The Girl Who Dared to Stand

by Bella Forrest

  “C’mon, Liana,” he said, tugging at his clothes to straighten them. “It’s clear Leo’s not going to show us, so let’s not push. Besides… I have a few apologies to make to everyone, and I figured you’d want to be present.”

  “What? No, that’s silly. I don’t have to be there.”

  “I want you to be,” he replied, giving me a slow, confident smile. “I’m hoping that by witnessing my humiliation firsthand, you’ll fully forgive me, and then maybe even take pity on me.”

  I snorted and crossed my arms. “I don’t know…” I teased. “If anything, I might make your apologies more humiliating.”

  “Good,” he said. “I deserve it. Let’s go. Thanks for letting us use your room, Leo!”

  He grabbed my hand and began pulling me to the vent, and I went with him willingly. I was relieved that we had worked things out, and strengthened by the fact that he cared about me. After everything else that had happened thus far today, I was considering this one a victory.

  Now I just had to turn our other problems into victories.

  11

  The next day, Grey and I were lying on our sides, back to front, down one of the side vents, and I was trying very hard not to giggle as Grey reached over me to point out where I was messing up, purposefully dragging the rough stubble on his chin across my neck as he did so.

  “Stop it,” I said for the umpteenth time, pulling the soldering iron away from the fuses to which I was in the process of splicing a power cable. “I’m trying to work here!”

  “No, what you’re doing is making a mess of things,” he insisted, reaching over me, trying to grab the tool out of my hand.

  “Grey,” I gasped, jerking it away and high over my head. “It’s hot! You’ll burn yourself!”

  He grunted, and continued to reach, but then placed his mouth over mine as soon as he had an angle. I stilled, savoring the feel of his mouth as he slowly kissed me. He was gentle, his kisses more like he was taking sweet tastes from my lips.

  I relaxed with a sigh. Everything since yesterday had just felt… perfect. He’d actually made me watch him apologize to everyone, which I’d made him do as a group thing rather than individually. Then he’d made sure that we both worked together setting up the hydroponic room, which meant hours of us setting up bins, lights, tents—the works—with no one to bother us, save those who came in hauling bags of topsoil. At dinner, we’d eaten side by side, chatting with everyone. He held my hand while we all sat around telling stories, and then reluctantly let it go only when it was time for us to go to sleep. Which took place after enough kissing that we had actually woken up Zoe, who tossed something at us with an irritated noise, before rolling back over to go to sleep.

  I’d gone to bed feeling like light was radiating from my heart and through my chest, and awoke feeling lighter than I ever had before. For a moment, it hadn’t mattered that the future was nebulous. It had only mattered that Grey was waiting for me to wake up, ready to start the day with me.

  “Liana?”

  Tian’s soft voice in my ear interrupted the warm spell that held Grey and me together, and we slowly broke apart. I looked up and backwards, finding Tian’s face only a few inches away.

  “Heeeey, Tian,” I said, fighting back a smile. “What’s, um…” Grey’s weight shifted off of me, resulting in the vent giving a slight groan and rattle, and heat bloomed in my cheeks. “What’s up?”

  “Maddox is back with food and said that she got a message through her net from Mercury while she was out—that his friend is coming any moment for dinner, and Zoe is yelling at Quess in the new workroom.”

  I blinked, trying to filter out the Tian-embellished parts from the actual messages. “Where is everyone?”

  “Watching Zoe yell at Quess in the new workroom.”

  I sighed and nodded. “Lead the way.”

  Tian nodded and then spun around in the middle of the vent, heading away from us and back up the vent shaft.

  “Do you know why Zoe hates him?” Grey asked, referring to Quess, and I tucked my chin to my neck to look at him.

  “I may have some idea,” I replied, starting to wriggle around on my side so I could begin moving up the shaft. The fight between Zoe and Quess was one part ego, one part professional curiosity, two parts flirting (on Quess’s side), and three parts righteous feminine indignation (on Zoe’s). The combination was like some sort of perverse version of nitroglycerin, where Zoe was the explosive, one whose anger only seemed to fuel Quess’s need to flirt with her. Despite all of that, they could somehow find moments of reprieve in which they seemed to work together with growing, albeit begrudging, respect.

  It had all started yesterday when they both began fighting over the design for a brace to the door that led to the Menagerie that would only allow it to open from the inside. They had both fought (well, Zoe got angry, while Quess just flirted and teased) for over an hour before eventually deciding to do their own proposed designs and use the better of the two. They had bickered the entire time they had worked, and while it had been amusing, at first, it had stopped being so once I saw the effect it had on Eric. He watched them both with hurt, sad eyes, as if he could see Zoe slipping away from him in each moment they stopped exchanging barbs to examine the other’s work… managing genuine compliments that seemed to steal the air from the room. In the end, Quess had admitted that Zoe’s design was superior, and I could see Eric withering on the spot.

  A part of me wanted to let my friend know what she was doing. Another part of me knew it wasn’t my place to interfere.

  I heard them long before I saw them, the cutting remarks being traded faster than a rust hawk’s venom. As I slid out, I immediately found Eric sitting off to the right in the new doorway we had made in the wall by unscrewing the panels and taping up the wires that ran between them. The panels were now being used as work stations—Quess and Zoe had welded them to the wall inside and converted some of the crates in which our supplies were stored into a central workstation where the communal tools had begun to accumulate.

  Maddox was sitting next to Eric in the same spot, her legs spread and her hands on the floor behind her, partially reclining.

  I moved to one side to let Grey out, and then crossed the space over to her.

  “I can’t help it if I’m both good looking and talented,” Quess said with a cocky grin. “That’s just your burden to bear, beautiful.”

  “Do you even hear how disgusting you are, you misogynistic jerk!” Zoe snapped back, as she angrily tightened something with her wrench. A moment later, she asked, in a completely normal tone, “What frequency did you say you wanted it on?”

  “37.5, and that’s two, in my favor,” Quess replied. I realized that he was now keeping some sort of score, but whether it was the number of questions she had asked, or something else, I wasn’t sure.

  “Shut up, you neophyte,” Zoe retorted.

  “Hey, Liana,” Maddox said, looking up at me as Tian dropped into a seated position between Maddox’s legs, settling her back against Maddox’s stomach. “Tian tell you?”

  “Yeah. Where is he meeting us, and who’s going out to meet him?”

  “I’ll go,” Tian said brightly, leaning forward.

  “I’ll do it,” Eric said gruffly. “And he’s supposed to meet us at the front door,” he added, referring to the entrance we had first entered our new home through. “I gotta get out of here.” He nodded toward Zoe and Quess. “Anything’s better than sitting around and watching this.”

  I felt a pang of sympathy for Eric as he stood up and moved into the other room, choosing to go the long route instead of crossing through either Zoe or Quess’s field of view. Not that I could blame him—it was hard not to feel like you were watching two people flirting. I was certain that Zoe didn’t even realize how it looked, and I knew for a fact she wasn’t actually flirting, but Eric was in love with her. For him, it hurt.

  “Maddox, how come Quess never flirts with you?” I asked, finding myself curio
us. “Is it just because you’re Cali’s daughter, or…”

  Maddox let out a sharp laugh, and shook her head, amused by my question. “Yeah, Quess doesn’t have that much common sense, bless his heart. He didn’t care that I was the daughter of a woman who could break him with her thumb—he made a pass all the same. Day one, if you can believe that.”

  I laughed, because I could. Quess was that incorrigible. “What’d you do?”

  She rocked her head back and forth, a sly grin on her face. “I warned him that I would only date a man who could beat me in a fight, and he fought me.” She smiled wolfishly, and added, “He lost. Badly. Quess may be a genius, but he is the very definition of a lover, not a fighter.”

  She looked at me, and a moment or two later, we were both laughing. It felt good to laugh, and it was great that it was with Maddox. I got the sense that she badly needed it, and I was happy to be able to share it with her. The laughter didn’t last long, but she was still smiling as it faded.

  “What’s so funny?” Quess asked as soon as the outburst had receded enough that we could hear, and his nervous face set us off all over again. He knew all too well we were talking about him after that, but I couldn’t help but laugh nonetheless.

  “You guys ready?” I asked once I had calmed down. It hadn’t taken long for reality to set in—I was about to meet an absolute stranger inside our new sanctum, one who worked for another absolute stranger. Both of them could reveal at any time where we were hiding, if they wanted to or felt like they had to.

  It was nerve-wracking, to say the least, so the moment of levity with Maddox was something I needed as well. I tried to reassure myself that Mercury wouldn’t do anything to betray us this early (if he was going to do anything at all)—after all, he needed me to get him his supply of Paragon. He couldn’t do anything until he had the formula and a way to create his own pill.

  I pushed through the blankets that had been strung out into curtains, and moved into the common area, which had been decorated by Tian using crates and pillows for us to use for sitting and eating. A small section in the corner had been left bereft of seats and served as our kitchen, with a portable heating element placed on a crate, and another crate serving as our preparation area.

  Tian kept it surprisingly neat and tidy, and it was comfortable. What more did you need for a home, really?

  We waited, exchanging wild speculations about who could be coming and what news they would be coming with, which quickly became silly thanks to Grey, Quess, and Tian. It helped pass the time and ease some of the tension. Tian had just named two of the creatures she was pretending Mercury had sent to us Pompodora Grizwaldious, a pixie with violet hair who shot lightening from her fingertips, and Estabulary Jones, a sleek black dragon with white hair and glowing green eyes, when we began to hear the telltale rattle from the vent, and the conversation flat-out stopped, all at once. I watched the dark space of the vent for a moment, and then rose to my feet, suddenly too nervous to sit. I needed to be upright—I didn’t want anyone standing over me.

  I wiped my sweaty palms on the thighs of my pants and tried to remain still as I waited, the rattling and banging of bodies in the vent growing louder. Grey, who had been sitting next to me, stood as well, and placed a strong hand on the small of my back.

  “This is going to be fine,” he whispered. “It really is. Mercury isn’t going to try anything this soon, but in case he does, we have our weapons ready.”

  I nodded, letting some of my nervous tension become confidence under his gentle reassurance. Hands appeared, gripping the lower edge of the hole, and there was a grunt from Eric as he pulled himself forward, his hands going to the bare floor and hand-walking his lower torso in. As soon as his feet hit the floor, he stood, an excited grin on his face.

  “Liana, you’ll never guess who—”

  “I told you not to ruin the surprise, MacGillus!” came a muffled voice from the vent, and my heart froze in my chest. I was certain that I had just imagined that I knew that voice.

  A case was pushed out of the vent, landing on the floor with a loud clap. Seconds later, new hands appeared, the skin color more bronzed than Eric’s, gripping the sides of the vent. There was a grunt—an all-too-familiar grunt that shouldn’t be possible—and then a thick thatch of dark, wavy hair appeared. My heart pounded in excitement, and I laid my hand over my chest, trying to contain the hard beat of it.

  I would’ve recognized it anywhere.

  “Alex?” I said, my voice barely a squeak, and my twin brother tossed back his hair as he picked himself up off the floor and peered at me through his wire-framed glasses.

  “Liana,” he said, relief radiating off of him, and before I knew it, I had crossed the short distance between us and thrown my arms around him. He returned the hug, squeezing me tightly, and I almost burst into tears, I was so overjoyed to feel him in my arms.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Eric announced into the stunned silence that had fallen around us. “Meet Alexander Castell—Mercury’s envoy, and Liana’s twin brother.”

  12

  The elation I experienced was brief in the wake of Eric’s statement, and I stood back and gaped at Alex. He was working for Mercury?

  “They don’t look anything alike,” Tian whispered loudly into the hushed stillness.

  “He’s my fraternal twin,” I mumbled automatically, having heard the comment hundreds of times in school. “Different eggs. You’re working for Mercury?”

  I directed the last statement at my brother alone, and his cheeks grew darker as he blushed, embarrassed. I didn’t care—I still didn’t understand how this had happened. Had he been doing it all along, or…

  My eyes widened as I looked into his dark gaze, and he nodded with a sad smile. “Just started,” he said, confirming my suspicions. “Mercury knew about me the day you entered Roark’s life, Liana. He started watching all of us—Mom and Dad too—trying to see if you’d try to contact us, but I guess I surprised him when I hacked into your net to have private conversations with you. He contacted me the next day, and I’ve been working for him ever since.”

  “Even when you told me about Zoe?” I asked, and he shook his head.

  “Oh no, that was all me,” he replied with a grin. “Couldn’t let my other little sister get hurt, now could I?” He hugged Zoe, and then focused back on me.

  “Did he threaten you?” I asked. He shook his head again.

  “Not exactly. He, uh, said I needed to learn how to cover my tracks better, and offered to teach me.”

  “So you’ve met him?” I asked. Knowing who Mercury was would take away some of his security, and put us in a position of mutually assured destruction should either of us get caught. “You know who he is?”

  Alex shook his head. “No, he only contacts me through my work computer, and mostly via text. I don’t know who he is, Liana, just that he’s got a higher position than I have.”

  Which meant Mercury had leverage over my brother. I closed my eyes and took a moment to reground myself, trying to find a way to accept the fact that this was yet another person I had exposed to danger. And this time it was my twin.

  “And what position would that be?” Quess asked, crossing his arms and giving Alex a onceover. I rolled my eyes. Quess had been in IT before he had faked his own death and created a new identity within the Cogs department to pursue his dream of innovation. But that didn’t mean he let anyone forget.

  “Developer, second class.”

  Quess whistled. “That’s further than I ever got. I was just about to be bumped up to Developer when I decided to leave.”

  Alex gave Quess a curious look. “You… left?”

  Quess grinned broadly. “Absolutely. Although it took some careful planning. So, Mercury sent you with some nets?”

  “Not exactly. May I?” My brother held up the case he had pushed through earlier, and I nodded. As much as I wanted to grill him about what he could tell me about Mercury, or about what was going on in the Tower itself, t
his was more important. That could come later.

  He knelt and popped the case open, revealing half a dozen data crystals in varying hues, all of them about as long as my thumb. “These are new IDs to be installed into the nets. The only thing they’re missing is images, but he said Quess could handle it?” He looked up. Quess saluted him, and he returned to the case, pushing the crystals aside to get at a pad underneath. “Mercury and I made about a dozen of them, but as you know, once the ID is imprinted on a net, it remains there, so try not to go through them too quickly. Also, he wanted me to tell Quess, Maddox, and Tian that their nets need to be exchanged as well, as a precautionary measure.”

  “Noooooooo,” Tian groaned theatrically, and my brother gave her a curious expression as she rolled around on the pillows, her arms and legs flopping in dismay. “I hate net day,” she pouted, pounding her fists into the pillows.

  “Are you Tian?” my brother asked, a small, delighted smile playing on his lips, and Tian nodded, her head bob stiff and angry. “Mercury said that if you go through net day without complaining too much, Liana would be allowed to give you this.”

  As he spoke, he dug a silver foil packet from the pocket of his gray uniform, and held it up, revealing the words Hot Cocoa on the side. Tian’s head turned toward him, and her eyes zeroed in on it. Within seconds she was standing, perched eagerly on her toes a respectful distance away, staring at the packet.

  “How long until net day?” she demanded.

  “We’re not sure yet,” I told her carefully, and she crossed her arms, a frown pulling her mouth down.

  “Find out faster,” she commanded with an imperious foot stamp. She glared at us a moment longer, and then spun and darted through the curtain. I could hear her stomping around on the other side, and smiled a smile that only Tian seemed to inspire.

  Alex whistled a long, low note, and held out the packet to me. “She is a regal little thing, isn’t she?”