The Girl Who Dared to Think

by Bella Forrest

  “Welcome to Sanctum,” she announced.

  27

  Maddox led the way down the cramped tunnel. The statuesque woman practically had to bend in half to avoid brushing her head on the ceiling. I followed, suddenly grateful for my comparatively short stature. She led us to a junction that branched off into five different tunnels, but, instead of picking one, she opened a circular hatch in the floor, pulling it up and over on its hinge. I peered into it from over her shoulder, and saw a ladder leading down.

  The view was lost as she swung into it in a sleek, practiced move and quickly began to climb down, her hands and feet flying on the rungs. I looked over at Grey, who shrugged and then moved into the hole after her. I wondered if he shared my tentativeness.

  Roark went down next, and for just a moment, it was Cali and me. The older woman stood with her arms folded casually across her chest, watching me with a curious look on her face.

  “So you’re Liana Castell,” she drawled, eyeing me, and I faltered.

  “How did you know that?”

  Her lips quirked up in a sly smile and her eyes glittered with amusement. “Because the personal friend Roark and I share told me about you.”

  My heart started to beat faster, and I was suddenly uncertain and nervous. I still wondered if it was Alex, but had no way of knowing, seeing as I doubted Cali would tell me either. Maybe I just wanted it to be, so that I knew he would be coming with us. Either way, Alex or not, it didn’t change the fact that someone was talking about me.

  “What’s his name, and what did he say?”

  “Nice try. He said that you had a lot of potential for leadership, but have squandered honing that skill, choosing other, non-departmental skills, instead.”

  That was an exact quote taken from one of my departmental assessments a year ago, written by one of my former instructors. Those files were supposed to be confidential, but if her contact was an Eye, then I was sure he could hack into it, if he really wanted to. I just wished I knew who he was.

  I also felt stupid. Of course Roark had contacted him about me at some point. From what little information Grey had offered up, it seemed like they had a partnership, so Roark had let him know what was going on. If this Eye was as paranoid as Grey claimed, then he must have checked me out, accessing my information, peering into my life. It was enough to make my skin crawl, if I really thought about it.

  “I see,” I said, all of these thoughts flashing in and out of my mind fast enough to allow me to maintain a calm and collected exterior. “You shouldn’t believe everything you read. The instructor who said that was a fairly upbeat lady who didn’t like saying anything negative. I was actually really dismal in her class, but she passed me anyway. Maybe she just didn’t want to deal with me anymore.”

  “Still, I can see how much you care about your friends,” she said softly, taking a step closer to me. “You’re cautious, not wanting to trust this place until you’re sure it’s not a threat to you or them.”

  I nodded. “That’s true. Maybe you could save me some time and just tell me.”

  Cali laughed, a rich, full sound that filled the room. “I admire your wit as well. It’s very rare in a person so young.” She settled back down, collecting her regal posture as if she were donning a royal cape, and met my gaze, her lips curling under high, arched cheekbones. “Now, whether this place is a threat to you and your friends really sort of depends on you. I will not allow my home to be threatened, you understand? If any of you proves to be a threat, I will take care of it. Efficiently.”

  I couldn’t tell you why, but I liked her. There was something charming about the way she spoke; whether it was the warm, sweet tone of her voice or the sparkle of good humor in her eyes, it was hard to tell. I just did. Which was disconcerting enough for me to break eye contact and immediately drop myself down into the hole, climbing down the rungs of the ladder at a swift pace. The light above me was blocked momentarily as Cali followed me down, and I kept moving, my hands and feet confident. All ladders were standardized in the Tower, which meant once you were good with one, you were good with them all. As a potential Knight, I had learned how to be very good.

  We descended twenty feet or so before emerging into a wide, circular room with a glass floor. Half of the walls were comprised of glass, through which I could see the churning waters of the hydro-turbine seated down below, at the base of the Tower. Ahead, the river flowed toward us, snaking in under the greenery, the edge of which was visible some three hundred feet ahead. Even though we were low—perhaps fifty or sixty feet above the churning waters—I could still see out past the overhang created by the greenery above, and into a thin strip of sky now turning purple.

  “This is beautiful,” I said, my head tilting as my eyes absorbed the sights.

  My shin connected with something hard, and I looked down to realize we were standing in a dining area in the style of the Water Treatment people. Pillows and mats littered the area around a small table that stood maybe a foot or two off the floor. There were already seven places set, along with a bowl of steamed vegetables and another bowl brimming with steamed rice.

  A young man stepped around Grey, carrying a tureen, and I looked over at him as he approached, suddenly wary. His dark blue eyes seemed to smile at me as he sat the tureen down on the table. When he straightened, his hand was already held out.

  “I’m Quess,” he said in a surprisingly soft voice. “Well, my full name is Quessian, but everyone has a hard time pronouncing it, so Quess is better.”

  I grinned. “Medica?”

  “Born and bred,” he replied with an answering grin, sharing in the joke. The Medica were known for giving their children unusual and never-before-heard-of names. It was a way of ensuring their prodigy and department would stand out. “But I transferred to the Eyes when I was fifteen, and later was a Cog.”

  I blinked. He’d been an Eye and then a Cog? That seemed unlikely; Eyes were notoriously loyal, probably because disloyalty was rewarded with harsh and corporeal punishments. Not just for the offender, but for the offender’s co-workers. Their cruel tactics may not have inspired a lot of love, but they did inspire a lot of obedience.

  “How’s that possible?” Grey asked, seeming to manifest between us, and I realized we were still shaking hands. I quickly let go, and to my surprise, Quess winked at me before giving a nod to Grey and disappearing into the kitchen. It took me a moment to realize he had left without answering Grey’s question.

  Cali stepped off the ladder and into the room, softly clapping her hands together. “All right, everyone, we have guests tonight, so I expect your best behavior. Doxy, I am specifically addressing you when I say that.”

  I looked over to see the statuesque woman rolling her eyes, begrudgingly getting back up off the sitting pillows to start shedding herself of knives and other tools of violence. By the time she was done, I couldn’t help but feel incredibly impressed—and extremely intimidated.

  She caught me looking at her and swung her long hair over her shoulder, offering me a mocking smile as she sat back down on her cushions. I licked my lips and then chose a spot across from her, wanting to keep her within reaching distance. Grey took up a position on my left, while Roark took up a whole side of the square table to himself. Quess set down two more dishes: what appeared to be some sort of marinated potatoes, and some kind of bean dish.

  My stomach made a pitiful sound at the sight of all that food, and I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t eaten at all today. Still, that didn’t stop my mouth from opening and questions from spilling out before I could remember my table manners.

  “Where did you get all this food from? How are you living here undetected? Is it only the four of you? Why did you leave the Knights? How did Quess work in two different departments? What is it you want from us?”

  I paused to take a deep breath, and Cali’s smile grew as she gracefully crossed her legs. Tian appeared from a door just past the kitchen and plodded over to Cali, curling up right besi
de her, and Cali immediately made room for the young girl.

  “She has more questions than you do,” she said in a stage whisper into Tian’s ear, and the young girl grinned at me, showing me a toothy smile.

  “Not possible,” she crooned, and Cali laughed.

  “Our food is grown here,” Quess said. “Luckily, Maddox here got some time in as a Hand before her rank dropped to one. We have enough to take care of ourselves, although if your medication works the way that you say it does...” He turned a quizzical eye to Roark, who was already beginning to shovel food onto his plate.

  Roark paused when he realized everyone was staring, his eyes going wide. “What? Were we not starting?”

  “No,” Cali replied amiably. “Please, dig in, and I’ll do my best to explain. We are four, yes, but there are other smaller, family-like groups like ours scattered in hidden nooks and crannies all over this Tower. Not just in the Depths, but in the Tower proper. We aren’t detected because of the paint that you saw on the inside of the upper levels. It’s one of Quess’s designs—he’s quite the genius with inventions—and it blocks Scipio’s scanners from detecting us down here. I am sort of the de facto leader, but that’s more out of a desire or need to trade to get other supplies. As for this place, it used to be one of the water monitoring stations, back in the early years of the Tower, before Scipio was fully operational. Now that he is, the station is remotely operated, which means no one comes down here much.”

  She paused to pour herself some water from a pitcher in the middle of the table, and took a sip. “Let’s see... Shortly after I lost out as Champion, I fell into a state of depression. If it weren’t for Doxy, I’d never have gotten through it. Anyway, my rank crashed and burned. I’d actually had some suspicions about the system being skewed to begin with, but when my number refused to improve no matter how good I felt, I knew something was going on. I started digging, and the more I dug, the faster I fell. I probably would’ve let myself get caught, if it hadn’t been for Maddox, because I was so stubborn about finding out the truth. She convinced me to run, and we ran. We’ve been hiding ever since.”

  I took this all in, and looked around the room. “What about Quess?”

  “Oh, I can explain that,” he said around a mouthful of broccoli. “You see, I was pretty much told to join the Eyes, which I wasn’t complaining about. As a Medic, I was garbage.” He grinned at me and added in a low voice, “Can’t stand the sight of blood. Anyway, I was excited to go to the Eyes because I thought it’d be tough and challenging. I had a good head for numbers and tested well in basic programming. Well, it took about three years before I got bored.”

  I frowned. “You requested another transfer?”

  Quess threw back his head and laughed loudly. “Oh, lord no. The head of IT would never have allowed it. Too many questions going on. But I didn’t really have to. I just created fake credentials with a new identity for myself, and showed up the next day with new quarters in Cogstown.”

  “Yeah, but then what happened?” Grey asked from next to me, and I saw a muscle twitching in his jaw. I could see he didn’t like Quess and his flirtatious mannerisms—and I had to admit, he looked very attractive when he was jealous.

  I used my hair to hide my smile and turned back to Quess, who shrugged. “Got bored there, too. Problem is, there’s no room for innovation or creation in the Tower outside of medicine. I couldn’t rebuild or adjust or streamline the antiquated machinery around the place. Everyone gets twitchy when you mention it, yet they run around like madmen trying to keep up with the day-to-day needs of the Tower. It’s exhausting and depressing.”

  “So you fell,” Roark said, again around a mouthful of food, and I couldn’t stand it any longer—I began serving myself small portions, not wanting to take too much from the people we’d found. Maddox arched a taunting eyebrow as I scooped up a spoonful of the beans with some rice, but I ignored it and took a bite.

  Simple, but divine after the day we’d had.

  “Pretty much,” Quess said. “And don’t worry about giving us your backstory. We got it from Cali already. You guys really think there’s life out there?”

  “Selka saw it. She touched it with her own hands, and they killed her for wanting to spread the truth to everyone. The powers that be can’t stand to let the Tower go, so they crack down and keep the people living in fear of the world around them.”

  “The Tower wasn’t meant to last forever,” Quess added in the wake of Roark’s statement, his blue eyes sad. “Nothing we create ever does, but yeah... it will start to fall apart eventually, even with all the TLC it’s given. But still, this is a huge leap based on the belief of one person.”

  “He’s right,” Maddox said, breaking her stony silence by dropping her utensil onto her now-clean plate. “You’re betting everything—your very life—on believing that your wife saw what she said she saw.”

  “And her getting killed for it,” Roark thundered, his fists banging on the table hard enough to make dishes clatter. “You think they would’ve executed her if she’d just been mad? No, she was a danger to their perfect image of the Tower, so they did away with her. Like she was nothing.”

  He looked away from everyone, but not before his eyes had filled with the bitter sorrow of a man who was railing against a faceless system. Against those who had stolen his life and wife from him.

  “On that note,” Cali announced softly, filling the awkward silence that had stretched out into the small space with a confident command, “we should all start getting ready for bed.”

  I immediately got to my feet. “Then I should go. I need to get back up there before anyone notices that I’m missing.”

  Cali looked at me and then stood in one fluid motion. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you leave right now.”

  “Excuse me?” I stared at her, trying not to gape at the woman telling me I couldn’t leave.

  Her face was made of stone as she shook her head at me. “You know you heard me correctly, dear. And I’m sure that your friends have already come to the same conclusion as well.”

  “Gerome knows something’s going on between the three of us,” Grey said quietly, craning his neck up to meet my gaze, his eyes also reticent. “He’s going to be waiting for you to surface so he can question you.”

  “And people are still out looking for us—and subsequently you,” Roark added. “No way they’ll let you pass by them without wanting to know how your pursuit went. Where are you going to direct them? How are you going to avoid attention, even leaving this place?”

  “And you’re not guiding anyone back to our home,” Maddox declared menacingly. “We’ve worked too hard to keep our location a secret for you to start screwing this up.”

  “Besides,” Tian added, a shy little smile on her face, “I like you. You look like you can tell good stories.”

  I looked all around me, clearly outnumbered in more ways than one, and realized that now that I really thought about it, I didn’t even want to go. I barely slept when I was at home, and they had all made excellent points. Still, I hadn’t forgotten about Zoe and getting her those pills. She might not be talking to me right now, but she was in trouble, and if I didn’t help her, then chances were she’d just continue to go down.

  “I want your word that at some point soon, I’ll be able to go,” I said to Cali, lifting my head in challenge.

  She inclined her head somewhat. “That seems reasonable, but under my terms, all right? Everyone here is my family.”

  “The reason I need to go is for mine, so I think we understand each other.”

  The two of us continued to stare at each other, and I couldn’t help but feel that Cali was taking some sort of measurement of me, weighing pros and cons in her mind based on what she was seeing right now.

  In the end, it was Tian who broke the stare-off, by standing up and offering excitedly to show us our room.

  As we followed her, I could still feel Cali’s eyes on me. Still, the exchange had gone better
than I’d hoped, and I felt that she was going to make a good ally in the days to come.

  Once we figured out what the heck we were going to do.

  28

  As Tian led the three of us through the kitchen and down the hall, my eyes darted around, trying to find anything that would reveal who we were really dealing with. The small kitchen area was rudimentary, just a cooking element sitting on a metal table next to a cutting board. Another table held a plastic bin filled with soapy water, but there was no faucet for it. Everything was neat and tidy, but that was because it had to be—there wasn’t any space.

  In the middle of the floor in the kitchen area was an open hatch with steps leading down. The smell of damp soil and vegetation wafted through, and as I passed, I caught a glimpse of greenery down below, just out of sight. Then we were walking down the long hall. String lights were draped around protruding pipes and along the wall, giving the area a whimsical feel. I saw childish paintings—likely Tian’s work—on the wall in an array of colors. The one that made me pause was of four handprints, each a different size and color, with names printed just below. They had pressed their hands together so that their forefingers overlapped with the previous one’s pinkie, linking them together. Tian’s small hand was in pink, Cali’s in red, Maddox’s in purple, and Quess’s in deep blue.

  It was such a simple thing, but as soon as I saw it, I felt it—the love they had for each other. It gave me pause, made me think about my own family, my parents, and I truly realized that their home was not my home.

  That was followed by a surprising understanding: it hadn’t been my home since Alex had left.

  I sucked in a breath, suddenly desperately missing my brother, on top of Zoe and Eric. They were my family, and if I was going to protect them and keep us all together, I was going to have to get them out of Scipio’s control.