“Then Alex is going to have to go to Dinah,” I replied, thinking. I hadn’t wanted to go that route, but we couldn’t afford to let Sadie come home and find Rose in her computer. Of course, Dinah would also have to do something to get us to Sadie’s quarters undetected, but I was sure she could manage. All I had to do was get my brother to pass the message on to her.
“Alex is going to do what now?” my brother asked.
I smiled in spite of my anxiousness, and then looked up. “Alex, we need a way in and a guide to show us where Sadie’s quarters are. As one of the Leads in Sadie’s department, Dinah will know where it is. We need her to get us in undetected, and to that room.”
“Okay, but then what?” my brother demanded. “Aren’t there security features and such? How are you even going to get in without getting killed?”
I thought about it for a moment and then said, “Rose said Sadie’s virtual assistant is down, which means the defenses are on automated systems. If we got in, they wouldn’t necessarily turn on us if we had some way of not showing up on their sensors, right, Leo?” Leo gave me a surprised nod. Another stroke of luck in our favor, then. “Quess? Tell me you at least considered a few options for how to get us inside.”
“Yeah, about that,” he said hesitantly. “We originally figured that the best way to get in was to steal and copy Sadie’s credentials to your legacy net, since that information can be deleted and replaced on yours.”
I blinked. That was pretty smart, but there was one glaring problem with it: the facial recognition software. It had undoubtedly been updated since my team had breached it and stolen several nets, and I doubted there was enough makeup in the world to make me look anything like Sadie, let alone disguise me. “Quess, it won’t work. My face won’t match up with Sadie’s. It’ll be over before I even get there.”
“Actually, I came up with a way around that. I invented a spray that covers your face with a reflective substance. To the naked eye, your face will just look shiny, but on the cameras it’ll be a blinding light that will obscure your features. The software can’t read it. As long as the credentials match, you’ll be given full access inside. But we need a copy of her credentials first. Her real ones. We obviously don’t have the time to create them from scratch.”
“Alex, is that something Dinah can help us get?” I asked my brother, hope unfurling in my heart. Quess’s idea was brilliant, and probably the best way for us to get in and out without triggering any of the defenses. Because as long as Sadie’s virtual assistant was knocked out, the defenses wouldn’t go off on us when we entered—as long as I looked like Sadie, electronically speaking.
“Look, as good as this plan is, it’s not going to work,” Alex replied. “If Sadie’s in the Core when you enter, the system is going to flag two identical net IDs, and the Inquisition will be all over you both in seconds. It won’t take them long to figure out who’s who, and you’ll be sunk. If you want to do this, you’ll need to get Sadie out of the Core first.”
Frustration rolled over me, and I abruptly moved away from the desk. How was I going to get Sadie out of the Core? She was IT, and didn’t have to race off like Lacey or Strum did when something needed to be repaired because she could handle all of it from her office. She didn’t ever have to leave if she didn’t want to.
Unless something happened so that she had to.
But what would be big enough to force the head of IT to handle a problem herself? It didn’t have to be big, necessarily—she’d send her people no matter what size it was—but it had to be important. Something only she could handle, that was too secretive for anyone but her.
Cornelius! I suddenly thought. If I notified the council that he was broken… or better yet, that he might’ve been hacked, then only the head of IT could come and investigate. She’d come right into these very quarters to check him out, and I could jump her, knock her unconscious, and steal her net. That way Dinah wouldn’t have to duplicate anything. She’d just have to get me in!
I paused. I realized that this was a grander—and far more dangerous—endeavor than just tampering with something to distract her. One that involved attacking the head of another department and cutting the net out of her neck. My heart skipped a beat as I considered the insanity of the idea, but then I pushed that aside. Everything was based on the assumption that Sadie was a legacy, and Rose’s capture signaled that she definitely was, in my mind. Why set a trap if you didn’t know another AI was out there—one that had previously been under your control? And from there, it was only one more step to think that Sadie was helping to run the entire operation.
Fury gripped me as I realized that if I was right, then Sadie Monroe had had a hand in my mother’s murder. Whether or not she was the top of the chain had yet to be seen, but if I followed through with this plan, there was a chance I could find out exactly who was behind it.
And then I could punish them for everyone they had hurt in their little war: Cali, Roark, Gerome, Ambrose, Grey, my mother, Jang-Mi, Rose, Jasper, Scipio. I’d stop them and keep the Tower safe from the awful things they were doing, restore Scipio, and save everyone.
I quivered with a dark excitement at the thought, and it was intense enough that I forced myself back a bit, telling myself to fully consider the implications of the idea. Because I had to be very careful about what I did next. Attacking Sadie would have a number of consequences, and I had to anticipate them if I was going to keep us safe.
Okay, so if Leo and Quess could do something to Cornelius that was big enough to warrant Sadie’s attention, then she’d have to come to my quarters. She wouldn’t be able to send anyone else due to the secrecy around the rooms, so I was certain it would be enough to get her here. We would knock her unconscious, and then we’d have to steal the net under a neural blocker, so that the Tower wouldn’t read it going offline and signal that she was dead. I’d also have to wear a blocker over the net until we reached her quarters, to prevent the scanners from picking Sadie up where she wasn’t supposed to be.
The entire way, we’d be on the cameras, including once we were inside Sadie’s quarters. Quess’s face spray helped take care of some of that problem, but we’d need to find a way to wipe the evidence after we got Rose and Jasper, just to make sure there was no trace of our comings or goings. So that was one problem, but it was not insurmountable. From there, we’d escape, and then…
What? What happened once I got the two AIs? Sadie would know that I had attacked her. She wouldn’t forget, even if we returned her to her own rooms. I considered killing her for half a second, and then realized that if she died while she was in the Citadel, it would blow back on me immediately.
But if I couldn’t kill her, what could I do? How could I possibly get her net, infiltrate her room, get the two AIs, and then get her back in there again without her remembering what had happened?
She could have no memory of it. None. It was the only way to keep us all safe. But how?
Suddenly my mind flashed to Grey, and a little blue pill that he had pinched between his fingers, held at the ready. Spero, I remembered, and I smiled. It made a person forget the previous hour or so. Roark had designed it in case a recruitment went wrong, but we hadn’t used any—not a single pill—since our escape from his apartment after my mentor, Gerome Nobilis, discovered us.
And I knew he had thrown some in his bag, along with his entire stash of Paragon.
I straightened up and began searching the room, looking for the pile of bags that Zoe and the others had brought up a few days ago when they moved the contents of my old apartment to the new quarters.
Sure enough, they were still right where we had left them, and I immediately moved around the desk, making a beeline toward them. I was so intent on my purpose that I had completely forgotten that I was still on a conference call with Quess, Leo, and my brother, but was reminded moments later when Quess said, “Holy crap, is that how your mind works all the time? I mean, I was going to interrupt you when I realized that you w
eren’t actually transmitting to us, but thinking, but damn… that was some fast thinking. Do you really think it will work? This Spero pill or whatever?”
I paused, mortified that I had been thinking so hard that I had accidently sent my entire thought process to all three guys. I’d been so preoccupied with finding a way to pull this off that I hadn’t noticed the soft popping of the neural transmitter. I flushed, and then ignored it, feeling as if every second mattered. I hadn’t thought anything too bad, and this meant I didn’t have to fill them in.
“If we still have any,” I replied, resuming my trek to the bags. “I haven’t seen them since before Roark died. But they should be in the bag with the Paragon. Leo, help me look. Quess, wake Maddox and then get up here. Tell Zoe and Eric that there’s going to be some stuff going down, and they need to stay where they are for now, if only for their safety. I don’t want them exposed in case anyone figures out Sadie’s missing before we can pull this off.” I paused as I thought about the youngest member of our group, and asked, “Where’s Tian?”
“Hunting legacies down with Dylan,” Quess reported. “Should I call her in?”
I thought about it and shook my head. If we called her in, she’d want to be with us on the mission into Sadie’s, and that was far more dangerous than being alone with Dylan. Or at least I hoped it was. “No, leave her alone. She doesn’t need to be involved in any of this, but you know she’ll want to be.”
I made it to the bags and sank to my knees, hauling the first one to the side and unzipping it. A quick glimpse showed several of my extra uniforms with my insignia on them. I tossed it aside and reached for the others.
“On it,” Quess said. “I’ll be up there in five minutes.”
There was a click on the heels of his words, signaling that he had ended the call, but Cornelius still announced, “Quessian Brown has ended the call,” in a perfunctory voice.
“Yeah, and I’ll grab Dinah and let her know what’s going on,” Alex said. “Do you want me to come to the Citadel to help you with Cornelius, who I assume is your virtual assistant?”
“He is,” I said as I unzipped another bag and focused solely on the contents for several heartbeats. This one contained two sealed boxes that I had gotten from Lionel’s safe when I discovered it sitting wide open. I had completely forgotten about them, but they weren’t important right now. Placing them aside, I considered Alex’s question. On the one hand, I’d promised to include him, and this was part of that. On the other, he needed to be in the Core the entire time Sadie was here to avoid suspicion in case anything went wrong. “But I’m going to need you to stay there, Alex. If anything goes wrong—”
“Do not try to protect me, Liana. I can handle myself. I want to be there, especially if you’re right about this Spero pill. It’s the perfect opportunity to question Sadie about everything.”
My brother had a point, and I paused to consider it. If I found the Spero, then we’d have an hour at a time to question her before we gave her the pill to make her forget. But just because we could ask her questions didn’t mean she would answer them, and I had no idea how effective the pills were. If any remnant or shred of memory remained, Sadie would undoubtedly latch onto it. It was too risky. The whole thing was. But Sadie was the most unpredictable element of it all, and we had to keep her from remembering anything—except coming to help.
“No,” I said, crawling to another bag and throwing it open. “It’s too risky to question her about any of this directly, even with Spero. We can’t have any trace of this coming back to us, not a breath. I’m not just protecting you, Alex, I’m trying to protect all of us.”
“But she could’ve been the one who killed our mother!” my brother fired back hotly. “She needs to answer for that.”
I clenched my fists together, fighting for calm. “Alex, if we’re right and she’s only working with them, we have to send her back out so that our enemies don’t suspect that anything is wrong. If we can prove Sadie’s a legacy, then we have someone to watch. We can see where she goes and who she meets with. But we have to get Rose and Jasper away from her before it’s too late. That’s the priority right now.”
My brother didn’t say anything for a long moment, and I grabbed a new bag, busying myself with finding the most critical element of this plan. “I’ll talk to Dinah about getting you in,” he said finally. “But I am not happy with you. From where I am sitting, this is more about your precious AI friends than about our mother’s murder.”
I recoiled from the bag I was unzipping and looked up at the speakers—a useless action, mind you, but his words hit a nerve. “Alex, that’s not fair,” I said angrily. “Don’t you understand that it’s all tied together? The legacies are using the AI fragments to screw things up with Scipio and pilot sentinels. We need those AIs in our control rather than theirs to keep them from hurting Scipio or anyone else!”
“I stand by what I said,” my brother said. “I’ll net you back with a plan once I talk to Dinah.”
“Alex…” I said, not liking the bitter and angry tone in his voice. My brother was focusing on the wrong thing—something I could easily identify with, given the irrational anger that I had felt toward Jang-Mi. But he needed to listen to reason. “Don’t get upset. I promise, I am working on finding out who is behind everything. You just have to be patient.”
“Whatever,” he said. “I’ll net you later.” The speaker clicked, and I winced when I realized I’d made a grievous misstep with him. Calling him out on being insensitive to the other problems in the Tower had only wounded his pride, and added insult to the injury I had done to him already: not including him in the investigation as soon as possible. If anything, I had just made things worse. I ran a hand over my face and then set that worry aside for now. I didn’t like that he was angry with me, even though I was technically right and he had been focusing on the wrong thing, but he was still processing his own feelings toward our mother, and I had to be cognizant of that. But I couldn’t focus on that now. I had bigger fish to fry. He’d come around once he thought about it.
I jerked open the bag I had been opening and frowned. Files, recovered from Lionel’s safe. Aggravated, I tossed it behind me, toward the other pile, and then sighed when I heard the sound of plastic pages spilling out onto the floor. I turned around, and sure enough, the bag had landed awkwardly over the others and turned on its side.
I was gathering the sheets up with wide sweeps of my arms, not caring about the order, when Leo squatted down and picked up one of the opaque pages, a frown on his face. “Liana, what’s this?”
Surprised, I looked up at him. “The stuff from Lionel’s safe,” I replied. “Didn’t I tell you? I recovered it all when Quess was building the shockers. The safe was wide open, and I didn’t think I should leave anything inside. Do you…”
I stopped when he picked up another piece, and then another. “Did you look at any of these?” he asked, and his tone made me uncertain, as if I had made a massive mistake.
“No, I just grabbed them. Why?”
He looked up at me from the papers and then turned them around. “These are his files from the AI project. On all of us. I didn’t know they were in there—he never told me!”
I stared at him, and then the files, and then back to him, completely baffled as to how this was relevant to our current situation.
30
I continued to look at Leo, grasping at straws as to how this was helpful. Was there some secret code in there that would summon all of the fragments to one place? Because if so, I was all ears. But when Leo didn’t say anything further, I realized that there probably wasn’t, and he’d gotten excited over it just because it was something we’d need later. But still, it didn’t hurt to ask.
“Can it help us right now?” I asked.
Leo looked up at me, his brown eyes filling with surprise and then defeat. He looked away and began scooping the papers up into folders. “No,” he said sharply, with two quick swipes of his head. “You??
?re right. It’s not important right now. We have to focus on Rose and Jasper.”
I swallowed. I felt bad for having to steer him away from it, because I did understand the significance of what those files meant: We could finally find answers on how Lionel bound the AI fragments together in Scipio, which would hopefully tell us how we could put them back into his system. We could learn more about the other fragments and find ways to track them using the information in their files.
But it didn’t help us right now, and Jasper and Rose needed us to focus. We quickly shoved the files back into the bag and zipped it.
“Put it on the table,” I told him. “We’ll go through it later.”
He nodded and did as I asked, while I turned back to the pile, resuming my search. I found the pills in the second to last bag, and quickly grabbed both sides of the zipper to haul it up onto the table, where I upended it to spill the pill bottles onto the flat surface. I had no idea what I was looking at. All I knew was that I needed to find a small, blue, round pill.
Several large bottles rolled out of the bag, and I grabbed them first and looked at them. I found Zoe’s handwriting on them, reading Px10, and realized that this was the Paragon, strength of ten. I quickly eliminated all of the larger bottles that way without having to open them. The medium-sized bottles were also labeled—also Paragon, but with a lower strength—and I set them aside as well. The remaining bottles were small, and only about half of them were labeled. The rest had neat question marks on them. I realized Zoe hadn’t known how to identify the pills inside, and started pulling those out. She’d never seen Spero before, so if it was anywhere, it was in there. I quickly gathered all the mystery bottles I could find and began popping them open.
A sharp clunk at the other end of the table had me pausing and looking up from the third bottle, and I saw Leo placing the two locked boxes I had set aside earlier side by side. Instead of confusion this time, however, his face showed thoughtfulness.