“What are those?” I asked.
He looked up at me and shifted. “I’m honestly not sure I should tell you.”
I stared at him for a second and then looked down at the pills in my hand. They were red and entirely the wrong shape, and I set the bottle down, needing something to keep my hands busy as I considered his mysterious statement. “You put them on the table for a reason,” I said, now curious as to what had him so hesitant. “Clearly you think that whatever is in there is important.”
His mouth flattened into a tight, thin line. “They could be. But…” He swallowed and looked away. I frowned and glanced at the boxes. What was in there that was causing him all this difficulty? He looked so conflicted.
“What’s going on?” I asked, putting the bottle down. “Whatever it is, we can figure it out.”
Leo sucked in a deep breath and sighed. “I see two big problems with going into Sadie’s quarters, and I want to talk about the one that doesn’t involve these two boxes.”
“Okay,” I said. I didn’t know what to make of his bizarre behavior, but I decided it was easier for him to explain it to me than to guess. I just hoped he wouldn’t mind if I kept searching for the most critical part of this plan in the process.
I pointed at the bottles in front of me and then back up to him. “Can I keep looking for the Spero?” I asked, figuring it was easier to ask now. He gave a surprised laugh and then nodded, and I immediately cracked open another bottle. “So what’s the first problem?” I asked, peering into it. The capsules were long and green. I put the bottle down and scooped up another.
“Covering our tracks. The terminal is impossible to tamper with in the timeframe we have, and even though her virtual assistant is offline, thanks to Rose, we will be recorded as soon as we enter the rooms. Now, Quess’s spray thing will help with that, but we don’t have enough time to hack the vid files, delete the parts that will include us, and put in clean versions.”
I had gone through three more bottles—no matches—while he spoke, and when he finished, I pressed my lips together and rocked back on my heels. That was a big problem. Bigger than my missing Spero pills.
“Is there a solution?” I asked. “Could you figure one out?”
Leo placed a finger to his chin and tapped it thoughtfully. “Actually… I have an idea, but it’s a bit drastic. However, I think there’s a way we could tie it in to what we do with Cornelius.”
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” I said, thoroughly confused. “What do you mean?”
He grinned. “We’re going to trigger the death protocol,” he said. My eyes bulged in surprise, but it quickly gave way to excitement as I realized he was a genius. When a virtual assistant was notified that their council member was dead, it triggered a reset of their entire system and deleted the vid files. If he did it to Cornelius first, forcing all of the systems to reset, and then again to Sadie’s, the council would assume it was a glitch shared by the virtual assistants. No one would have any reason to assume that it was to obscure us stealing AIs.
And it was the perfect cover to draw Sadie out. As soon as I notified the council that Cornelius had glitched out on me, they’d want her to get to my quarters and check on it. But best of all, when Sadie got back to find that the same thing had happened in her own quarters, she would assume that Jasper had been lost in the deletion process! She’d have no idea that we had him—or that Rose had ever been in her computer at all! It was a brilliant solution.
“Leo, you’re a genius,” I said with a grin as I scooped up another bottle. “That’s an incredible solution. Do you really think you can do it?”
“They designed their securities around what they presumed people would go after,” he said with a smile. “But I don’t think they ever considered a hacker messing around with that protocol itself, so it’s not well protected.” He paused, and then added, “You know, this also means we can go through her private files and take whatever we want. She might have stuff that can help us figure out who is really behind everything.”
I blinked and then smiled in pleasure at the thought. We hadn’t ever discussed going through Sadie’s files on the computer because the priority had always been Jasper. It still was, but now that we were going to wipe Sadie’s system completely, we might as well take everything we could find while we were there, right?
A secondary thought occurred to me, and my smile deepened. Alex was going to be really happy to hear that. “That’s also a good idea. So what’s the other problem?” I returned my focus to the pills as I spoke and opened another bottle, discovering several small, circular blue pills. I tipped the bottle into my cupped hand, and my grin became triumphant as I counted the sixteen pills on my palm. Spero could only erase the past hour, which meant I potentially had sixteen hours’ worth. I would only need one—two tops—to keep her from remembering what happened while we got in and out of her quarters. I just had to knock her out before she could net for help, and we’d be in, so to speak. We still had to think of a way to explain the gap in time, but maybe we could engineer an accident that would explain the memory lapse.
I held them out to Leo and said, “Found them.”
He studied them for a moment. “Good. Now about these boxes.” I explored his face and saw a seriousness in his eyes that made me feel like I should give him my undivided attention. So I carefully poured the pills back into the bottle, recapped it, and slid it into my pocket, not wanting to take any chance of losing it.
“What is it?” I asked, coming around the table to stand next to him.
“Well, if we’re right about Sadie being a legacy, then—”
“You think she’s not?” I asked, unable to help myself. “She set a trap on her computer for an AI. You don’t do that unless you think there are AIs out there to catch! She has Jasper, and she’s never told anyone on the council what he really is!”
The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was. Sadie was in a perfect position to manipulate the investigation into the sentinel. Hell, she was IT—she could manufacture whatever data she wanted, interpret it five ways from Sunday, and use that to undermine any investigation. Like one of the previous owners of my net had thought, How can we really believe anything IT says?
“I agree that it is highly possible,” he said. “But if she is, we have to anticipate that she might be high enough for them to be monitoring her. We have to be very careful about using her net, or it could draw their attention to the fact that something is wrong. They might send people to investigate what’s going on, and if so, I think we should be prepared.”
I nodded slowly. That made sense, especially if Sadie was at the top—or close to it. But prepared how? What did that have to do with the boxes?
“Okay,” I said carefully. “I’m in that ‘needing more’ phase. How does this relate to the boxes?”
Leo paled slightly and looked down at them before swallowing. “I had hoped never to tell you about these. Lionel despised the things, and hated himself for keeping them, but…”
He wasn’t making any sense. “What things? What are you talking about?”
“Have you ever heard of a gun?”
His question was immediate, and it threw me off. “A… gun?” I wasn’t sure why I repeated it; maybe I was hoping the legacy net would trigger something. But when nothing came, I shook my head.
Leo sighed again, and then reached for the keypad on the larger of the two boxes. He pressed a series of buttons, followed by a star-shaped key. There was a beep, and moments later a seam appeared in the smooth surface, a bright blue light streaming through the cracks. The top part continued to rise, letting more and more light through, and then stopped. It was suspended for a second, seemingly floating on the light, and then slid to one side.
The light intensified briefly, and I winced against it even as I tried to peer inside the box to see what was putting Leo so on edge. I blinked in annoyance when it clicked off so suddenly that my vision went dark as my eyes a
djusted.
I waited as the dark became gray, and then gray bled to the brown of the table and the darkness of the box, and finally, I could see. I looked inside and cocked my head, puzzled.
Inside were two pieces of black metal, uniform in shape and design, but bent at a right angle with some sort of loop at the bottom, which sat over another piece of curved metal. “This is a gun?” I asked, reaching for the closest one. “I don’t understand. Do you hit someone with it?”
Leo grabbed my wrist before I could touch it, his eyes wide in alarm. “Don’t,” he said, and I froze, suddenly afraid that if I just touched it, I would die. Maybe a gun was a kind of bomb.
Leo stroked his thumb over my wrist before letting go, and I watched, transfixed, as he reached in and pulled one out, gripping it in a way that reminded me of a pulse shield or the weapon the sentinel had wielded in its hand. Only, the top of it was narrow, and had a hollow tube running through it.
“I’m sorry, but this is a lethal weapon,” he said as he pulled back on the top of the thing. To my surprise, the top section slid back, and he peered into it. “I watched Lionel do this a few times, but it’s a lot harder than I thought.” He released the top part and then pressed something on the side, and a second later, something else ejected from the handle. He slid it out, looked down the flat, hollow shell, and then nodded. “They’re not loaded.”
He said it like it was a good thing, and maybe it was. I wouldn’t know. Because he wasn’t telling me. And I was getting really annoyed.
“Leo,” I said, adding some heat to my voice and putting a hand on my hip. “You need to explain what this is. You’re not making any sense.”
He eyed me, slightly confused. “Your legacy net didn’t show you anything?”
I shook my head, and he frowned before holding the gun out to me. “It’s unloaded because it uses specialized projectiles called bullets. Those are kept in the other box.”
“Okay,” I said, reaching for the gun and fitting it in my hand like he had. It was heavier than I expected, the handle rough under my palm. “What’s a bull—”
I cut off as a memory—finally—filled me, and suddenly I knew. I knew what it was to hold a gun in my hand and breathe in, take aim, exhale, and squeeze. I knew how to clean it, oil it, load it, and shoot it. And I knew… I knew the finality of a bullet. One tiny piece of metal that could end a life at the press of a button. It was savage, brutal, and effective.
As soon as the memory fled, I opened my eyes and studied the weapon. I knew the name of every part. Within seconds I had neatly ejected the magazine and slapped it on the table. Then I gripped the top, checked for the dull copper sheen of a bullet, and released the lock on the side, sliding it free.
Out came the firing pin. The spring next. The trigger, mount, and grip all went to one side, laid out in order. Then I did it in reverse, tucking each component back into its place as flawlessly as possible, my hands mechanical in their precision. I did it like I’d done it a thousand times. Then I felt the buzz of the net in my skull slowly die as the memory faded, the gun reassembled and in my hand again.
“Scipio help me,” I breathed, tightening my grip on the handle. “It felt like I was made for it.” And it would give us a world of advantage if we got into a fight. No one had a weapon like this. I’d feel a lot safer going into IT with it than without it, that was for sure.
Leo grimaced and gently pried the gun out of my hand. “Lionel would turn over in his grave if he ever heard his name used to express pleasure in a gun. He hated them.”
I cocked my head at him, watching as he busied himself with opening the other box. “Why did he hate them?” I asked, unable to stop myself.
Leo’s fingers paused. “Lionel’s son was shot,” he said after a moment. "His son fell victim to the violence... when he was only ten. Lionel hated guns for the rest of his life.”
“That’s… so awful,” I said, knowing the words couldn’t capture what Leo must be feeling. “Pre-Enders were messed up. Plastic surgery, and now this? If we ever get out of the Tower, I am so leading discussions into such unnecessary violence, so that we can make sure that as a culture, we never, ever backslide into that again.”
He smiled, but it was twisted by a sadness in his eyes. “If you get out of the Tower, you mean.”
I opened my mouth, shut it, and then took a step back. I wasn’t even sure why I had said that. I had already made up my mind to stay to help Leo, and to be honest, I didn’t exactly know what was going to happen if we succeeded in that. I wasn’t even sure I’d survive it. But I’d never considered what would happen to Leo once everything was said and done. What happened to him if we won and restored Scipio? He couldn’t remain in Grey’s body.
Would we repair his terminal in Lionel’s office and just… leave him there alone again?
My heart ached at the thought of such an empty end for him, and I took another step back, needing to carve out a little more space before I once again wrapped my arms around him and hugged him close. Everything was so confusing.
“I didn’t mean anything by that,” I mumbled. “I was just making a joke.”
He opened his mouth to reply, but Cornelius interrupted him. “Lieutenant Kerrin and Quessian Brown have arrived.”
“Right,” I said as I looked at Leo, and then pointed a thumb at the door behind me. “I should go get them caught up on the updated version of the plan. Can you go ahead and pack the guns, and then get started on Cornelius?”
Leo slowly closed his mouth, and then nodded. “Sure.”
I smiled, then turned and fled. I had too much on my plate to add my weird-ass love life to it. I just needed to rescue Jasper and Rose, and pray that we didn’t get caught doing it.
31
It took three hours for Quess and Leo to figure out how to trigger the death protocol in Cornelius, and by then, Alex had gotten back to me with a plan from Dinah. We merely had to get to hatch 12-B in the Core, and she would make sure our passage went undiscovered.
Three hours also helped me come up with a solution for how to explain Sadie’s memory loss. Quess had identified some mild sedatives among the mystery pill bottles on the table, and we figured we’d slip her one with the first Spero pill, and then let her tinker around with the terminal. That way, she’d have a vague memory of working on the terminal, while hopefully being out of it enough to not have a good concept of how much time had passed. If we were lucky, she would go to sleep, and then when we got back, I could just wake her up, praise her for fixing it, and send her on her way. But even if she was awake, with the sedative and the Spero, I doubted she would remember any of it. It was better than her having any signs of a possible assault—even if we tried to explain it away as a malfunction in the room.
The rest of our time was spent finding all the important items in the place and stashing them in a supply closet on one of the nearby levels. It wasn’t ideal, especially since the items included illegal copies of IT manuals, and files concerning Scipio’s creation, but I didn’t want to move them out of the Citadel again. It would attract too much attention. I used my power as Champion to secure the door so that only Maddox or I could open it, and hoped that no one stopped by needing something while we were gone. If they asked any questions, I’d make something up, but leaving that stuff in my quarters was not an option. When Leo tricked Cornelius into believing I was dead, the room would also reset, and I didn’t know what would happen to our personal items once all the walls and furniture were removed.
We left some things behind so it wouldn’t seem staged, but everything else went. I didn’t mind the work. It kept me distracted from fretting over every minute that passed without having the first part of our plan ready. Maddox and I moved everything, showered, changed, and then went into the war room, where Leo and Quess greeted us with wide grins.
“I take it you figured it out,” I said as I finished braiding my wet hair. “I hope so, because it’s two thirty. Dinah isn’t going to be able to break us in afte
r four.”
“Relax,” Quess said lightly. “We got it. We’re just downloading a copy of the code for Sadie’s computer onto Jang-Mi’s old hard drive, and then we’ll go ahead and get started.”
Maddox and I exchanged looks. With them downloading the virus to Jang-Mi’s hard drive, the final pieces were falling in place. Soon we’d have Sadie here, I’d knock her out, and Quess would take her net out and put it in the back of my neck. Jasper’s highly unorthodox rescue was about to be underway—after we took care of a few more items of business. “Are we going to stay in here when you do this?” I asked.
Leo answered. “We’ll be fine, and it’ll make our story even more believable if we’re inside when it happens. It’d be suspicious if we left, it happened, and we came right back in.”
He had a point, but I was less certain about our safety, recalling the flurry of walls and robotic arms that had activated when I was designing the room. I could only imagine what it was going to look like in reverse. A belated thought occurred to me, and I looked at the two men standing on the other side of the desk. “Hey, guys, did you save my room design?”
They paused in whatever work they were doing on the computer, and exchanged a look. “No,” Quess said after a moment. “But we will. I didn’t realize you were so attached to the design.” There was a teasing light in his eyes when he said that, and I couldn’t help but laugh, in spite of the nervousness starting to cramp my stomach.
“If you had spent as much time as I did experimenting to get the walls just how I wanted, then you’d be attached, too,” I retorted, and he chuckled.
“Fair enough. You done, Leo?”
Leo had bent over while we were talking, but sat up a second later, holding Jang-Mi’s hard drive in one hand. “Yup, the virus is downloaded. Go grab Liana’s design out of the column and throw it in my bag.”
“Got it.” Quess accepted the transparent box and moved away to download my schematic, leaving Leo to type a few things on my terminal.