The Girl Who Dared to Stand

by Bella Forrest

  I inhaled and exhaled sharply, looking at Lacey. She rolled her eyes. “We think Devon’s part of the group that has gained control,” she said simply. “Historically, it’s never happened before, that we know of, and—” She looked at Strum, who gave her a tacit nod of approval. “We aren’t entirely sure how to fix it.”

  Because Ezekial Pine had destroyed any knowledge on how to, and had almost destroyed the key ingredient: Leo. Anyone who knew about Scipio’s malfunction would have no idea how to fix it. I studied them, wondering how long they’d known Scipio was malfunctioning, and if they’d been sitting on it all this time. Then I realized that they would’ve sat on it forever to keep people from panicking, and the thought led me to a more important one—one that had been bothering me for a long time.

  “For how long has Scipio been malfunctioning?” I asked. “Do you have any idea?”

  “That’s complicated,” Lacey said, shifting her weight to her other foot. “We’re not entirely sure. We only became aware of it a few weeks ago.”

  I stared at her, stunned by her response. “So you’re telling me that an unknown group of individuals in the Tower could have control over the AI whose impartiality was designed specifically to keep us alive?”

  Lacey nodded. “That’s about the short of it.”

  They had only noticed it a few weeks ago. I sat there, contemplating the information. Just because they had noticed it then, didn’t mean that it hadn’t been going on for a while. I didn’t like thinking that way, but since they were confirming that the main Scipio AI was being manipulated somehow, I couldn’t help but wonder for how long this had been happening. Something told me it was much earlier than they were claiming.

  I still needed more information than they were giving me, so I decided to switch lines of questioning and keep digging. I hoped they would let something slip, but at the very least, it would tell me more about them and who they were.

  “Which leads me to an excellent segue. How do you know?” I looked back and forth between them, my eyebrows high. “How do you know that Devon is with this faction? How do you know this faction exists? And how do I know that you’re not from a different faction, and are just trying to use me and my criminal friends to eliminate your enemy?”

  Even as I asked them my numerous questions, my mind was going through everything they had said thus far, scrubbing it all for any details that would help get me a larger image of just what was happening in the Tower. Secret groups that ran around trying to control things? That tainted Scipio’s programming?

  What else? There had to be more to it. Did these two just not have a bigger picture than that? Did they honestly not know? Neither one of them was IT, so how could they even tell there was a problem with Scipio?

  “Those are all very good questions, Squire Castell.” Praetor Strum sighed and stood to his full height, looking as strong and majestic as I was sure the Tower looked from the outside, and I stepped back—right into Lacey, who had managed to make her way behind me. She steadied me, and then guided me back to my seat while Praetor Strum began to speak.

  “From the beginning, the Founder’s work was always met with a great deal of controversy, even by those whose lives were sheltered by him, protected from the nuclear storms brewing on the outside. During his lifetime, several terrorist attempts to subvert the Tower were thwarted, and after a while, he and several other members of the council began to think that those plots were the work of secret organizations.”

  I leaned forward. Even though I knew a lot of this, there were new details here that I hadn’t quite heard before, and I wanted to pay attention. I also knew that they expected me to be stunned by the news, so I set my features to an expression of slightly horrified awe, and watched him as he continued to speak.

  “Lionel made the mistake of thinking that such things would die out after a generation or two. He never suspected that his enemies would create legacies, training their offspring to carry on the work they had been doing since the beginning—but with more coordination that not only spanned lifetimes, but departments as well.”

  My eyes widened. Secret groups that had managed to embed themselves into all of the Tower in order to subvert it for their own ends? Why? What was the goal for them? I understood Ezekial’s goal, thanks to the video, but why would his descendants continue to work toward it long after he died? Why hadn’t they just given up? What was motivating them?

  “To what end?” I asked. “To escape the Tower?”

  “No,” Lacey said softly. “To control it. Scipio was always intended to be a neutral party, to present the best options and scenarios for preserving life in the Tower while preventing it from failing. It’s a double-edged sword, but Scipio was intended to be just that—offer the best solution, boil down all the conflicting human emotions into a decision. To present the most practical answer.”

  I bit my lip. They kept using the phrase “was intended.” That didn’t explain what he was doing. Or how anyone outside of IT had been able to change him. Lionel had mentioned that it would take generations for someone to take Scipio down, but without some IT background, I couldn’t see how it was possible. Unless, of course, one of these factions had somehow managed to infiltrate IT.

  “So, Scipio is broken?” I asked, looking Lacey in the eye.

  She hesitated, her eyes searching. “We have no way of knowing that,” she said slowly. “We aren’t members of IT, and getting anyone from our departments into IT is difficult. The thought is that as a fully realized AI, Scipio can’t fully be broken. But someone is definitely making him offer up more and more extreme solutions.”

  “We know for a fact that Devon is part of one of these groups,” Praetor Strum continued over Lacey. “He has been backing Scipio’s more extreme recommendations.”

  I remembered him in the cell, insisting on killing Grey even though his number had risen to a four. Yes, it had been a trick on my part, but he had tried to overrule the new rank without knowing that it had been tampered with, and he had almost succeeded.

  “So have others on the council,” Strum added glumly. “They have turned their back on the Tower.”

  I let out a breath. I was still trying to process all of this. Everything they were talking about confirmed what Leo had been telling us. What’s more, they might not have a way to fix the Tower, but I might. Yet, I couldn’t trust them with this information. Not yet, not so soon. They needed to tell me so much more before I told them anything. I needed to know who they were first.

  “Who are you, in all of this? I mean, how do you know any of this? You still really haven’t given me anything to go on, evidence-wise. For all I know, you could be the bad guys trying to set me up.”

  Lacey hesitated, and then leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “We’re legacies as well, Liana. At some point or another, an ancestor of ours has been pulled into this secret war, and has joined our ranks, or our enemy’s, in some form or fashion. From there, they’ve passed this knowledge down from person to person.”

  “And Scipio didn’t catch any of this? I mean, come on. I did everything I could to keep positive in the face of being weighed down with all of these questions that—just because I wanted to ask them—caused my ranking to drop faster than a rock off the top of the Tower. And yet you and your ancestors managed to have this plot going on without getting caught? This all smells just as bad as what they shovel in the Menagerie.”

  Lacey laughed, and even the Praetor smiled slightly, and it gave me confidence to see that they weren’t unsympathetic.

  “You’re right, of course. Scipio’s programming should’ve picked up on all of this—had we been told after our implantations at fifteen. But as legacies, we’re told before, so that we’re given time to train and adjust to our new worldview and our role in it while we’re young.”

  “We’re getting off track, Lace,” Strum said softly, and she frowned, her eyes going to her indicator on her wrist and checking the time.

  “He’s rig
ht, and the longer we’re both here, the more chance there is for one of our enemies to discover what we’re up to.” She met my eyes. “You keep asking for evidence, and the truth is we have none. This life is like playing chess in the dark, feeling for pieces, guessing for moves, and only getting flashes of what your enemy is doing. But we know Devon has definitely done something. Scipio votes with him more often than not, and the laws he’s proposed recently are only going to cause problems. They already are, with the mandatory Medica treatment law change. We’re worried that if things get too strict, any illusion of control will be lost, that faith in Scipio will be lost completely, and we can’t let that happen. Scipio is what gives people hope. Devon is a threat to that. So Devon must go.”

  “So do it yourself,” I said, standing once again. “You guys paint a pretty awful picture as to what life is like inside the Tower—including a dark underbelly that I myself am only beginning to get acquainted with. But what I fail to see is why I should do your dirty work. What’s in it for me? For my friends? I mean, Scipio help me, why me? Did you just… see my wanted picture and decide that I was the girl you were going to make your assassin?”

  Lacey stood as well, and ran a hand over her hair, smoothing any frayed ends down (not that there were any).

  Before she could make a sound, Praetor Strum spoke, his voice deep and heavy. “Liana, picking you is purely opportunistic, as you suggest. However, there is a reason we wanted someone from within the Knights. It is part of the cover story we are crafting for you, but it was essential we had a Knight to make it work. If you do this for us, we can and will exonerate you and clear your friends from any guilt, and help you reintegrate back into Tower life, a hero.”

  “Guilt?” I said. “Why would I feel guilt? Do you even know what I did? I mean, did you do any research?”

  “Well, yes,” Lacey said. “But the Knights’ report on you wasn’t exactly flattering. It says that you apparently lost sight of your duties and sprang a known criminal from the Citadel—although that information wasn’t discovered until later. The consensus is that you fell in love, and—”

  “I what?” I spluttered, staring at both of them. I mean… yes, I had been attracted to Grey at the time, but that didn’t change the fact that they wanted me to kill another human being as an initiation test. The fact that I’d had feelings for him was secondary. “They are really pulling that? Like I am some airhead of a girl who can’t control her weak, womanly emotions? Instead of a human being who doesn’t exactly support killing people?”

  Lacey smiled then, and looked at Praetor Strum. “I like her,” she said. “She’s smart.”

  “Smart enough to question how you could ever craft a cover story that allows me to get away with murder,” I retorted. “Smart enough to notice that you’ve never once directly answered my question about what sort of legacies you are, or how I can trust you. Smart enough to know that you’re so desperate to make this work, you’re not even going to do any research into who you’re trying to make a deal with.” I looked back and forth between them both. “I’m sure you thought I’d be desperate enough to jump all over this, but you clearly didn’t look into me at all.”

  “I take it back,” Lacey said into the silence that met my remark. “I really like her. I told you this was stupid.”

  “It’s not stupid,” the Praetor insisted. “It’s necessary.” He turned to me. “You’re right, of course—I don’t know what you actually did or what kind of liability you will be. We risked a lot telling you what we told you tonight, and I expect you to keep that to yourself. Not just for your sake, but also for the sake of your friends. We have ways of making them disappear.”

  “No threats,” Lacey growled. “She needs to see that what we’re doing is for the people of the Tower. Liana, the council has another vote coming up in a week. This one will authorize the executions of anyone three or below. Scipio is currently in processing, but if we’re right about Devon, then he will be working with someone inside the Core to make sure Scipio’s recommendation reflects what he wants. If he does, only the two of us will be voting against it. The rest have bought into Devon’s fear-mongering, and are voting more and more frequently with him. Do you understand?”

  I sucked in a deep breath, the severity of the situation now fully revealed to me. No wonder the need for haste. No wonder the lack of complete research. I was right that they were desperate, and I could see why. They didn’t want more people to die on top of those who already had.

  This was all predicated on whether or not I believed them, of course, and so far, I didn’t have a reason to, other than the sloppiness of everything. Yes, they were capitalizing on an opportunity. That didn’t mean they could back up what they said.

  But they were trying to stop it. They were trying to save people. All I had to go on was their word, but I felt like I could believe them. They had told me so many things that I knew they wanted kept a secret... Would the bad guys have done the same thing?

  I doubted it.

  Uncertainty quivered in the pit of my stomach, and I realized that it all came down to a choice. Trust them and do their bidding, or walk away. I would have to talk to everyone first, but if we accepted their proposal, we would be completely relying on their word to come through for us. For me.

  “How do I know you can deliver? Not just for me, but for my friends.”

  “Once we get Devon out of there, we will be able to, uh, shift things back in the right direction, so to speak,” the Praetor said. “But if we reveal any more than that, we put our plan in jeopardy. We need you to agree before we can tell you anything more.”

  I exhaled. This wasn’t an easy decision to make on so little evidence, or proof that help would be waiting for me once the deed was done. And while I was inclined to believe that they were the good guys, and knew for a fact that Devon was bad, that didn’t change the fact that there wasn’t any proof. This was definitely a decision I couldn’t make on my own. “I can’t agree to anything until I talk to my team. How long do I have to decide?”

  “Not long,” Lacey replied, her face grim. “And we don’t want you telling your friends any details. We are risking exposure ourselves, and if we are found out on this, we risk our seats on the council—which is an opportunity for an enemy to replace us with one of their own.”

  “And for us to die not long after,” Strum said quietly, his eyes filled with shadows. “Along with our children.”

  He spoke as if from experience, and I studied the man. I didn’t know much about him, but there was a story there. I could sense it.

  “A day,” Lacey finally said. “No more, no less. And if you just go ahead and kill him, then we’ll take that as a ‘yes.’”

  “And come through on your promise to exonerate me?” I asked, eyeing them both. I didn’t care about reintegration into the Tower, but being exonerated held a certain appeal. It would keep the Knights off our backs if I wasn’t public enemy number one. Moving around would get a lot easier as well, as I could go the direct route.

  “That, my dear girl, was in place before we even reached out to you through your IT friend.” Strum’s smile was smug as he raised an eyebrow. “We may have put this together hastily, and with very little research, but we made sure to have that in place.”

  I stared at both of them. I was out of questions for now, but I knew more would come to me in a little while. Belatedly, I remembered Maddox, and about asking them for help getting her out, and then reconsidered it. By now the Inquisitors were running her DNA test. If they found out she was a… legacy, and Devon’s specifically, these two might not buy her innocence in all this. They were willing to kill Devon, after all. They might be willing to kill his daughter as well.

  I decided to hold it back, and resolved to handle it personally. We were in the process of putting a plan together for her, and I believed in my team—they’d come up with something genius. It wasn’t worth the risk of trying to involve these two.

  “How should I contact
you?” I asked.

  “Through your friend in IT,” Lacey said. “We’ll meet here. This room is a show of goodwill for you and your friends, by the way. We left it intact after the Knights took whatever they deemed evidence. I understand the occupant was a friend of yours.” She held out her hand, a silver chip dangling from it. “So you can enter and exit more easily.”

  “Thank you,” I said, accepting the chip, surprised by the gesture. It was a thoughtful gift, even if I had no intention of using it unless absolutely necessary. “Am I free to go?”

  “Yes,” Praetor Strum said. “And, if Ms. Elphesian is with you, let her know that I am keeping an eye on her mother for her. She is as well as can be expected, under the circumstances.”

  I bit my lip, and nodded. “I’ll do that.”

  They nodded back, and I turned and left. No one bagged me as I went, but I did pass several people in black standing guard. They were wearing masks that covered their eyes. The black they wore wasn’t a pure black, and seemed to blend perfectly into the walls. I almost wouldn’t have seen them, were it not for their exposed heads.

  Partway back the way I had come, I was greeted by a group of them, Eric in tow, a bag still over his head.

  “Let him out after one minute,” one of them instructed. “We will be gone by then.”

  I nodded, and they turned and walked away. I looked back to see Lacey and the Praetor leaving the apartment, the guards I had passed already moving with them, and then began counting down in my head.

  Sixty… fifty-nine… fifty-eight…

  21

  I counted all the way down to one before removing the covering from Eric’s head. I was sure the people with Lacey and the Praetor (I was assuming guards of some kind) were watching, and I wanted to demonstrate my goodwill, but I also needed the time to think. In the end, even a minute wasn’t enough. There was so much to process and unpack, and I wasn’t sure where to begin. Secret shadow groups vying for control over Scipio. Families passing their schemes and plans down through generations. Assassinating Devon Alexander.