was why Dinah had insisted she couldn’t leave. Because, well, she couldn’t. If she had tried to run for it with that limb and her advanced years, the sentinel would’ve caught up to her easily in the halls.
Thank Scipio we had gotten to her in time.
I took a moment to enjoy the small measure of relief, and then put it aside. Mer… Dinah had some explaining to do—namely, how the sentinel had found her.
I followed her into the living area, moving up next to her when she stopped to survey the damage. “Did you have to go and piss it off?” she groused after a moment, canting her head up at me.
“Sorry,” I said automatically, immediately contrite under the heavy weight of her gaze. I could only imagine what she had gone through waiting for us, and while it wasn’t my fault that it had taken us time to get up there, I still felt bad. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” she snapped. She lifted and dropped her shoulders in a small, uncomfortable wiggle. “Embarrassed. I hadn’t intended for us to meet this way.”
“How had you intended it?”
“On the day we left the Tower, and not a second before,” she replied quickly. “Hello, Alex.”
“Hey, Dinah,” my brother said from where he was kneeling over some books that had been cut in half by the blast. Then he shifted slightly, his eyes darting up to mine in an expression that read I have no idea what to say to this woman.
“Dinah, how did this happen? How did it find you?”
Her mouth pinched tighter. “I made a mistake,” she admitted begrudgingly after a moment. “I started running the search on your little sentinel without realizing that the powers that be had decided it would be a good idea to give them anti-tampering software that allowed them to track down ‘unauthorized’ individuals trying to locate them.”
My eyes widened at that information, and my stomach churned. “Why would they do something like that? Seems a bit—”
“Overcautious?” Dinah said, twitching an eyebrow. “I don’t know. The rationale didn’t come in the report I read.” She stared at the remains of her door, glowering. “What a mess.”
Her mutter was delivered with anger and exhaustion, and I could sense that the older woman was beginning to come down from the adrenaline that had been surging through her during the event. Soon she was going to get sleepy, her body craving rest to help push the traumatic experience out.
Not to mention, this place was going to be crawling with Inquisition agents at any moment. We would only have a narrow window to talk before Alex and I had to get out of here. Our presence would attract a lot of unwanted attention, and Alex was already being monitored by the head of their department, Sadie Monroe. The last thing we wanted to do was bring her attention onto Dinah.
“Dinah,” I said, catching the older woman’s attention. She blinked and turned her head toward me. “We’re going to have to go soon,” I informed her gently. “Otherwise people will know that we’re working together.”
Her mouth tightened, but she nodded. “Of course.” She looked around the room. “Where’s Tian?”
Now it was my turn for my mouth to go taut. “It still has her.”
“She went with it willingly,” my brother corrected. “She somehow managed to get it to stop. If she hadn’t… I’m pretty sure it would’ve killed us.”
My fist tightened. My brother had a point. Tian clearly had some sort of relationship with the thing. But what and how and why? What had happened to her in the condensation department? How had she managed to befriend it? Why was it keeping her and not letting her go? And who was controlling it in the first place?
Regardless of any of that, though, we needed to find her. And there was only one way to do that.
“Dinah, can you find a way to track this thing without it getting traced back to you?”
She scoffed and shook her head. “Oh no, dearie, I am not tracking that thing again. Do you see my home? It’s too dangerous, Liana.”
“But Tian—”
“Is doing better than we are,” Dinah cut in. “She apparently has a five-hundred-pound block of metal monster protecting her.”
“And keeping her hostage!” I retorted, frustrated. “Plus, that thing is being controlled by someone, possibly the same person who killed Ambrose.” It was a leap, but not much of one in my mind. I found it difficult to believe that there was a third, unknown group, working against both whoever Devon’s allies had been and Lacey’s people as well. I couldn’t prove it, but I knew it in my gut.
“Ambrose is dead, and to be honest, he was never really my problem. You and the others are, but I’m beginning to wonder if any of you are worth it. You’re running around doing your precious Tourney and getting caught up in… whatever the hell is going on in the Tower. You uncover problems with Scipio, but then you don’t follow through on them! And we’re no closer to any plan of escape than we were when Roark was alive!”
I swallowed and looked at her, and at the anger in her eyes. She wanted to escape, and to her, I was dragging my feet. She had every right to be angry—but we didn’t have the time for it.
Besides, a lot of that crap had been forced onto me, partially because of her actions. She had been the one who introduced me to Lacey and Strum in the first place, thus getting me in this whole mess to begin with, so I couldn’t feel too bad.
“Dinah, I don’t know what to say to that,” I said. “But it’s a moot point. We’re here now, dealing with this mess, and I need a way to track down this sentinel. Can you help me?”
She sucked in a deep breath and then held her cane out to me, balancing carefully on her twisted limb. I accepted it, and a sec
ond later her pad was in her hand, her fingers flying across it as screen after screen of complex coding popped up. She swirled her finger around, making the screens shift to one place or another as she examined them.
“Yes,” she said finally, clicking the pad off and slipping it back into her uniform. She held her hand out for her cane, snapping her fingers impatiently when I didn’t get it to her fast enough, and then settled a part of her weight back onto it with a relieved sigh. “I can write a code that can be uploaded into the relay stations in the Tower, which would prevent it from tracking you, while allowing you to scan for its location. Will that do?”
I nodded. “It will, thank you.” I licked my lips. “Will you be okay here?”
“I’ll be perfectly fine,” she snapped, her eyes narrowing. “I can have some people here to fix the door in a matter of hours, and I’ve got a few Inquisitors in my pocket. Besides, I doubt the sentinel will be back. Whoever is controlling it is too smart for that.”
Controlling it. My mind drifted back to the fight in the kitchen—the speed with which the sentinel had reacted. If it was being controlled by someone, wouldn’t there have been a delay in its response time? The user needed time to receive the images from the sentinel, and then input the instructions, right?
So how had it moved so quickly at the end there? It had received orders, but I supposed that whatever they had done to program it allowed it to have some autonomy—it was the only explanation. It waited for the orders, but once it received them, it decided how to execute them.
And that made it twice as dangerous, as its reaction times were far superior to those of a human’s.
“Dinah, did you see or hear anyone else in your apartment after it broke in?”
Dinah gave me a sideways look, her white brows drawing together. “No,” she said. “Why?”
I bit my lip, thinking. If there had been someone nearby, watching, then that could explain how it had reacted so quickly. There was that voice I had heard in the hall, but there was no sign that anyone else had been here. Unless…
The Girl Who Dared to Rise Page 13