“Alex?” I asked, looking at him and ignoring Dinah’s question for a second. “Did you notice anyone in the hall when you passed it, going into the kitchen?”
He frowned and shook his head. “I looked down it, but there wasn’t anybody there. Why?”
I rubbed my eyes, suddenly very tired. Maybe I was wrong about this. What the hell did I know about a sentinel, or how fast it could move? They had been built long before my time, and all I had were the reports in my history book to guide me.
Still, everything about this entire exchange had been off, in more ways than one, and it wasn’t sitting well with me. We needed answers.
“Never mind,” I said, shaking my head. “I just… I’m trying to figure this out. Dinah, pass the file and instructions for tracking the sentinel over to Quess as soon as possible. Alex, we should get out of here before the Inquisition gets here.”
“Right,” he said. He paused, looking at Dinah. “It’s, um, nice to meet you.”
Dinah gave him a withering smile. “You’ll be seeing a lot more of me,” she said primly. “Now that you know who I am, I’m having you transferred into my group.”
I frowned. She could do that?
More importantly, would it be safer for him to be closer to Dinah? Sadie Monroe was already watching him because of me, and if Dinah suddenly pulled him into her… mysterious department…
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Alex asked, and I could tell he was already thinking along the same lines. “Sadie is having me watched, and—”
“You let me worry about Sadie. I alone have the ability to pull rank on her, and now that you’re in my department, you’re under my protection.”
I blinked. She had the ability to—
The words came sputtering out of me; my thoughts and shock eliminated the filter I usually kept between my thoughts and mouth. “You have the ability to override Sadie Monroe?!” I sputtered, incredulous. “How?”
“I run a shadow security department, meant to be a review board to every decision the CEO makes that affects Scipio’s programming. We’re the programming ethics committee, essentially, responsible for making sure each decision made in the name of efficiency isn’t also affecting his other, emotional protocols.”
There was another round of blinking, as I was robbed of all my words for several seconds, trying to wrap my head around what she was saying. “You make sure that Scipio’s feelings don’t get hurt when you’re forced to change his programming?”
Dinah chuckled derisively. “Something like that. Anyway, don’t worry about your brother. I’ll convince Sadie I can keep a better eye on him while giving him a research job. That’ll lead her to believe that he won’t have programming privileges, which will go a long way toward making her relax. I’ll have to give her reports, of course, most of which will be lies, and we might have to feed her a scheduled meeting here and there between the two of you, just so she can have something to listen in on to put her mind at ease. Just have dinner with your family or something, and keep the conversation light and topical.”
Alex and I exchanged wide-eyed looks. “Uhhh…”
“Or go to dinner with each other and talk about things,” she snapped impatiently, slamming her cane into the ground. “What do I have to do, come up with everything? Figure it out for yourselves, and just realize this will be a thing, all right? I’ll keep Sadie off your brother’s back, and give him a little more freedom to work!”
She stopped, glaring at us both, and then sucked in a deep breath. “Now get out of here. The Inquisition is no doubt on their way, and you two aren’t supposed to be here.”
I wanted to stay and question her more about my brother’s safety, but I knew she was right. What was more, if Alex was caught having brought me to this level, Sadie would toss him out long before Dinah could fill out the transfer request form.
We had to go. Now.
16
My brother and I were forced to say a hasty goodbye due to the growing pandemonium around the Core, and I hurried home as quickly as possible, my mind replaying the events with Tian and the sentinel. There was something more going on there—I was certain of it. And now, more than ever, we needed to find her.
If only so we could get a few answers.
Excited by the prospect of telling my friends that Tian was alive, I rushed into my apartment, eagerly searching the interior for my friends. The funeral was probably still going on, so I doubted they were here, but still I looked.
To my surprise, they were here. I felt a moment of confusion, and then realized that they had probably come back here when I hadn’t turned back up after leaving. I was more surprised to see that Zoe and Eric were here as well. Zoe was standing by the table, her fist pressed to her lips, with Leo standing opposite her, his own arms folded across his chest. Maddox was lying down on the couch, a pillow under her head, while Quess and Eric sat in the easy chairs opposite her, with their backs to me.
Maddox spotted me first, and her green eyes narrowed slightly. She heaved herself upright, still moving a bit gingerly, and said, “Liana’s back.”
Everyone swiveled their heads around, and suddenly five sets of eyes were staring at me.
“Oh, thank Scipio,” Zoe exhaled, shaking her head in relief.
“See, I told you she’d be fine,” Quess said smugly. I wasn’t entirely sure who he was talking to—it could’ve been the entire room for all I knew—but I was grateful for the show of support. Although why I needed it was still a bit of a mystery. But that could wait; I had more important news.
“Of course I’m fine,” I said. “But I need to tell you about—”
“Oh no, you don’t,” Zoe exclaimed, her brows furrowing. “Don’t change the subject! Where were you? You just ran off, and you didn’t tell anyone where you were going! Leo and Maddox searched for fifteen minutes before they called me—concerned, I might add—and I ordered them back here to coordinate! We were just about to call Alex! Liana, you went off alone, which is breaking your own rule!”
I stared at her for a long moment. She was right, of course, but the circumstances weren’t exactly as simple as she made them seem. Still, from the looks on their faces, I had given them an awful fright.
“I’m sorry for worrying you,” I said. “But I got a net transmission from a Dinah Velasquez, and—”
“Oh no! I don’t care about Dinah Velasquez, whoever she might be,” Zoe said angrily. “You ran off without any backup. That is unacceptable.”
I gave her a look. “Zoe, I’m going to have to run off sometimes if the moment calls for it,” I replied dismissively. “Now, as I was saying, it turns out Dinah is—”
“No!” Zoe shouted, stomping one foot down on the floor and cutting me off again. I blinked my eyes at the childish display and then took a step back, alarmed when she came marching toward me. “They killed Ambrose, Liana. They snuck into the Citadel, overrode the door to his room, and beat him to death.” Maddox made a small sound on the couch behind her, but Zoe, normally the most empathetic person I knew, ignored it, her dark blue eyes blazing like sapphires backlit by the desert sun.
“You are now our nominee to become Champion,” she continued blithely. “That makes you a prime target for attack. So no, you do not get to run off any time the moment calls for it. You’re our leader, Liana, and we need you as safe from harm as we can possibly make you. Do you understand?”
“Guys, I am sorry I left like that,” I said honestly. “It wasn’t my intention to leave the memorial, let alone the Citadel, and I’m sorry that I didn’t take the ten seconds I should’ve to call you. What can I do to make this better?”
“Promise that you’ll never do it again,” Leo announced from behind Zoe.
“And then never do it again,” Quess added helpfully.
I couldn’t help but smile. Even though they were preventing me from telling them about Tian, I felt warmed by the reaction to my sudden disappearance. They cared about me—and that made me feel good.
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“I promise,” I said solemnly. “Now, will you please let me tell you about Tian?”
“Tian!” Quess and Maddox both said her name at the exact same time, and Quess stood up, his wide eyes already searching for his surrogate sister. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “But she’s alive. And I think she’s okay, but…” I shook my head. “You’d better sit down,” I told them. “This is going to take a minute to explain. Quess, set up that noise-cancelling device.”
Quess quickly set it up, but it took closer to five minutes to explain, and everyone had questions. Questions about the sentinel, about the voice I had heard, about Dinah, and, of course, about Tian.
“So she was alive?” Maddox asked.
I had already answered the question, but I nodded again. “Yes. Very much so. I didn’t see any injuries.”
“But she stayed with the sentinel?”
This time it was Quess asking yet another question I had already answered. “Yes. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought she thought she had a relationship with it. But she was only able to convince it to leave without killing us after it had already done a lot of damage. She wasn’t able to stop the attack on Dinah, or on us, until the very end.”
“Okay, but why stay with a death machine that murdered six people to get to you?” Zoe asked. “Tian’s smart, and fast—she could get away easily, I’m sure of it. So why stay?”
I looked at Maddox and Quess, hoping that they could find some explanation for Tian’s decision to stay with the sentinel. Maddox’s eyes had grown distant, and I could tell she was deep in thought. Quess, however, was scratching his chin, his eyes much more focused.
“Quess?” I asked.
He sighed, and rested an elbow on the top of the chair. “I suppose if Tian thought the sentinel was something she could save, then she might stay with it.”
“Save? How could she save a sentinel?” I asked, trying to follow his logic.
“It’s a killer,” Maddox said, breaking free of her thoughts. “But if it showed kindness toward her, she might stay to try to keep it from killing others. I mean, that seems like what she was doing, right? I don’t think it’s a big leap for her.”
“But what could possibly prompt that kind of behavior from her?” Leo interjected. “The sentinels were only meant to be basic shells. The only programs inside of them were for receiving Scipio’s signal, and making their bodies move.” I gave him a surprised look, wondering how he could’ve known all that when he’d been cut off from the Tower long before the sentinels were even conceived. He noticed, because he offered me a slightly embarrassed shrug, and said, “I read up on them after you showed us the history book.”
“Right.” I stopped to think about what he was saying. If the sentinel was only a shell, then Tian’s motivations for staying were still a mystery—and one that didn’t offer us much in the way of a starting place for evidence. Without anything to go off, everything we did from here on out would be based on speculation.
And we needed less of that, in my opinion. Which meant it was time to get to work.
“Regardless of Tian’s motivations,” I announced slowly, grabbing everyone’s attention, “the fact remains that the sentinel is still out there, and it’s a threat to us. It saw my face. It could be hunting for me even now. Hell, whoever is controlling it could be forcing it to come find us right now. Tian might be holding it back—don’t ask me how. And if she is, there’s no guarantee it will last; it barely worked the first time. She might not be able to save us again. Which means we need to find it fast.”
“And kill it,” Quess added, and I gave him a sharp look.
“No,” I countermanded, much to everyone’s surprise. But I barreled on, eager to explain why I didn’t think killing the sentinel was the best move at this juncture. “The sentinel is clearly being controlled by someone, and I want to know who it is. Whoever controls it could be the same person or people who targeted Ambrose, possibly even the same people Devon was working with. If so, we might finally get a chance to learn the identity of our attackers. And keeping the sentinel intact is the best way of doing that.”
Silence met my statement and I waited, wondering who would be the first to break it.
Turned out it was all of them.
“That’s crazy!”
“What, why?”
“How can you even think that’s possible?”
“What about Tian?”
I held up my hand in a silent plea for them to stop, and to my absolute surprise, they did, allowing me the opportunity to explain myself. I carefully placed my thoughts in order, and then began to speak.
“Tian is absolutely a priority in this,” I informed them, needing to get that out of the way first. I didn’t want them to think that I was about to sacrifice her safety for some quest to take the sentinel. “I want her to be the first one out of the room, preferably with one of you going with her. But the rest of us… We need to see if we can try to take the sentinel in one piece. Or, at the very least, recover its hard drive. I assume it has one?”
I looked at Leo as I asked this, and he nodded slowly. “It does. It’s in the back of its neck.”
“Could we use it to track whatever signal is being sent to control its movements?”
“Maybe,” he conceded after a beat. “Although, I have to ask why. Won’t finding the people controlling it only place you in more danger?”
I hesitated. Leo was right, of course. By pursuing this, I was definitely putting us at even more risk than ever before. Trying to keep it intact limited our options for taking it down, and it wouldn’t share our limitations. We’d be trying to take it alive; it would be trying to kill us.
But I was tired of always being blindsided. I had no idea who our enemies were, what they were planning, or what sort of resources they had to work with. Finding them would be the first step to figuring it all out. I just had to convince my friends it was the right idea.
“It will,” I told him. “And I’m very aware that it’s a risk, but we have no idea who is after us, and I, for one, am getting pretty sick of walking around this Tower with half a blindfold on. I think the benefit of knowing who is behind this far outweighs the risk, especially if it’s something we can give to Strum or Lacey to keep them off our backs.”
Not that I couldn’t be sure that they weren’t tearing apart the Tower looking for it. But I doubted they had access to Knights’ manuals, which was what they needed to learn about the sentinel. I considered telling them, but finally decided that the only good time to tell Lacey they had anything was when they had the names and locations of Ambrose’s murderers, and not a second before.
“But more than that, I want to know who was really behind Ambrose’s death. And there is every chance that in doing this, we could find out where his killers are. And bring them to justice.”
Silence met my remark, and I gave my friends time to think, not wanting to pressure them into it. After a moment, Quess said, “So Mercury has a way for tracking this thing down?”
“She does,” I said. “She said she’d transmit it to you, so check your pad and see if it’s already waiting for you.”
I waited as he pulled out his pad and checked it. A second later, he nodded.
“Got it right here,” he said. “It’s not from her directly, but it’s the code. Let me take a look at it and see how it works.”
“Take your time,” I said, knowing full well that he wouldn’t. Still, I was grateful he was on my side. Now I just needed the others there as well. “How are the rest of you feeling?”
Zoe scratched the shaved area on the side of her head. “I think it’s a bit risky, but you’re right—we need to know who’s after us. If the only way to find that out is to catch this thing, then I’m in. I just want us to go in there with a weapon powerful enough to take it down. Just in case.”
I nodded. “I’ll handle that. I’ll just need to get into the armory and get one.”
“I’ll go with her,” Leo volunteered.
No he would not, I thought to myself, already digging for ways I could escape robbing the armory with Leo.
“No, you won’t,” Quess announced, setting his pad down with a sigh. “I’ll have to. You and the others will be needed elsewhere.”
“Oh?” I said quickly. “Why?”
Quess nodded toward his pad. “Mercury’s trace program requires that we upload it to a minimum of twelve relay stations before we start running it. Three on each side of the Tower; at the top, middle, and bottom, to boot. We’ll need to upload the program into each one, but if we do it right, the sentinel won’t be able to track us while we’re looking for it.”
Twelve relay stations? That was a lot. And it required using lashes and going outside—something that was dangerous on the best of days. There were only six of us, and even moving in tandem, it would take time.
Plus, I still had to handle the weapon. But it explained why Quess was willing to go with me. He was notoriously bad at lashing, and going outside onto the glass shell encompassing the Tower could be a death sentence for such an inexperienced lasher. Leo was needed outside: his lashing and computer skills made him perfect for the task.
“Leo, I’m putting you in charge of getting the program into the relay stations,” I said. “I know you want to help me with the weapons, but you are good with lashes, which we need. We’ll have two teams outside, and one team inside. The two teams outside, under Leo, will plant the program, while the one inside—me and Quess—will get a weapon capable of stopping this thing. Does that sound good?”
I was fairly certain it did—not fully, but we didn’t have a choice. We had a limited window of opportunity before the Tourney resumed, and we needed to find Tian before our moves became even more scrutinized.
To my great relief, however, nobody objected, and within moments we were all around the table, going over who was responsible for what.
The Girl Who Dared to Rise Page 14