I realized then that she had come to the same conclusion I had, and was sealing the door manually, cutting off access. A part of me wanted to tell her to stop—to not close the door until everyone was safe—but I knew, deep down, that she had to do it. There were more people in Cogstown than in that hall, and we had a duty to serve the greater good.
So instead of wasting time fighting with her, I moved over to the door and began helping pull people through, grabbing the arms of bodies that were closest to the door and yanking them out of the mass, ushering them along. At one point a child of about four or five, his face red and screaming, was passed over the crowd and practically thrown at me. I barely got my arms around him before a large man who could barely squeeze through the narrowing space reached out and snatched the boy’s leg, grabbing for something to pull himself forward. It took me a second to recognize Cyril, the fear carved into the line of his face making the man look rabid, and I realized he didn’t understand what he was doing; the fear of death was blinding him to his actions, leaving him with a desperate compulsion to survive no matter what.
But the boy in my arms howled in pain as Cyril started to pull, trying to find leverage to get through, and, reacting purely on an instinct to keep the boy safe, I lashed out with a foot, kicking him right in his armpit. He shouted in pain, but let go of the boy, and I stumbled back, keeping my arms locked tight around the panicked child.
Dylan caught me, and I quickly handed the boy to her before racing back to the man and trying to grab one of Cyril’s arms to help him.
“PUSH HIM OUT!” I heard Neela yell from behind me, but I ignored her and planted a foot on the door just as I got a grip on his forearm with both hands. I had long enough to catch a glimpse of the orange five on his indicator, and then began yanking. I couldn’t let Cyril die. His decision to support me and Lacey had kept the crowd from killing us, and he had worked hard to get everyone organized and working. He had helped me, helped all of us, and he didn’t deserve to die after he’d worked so hard to save so many people.
“OPEN THE DOOR!” I shouted as I managed to get a few more inches of him out of the confined space.
“We can’t!” she cried. “The sentinels—”
A metal hand slid through the door and wrapped itself over Cyril’s head. He gave me a pleading look and his grip tightened on my arm, but before I could even pull my gun and fire at Alice, he was viciously ripped away, hard enough that I was slammed into the door with him before our grip on each other broke.
I stumbled back, my entire arm and side throbbing, and then raced toward the gap in the door. “Don’t!” I cried, not wanting to lose him, but it was too late. With a loud grunt, Neela drove her weight against the wrench and sealed the door closed. I stopped just short of it, staring at it, unable to understand that it had closed.
“He was still out there,” I said softly, my stomach churning as I fully comprehended what closing the door meant to the people on the other side. I could hear their fists beating on the door, their screams begging to be let in, and it was more than I could bear. “They need help!”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Neela bit off tearfully, her angry tone so deep and wounded that I turned and considered her in a new light. She scrubbed the tears from her face and gave me a fierce look. “Engineer Green ordered me to protect Cogstown at all costs, and that meant letting the people in the hall die to save it. I’m going to have to live with that for the rest of my life, so I do not need you to remind me of it right now.”
I stared at her, and then immediately felt contrite. She was absolutely right, and it had been sanctimonious of me to act like she had done it out of maliciousness. I knew that Requiem Day meant hard choices, but the reality was far different than I ever could’ve imagined. “I’m sorry,” I exhaled, turning toward her. “You are absolutely right. I just… I wish we could’ve saved more.”
“Me too,” she said, wiping the tears from her lashes and taking a moment to collect herself. “And I’m going to. There are more doors that need opening. But you two need to go find Lacey. There’s a medic station down the hall—that’s where I told the sentinel to take her. Go left at the fourth intersection and keep going straight. You’ll see it.”
I nodded, and on impulse, reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “Thank you for your help, Neela.”
She nodded, and then turned to a few of the Cogs, who were fitting expandable braces to the gears in the door and the wall opposite from it, to make sure it stayed wedged shut. I watched them for a second, wondering what sort of struggle they were in for, and realized that it would be nonstop until I could find a way to put an end to Sage.
And the first step of that was getting to Tony. “C’mon,” I said to Dylan. “Let’s hope Lacey’s still awake and can give us Tony’s location.”
Dylan nodded and began moving down the hallway, her limp less pronounced now. I followed close behind, checking my watch. It had been an hour and a half since Sage had given the order to kill the power and started scaling the wall, which gave us thirty minutes to get to Tony before Sage did, provided Lacey’s timetable was accurate.
Even if it wasn’t, that was all the time I was willing to spare on this. My friends were trapped in the Citadel, and I had to get to them before Eustice and the other legacies did.
10
We followed Neela’s directions and spotted a white sign sporting the Medica’s insignia after only a few minutes of walking. The power was still working in Cogstown, so the door opened as soon as I pushed the button outside.
Inside, Anna was racing around a diagnostic table where Lacey was sitting, setting up tools and equipment. She looked up as we entered, and then back down at what she was doing. Beside Lacey sat a man, whom I recognized as one of her lieutenants in the legacy arm of her operation, and a transfusion tube was dangling between the two. Rose was standing in the far corner of the room, trying to look as diminutive as possible.
“There you are,” Lacey said hoarsely. “I’ve been waiting forever.”
“No, I’ve been waiting forever,” Anna spat hotly, folding her arms over her chest and taking a step back. “She wouldn’t let me start the operation until you were here!”
I looked at Anna and then back at Lacey. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell Anna that it was the right call on Lacey’s part, given that we needed her to tell us where Tony was, but I held back, knowing that I didn’t want Lacey to die just because she had held off from the surgery waiting for me.
“Lacey, where is Tony?” I asked, taking a step toward her. “In your quarters, or—”
Lacey gave a hacking laugh and shook her head. “Needed to put him somewhere he could escape from easily,” she rasped. “He’s… in the… door…”
Her breathing started to catch, and the monitor over the diagnostic table began to flash red in warning. “The internal bleeding is starting to fill the cavity around her lungs!” Anna shouted, tapping on the screen. A moment later the monitor depicted the image of what were presumably Lacey’s lungs, showing the area filling with darkness, the lungs slowly deflating. The young intern stared at it for several seconds, her eyes wide and mouth open, but before I could snap her out of it and tell her to get to work, something took over and she grabbed a pneumatic injector from the small table of items she’d gathered, inserted a vial, and pressed it against Lacey’s neck.
I realized she was humming to herself as she tossed the injector down and retrieved another bit of tube, this one hooked to a giant needle. She hooked one end of the tube to a nozzle on the wall—a vacuum, I realized a second later. Lacey gasped helplessly, like a fish, as Anna pressed a shaky hand to her side, right under her armpit, her fingers probing the space between ribs. I was trying to keep from telling Anna to just do it, or Lacey was going to die, when Anna blew out a slow breath and shoved the needle into Lacey’s side. The vacuum that Anna had hooked into immediately began removing the blood, and Lacey’s breathing grew easier.
But her eyelids
were getting heavy from whatever medicine Anna had administered. I could see that she was slowly losing her tenuous grasp on reality and was about to be unconscious. I had no way of knowing how long Anna would take patching her up and had no clue what Lacey meant by Tony being in the door. But it was now or never. I took a step toward the woman on the table and leaned over her.
“Lacey, focus. Where is Tony?”
Lacey blinked groggily at me. “I’m going to die, aren’t I?” she asked heavily. “First Ambrose… then Strum… All my work and preparation, all for nothing.”
I stared at her for a long moment, not sure what I could say. I understood how she felt, because I felt defeated as well. Even after everything we had done to get us here, I wasn’t certain we could win this fight. What did it matter if I got Tony or saved my friends? I had no idea what Sage was planning, or even where he was. Finding him during Requiem Day would be nigh impossible. Yet here I was, still fighting.
And I wasn’t about to let Lacey give up.
“You’re not going to die,” I told her. “Anna is going to patch you up in no time. You just wait and see.”
Lacey gave me a weak smile. “You know… Liana… I really, really couldn’t stand you… for the longest time.”
I gave a derisive laugh and shifted a little closer to her. “And now?”
Her eyelids blinked heavily. “I still can’t,” she admitted. “But… at least I know I can trust you. Lynch?”
“Yes, Lacey,” the man giving her blood said, standing up. “What is it?”
“Get the Champion and her people to the server farm, to the door controls. I put Tony in there to protect him. He—” She broke off, a yawn catching her by surprise. “Those are some really good drugs,” she told Anna as soon as the yawn finished, and I heard a slight slur to her words that told me she was going out. “Liana?”
“Yes?” I asked, and I was stunned to see her stretching her hand toward me. Tentatively, I took it into my own, and she immediately squeezed my fingers together in a vice-like grip that made my bones pop.
“The password… Tony… Seymore Butts…” She was barely able to string together a sentence, but I focused.
“Seymore Butts,” I repeated back to her. Then I frowned. “Wait, what?”
Lacey chuckled softly as she let go of my hand. “Tony’s… choice. You’ll… see.”
Her eyelids fluttered closed, and within moments she was breathing deeply. I took a glance at the wall screen to check her vitals, which were weak and thready, and sent up a silent prayer that she managed to survive her surgery.
Anna exhaled in relief, and then looked at us. “You need to go,” she said. “And I need another blood donor if you’re taking this one.”
I turned to Lynch in time to see him reach up and pull off his end of the transfusion tube. “Don’t worry,” he told the girl in an authoritative voice. “I’ve put out the word. You’ll probably have a line waiting outside. Anything you need, just ask the next person in line. We’ll also be sending a contingent of guards to keep you and her safe.”
Anna’s eyes widened, but she nodded. “Thank you,” she told him. Then she looked up at me and Dylan. “And thank you,” she added, nervously tucking another strand of hair behind her ear. “You saved a lot of lives. You should be proud of that.”
She said it, but in my mind all I could see was Cyril at the door, a handful of his hair gripped tightly in the sentinel’s hand. The way he tried to hold on even though the sentinel was stronger… and how fast he had been ripped away.
“It was my duty,” was all I could muster. “Lynch, where is the server farm?”
“Underneath the central air processing unit in the heart of Cogstown,” he replied, moving over to a table that I hadn’t noticed in the corner and collecting one of those coats that could make a person appear to blend in with the walls—something a legacy in Lacey’s family had designed. “Follow me. I’ll update you on everything we know.”
I nodded and let him lead the way, giving one last look to Lacey and Anna, and then Rose, who was still standing in the corner. “You coming?” I asked her.
Her purple eyes blinked at me, and for a machine, she managed to portray insecurity very well. “Don’t you think it would be better if I stayed here?” she asked hesitantly. “People are afraid of me, as they should be. I might only make things harder for you if I come along. I stand out.”
I gave her a considering look and thought about what she was saying. She was right that anyone we encountered was bound to be hostile or afraid when they saw us. But that was something that could work to our advantage, the longer Requiem Day went on.
“Yes, you do, and I’m sorry if this hurts your feelings, but I’m going to need you to be scary and threatening. There’s going to come a point during all this when we won’t be able to trust any of the people we’re encountering.”
“Especially since Scipio just announced that you and the entire Knight, Cog, and Diver Departments attempted to murder him,” Lynch announced grimly, slipping his coat over his shoulders. “And I’ve already put the word out for the Cogs not to attack any sentinel with purple eyes. Luckily, because we have power, we can still send text messages through the servers, but c’mon. I’ll explain as we go.”
He was right. I glanced at Rose, giving her a questioning look, and after a moment she nodded and began walking forward. I stood aside to let her pass, and then followed her into the hall. Lynch was right behind me, leaving Dylan to shut the door as she exited. Lynch quickly moved around me when I paused in the hall and waved us along. We quickly formed a little line behind him, heading down the hall. There were more workers than before in the halls, not all of them Cogs, heading toward some unknown destination, some defensive task, and I couldn’t help but feel like the entire place was a beehive readying for an attack.
“What is going on?” I yelled at Lynch, the amount of noise in the hall making that the only possible volume for a conversation.
“Water Treatment was breached a few minutes ago,” Lynch replied grimly. “The sentinels are in there now, killing people.”
“Yeah, about that,” Dylan called from behind me. “Why are the sentinels killing some people and leaving the others behind?”
Dylan’s question caught me off guard, but I suddenly remembered that I had been wondering the same thing. The Alices had spared Dalton—indicated that he was a worthy citizen—but then killed the man trying to get through the door before it closed. Why? What had differentiated the two of them? Alice didn’t seem to care about gender or anything else, so why—
My mind suddenly flashed to Cyril’s indicator, and what I knew about Dalton. Dalton had been a seven when I’d met him, and I had no reason to assume that he’d dropped in rank since then. Meanwhile, Cyril’s rank had been a five, and they had gone after him. It was the ranks—the ones Scipio gave us to reflect our service to the Tower. It had to be. Alice had mentioned that citizens true to Scipio would not be harmed, and there wasn’t any other way of differentiating the citizens beyond their department. Not to mention, Sage had wanted the expulsion chambers in the Citadel to remain in use; even though Sadie and Plancett had been the driving force, I had no doubt it had been Sage’s hand guiding their actions.
But that didn’t explain the why. What did Sage hope to achieve by using sentinels to murder that many of the Tower’s citizens? Sure, Alice was telling them it was for the good of the Tower, but surely he didn’t believe the people would take that sitting down. The lower-ranking individuals made up nearly a third of the population! If my hypothesis was right and they were targeting everyone ranked five and below, then the people were going to catch on and start fighting back.
Then again, all the ones were in the Citadel, and the twos and threes were being sequestered in the Medica. The remaining fours and fives might not be able to put up much of a fight after all.
I didn’t know, but I had to find out. Something told me it was important to Sage’s plan. If I could figure out wh
y, then maybe I could do something to stop it.
“I think they are targeting people rank five and below,” I told the group, sharing my theory with them. “I saw a man I knew to be a seven only a few moments ago, and the Alice units let him live. But they grabbed a man who was a five and killed him.”
“That would make sense, given what the sentinels were saying,” Dylan replied. “But why are they doing it?”
“I don’t know,” I told her. “But if we could figure out why, we might also be able to figure out how he’s trying to kill Scipio, and stop it.”
“Well, I can’t tell you how he’s doing it,” Lynch cut in, coming to a stop in front of a hall and ushering us to turn right. “But what I can tell you is this: forty-five minutes ago, we got an update from Scipio reporting that you, Engineer Green, and Praetor Strum had attempted a coup against the other department heads and Scipio. Orders are to execute you on sight. I can promise you that none of Lacey’s people will hurt you, but not all of the Cogs are like us, and they may try to attack you, so beware.”
I followed his instructions to head right and paused when I saw a deserted corridor in front of me, disconcerted by what he was saying and suddenly feeling that I was being led into a trap. It would be cruel of him to taunt me that way if it were the case, but I had no reason to doubt his intentions, especially given his loyalty to Lacey.
“Have you heard anything about the Citadel?” I asked, resuming my quick pace.
“Actually, yes,” Lynch replied, jogging to keep up with me. “The update from Scipio allowed us a few seconds to use their connection to hack into their data feed, and we were able to determine that Water Treatment, Cogstown, and the Citadel all have power. Apparently they didn’t anticipate our departments not getting hit in the initial power drain, and have sent orders for us to shut it down so they can work on restoring Scipio, but fat chance of that happening. I can’t tell you what’s happening inside, but they are fighting back. Which is good, because Scipio has deemed the entire Knights Department psychologically contaminated.”
The Girl Who Dared to Fight Page 9