I nodded, impressed by the level of caution they were displaying. Whoever they were, they certainly didn’t want to give anyone a lot of time to try to set up any sort of trap to catch them. It still didn’t tell me who they were, but at least they were smart. That was a good sign.
“So they could call while we’re on the heist?” I asked, and he nodded.
“Hence the five hours.”
I sighed, irritated beyond belief, but what could I do? “Tell him that I agree to the terms, and I’ll be waiting on his call.”
Alex frowned. “Are you serious? You’re going to meet with them just like that?”
I nodded, giving him a wry look. “I know—believe me, I do. I think about things too, y’know. But it couldn’t hurt to find some new friends and a safer place to figure out our next step.”
Alex looked around and then nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, this place is a bit of a dump,” he replied in comprehension. He held up his wrist, frowning when he saw the green dash there, and then swiping over to check the time, which also wasn’t working. I looked around for the clock Quess had brought.
“It’s eleven fifteen,” I informed him. “In the evening.”
“Then that’s my cue to leave. I can’t be out of the Core for too long—they don’t really like it when I do that. I just need you to hand me over the Paragon Mercury wanted before I head off.”
My spirits plummeted some, but I stepped in close and hugged him one last time, as Quess fetched the Paragon and pressed it into my brother’s hand. I remained clutching Alex tightly against me, just feeling… whole. He squeezed me for a second or two longer, and then slowly pulled away.
“I gotta go,” he said. I nodded, pushed the curtain aside, and followed him to the vent. He knelt before it and looked up at me. “Gonna walk me out?”
“Of course,” I replied. “I need as much time as I can get with you.”
He grinned, and slid into the vent. I waited patiently, but even as he pulled away, I felt sadder and sadder. I wanted him to stay, but I knew it was impossible. So I put on my happy face instead, and moved to follow, planning to make any face-to-face interaction we had as positive as possible.
After all, who knew how long it would be before I’d get to see him again? This last time it had been over a year. So I intended to savor every last moment, until I had to head back in and find out what was going on with the plans for the Core.
One problem at a time, right?
13
Saying goodbye to Alex wasn’t easy, but I knew he was going to be careful, and so was I. We had our own places we needed to be, and while his was admittedly the more dangerous one, I knew my brother well enough to know that he wouldn’t leave IT unless he had to.
I crawled through the vents, eager to get back to the others and start going over Mercury’s plan. His mad plan. I paused in the tunnel and took a moment to collect myself, the sudden apprehension of what we were about to do once again sinking into me. I had to remind myself that Alex would not let me walk in there without a good plan in place. I had to trust him. Which meant I had to trust Mercury.
Mercury. He’d known I was in contact with Alex since right after Cali and I had netted him. He hadn’t said anything, and he’d even asked me to reveal how I’d gotten the information about Zoe. But I hadn’t said anything, and neither had he. Why not? What good was hiding it?
“Because he wouldn’t have gotten the dramatic splash that not telling me did,” I muttered, resuming my shuffling through the tunnels. It made sense. It was a surprise that bore a powerful message: I have your brother, too.
I paused at the junction. If I turned left, I’d be in the workroom, and if I stayed straight, the main room. I listened for a second, my ears straining, then heard the faint sound of voices off to my left, and headed toward them.
As I moved, I recalled Alex’s assertion that maybe Mercury wasn’t so bad, and once again, I heard Roark’s voice in my head saying, You kids don’t know how to hope, not really. And it’s the damned Tower’s fault. I knew he was right, in my heart, but I wasn’t sure I was willing to let go of my distrust of Mercury just yet. Maybe, if things went according to plan. Maybe.
As I drew closer to the workroom, the voices became more discernable and familiar, until I was being greeted by the dulcet and sweet tones of Zoe and Quess. Fighting. Again.
I paused for a moment, rolling my eyes upward and praying for patience, and then continued to drag myself forward.
“Look, just because you worked in IT doesn’t mean you know everything. The silica circuits will make them waterproof!” Zoe thundered, her words bouncing off the metal walls with the derisive quality of a meteor impacting the earth. “And they could be used in the plunge! I’m telling you, that’s the way in—not this open shaft with the laser beams of death.”
I slipped out of the vent and back onto my feet quickly, my eyes already seeking them out. Zoe had her back to Quess, and partially to me, and was hunched over working on something small. Quess was facing me, leaning back on his right elbow while he examined something he clutched carefully between a set of tweezers in his left hand. He nodded at me as I entered, but was already in the process of replying to Zoe.
“It’s pronounced laser cutter,” Quess said arrogantly. “You’re going to have to speak the lingo if you’re going to come with us. Unless you want me to have to smooth talk you out of a situation. I can just picture it now…”
Zoe groaned theatrically and swiveled her head to look at him over her shoulder. “Don’t you even do it,” she said, her voice filled with warning, but it was too late, and Quess was already going over his imagined scenario in which he saved Zoe from some imaginary member of the Inquisitors, who were the internal police force inside the Core.
Every department had one. They were generally meant for handling interdepartmental disputes between neighbors and friends. They also guarded important equipment and machines to prevent anyone from tampering with or damaging them in any way, shape, or form. The Knights had good working relationships with all of them, and each department gave Knights free reign to patrol through. Except for IT. No one from the Knights or any other department was allowed inside IT without permission from the head of their department, and they handed that out very rarely.
I mostly ignored his story, even though it was garnering a laugh here and there from Grey and Maddox. It seemed Eric had moved on to anger, and was staring at Quess from under his eyebrows, emitting what could only be described as the slowest working death glare in existence. I had known Eric for most of my life, and he was the most laid-back, good-natured person I had ever met. For him to look at Quess like that made me nervous.
No, it made me realize that I needed to intervene. Just not as a friend to Zoe, as I had contemplated before, but as a leader to those who were supposed to be working together. For better or worse, their relationship, as it stood, was creating tension. People were laughing at Quess’s story, but I didn’t miss the hint of pink in Zoe’s cheeks when he discussed making out with her in the cooling pools of Sector 8. She wasn’t pretending to be upset. She was upset. And Quess wasn’t taking her seriously. He would if she’d just tell him to knock it off, but for some reason she hadn’t.
Eric was jealous, and Quess was… Well, Quess was being Quess. He didn’t mean anything by it, but he needed to learn when to back off.
Zoe turned to throw something else at him, and I snapped.
“Both of you knock it off right now!” I commanded loudly, and everyone froze and stared at me, mouths wide. Doubt filled me for a heartbeat, then two, and then I shoved it aside. “You two have been bickering since you met, and I’m here to tell you, it’s beginning to seem less like fighting and more like flirting, and it’s getting a little old.”
“Hear hear,” Eric said loudly, and my eyes immediately sought him out. He was smiling at me, his eyes brimming with gratitude, and the glow intensified with the sound of Zoe’s ear-rending shriek of disgust.
“W
ith this pretentious, pompous, arrogant, egotistical, maniacal, lackadaisical, lazy, rude, sophomoric, selfish, argumentative, spoiled little brat?”
Quess flushed bright red as she continued to list unpleasant adjectives, and he looked away, rounding his shoulders slightly. I immediately got angry at her. Quess was annoying, yes, and he flirted, hard. Without Cali around to keep him in check, I guessed it fell on me to do so. But that didn’t mean Zoe got to run her mouth about him.
“Zoe, I understand that you’re angry, but think about what you just said to him,” I said, meeting her gaze. She looked over at Quess, and then back to me, her mouth pinching.
“Liana, he wouldn’t stop flirting with me. I mean, did you hear those descriptions? That was a little much.”
“I agree,” I said, spearing Quess with an equally hard look, and he nodded contritely, looking as if he completely understood where he’d messed up. “But why didn’t you ask him to stop?”
Zoe gave me an incredulous look and held up the tool in her hand—the one she had been intending to throw before I had interrupted. Then she looked back to me, her pointed glances revealing that she had, in her own way.
I pressed my mouth in a thin line and cocked my head at her. “Really, Zo? This might be just as bad as the infamous ‘inspecting the underside of the bridge’ thing.”
Her sullen features broke into a surprised smile as I referenced the time I had leapt out from under a bridge, where I’d been hiding from her and Eric, and then refused to admit that my excuse of “inspecting the bridge” was a lie. She hadn’t bought it then, but it was nice to see we could smile about it now.
It also helped ease some of the tension in the room. I was aware everyone else was watching me, waiting to see how I’d handle it from here, and felt one of those do-or-die moments. I just wanted to be diplomatic and fair, without ruffling too many feathers. Well, any more feathers, at the very least.
“Zoe, you probably should’ve sat down and talked to Quess back when all this started. Quess, you need to learn to respect other people’s boundaries. I expect everyone here to act like adults—Tian being the only exception—and remember that we are in hiding down here. Fighting, yelling, throwing things…” I gave Zoe a pointed look, and she cringed, her shoulders hunching. “That’s how we get caught. If a Hand were up there and had heard…” I trailed off, and both of them looked remorseful.
“I’m sorry, Liana,” Zoe said. “You’re right. I just…” Her eyes widened in mortification.
I waited for her to go on, to explain why she hadn’t put a stop to it in the first place, but I saw the surrender in her face as she gave up.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “And it will never happen again.”
“Same here,” Quess said, giving me a solemn nod. “And… I swear I’ll try, but I have poor impulse control, so you’re gonna have to cut me some slack.”
“No, we won’t. But I’ll leave my considerable boot print on your butt if you get out of line again,” Maddox said from where she was watching on the sidelines, and I grinned.
“It’s forgiven this time, but next time, the first offender gets the grossest of the chores on the next day’s chore list. And that goes for everyone. No screaming matches. Your feelings get hurt, you start to get upset, take a breath, and then work it out. Listen, and speak clearly, and if you need one of us to play arbiter, let us know. These are tight quarters, so there are undoubtedly going to be fights. Just try to get a handle on it before it gets too bad, okay?”
Everyone nodded in unison, and I felt a trill of excitement. They were listening to me and agreeing with my idea. I’d made a rule.
“All right, moving on to the next piece of business,” I continued, playing it cool. “What’s going on with the plan Mercury and my brother prepared?” I asked, clapping my hands together to try to clear some of the air.
Grey gave me an impressed smirk as he bent over to pick up the case, and I smiled, wordlessly thanking him for noticing how awesome all of that just was. I might gush about it later, but right now, I was riding a power high.
“Give Quess and me a minute to set it up, okay?” he said.
I nodded and watched as they began clearing the center table, taking an extra moment to shove at the crates to make sure they were as tight together as they could be, before pulling out the files and beginning to lay them out.
As I watched them, I realized that this was what being a leader meant—people moving to get things set up for you without you even asking. I had never considered that before, but as I watched it happening right before my eyes, I couldn’t help but feel excited by the possibilities. I let my imagination drift for a moment. I could ask for things to get done, and people would actually do them for me! I could send them out on missions, supply runs… whatever, and they would listen. I found myself idly wondering how bad it would be to send someone to track down a few of the personal items I had been missing, like the diary left behind by my great-great-so on-and-so-forth grandmother—and then I realized how easy it would be to abuse the power, imagining dozens of scenarios in which I let my laziness get the better of me and ordered others to do even the most menial of tasks for me, and despised it. I immediately began willing the use of such a disgusting power out of existence.
“Hey,” Zoe said softly from next to me. I glanced over to see her studying me, then turned back to the table, still fascinated by how much time they were taking to lay out the plan. “Why does your face look like that?”
“Because I just discovered that I have a superpower that can very easily be used for evil, and I’m making myself promise to never, ever use it again.”
“Oh?” She looked genuinely intrigued, so I took a step closer.
“Okay, but this is between you and me, not between… leader and leader’s best friend, okay?”
She laughed and shook her head. “This leader thing might be going to your head a little bit.”
“I think it is,” I said excitedly, and she laughed loudly. “I’m serious, Zoe! Grey and Quess just started setting things up to break down the plan. For me! ‘Cause I’m in charge. And I just conflict-resolutioned the crap out of that fight. Sorry to bring it up so soon after—” I paused long enough to wait for her “It’s okay” response, and then continued. “And everyone looked at me like… yeah… that’s Liana. That girl is in charge.”
Zoe stared at me, and I could see her struggling to keep her laugh back. After a moment, she shook her head. “I will admit,” she said, her voice shifting with barely repressed laughter, “that you handled that situation beautifully. I was properly called out. Thank you, by the way…”
“No problem,” I replied in the space she left for me.
“And I am glad to see you’re having fun with your new superpower. You mentioned a promise to never use it again?”
“Mm-hm,” I replied with a serious nod. “I do not want this temptation anywhere near me. I’m not sure I can be trusted.”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head even harder, but she was laughing, and that was all that really mattered.
“Can I ask a question?” she asked, and I nodded. “Why didn’t you say anything earlier? About how Quess and I… seemed to others.”
I hesitated, and then shrugged. “Why weren’t you telling Quess to back off?” I asked back.
“Because… Because of what happened to his friend, or mom figure—I’m still not really clear on the roles—I felt like I couldn’t say anything bad to him. It was like… ‘Hi, I’m Zoe, and your mom basically just died because my best friend wanted to save my life. Let me just go off on you and become an even bigger jerk than before’.”
I really shouldn’t have laughed at that. It was woefully inappropriate, since Cali had just died. And as soon as the laugh escaped me, guilt followed fast at its heels, cutting it short. I covered my mouth and shook my head.
“We’re bad people,” I said, mortified.
Zoe looked around the room and shook her head. “Not this time,?
?? she said somberly, and I frowned, wondering what she was thinking. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask, when she added, “Also… I’m guessing that flirting jab that got me so riled up at first was intentional?”
I smiled, question forgotten. I loved that Zoe knew me so well she could read between my lines. “Yeah,” I replied. “You, uh… you have another apology to make.”
Zoe’s head moved, and I followed her gaze to where Eric was sitting. He was staring at both of us. She looked back at me, and realization dawned in her bright blue eyes.
“Oh, Scipio kill me now, I fell into a romance novel trope, didn’t I?”
I chuckled. “Yeah, you did. But if Eric really is your one true love…”
“Shut up, Liana,” she said, and rewarded me with a hard slap on my shoulder, before making a beeline right for Eric, her body language radiating her apology. One part of me wanted to watch, but I stayed away, giving them their privacy.
I moved over to the table, clasping my hands together to keep from touching things, and put the silliness aside. I was pretty certain I wasn’t supposed to be silly at all anymore, but maybe nobody would judge me harshly, just this once.
The lines on the paper looked dense and complex, and I blinked several times, trying to get a clear sense of what I was looking at. Every citizen of the Tower had to take a blueprint-reading class, another one of those fun little preparedness classes that were mandatory until the day you died. The classes weren’t every day, unless you were from certain departments, but it was required to attend at least one a year, as a refresher course.
But I had never been the best with blueprints, so… looking at this was the equivalent of looking into the gates of hell. I gazed up at them, and smiled.
“I have no idea what I’m looking at,” I admitted, and Grey and Quess laughed.