The Girl Who Dared to Stand

by Bella Forrest

  Quess stared at me, his dark blue eyes glistening. After a moment, he inclined his head and adjusted the satchel on his shoulder. “Let’s get changed.”

  I led the way down the hall, back to the room we had picked as a rendezvous spot. When I slid open the door to the supply closet, I half-hoped to see Maddox already inside and waiting for us. But she wasn’t. The disappointment held me in place, wondering what if, and then I stepped into the room, suddenly very, very tired. My bumps and bruises from earlier were turning out to be worse than I had imagined, and I was afraid for Doxy. She’d just lost her mother, and now she was surrounded by people who were even at this moment interrogating her, trying to get her to slip. Or worse, they were hurting her. Or even worse, they already had—

  I clenched my fists, fighting off my imagination. I couldn’t get caught up in what ifs. I had to work with what I had, which meant getting us back safely.

  I pulled out the bag we had left here and opened it, grabbing my backup clothes. We were still wearing the IT uniforms, and this far from the Core, it was going to make us stand out. I stepped off to one corner and turned my back, getting ready to change.

  As I did so, I became all the more conscious of Maddox’s absence. Changing outfits in a dark supply room with two men had seemed more palatable when I wasn’t the only female. Now that I was, it was uncomfortable.

  I turned, prepared to find another room to change in, and then whipped right back around to face the wall, heat blossoming in my cheeks. The image I had gotten was brief, but explicit, and the strong lines of Grey’s backside were going to be forever emblazoned in my mind. Especially those two intriguing dimples over his…

  I quickly shut the thought down and closed my eyes, deeply mortified at my own brazenness. I shouldn’t have turned around. They were following the plan—they were just changing. I should be changing. Their backs were to me. They wouldn’t peek.

  I gritted my teeth together and began pulling off the suit, yanking it off my shoulders and down over the harness I was wearing underneath. Kicking off my boots, I quickly slipped the uniform off my legs. The cool floor beneath my toes caused goose pimples to erupt over my exposed flesh, and I quickly put on the pants and top that I had brought, wanting nothing more than to cover my exposed flesh.

  I was in the process of adjusting them when Grey coughed politely. “Liana, are you decent?”

  I smiled, knowing that it was lost to everyone else in the room. I was just grateful he was being respectful. As was Quess. More respectful than me.

  “I am,” I said, turning around. They turned as well. “We need to get going.”

  “Tian picked the best route back,” Quess said. “She’s a genius at this stuff. Should only take us fifteen minutes to get out to the greenery.”

  “Good,” I said, collecting the gray uniforms we had been wearing. I wadded them up into a ball and shoved them into a bucket I had set aside earlier, immersing them in whatever opaque liquid was inside. They’d be discovered eventually, but Grey had assured me that the harsh chemicals would eradicate any trace amount of DNA we left on them. In my case, it didn’t really matter, since they had ripped out a chunk of my hair. But still, it was better to leave as little trace as possible, especially for Grey and Quess.

  I turned, wiping my palms on my thighs, and saw Grey working a white cream into his hair. The color was already lightening to a bright yellow blond. I pulled my own tube out—different than the one I had originally used to alter my hair—and squeezed, then worked the cream into my own hair. The color of my hair changed as well, becoming a light brown. I didn’t have a set of new, different-colored contact lenses, so I had to keep the old ones in. My own eye color was too recognizable without them.

  I was feeling paranoid, but I had to keep the new Sanctum safe. The people inside were too precious for me to risk a mistake like last time.

  The three of us quickly packed up our remaining gear, and I took a quick glance down the dark hallways through the open door to check that the coast was clear. “Let’s go,” I said as I slipped into the hall first and led the way.

  “Liana!”

  I cringed at Tian’s excited cries, already dreading telling the girl the news about Maddox. In truth, it had been eating away at me since that door had slammed shut between us. That and the fact that I was going to have to tell Alex that I might have given him away.

  Tian’s arms slid around my neck, her head burrowing under my chin, and she exhaled happily. My arms reflexively went around her, and I hugged her close.

  The small blond head pulled back after a moment, her bright eyes wide and an excited smile playing on her lips. “You’re back! You got new nets! Did you run into any trouble? Your hair looks a little messy, were you in a fight? And you won? Did you punch someone in the face or kick them with your foot?”

  As the questions tumbled out of her, she danced around, enacting her questions. The more she talked, the sadder I grew—until she finally noticed. I looked away, unable to hold that questioning blue gaze.

  “Liana?” Her voice broke, and I looked back to see her staring at the vent where Grey had already exited, and Quess was now appearing. She waited for him to move, perched on the tips of her toes, hands clasped together over the wispy skirt she wore.

  My heart ripped in half at the sight of her waiting, expectantly, for the woman who was fundamentally her older sister, and instantly imagined myself in her shoes, waiting for Alex to come.

  “Tian, Maddox got taken,” I told her, my own voice cracking, and Tian’s hand fluttered to her mouth as she turned toward me. I felt sick watching her eyes fill with tears, and she spun around, looking up at Quess.

  “My Doxy?” she said, her voice barely a squeak through the sound of her heart breaking.

  Quess’s face broke, and he knelt, immediately pulling her into his arms. Tian sniffled, struggling in his arms to look at the vent. “Doxy?” she managed again, looking at him. He shook his head, and her face collapsed, tears forming and falling from her eyes. A racking sob caught her, and Quess fell back on his rear, rocking the girl back and forth.

  “It’s okay, T,” he said softly, smoothing her hair. “We’re going to get her out. We just have to get some information, and then we’re going to rescue her. I promise, okay?”

  Tian continued to sob, clearly inconsolable. She had every right to be. She’d just lost two members of her family within a week.

  “Take her to her bed and give her Commander Cuddles,” I said softly, catching Quess’s attention. “See if you can’t get her to sleep, and then get back here. We need you to walk us through the net replacement.”

  “Let Quess go with you now,” Grey said to me, stepping around me and over to Quess and Tian. “I’ll take Tian.”

  Tian didn’t protest as Grey collected her from Quess’s lap, cradling her sobbing form to his chest. He stepped by Quess and moved to the opposite corner of the room, where Tian’s bed had been set up, a nest of blankets on the floor under Maddox’s hammock, with a few crates stacked next to it to give her some privacy.

  I pulled Quess to his feet, immediately turning toward Zoe. She stood off to the side, Eric next to her. Her hand was over her heart, and she looked at me with sympathy in her eyes. “Are you okay?” she asked, her eyes raking over me.

  “She took a bit of a beating,” Quess announced before I could say anything, and I resisted the urge to glare at him. He wasn’t wrong—I was one giant bruise after our fight—but I couldn’t afford to be hurt right now, so I was trying my best to ignore it. “But you should’ve seen her and Maddox fight! They took out eight Inquisition agents on their own!”

  This time I did give him a hard look. “You are not telling me you watched the fight instead of paying attention to your hacking, are you?”

  Quess blinked and quickly shook his head. I let it go, but the anger I felt was long from over. It was just directed toward a far more practical endeavor: getting Maddox back.

  We moved into the workroom,
and I watched as Quess pulled out the cases filled with our pilfered nets, placing them on the workbench. He opened the case my brother had brought, and pulled out a data crystal. Next he produced his pad, and a handful of cables. Within seconds, the crystal was connected to the pad with one cable, while the net was connected to the pad with another. Immediately a bio came up—like the ones we would get from Scipio when we were in pursuit of a suspect—with all the details filled in except the picture.

  “Clara Euan,” I read. “Farmhand from Greenery 9, harvester.” I stared at it and then shrugged. I could be a Hand, and I knew enough about Greenery 9. I could get by with this ID for a while.

  “What hair color are you going to go with?” asked Quess, and I shrugged, tugging on my still-brown hair.

  “I guess this’ll do,” I said. “And the contacts will work. You got a capture?”

  In response, Quess pulled something else from the case and held it up. The item was made entirely of glass and was about as long and wide as my hand. He peered through it at me, and then, a moment later, my image filled the blank box.

  I… had looked better, the disguise notwithstanding. My hair was still all over the place and stuck out wildly in areas, while my eyes looked tired and sad, my focus slightly over Quess’s shoulder.

  Still, it was a government ID. It wasn’t supposed to look pretty.

  “Will this get me inside the Medica?” I asked as a screen came up on the pad, indicating that it was loading.

  “Not exactly,” he said, making a motion for me to sit down and turn around so he could have access to the back of my neck. I did so, and lifted up my hair, meeting Zoe’s gaze.

  “What happened?” she asked as Quess sprayed something cold on the back of my neck from an aerosol can. I knew it was a topical anesthetic, thanks to the apprenticeship programs I had been going to since I was fifteen.

  Immediately the flesh began to go numb, and I closed my eyes, trying not to think about the fact that Quess was going to cut into my neck and remove my net.

  “There were people in the room when we got there,” I said, focusing on Zoe’s question. “We sort of… improvised a pretty convincing lie, which they seemed to buy…” I paused, gritting my teeth as I felt something push on the back of my neck. I braced both hands against the table to keep from moving. There was no pain, but I could tell by Quess’s intake of breath that he was in, and it wasn’t easy to remain still.

  But I managed, and focused back on Zoe. “Anyway, the plan fell apart when the man I claimed was my supervisor—by the way, he’s Alex’s supervisor—showed up, and they caught us. Maddox punched him in the throat—”

  “She did not,” Quess said with a laugh, and I resisted the urge to tell him not to laugh when he was digging around in my neck.

  A second later, my head began to ache, and I felt vibrations coming from deep underneath my skull. It was hard not to imagine pulling twisted tree roots from the ground, but that was what it felt like—only the net was the roots and my head the soil. For several intense seconds, there was a pressure that made my entire body cringe. Zoe took my hand and held it tightly.

  Then the sensation passed, and I relaxed, air flooding into me as I took in a deep breath. My head felt the same… but different. It felt less stuffed. Lighter, even. I couldn’t tell, and was pretty sure I was imagining it.

  It didn’t matter. I had barely been given a chance to catch my breath before Quess’s hands were back, the pressure returning. I tensed a few seconds more until he withdrew and relaxed.

  “Is that it?” I asked.

  “Well…”

  Whatever Quess was going to say next was lost under the sensation beneath my skull as the net began to unravel, the tendrils spreading out and taking root in my brain.

  “The tendrils will follow the path left by the last one,” Quess said. “You don’t have to worry about it causing scar tissue or anything.”

  I paled at the thought. “Is that really possible?” I asked, as the net continued to move and settle. It went on for a few more seconds, and then stopped. Quess then pressed something into my skin, and this time I felt the pressure of it being dragged down slowly, over the incision point, and realized it was the pink goo of a dermal bond, which would seal the cut permanently in a matter of hours.

  “Not anymore,” he said, and a moment later I heard him stepping back. “You’re good to go. How do you feel?”

  I shrugged. My head had started to ache again, but there were no vibrations this time. Just a heavy pressure that spread from the back forward.

  “Uncomfortable,” I finally said, and he nodded, looking unsurprised.

  “I figured it might be. I’m sorry.”

  “Not your fault. We needed to do this, and I needed to do it now. How long do you think it’ll be before I can net my brother?”

  “Five minutes. Give the net a moment or two to get settled. If the discomfort gets too bad, let me know and I’ll give you something for it.”

  I smiled. I couldn’t help it. Even though he insisted he wasn’t Medic material, he was actually quite good at it, and I was surprised how much comfort his confidence and directness brought me.

  “Thank you,” I said, and he gave me a lopsided grin.

  “Don’t thank me yet. We need to look at that shoulder, and your head.”

  “My hair will grow back,” I said, my fingers reaching up to my hairline and probing the tender flesh where the hair had been ripped out. “Besides, I thought you didn’t want to wait to find out about Maddox.”

  “I don’t, but Grey told me you hit your head pretty hard,” he said coolly. “Can’t make a net call until I’m sure you don’t have a concussion. Shirt off so I can check your shoulder too.”

  “Plus, you were in the middle of telling me how Maddox got grabbed.” My best friend smiled faintly as I met her gaze, and I sighed, leaning forward so Quess could help me out of my sweater. Eric immediately turned around, but Zoe, bless her heart, stood and watched Quess, waiting for him to make one tiny misstep. It didn’t matter, I was wearing an undershirt, but I was glad to see everyone cared.

  “Right. Well… we start running, and an alarm goes off behind us. Scipio comes on and is all like, ‘My name’s Scipio, and today I’m going to ruin your day, just like every other day,’ and then these door barriers start coming down behind us while people start to chase us. We get ahead, and then Quess has to hack the door for us to get out the way we came in, and Maddox and I had to buy them time to get the door open. So we took them on. We won, but more were coming, and we needed to run. I went back, assuming she was with me, but she had stayed behind to throw off the new group and… we got separated.”

  “She’s with the Inquisition,” Quess said, spreading something sharp-smelling over my shoulder with a gentle press of his fingers. He rubbed it in, and I breathed a little easier as whatever he was using eased the pain where I had slammed it into the wall. “But we’re going to get her back.”

  “How?” Zoe asked, her eyebrow twitching up. “If they have her… I mean… Where would they keep her? The Inquisitors are supposed to pass off prisoners to the Knights.”

  I shook my head at my friend. “I don’t have any answers yet,” I told her. “And you’re right—she may have already been transferred, but we’re not leaving her behind. Quess?”

  “One more minute,” he said, and I sighed, wincing as his fingers slid over my scalp. He was massaging some of the pink goop into my head to repair the torn areas. I breathed a sigh of relief as the burning spots quickly eased and faded, the goo bonding with the cells and covering the pain receptors.

  “I finally got her to stop crying and lie down,” Grey said from the doorway. I turned, pulling my head out from under Quess’s hands.

  Grey’s eyes—back to their familiar brown, which meant he had taken out his contacts—watched us as I broke away from Quess, and I could see the flash of jealousy there. I had thought we were past that, but I was clearly wrong, given that Grey was eyeing Que
ss like he was a piece of meat that needed tenderizing.

  “Is she okay?”

  He tore his gaze away and gave me a sad look. “No,” he said. “She’s distraught. After I finally got her to stop crying, she shut down. She just held her bear and stared at the wall. She eventually closed her eyes, but I’m not even sure she’s asleep. Liana… she’s heartbroken. We have to get Maddox back.”

  “We will,” I said, praying for it to be true. “Can I go now?” I looked back at Quess. He flashed me a thumbs up, and I immediately left the room, bypassing the vents and heading instead through the gap in the wall that led up to the Menagerie. I moved down the tight tunnel, following the path that eventually dead-ended in a series of steps heading up.

  I removed Zoe’s now-functioning brace, then opened the hatch on the ceiling, lifting it up a few inches and peering out. Dark shapes of pigs sleeping on their sides or bellies filled my gaze, and as I lifted the door higher, the pen fence came into view. I wrinkled my nose against the smell of animal droppings, and slowly slid out of the hatch, taking care not to disturb the hogs.

  I remained on my belly and drew my indicator to my eyes, swiping my finger across the glowing nine to activate the voice command. “Contact Alex Castell, IT47-4B,” I said. The net buzzed under my skull, in response to my order, and I waited.

  A second later, I heard a digitally altered voice fill my ear, and I frowned as it said, “Hello, Liana.”

  “Hello, Mercury. Where the hell is my brother?”

  18

  The farming floor was quiet, the lights set on the dimmest setting to let the animals rest. Even the quiet sounds of hundreds of animals sleeping were enough to mask the little noise I was making. I crept off into the deepest shadows, taking care not to step on any of the slumbering swine as I did, trying to keep myself hidden so Mercury and I could have a little chat.