“So, once I do this, the virus is going to override Cornelius’s ability to perceive you, so he can accept the order,” Leo told me as he typed. “After that, the room will reset. Any preferences you set up are going to be gone.”
I arched an eyebrow at that and smiled. “I think I’ll find a way to manage,” I said dryly. “So once you do this, I’ll call the council, report what happened, and request that Sadie come down and take a look at it personally, as the head of my internal IT department can’t make heads or tails of it.”
“Incompetent as charged,” Quess said with a mocking salute as he passed us, hard drive in hand, heading for the bag on the table. That bag had the guns, several extra magazines, Quess’s special face spray, the neural blockers, a medic kit—including everything we needed to remove and insert Sadie’s net—and now Jang-Mi’s hard drive with the virus and my schematic. We had everything we needed. Now we just had to invite the guest of honor.
“Everybody ready?” I asked.
“Nope,” Quess said, slinging the bag over his shoulder. “I would like to request that we move to the hallway, as it has the least amount of furniture that can kill us.”
I laughed, but found I didn’t disagree with his assessment. “Fair enough. Leo, I assume you can do this remotely?” I wasn’t going to leave him alone if someone had to hit a button to start the process.
“No, but it has a ten-second delay,” he replied. “I can get to the hall in ten seconds. Go ahead.”
I nodded and moved after Maddox, who had already begun descending the stairs toward the hallway. I was crossing the recessed floor when Leo said, “Starting now,” and quickened my pace up the handful of steps and into the hall where Quess and Maddox were waiting. I stopped in front of them, and turned in time to see Leo racing across the room toward us, already at the bottom of the first set of stairs and heading toward the second.
He ascended them quickly, and entered the hall just as a soft hum started. I held my breath and looked up at the ceiling and the lights, and noticed that the bulbs were flickering somewhat.
“Champion life signs not detected,” Cornelius abruptly announced. “Implementing sunset protocol.”
The lights suddenly shut off, and I halfway leapt out of my skin.
“What’s going on?” Maddox asked from somewhere to my left in the inky blackness.
I opened my mouth to tell her that I wasn’t sure, but then we all gasped when a sharp clang sounded. I took a step back on instinct, and ran into a solid form with just enough give to tell me it was human. Hands grabbed my shoulders and squeezed reassuringly, but another clang came, and then another and another. It took me a second to realize they were coming closer, growing faster.
“What is that?” Maddox asked, her voice panicked.
I tried to think of what could be making that noise, and suddenly realized that it was the walls dropping into place.
Quess beat me to telling her, though. “Don’t worry, Doxy, it’s just the walls. It’ll be over soon, I hope.” He was somewhere to my right, which meant the hands holding onto me were Leo’s. I relaxed into him some, and one of his hands came around my chest, hugging me tightly to him.
The clangs approached quickly, the sound growing thunderous in my ears, and even though I knew that the walls dropping into place couldn’t hurt me, the darkness made it impossible to see, which made it easy to believe that it was something else. Like an army of sentinels racing right for us.
I struggled to keep my breathing even as a sharp angry buzz started, and then I felt whirls of air ruffle my hair as things whirred by overhead. I ducked instinctively, even as the clanging rounded a corner. I felt a rumble under my feet, shaking violently, and then suddenly we were caught in the tidal wave. Bursts of cold air hit my skin, sending a trail of goose bumps down my arms, and I heard the grating rumble that told me the war room was becoming flat once again.
The clangs stopped a few seconds later, but the whirring overhead continued at a relentless pace as the mechanical arms hauled away all of my carefully placed furniture. It continued to run for what felt like forever, and then suddenly stopped.
For several seconds, nothing happened, and then the lights came back on overhead, revealing the Champion’s quarters, which were, once again, a wide, empty circle with nothing inside. I straightened immediately and looked around.
“Wow,” I said with an appreciative nod. “Step one down. Good job, guys.” Quess beamed, Leo flushed with pleasure, and I checked my indicator—2:43.
“Quess, how long do you think it would take for an idiot IT guy to figure out he was in way over his head?” I asked him, looking up.
Quess made a face and scratched his head. “Well, the first thing would be to find a terminal, but wouldn’t you know, there just isn’t one around? Welp, my hands are tied.”
I knew I should be chiding him about not taking this seriously enough, but I couldn’t help but chuckle at his antics. The levity dried up quickly as I realized that it was time, and I took one calming breath before swiping my indicator and saying, “Call the council, emergency request made by Champion Castell.”
There was a pause, and then the net in my skull began to buzz. Greetings, Champion Castell, Scipio said in my mind. You’ve requested an emergency conversation with the council. What seems to be the problem?
I closed my eyes and summoned the appropriate amount of fear and anger necessary for a council member who had just had their entire home fall apart around them, while sprinkling it with enough reverence so as not to be disrespectful. “Lord Scipio, I don’t even know how to describe it, but I think there is a problem with my virtual assistant! I was having a meeting with some of my Knights one moment, and then the next, the lights went out and all of the walls and furniture were swept away! I was almost killed! Now the assistant isn’t responding, and my computer expert can’t even find a terminal to look at the problem!”
Hold, please, Scipio ordered. I kept my eyes closed, which was a good thing, considering the buzzing grew stronger, sending vibrations along my jaw and into my teeth. I gritted them against the signal that the net transmission had now been conferenced in. Councilors, Champion Castell is reporting a severe problem with her virtual assistant. Per jurisdictional rulings in the past, the care and maintenance of the virtual assistants falls into the purview of the IT Department. Does anyone wish to contest this ruling before proceeding?
No one spoke for several seconds, and I almost sighed in relief when Scipio said, Very well. CEO Monroe, do you have any idea what would’ve caused the Champion’s assistant to reset her room?
No, I do not, Sadie replied primly. I’ve never heard of this problem occurring before. Was it just me, or did I hear a thread of suspicion curling through her voice? I could have been imagining things, but I doubted it. Sadie was not stupid. I decided to keep quiet and see how things unfolded.
I see. Well, in the interest of determining the cause, CEO Monroe, you are officially charged with investigating Champion Castell’s virtual assistant.
There was a pause. Very well, she replied with a heavy sigh. Champion Castell, please be prepared to receive me in ten minutes.
That had been easier than I’d expected. “I’ll send Lieutenant Kerrin to escort you to my quarters,” I replied.
Good, Scipio said. CEO Monroe, we will be expecting your report on this incident soon. Please let the council know if there is anything you need.
I will endeavor to need nothing, Sadie replied formally. But I appreciate the offer and will keep it in mind.
I rolled my eyes but continued to keep my mouth shut. I was getting my way; no need to make an off-color joke about Sadie sucking up to Scipio being completely unnecessary, given that she was secretly manipulating him.
Then consider this emergency meeting ended, Scipio said formally. Good luck in your investigations.
“Thank you,” I replied. He ended the transmission a second later, and I sagged some as the buzzing abruptly stopped, relieved that
I didn’t have to endure any more of that.
“How long?” Maddox asked almost immediately.
“Ten minutes,” I replied, rubbing my forehead. “Go ahead and get down there. If she brought any of her people, make them stay in the reception hall. Cite the privacy rules of a councilor’s chambers if you have to. We don’t need anyone else up here when everything goes down.”
“I know, I know,” Maddox said irritably as she headed over to one of the white rectangles on the wall. “I’ll be right back.”
I watched her go, half of me wanting to go with her. But it would be odd if two of us showed up to escort Sadie, especially if we insisted she was the only one allowed up. So I sat back and waited.
Ten minutes felt like ten hours now that I had nothing with which to distract myself. The entire floor was empty, save the neat little boxes we had found stacked by one of the elevator entrances. They contained our personal belongings, which had apparently been separated during the resetting process.
Maddox netted as soon as Sadie arrived with her contingent of men, but I felt confident that Sadie wouldn’t be able to argue her way into keeping them. In fact, I’d have given anything to be able to watch it on a live feed—but unfortunately, all of my screens had disappeared. So I paced instead, and went over the plan in my head. Get her in, put her at ease, get her to pull up the terminal, and then knock her out.
It was almost a relief when there was a soft bong and a door slid open. Sadie swanned in, looking as if she owned the place. She was alone—save for Maddox—and I almost smiled at that. So far, so good.
Sadie’s auburn hair was braided back behind her head today, and she was wearing a pair of black-rimmed glasses that gave her a severe look, reminding me of a stern teacher. A frown was already on her lips, and as her steely gaze came to rest on me, her face tightened in clear displeasure.
“Champion,” she said as she reached me and slowed to a stop.
“CEO,” I replied. “Thank you for coming so soon. As you can see, I appear to have a problem with my house.”
One dark auburn eyebrow lifted over the rim of her glasses, and she gave me a measuring look that made it seem like she was slowly listing each and every one of my physical flaws in her head. I hated that look, so I met it head on, folding my arms over my chest.
“Clearly,” she replied dryly. “And what were you doing when this little glitch occurred?”
I raised an eyebrow at her, not liking the snarky tone in her voice. “I’m not sure what you mean, but my Lieutenant and I were having a meeting with two Knight Commanders when the lights shut off and everything I designed disappeared. And no, Cornelius isn’t responding.”
She rolled her eyes and then looked up at the ceiling. “Drop command module on my authority,” she ordered. The system asked for her designation, which she gave, and a second later, a computer terminal attached to a long pole began to descend through a hole in the ceiling a few feet away from the central column. She strode over to it, and I followed behind, watching over her shoulder as she began to type. I gave her a minute, then two, wanting her to have the memory of starting, and then cleared my throat loudly. Her fingers didn’t miss a beat, and she continued to stare up at the screen, clearly ignoring me.
I smiled, pulled out my baton, pressed the button to build a charge, and then reached out to tap her shoulder. No response. I gave her thirty seconds to acknowledge me, and when she didn’t, I repeated the movement, bemused by the fact that she was being rude to me right before I intended to shock her unconscious.
“What are you doing?” she asked finally, snapping her head around to look at me.
“Nothing,” I lied with a smile.
Her eyes flicked down to the baton in my hand, and then back up to me, growing dark. She opened her mouth to speak, but I’d had quite enough of that. I casually touched the tip of the rod in my hand to her ribs, and had the distinct pleasure of watching Sadie’s face morph from disbelief and outrage to a silent cry of pain. Then it was lights out for her.
I stepped back as Leo quickly went to her, my heart pounding as he withdrew a laser cutter from his bag. Quess helped him roll Sadie’s unconscious body over, and then quickly began cutting a spot on her neck.
I waited, watching their bent heads closely for any sign that we had been wrong about Sadie. If she didn’t have a legacy net…
“We got it,” Leo announced, and a second later he turned around and showed me a bloody chip, the color the bright white of a legacy net, and Quess immediately started cleaning it.
Relief coursed through me, followed by a deep, dark hatred as I looked down at Sadie with anger. “Okay, let’s take mine out and get Sadie’s in.”
“On it,” Quess said, taking the cutter from Leo and moving around behind me. I gritted my teeth against the familiar burn of the cutter as he opened up the back of my neck for the second time in three days, and endured the stomach-roiling sensation as the tendrils of the net retracted, reminding me of the roots of a weed being pulled out. Then Sadie’s went in, and I got to experience them going backward. It wasn’t my favorite feeling, but it was endurable. As soon as he was done, he sealed the wound with the pink bio-foam, and then placed a scrambler over it.
The net began to buzz immediately as the scrambler did its job to block all outgoing data from the net. It would disguise my movements, but I could only use it for two hours maximum, or the net would overheat and kill me. Leo was wearing one as well, and after Quess sprayed us in the face with a quick blast of his camera-fooling invention, we were ready.
Maddox gave us both approving looks as we approached the elevator, but I could see that she was nervous. I didn’t blame her. If anything went wrong, Leo and I would be without any backup.
“Remember, give Sadie the sedative and a quarter pill of Spero before she wakes up,” I told her when we got close enough. Giving her a full pill would wipe her memory of the call, which would be bad, so we were gambling on fifteen minutes being enough to erase the attack. “If we aren’t back within two hours, you take her and run. Use her to bargain for your lives.”
“I’m going to use her to bargain for yours,” she replied stoically. “Or just throw her off the side of the Tower. Depends on how I’m feeling at the time.”
I forced a smile at her joke, but to be honest, I was too nervous for it to really hit home. “Hopefully it won’t come to that, but if it does, have some fun with it. Tie her to a rock or something.”
Maddox snorted, and then impulsively dragged me into a hug. “Be careful,” she said, and I could hear the order in her voice. I hugged her back for a second or two, and then patted her arm. Time was moving against us, and was a commodity we could not afford to waste. We only had so long before the council began to wonder why Sadie hadn’t checked in with her initial report.
Maddox let me go, and then headed to the elevator, where she quickly authorized a lift for us, ordering it to go to the topmost level of the Citadel. From there, we could use an escape hatch to get into the Attic. But we needed to go now—Dinah was waiting, and there wasn’t ever enough time.
32
Leo and I entered a storage room in the Attic through a hatch from the Citadel, and Leo quickly hacked the door into the Tower open so we could get to the corridors beyond. From there we walked confidently through the halls, but I worried about the efficacy of Quess’s face spray the entire time, certain that someone would notice. Our destination was two storage rooms over, and we located it easily, hacked the door in the hallway, and then exited through another hatch that brought us out to the span of ceiling between where the Citadel and the Core dangled over the Grounds. We transitioned to our lashes and quickly traversed the remaining distance between us and the Core. It took about twenty minutes all in all, and by the time we reached the hatch toward which Dinah had pointed us, my arms were aching and a fine sweat had formed on my brow. Leo input the code and ushered me through the hole that opened up seconds later, and we were in a crawlspace.
As I slid in, two things struck me at once. Number one was that it was hot. Uncomfortably so. Number two was that the crawlspace wasn’t like others I’d encountered in the Tower. It was made of a black mesh that was slightly flexible under my palms and knees, and didn’t make any noise as I moved on it. It was also cool to the touch, untouched by the hot, dry air, which helped battle some of the heat, but only a little. I crawled forward a few feet into the darkened space, and then stopped to catch my breath while digging out my hand light.
Leo crawled in behind me, and seconds later the hatch was closed. “You okay?” he asked, also slightly out of breath.
“Good,” I told him as I found the familiar oval shape of my light source in my pocket and pulled it out. “Get your light.” Leo began to look for his while I unraveled the strap mine was attached to and clicked it on. A bright light erupted from it, and I winced and quickly twisted down the setting using a control on the base, softening the light to something less obnoxious and noticeable. Satisfied, I wrapped the strap around my head, and then looked down the shaft. “Dinah should be straight ahead,” I said softly.
“About forty feet or so,” he replied, showing me that he also remembered Dinah’s instructions. “Let me go first.”
There was a seriousness in his voice that made me want to smile in spite of the nervous roil of my stomach, but I remembered my promise to him and flattened myself to one side. He squeezed past me, his side brushing against mine, and then pulled away, crawling ahead. I took a deep breath, reminded myself that everyone’s life was on the line, and then pressed after him.
We just need to get in and out, I told myself as we went. Get Jasper. Get Rose. Trigger the death protocol. Get back to the Citadel. In and out.
I hoped everything was going all right back at the Citadel. Without my net, I had no way of knowing what was going on, but I trusted my friends to handle it.
I just worried about any curveballs our enemies might throw at us in the process.