I looked up, my whole body numb. Dalton was gazing down his long nose at me like some kind of pompous vulture, thin tongue darting out to wet his lips. I tried to press down a surge of disgust at his presence. Such thoughts were not helpful right now. I could practically feel Scipio leafing through my emotions via the net in my head.
“Liana…” Gerome began, but I turned away.
“It’s fine,” I said, not sure where the lie came from. “I—I’ll get it sorted out.”
“The Medica will sort you out, you mean,” drawled Dalton. “At least I won’t have to deal with you again.”
I glanced back as Gerome turned on the engineer, his eyes flat as stone. “She saved your life, Cog.”
Dalton stood up a little straighter. “I still had my lashes. I was perfectly capable of—”
“I have been training with lashes my entire life,” Gerome said matter-of-factly, “and Liana is already twice as talented as me. I respect your loyalty to the Tower. I respect your commitment to its values. What I cannot respect is your flippancy toward its Knights. Unless you’re trying to mar your record and bring your number down, I suggest a change of temperament.”
Dalton had gone pale, and now he nodded shakily.
I glanced at Gerome. The speech had been defensive, but it wasn’t meant as complimentary. How very Gerome: the facts, flat and simple, with no emotions or loyalties beyond himself and the Tower to get in the way. I appreciated the support, but sometimes I wished the man would show me something that resembled actual kindness—not the damnable cool statement of facts.
“Liana,” he said, and this time it was not a tone that allowed me to ignore him.
“Yes, sir,” I said, shoulders slumping.
“You will be required to visit the Medica tomorrow,” he said. “They will give you what you need in order to be a productive member of this Tower.”
My gut clenched. “Yes, sir.”
“For now,” he said, “I think it would be best if you—”
A low buzzing cut him off, coming from the net in my head. The vibrations seemed to flow together, until my eardrums rattled with sound that wasn’t there. I bit my lip; direct messages had always left me with a vague sense of vertigo.
Squire, a voice said in my head. I recognized Scipio, and shivered. The programmers had chosen a soft, male voice for him, and for some reason whenever he spoke I imagined a young man, blond, sitting upon a throne, sword across his lap. He was regal, condescending, and completely at ease in his power. I wasn’t sure if I hated, loved, or feared him. He merely was what he was.
There is an incident that requires your attention. A ‘one’ has appeared in the Water Treatment facilities. You are to assist in apprehending him. Immediately.
Scipio’s words rang in my ears, and for a moment I stood, frozen in shock. I had expected a reprimand, not a call to duty. I watched as Gerome’s iron façade twisted. He turned away.
“Something has come up,” Gerome said. “I need to—”
“I got it too,” I said hurriedly.
Dalton’s stare darted between the two of us like we were mad.
Gerome stared at me.
“Confirm to me what you heard,” he said.
I looked at Dalton, not particularly wanting to give the man the gossip that he wanted. The communication had been for Knights only. All the same, Gerome wanted an answer.
“A one has appeared in Water Treatment,” I said. “I am to assist.”
Dalton let out a gasp but Gerome just nodded.
“We’re taking the plunge,” he said.
Dalton, predictably, gasped again. I, on the other hand, offered the first genuine smile of the day.
The plunge was a sheer shaft that ran almost the entire length of the Tower, from the ceiling to the lower levels. Unlike the elevators, this tunnel was narrow and didn’t always run in a perfectly straight line. For an experienced Knight, lashing your way down the plunge was simple, but, much like the drop outside, my stomach never failed to lurch when I leapt out into the empty air. The narrowness and random changes in the tunnel meant there was little room for error. It was one of the faster ways of getting to a lower floor, but at least one Knight a year died due to a mistake that sent them slamming off wall after wall in free fall, often getting no time to place new lashes before they hit the bottom of the passage. Seeing the deadly shaft of pipes and exposed beams, and leaping into it was as thrilling and terrifying now as it had been the first time I’d done it.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love it.
Gerome leapt into the narrow shaft first, and I managed to last three whole seconds before I followed, a mad grin on my face. I placed my foot into nothingness and then allowed gravity to take me, throwing my lashes at the last possible second to arrest my descent down.
Gerome stared straight forward, his short hair barely moving as we hurtled toward the ground. His approach was methodical: a flick of the wrist here or there to keep himself perfectly centered as he shot downward. By contrast, I was a meteor. I spun and whirled, dancing about him as I let my feet clip the walls, grinning in spite of my mentor’s disapproving glances. My teachers had always been very firm on the fact that the plunge was for emergency transportation only, but they had been forced to remind me several times over the years. Something this wonderful couldn’t just be for when things were bad.
“When we arrive,” Gerome shouted, his voice barely carrying over the wind roaring in my ears, “you are to stay with me. We’ll search the perimeter indicated by Scipio while others search the interior.”
I shot out a cable and yanked myself away from where a beam cut across the path, slipping my slim form through the narrow gap between the beam and the wall, leaving the wider space for Gerome’s muscular form. Once I was past it, I took the time to answer. “Wouldn’t it be more efficient if we split up?” I yelled back.
“We’re not splitting up.”
I winced, and for a moment I was all too aware of the low number on my wrist. Of course Gerome wouldn’t want me to go off on my own now.
“Yes, sir.”
Coming to a halt in the plunge was never easy, but Gerome managed it nicely, throwing a hand in either direction so that the lashes he shot out caught the walls simultaneously, at the same elevation. He came to a halt just above the exit we needed to take, which was little more than a door-shaped hole.
I speared one lash to the top of the exit and shot past Gerome through the narrow space, throwing another lash up and back to catch the doorframe as I passed through. I eased the latch and the cord gave a gentle pull at my wrist, slowing me until I landed, feet skidding along the ground.
Behind me, Gerome eased himself through the doorway. “Being flashy will get you killed,” he grunted. “We have procedures for entering and exiting the plunge for a reason, Squire Castell.”
I wanted to make a face but held the impulse in, opting for a curt nod instead. It never seemed to matter that I could do things nobody else could. My expertise, and what I could accomplish with it, meant nothing in the face of the immutability of the Tower. It was all I could do not to scream sometimes.
Gerome strode off and I fell into line behind him, my boots slapping moodily against the floor.
“So, what do we know about this guy?” I asked, trying not to think about the fact that my own dossier had just been flagged and passed on to the Medica. Gerome would have the information on the individual we were looking for—sent along with our orders.
Sure enough, he pulled a small, pen-like device from his pocket and held it up to one side. An image flared into view over it: a picture and several lines of text.
“Grey Farmless,” he said, reading off the information. “Citizen designation 49xF-91. Looks like he was initially raised by the farmers but his parents petitioned the Department Head to drop him and they did.”
I blinked, looking at the face with renewed interest. Getting dropped by your parents was a rare occurrence, but it did happen. When a parent
simply couldn’t take their own child’s presence, or else thought them a bad influence on their floor, they could “drop” the child, essentially rendering them homeless to go find a new floor. It was extremely rare for any Hand to drop their own children, which made me curious.
In the picture, Grey’s mouth was twisted into the smallest of frowns, his soft, dark brown eyes staring intently toward the camera. His hair was a light brown or dark blond—it was hard to really tell—and his square jaw framed lips set at a slight scowl. He wasn’t classically handsome, but there was something sultry in the dry disdain of his features that made my heart skip a beat, and I quickly pushed the feeling back—it was woefully unprofessional. There was something else stamped into his features. It was subtle, but there: a bitterness—that I couldn’t help but recognize in myself.
“What did he do?” I asked.
“Hm?”
“Why did they drop him?”
Gerome scrolled through the notes.
“Doesn’t say,” he replied eventually. “I do see that his number dropped before it happened, though. Might have just been natural prejudice against a dangerous element.” I shoved my right hand behind my back, biting my retort clean in half. Picking a fight with Gerome about calling the lower numbers “dangerous elements” made about as much sense as saving Dalton had, and I was done doing stupid things today.
The search proved boring. Water Treatment was a fascinating process, or so I’d been told. Intricate, delicate, and deeply scientific, the mesh of vein-like pipes kept the Tower from dying of thirst, grew our crops, and provided energy. This floor, however, held nothing of the supposed majesty of the profession. Everywhere I looked it was pipes, pipes and more pipes. Some glass, some metal, they tangled together into complex and intricate knots with only sparse room left for walkways to wind between them.
“Why would someone even be in here?” I asked, using a lash to tug myself up and over a particularly large pipe that had been built directly across the footpath.
Gerome pulled himself up over the same pipe without so much as a grunt.
“It makes sense,” he said. “Good place to hide. Not to mention, these pipes go into the Depths.”
I cocked my head at that. The Depths, as the council had taken to calling them, were a series of caverns and maintenance shafts at the base of the Tower. Supposedly they had become too irradiated to inhabit, but sometimes people would talk about undocs, the undocumented citizens of the Tower, hiding down there. It didn’t seem likely to me. If there were people down there, surely the council would have done something about them by now. Besides, there was nothing to live off of in the dark, under-powered floors that made up the Depths.
As I was contemplating the idea of someone actually trying to live down there, a figure emerged from behind a nearby pipe.
I froze, looking him up and down. He was taller than I’d imagined from the picture, and better built. Also, his hair was a little lighter, and he looked more rugged; a layer of stubble had grown along his jaw. All the same, this was our guy. I raised a hand, but found myself momentarily speechless as his intense brown eyes locked with mine.
As he shifted, his wrist came into view. His band glowed hot and red, like an angry burn.
“Gerome,” I finally blurted.
My mentor turned, and I could feel his eyes zoning in on the young man. Gerome wasted no time.
“Citizen Farmless,” he said, advancing, one hand unslinging the stun baton from his waist. “You are hereby placed under arrest by the order of the Knights. Should you fail to comply, you will be—”
Grey didn’t even wait. He turned with alarming speed and darted back the way he had come. Gerome cursed and broke into a run. I took off after him into the maze of pipes.
The guy was fast. He swung under and over pipes, his feet never missing a beat, never faltering for an instant as he sprinted ahead. Within moments he had a sizable lead. Growling, I thrust a hand forward and sent a lash spinning out. It collided with a pipe, and with a flex of my wrist I let it surge me forward at a breakneck pace.
I was almost near the fleeing man when I saw a familiar grayish tube just beyond him. An elevator.
That’s fine, I thought. The scanner would read his number. The elevator would hold him in place—like any other person with a ranking of one attempting to use them—and we could just grab him when it refused to move.
That was what I was telling myself as Grey stepped onto the platform and the blue lights erupted from the bottom, moments before it began to lift him upward. I nearly slammed into a pipe as I gaped, dumbfounded, at the machinery. It hadn’t even chirped out his ranking, and it always recited rankings if anyone lower than a nine was present on the platform.
Grey had the nerve to grin and actually waved at me as he disappeared behind the wall. I felt a burst of annoyance at the odd sense of pleasure his acknowledgement brought me.
Gerome entered the room just as I seized on that annoyance, racing up the ramp and onto the platform that slid out of the wall to support me. I didn’t break my movement as I flung the lash up, attaching it to the underside of his elevator and letting it haul me up as I dangled in the shaft. Below me, the blue lights of the computer flashed red in warning—indicating that someone (me) had broken protocol.
“Liana!” Gerome bellowed, as I disappeared into the shaft. “Get to C-9 and head him off! I’ll come around the other side.”
His voice carried after me as I pulled myself up toward the panel above, reeling in so fast the line seemed to whistle. I couldn’t stay under here for long—it was too dangerous.
The elevator began to slow and I waited until it had almost stopped before disconnecting my lash. I fell a few feet down, and flung out both lashes so they attached to either side of the shaft. The lashes fed out as I continued to fall, and at the last possible moment I reversed the feed and had them reel me back up—faster than was safe but I needed momentum. As I shot past the lash points, I disengaged them, angling my body up and through the now exposed doorway. I landed with a hard thud of my boots, a few feet behind Grey.
Grey froze and turned, his eyebrows jacking up into his hairline as he gazed at me in surprise. On impulse, I raised my hand and waved at him. He blinked, and then ran.
I felt a smile bloom on my lips as he sprinted, and flexed my shoulders, suddenly confident. This was what I had been made for. I felt my worries slipping away, my concerns staying far below with my supervisor as I lashed my way after him—through the pipes that crisscrossed the room, skimming surfaces as I shot lash after lash, in pursuit of Grey.
Because of his speed, and the pipes being so dense, I lost him behind a few, overshooting his location, too fast to stop. I swung back around, letting the swing of the last lash carry me back in a reverse trajectory and releasing it at just the right moment so I could land on an outcropping of pipes. I stared at the floor below, trying to find him.
The room was silent—only the occasional sound of water gurgling or steam escaping could be heard. My eyes scanned the piping he had disappeared behind. After a long moment, I lashed down to the catwalk below, looking for any sign of the man.
He hadn’t disappeared after all—but had come to a stop by a junction of pipes and was now hunched over one, rooting around like a farmer planting seeds and not a man being pursued by the Knights. I coughed as I unsheathed my stun baton, releasing a menacing hum of electricity.
“So,” I said, drawing out the syllable, “are you going to introduce yourself, or…?”
He spun around, his dark blond hair mussed and touching the sides of his face. His eyes found mine immediately, his muscles surging and tensing beneath his clothes. He didn’t exactly look like a villain to me. Then again, I was a three, so maybe villains were just my type.
I tapped the tip of my baton against some of the piping, letting a thin tendril of power curl lazily up from it.
“Awkward silence works too, I suppose,” I said, taking a step forward.
I failed
to anticipate his speed, though, and he moved close, grabbing my wrist and attempting to break my hold on my baton. Alarmed, I reacted instinctually, striking a low blow with my foot in an attempt to get him to move back or upset his balance. His foot came up to block my blow, and I froze as he kicked it away.
I launched another kick, which he blocked as well, his hand still firmly wrapped around my wrist. We stared at each other, tension radiating from both of us.
“How do you know to do that?” I asked after a pause, looking at his feet.
He smiled, a flash of white straight teeth. “You’re pretty, for a Shield,” he said, referring to the Knights by their nickname.
I glared at him then thrust out my arm, my fist clenched, intent on knocking the smug look off of his face. He blocked the blow with his forearm, and then slid his arm around my waist, pulling me tight against him. I flushed and looked up at him, extremely uncomfortable at his proximity and the way his brown eyes lit up as he looked down at me, that cocky smile still clinging to his lips.
“Let go of me,” I said, forcing air back into my lungs as I tried to fight my way out of his arms.
Grey smiled a slow, arrogant grin. “Let go of a pretty girl in the middle of a dance? My mother raised me better than that.”
“Apparently not, Farmless,” I spat, and was immediately mortified by my own words. They sounded harsh and cruel—spoken out of a nervousness that stemmed from the feeling of being trapped.
Grey’s jaw twitched and he abruptly released me, keeping cool despite the simmering anger burning behind his brown eyes. He sucked in a deep breath as he took a slow step back, creating a little bit of room between us.
“Liana!” I heard Gerome’s voice from the tunnels behind me, clearly looking for me, but I ignored it, keeping my eyes on the oddly untroubled fugitive in front of me.
“Citizen Grey Farmless, designation 49xF-91—to be precise,” Grey informed me, his tone exasperated and curt. “May I ask why, exactly, you feel the need to brandish a weapon at me, Squire?”
I gave him a confused look and he gestured to the glowing display on his wrist. “I already know your number,” I informed him, baffled by his odd behavior. “It’s a one, Citizen Farmless. I’ve been given full authority to take you into custody.”