Level 25, Tony replied. Dylan took charge after you passed out, and at Rose’s insistence, put me inside you, in case there was any brain damage. There was not, by the way, and I managed to get the rest of my program into the net before Scipio crashed the server, so there’s that. I hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of piloting your body up here. It was super fun, by the way; you’re kind of really flexible, huh?
If Tony had been any older, or had any sort of a lecherous tone in his voice, I would’ve been creeped out. But he wasn’t, and I could sense the compliment. Even still, that did nothing to detract from his revelation that he’d been “piloting” my body while I was unconscious. I’m not sure I’m—
There wasn’t any time, he interjected impatiently. Scipio fried the servers controlling the doors, to try to get me to escape through the transceiver. I set up a dummy program to continue opening the doors for the Cogs after I left, but it’s gone. That means that whatever doors were open are going to stay open until the Cogs close them manually. If they don’t get them closed in time, then Alice is going to get in, and everybody’s up poop creek without a paddle. We had to keep moving.
I bristled under his words. He was right, of course. I just didn’t like the idea that he had taken control of me. Still, I could tell he hadn’t done it maliciously; his thoughts were like an open book to me, and I could feel the innocence of his actions. Which was odd, considering he was over two hundred and fifty years old.
I understand, I told him, deciding to let it go. Now, why are we on level 25? That’s right above Water Treatment. It’s the wrong direction.
Your blood sugar is dangerously low, and your electrolytes are depleted. Dylan asked Lynch to find you some food and water, and this was apparently the closest place. I wanted to work on waking you up, so I stayed out here while they went inside to grab some grub. But, now that you’re up, you should probably get in there. They seem to be at an impasse regarding what to do next. Or rather, how to do it.
His words filled me with a sense of foreboding, but I ignored it and slowly climbed to my feet. Every movement was filled with some sort of twinge, sometimes painful, but other times electric, like amps of energy had somehow managed to hide themselves just under my skin. I ignored that, too, and eventually made it to my feet.
I was exhausted by the effort, but Tony had mentioned one important detail that seemed to override everything else weighing on my mind.
Food and water.
15
I pressed the door control to open the door and stepped inside, trying my best not to stagger. My knees felt rubbery, and every nerve ending in my body seemed to twitch with excess energy, but I somehow managed to keep a smidgeon of dignity.
Dylan and Lynch were standing on either side of a dining room table filled with food and water bottles—telling me we were in a residence. They were also in the middle of a shouting match. Rose stood on a third side, her head darting nervously back and forth as the two exchanged verbal volleys. She looked as if she were ready to intercede the minute things turned violent, and I couldn’t blame her. I had arrived when both parties were just about turning blue in the face.
“What’s going on?” I asked, and then paused at the hoarse grating sound my voice made. I sounded awful, like someone who was about to die. Luckily, the strange croak was jarring enough to catch both Dylan’s and Lynch’s attention, and they both stopped whatever incoherent rant they were in the middle of and turned toward me.
“Liana?” Dylan asked cautiously, taking a step toward me. “Or Tony?”
I stared at her for a second, and suddenly understood perfectly how Grey must feel every time I did that to him. First, I was confused. How could she not recognize me? Then I was angry—not at Tony or her, but that I couldn’t remember getting here or any conversation Tony might have had while he was using my body to get around. I took a deep breath and let it go, my current needs far more pressing than my wounded pride.
“It’s me,” I said, moving toward the table, my eyes focused solely on one of the water bottles. It had condensation on the side, telling me that it had been, at one point, cold. Dylan grabbed it before I was halfway there and tossed it to me. I caught it awkwardly, the joints in my hand too stiff to move properly, and wound up using my arm to press it to my chest. I then pulled it out, unscrewed the lid, and began drinking the water.
It was still cool, and beyond refreshing. I guzzled it down, pulling mouthful after mouthful, unwilling to relinquish it until I had sated the terrible thirst that had seized me. For several seconds everyone was silent, leaving only the sound of my heavy gulps in the room.
I stopped only when it became necessary to breathe, pulled the bottle away, and wiped my mouth with my sleeve. “Thank you,” I said, my voice significantly improved with the aid of the water I had just consumed. Dylan and Lynch both nodded.
“How are you feeling?” Lynch asked, stepping around the table. “Has Tony—”
“He got me mostly up to speed in the hallway,” I told him. “I’m still confused as to why we came down here for food. Surely we could have gotten some from an apartment closer to the Grounds.”
I reached for a loaf of bread from the table as I said this, gripping it between two hands so I could rip a chunk of it off and shove it in my mouth. My hunger was asserting itself so aggressively that manners weren’t even an option.
“Number one, because this is my apartment,” Lynch said. There wasn’t any condescension in his voice as he said this, but at my curious glance, he added, “I didn’t feel right using my authority to access other people’s apartments to take their food. But that’s not the real reason. It has to do with the sentinels.”
I shoved another piece of bread in my mouth, the taste deliciously sour and fresh, and looked at Dylan for an explanation as to why the sentinels had played a role in the decision to go down. She knew that I wanted to get to the Citadel as quickly as possible, so there had to be a reason she had done the opposite.
“The sentinels are still mostly on the upper levels,” Dylan reported. “Which means the doors on those levels are the most dangerous, because sentinels could be lurking on the other side. It would be madness to try to slip back into the shell and get back up to the Grounds that way. So we went down, to see if we could get ahead of the sentinels and slip out one of the doors down here. Get back into the shell.”
I chewed thoughtfully, mulling over what she was saying, and realized she was right. It had been the right call. Getting to the Citadel to help the others meant avoiding as many obstacles as possible, which meant the path of least resistance was the right one.
“So then why are you fighting?” I asked after I had swallowed the bread. “It makes sense.”
“Because I think you should exit on the north side of the shell, and use the power conduits running up the side to climb up,” Lynch said angrily. “They have no sensors, no cameras, and none of the sentinels would think to look for you in there.”
“And I said that would take too long,” Dylan practically snarled. “The area in there is tight, not meant for fast movement. You need to get us to the west side of the Tower. Lift shaft number 12 on that side goes all the way up to level 83 of the shell before it dead ends, so we can use our lashes to climb up the shaft all the way to the top, taking rests every ten levels or so. From there, we would just have to sneak up two flights of stairs.”
I stared at both of them for a moment, and then took another bite of bread, using the time to consider both their plans. In truth, I hadn’t been thinking about the how of getting up; I’d just assumed we would return to the Grounds and climb up the same way Sage did. But they were right to be considering it, because with the sentinels in the shell, movement within it was going to be very tricky, if not downright impossible.
But I didn’t like the sound of either of their proposed options. The power conduits that Lynch was talking about were one of the four main power lines that transferred power from Water Treatment and Cogstown
and distributed it to the Core and the rest of the Tower. While they ran all the way to the top, and had just enough space for workers to climb in and out, the conduits in there emitted massive amounts of thermal radiation, making it dangerous to be in there for a long time. There were environmental suits we could wear to resist it, but even then, they started losing integrity after an hour. Not to mention, if Sage needed power diverted to the Core for his plan to kill Scipio, then he was undoubtedly keeping an eye on those conduits—if only to make sure no one tampered with them.
But just because they were out didn’t mean going up an elevator shaft was any better. The entire shell was without power and pitch black, making something that was difficult enough to navigate—even when lit—damn near impossible to do so in the darkness. The Tower held a veritable pitfall of ways you could plummet to your death, and if we weren’t extremely careful (and slow), then we could accidently step into an elevator shaft or plummet into one of the plunges. Or worse, someone from an upper level could accidently fall into one while we were in it, and plummet down on top of us, killing everyone on impact. Not to mention, the sentinels would undoubtedly be monitoring them as well, looking for anyone trying to escape. It was far too exposed.
I’m glad you got there quickly, Tony said in my head, his voice exasperated. Because I didn’t want to waste time giving you the numbers. Your best option is to go outside.
“Outside?” I exclaimed out loud, and Lynch and Dylan both exchanged confused looks. I ignored them, my mind racing. What he was talking about was risky, but I immediately saw the appeal. Sage wouldn’t anticipate anyone going outside the Tower to avoid him. He would assume that everyone would try to remain inside rather than risk getting stuck outside. If we could make it to one of the access hatches and get out, then we could scale the side of the Tower with our lashes. It was still dangerous. If the lash ends failed, the gyros in our harnesses gave out, or we grew careless due to exhaustion, we could plummet to our deaths. But Tony was right: it was the best way to get up the Tower unobstructed.
I looked at the other occupants of the room, and smiled. “Tony suggests we scale the outside of the Tower, and I happen to agree with him. Where’s a good place to do that?”
Lynch leaned away from the table, his face contemplative, and then nodded thoughtfully, while I took the opportunity to stuff more bread into my mouth. “On the north side of the Tower,” he said. “It’ll put you out of direct sunlight, which will hopefully prevent you from getting too sunburned or dehydrated, and it’ll give you the best access to the Citadel without forcing you to navigate too much of the shell. You’ll be exposed on the bridges, but… I don’t know where you go from there. I’m not really familiar with that area of the Tower, so you’ll have to figure it out. I can at least get you out.”
“Excellent,” I said approvingly around another spongy mouthful of bread.
“Not excellent,” Dylan cut in before I could say more. I switched my gaze over to her, swallowed the piece down, and waited for her to air her issues to the group. “We don’t have the equipment to scale the Tower. I don’t know when you last switched your lash ends out, but I haven’t done it in a while, and we’ve both been exposed to all sorts of radiation, which you and I both know causes them to degrade. I don’t have any spares, and you’re talking about climbing a hundred stories with them. They will fail, and we will die, long before we reach the top.”
She was right, of course, but I had already been going over the problem in my head, and I had thought up a solution.
“Lynch, where’s the nearest Knight supply station?” I asked.
Every department had supply stations on the other floors, just for situations like this. And though they were some of the most secure rooms in the Tower, they also ran on battery power, making them accessible even during a crisis. Only workers from the right department had access, meaning only Knights had access to Knight supply rooms, Cogs to Mechanical supply rooms, etc. It was impossible for Scipio to lock anyone out, as they operated outside of his systems.
He blinked, a surprised smile dawning on his face. “On the way, actually. Why?”
“Well, for one thing, Dylan and I are going to need replacement lash ends. But for another, you’re going to need batons to fight Alice. One won’t do much to slow her down, but if you can organize people, and you all hit her at the same time, then you can disable her long enough to rip the hard drive out of each sentinel’s back. Rose, would you show him?”
She turned around and pointed to the black box under the metal cage fitted between her shoulder blades, and I continued talking. “Do whatever you can to destroy that, and you destroy the sentinel.”
He nodded and pulled out his pad to type a message on it while I looked at Dylan, raising an eyebrow in mocking smugness. She arched one of her own, and then looked me over from head to toe.
“That was a really smart suggestion,” she admitted with a smile. “But you better take a look in the mirror before you go acting all superior.”
I laughed at that, and turned toward one of the pictures in the wall, trying to catch a glimpse of my reflection. “Are you saying that I don’t look pretty enough to bust in and rescue Grey and the others?”
“Girl, at this point you look like you’re an IT-born recruit on her third day at the Academy, and her drill instructor is Rachel Pine.”
I cringed at the image that conjured, knowing full well that of all the departments we recruited from, IT produced some of the worst candidates, physical fitness-wise. Perhaps it was the sedentary lifestyle of the Eyes, but their kids often came to us overweight and highly sensitive. And the Academy was indifferent to all of that, and ran them ragged to get them in shape.
In the ghostly outline of my image in the glass, I could see that my hair had come completely undone and was standing out around my head, not quite on end, but definitely filled with static. Beyond that, my face was a pale blob, giving me zero indication of the state of it.
“I’ve definitely looked better,” I said once I was done, turning back toward her.
Her smile was lopsided. “Me too. Lynch, you done?”
“Yup,” he said, tapping a few more buttons, presumably to send the message. “Let’s get going.”
16
We made it to the Knights’ supply room quickly, even with me scarfing down a few more chunks of bread and polishing off two more bottles of water as we went. Nobody bothered us. In fact, there didn’t seem to be much traffic on this level at all, likely because all the Cogs were on the upper levels, trying to prevent the spread of the sentinels.
Dylan and I quickly found the lash ends on a shelf and pocketed several while discussing the finer points of when and how to change out the lash ends during the climb. Vertical climbs were tricky, as finding a way to generate enough momentum to create a static charge strong enough to hold our weight was too difficult to safely achieve when throwing vertically, which meant shorter, tighter throws. That was more stress on the lash ends, which would result in them failing more quickly than if we were lashing inside the Tower.
Dylan wanted to plan to change them out every three hundred feet, which meant changing the lash ends out nine times. I overruled her, wanting them changed out every hundred. It meant going slower—we’d have to stop a total of twenty-five times, which was annoying—but considering the climb we were about to make, it was the safest course of action.
I wasn’t any good to my friends dead, so I was willing to play it safe, for now.
As soon as we were done, I gave Lynch my ID number and told him to have his people open the other Knight supply stations up and take as many batons as they could. It wouldn’t be much, but it was better than nothing. He sent out another message, and then tucked his pad back into his overalls and waved for us to follow.
We took several twisting turns down the halls, enough for me to grow a little disoriented about where we were, and then entered one long hall, which was both wide and tall, taking up nearly two levels. A seri
es of tracks ran through the middle of the floor, but the sides were crammed with boxes of tools, equipment, barrels, sheets of metal, workbenches… It took me a minute, but I finally realized that it wasn’t a hall at all, but a storage room.
Lynch began picking his way through the winding path, evidently so used to the sight that it failed to inspire any awe in him, but I couldn’t help but gape. It was cluttered and showed signs of being used frequently. Dozens of workbenches grouped together in a haphazard way were cluttered with tools, and there were various pieces of machinery in the room in different stages of disassembly. Tool bags were hung on this and that, with different last names embroidered on them to signal ownership, scattered all around the room in no particular order. There was even a kitchen in the corner, which showed signs of activity, including a few dishes of unfinished food sitting on a nearby table. Looking at the room, I suddenly felt as if this was the true heart of Cogstown—a place where workers congregated to share stories while working on various projects and replacement parts.
A pang went through me as I thought about those people, and how many of them were likely to die, with what was going on in the Tower. However Sage was targeting his victims, he’d make sure of that. The sooner I got to him, the sooner I could stop it. But I had to get to the others first. They had no idea that he wanted Leo, or that he even knew Leo existed, and wouldn’t be taking the necessary precautions to keep him protected. They assumed he was safely hidden inside Grey. They didn’t know what I knew.
It was frustrating not being able to reach out and talk to them. My entire life, I had taken the nets for granted, and now that I was without even the most basic function of mine, I felt panicky and unhinged. The lack of knowledge was driving me insane.
The Girl Who Dared to Fight Page 13