“No, but—”
“Well, you don’t tear apart your team just because you’re unhappy with the outcome of one of our missions,” Eric cut in smoothly, his jaw clenching.
Quess growled, his entire body radiating tension to the point where it seemed like even touching him would get me cut. I stared at him, and then made a snap decision. “Take a shower, Quess. You need to cool off and get some perspective.” It was clear that there was no reasoning with him right then, and he needed some time to himself to calm down and think about what he was saying.
“Don’t tell him what to do,” Maddox snapped, picking herself up. “He has a right to be heard!”
“He’s been heard,” I shot back, some of my anger cracking through the patience I had been managing to maintain. “So have you. I get that you’re upset that Tian’s not with us, but I’m not going to let you blame me, or each other! Not when all of us did the best we could with what we had! Yes, mistakes were made, but we can’t change anything about what happened. We can only affect what happens moving forward. So either get on board, or get out, but whatever you’re going to do, decide quickly.”
I was a little shocked at the words coming out of my own mouth, and realized halfway through that I could be driving them farther away. But I couldn’t seem to get myself to stop. For several long, pregnant seconds, nobody said anything.
“I’m going to take a nap,” Maddox snapped suddenly, her jaw tight and tense.
“And I’m going to work on the shockers,” Quess added, holding out an insistent hand to me. I ignored a glare sharp enough to cut diamonds, and quickly untangled the bracelet and handed it over to him. In truth, I was relieved. They had clearly decided to stay, and even though they were still angry, I knew that, at the very least, they were planning on sticking with us, even if they weren’t happy.
It also meant that they didn’t think I was to blame. If they really believed that, they would have walked out.
Quess snatched the bracelet from my hand, and then grabbed one of the bags that we had hauled up from Sanctum just a few short hours ago. I recognized it as the bag he had put his tools in. He waited long enough for Maddox to get to the hall, and then moved to help her down it.
I waited until I heard the hiss of the pneumatic door, and then slowly relaxed some.
“Well, that was bold,” Zoe said, clearly impressed by my actions, if a little concerned. “Was it absolutely necessary, though?”
I sighed, reaching up and rubbing my forehead. Honestly, I still wasn’t sure, but what was done was done, and it had been the only thing I could think of in the heat of the moment.
“I don’t know how Liana feels,” Leo announced softly. “But I think it was something that Quess and Maddox both needed to hear. They are upset, but misdirecting their anger. They’ll be better once Tian is back.”
“As a man with his fair share of female family members, I will say that if anything happened to any one of them, I might go a little off the deep end, too,” Eric said, fidgeting slightly. “But yeah, I agree with Leo. They needed to hear it. I would need you to say the same thing if I were in their shoes. It’ll be fine as soon as Tian shows up and explains what the heck is going on.”
“That’s a really nice thought, guys,” I said softly, running a hand through my hair. “But we don’t actually know that she’ll be able to break free of that thing. Anything could happen, and that machine almost killed us tonight! Who’s to say that whatever protective instincts it has for her won’t suddenly turn violent? Or that it won’t just glitch out—something the sentinels have been known to do in the past?” I pressed my lips together, trying to organize my thoughts, and found that they had all left me. I was just too tired and too sore to focus. I checked my watch and observed that it was ten o’clock. Way past time for bed.
“Look, let’s get some rest, give Quess a chance to calm down, and then discuss the situation again in the morning. If we’re lucky, Tian will show up by then, or before then. If not, we hunt her down again and start all over.”
“Or you could just talk to her now,” a sweet voice chirped from the direction of the front door. I swiveled around, and sure enough, Tian was standing there, a small, nervous smile playing on her face. “So on a scale from one to no hot chocolate, how much trouble am I in?”
I couldn’t answer. My heart was in a vice grip of strongly surging emotions at seeing her safe and relatively unharmed—but that was battling with the rage I was feeling over her captivity by a monster. So instead of saying anything, I simply stood up, ignoring my aches and pains, hobbled over to her, wrapped my arms around her, and squeezed as tightly as I could.
21
“I’ll go get Quess and Maddox,” Leo said in a hushed tone from behind me. I heard him move to leave, but didn’t let go of Tian, just took strength from the fact that she was here—vibrant and alive.
She, however, was not happy with the prolonged nature of my hug, and began squirming seconds later, saying, “Get a grip, Liana,” her voice muffled against my shoulder.
I smiled, and reluctantly let her go. “I’m sorry, Tian. We’ve just been really worried.”
“Yeah, I figured that—”
“Tian!”
Maddox’s voice cut over whatever Tian was about to say, and the next thing I knew, the muscular girl was squeezing past me and wrapping the smaller girl up into a massive hug. Tian endured it for several seconds, and then—just as she had with me—began pushing Maddox off of her.
“I’m fine, Doxy! I promise!” she cried as she managed to get her head and shoulder free. “Let go of me!”
“No!” Maddox replied with a happy laugh, her earlier bitterness gone. “I have been so worried about you!”
“Oh my God, I know!” Tian replied, exasperated. “And I’m sorry that you were. Now, will you just—”
Tian broke free with a grunt, the “let me go” slightly interrupted by the guttural sound being exhaled from her lips. Within seconds, she was scooped up by Quess, his massive arms wrapping around her like heavy metal bands and pressing her into his chest.
“Oh, for the love of… Are you fu—”
“Tian!” I cried, shocked to hear such vulgar language in her mouth.
“—ing kidding me!” she finished crossly, a frustrated look coming over her doll-like features. “Quessian Brown, you put me down right now! Right now!” One tiny, booted foot flailed, and I got the impression that she was trying to stamp the ground.
Quess refused—and squeezed her tighter. Tian retaliated by sucking in a deep breath, and then kicking the toes of her boots into his shins at a rapid speed.
“Hey! Ow! Stop it! Tian! Ow! C’mon! Ouch!”
Eventually Quess let her go, and she landed on her feet with all the grace of a cat. I couldn’t help but smile as she straightened up; half of her white-blond hair had been shoved upward through the manhandling by her surrogate siblings, as well as myself.
Maddox immediately moved to hug her again, but the little girl thrust up her arms, shoving her hands out in a defensive gesture, and shouted, “I don’t have a lot of time! Jang-Mi is charging right now, but she can do it really fast, so I can’t stay too long.”
“You’re not going back to it!” Quess said, his brows drawing together.
“Absolutely not,” Maddox echoed, her face pinched with stress and fear. “You are home now, and this is where you will stay.”
Tian scowled at them both, balling her hands into tiny fists. “You don’t get it! She will come for me! She’s… well, it’s complicated, but she’s attached to me. I tried to run away the first day, but she woke up and tracked me down before I could get back.”
I stilled when I heard the acute frustration in her voice, and realized that if I didn’t get us pointed in a useful direction soon, this would escalate into a fight, and we would risk Tian running away from us again. Only this time, she could disappear forever, and we might never see her alive again. If we wanted her to stay, we needed to let her
speak her piece, and then make a decision, together.
“Why don’t we all sit back down in the living room and give Tian a chance to tell her story about what happened? I, for one, want to know.”
Tian’s blue eyes filled with gratitude, and she offered me a tremulous smile. “Thank you,” she mouthed at me, and I flashed her a grin.
Maddox and Quess didn’t look happy, but they didn’t say anything as they headed back into the living room, and Tian moved to follow them, her feet skipping lightly on the floor. She chose to sit in one of the chairs by the door, fidgeting in her spot as she tried to get comfortable. Leo offered me the other chair, but I shook my head and went over to the wall instead, resting against it.
It took us all a minute to get settled. Maddox joined Zoe and Eric on the couch, while Quess took the chair I had refused earlier. Only Leo and I stood—at opposite sides of the room.
“Okay, Tian,” I said, settling back into the wall. “What happened after you snuck out?”
Guilt flashed in Tian’s soft blue eyes, clouding them, and she frowned. “Have I mentioned how sorry I am about leaving like that?” she asked, wincing.
“We forgive you,” Maddox said soothingly. “Just don’t ever do it again.”
Tian’s mouth turned down, and a crease formed in between her brows. “I can’t promise that,” she said guardedly, giving Maddox a look. “If you try to keep me here, then I’ll have to sneak out again. Jang-Mi… the robot lady… she thinks I’m her daughter, Yu-Na!”
“Her daughter?” Quess exclaimed, his eyes wide. “Tian, it’s just a machine.”
Tian rolled her eyes theatrically and stared at him. “No, she’s not!” she exclaimed haughtily. “If anything, she’s more like Leo than a machine, except…” She trailed off, clearly losing herself in a thought. A few seconds later, she shook her head, as if jostling her thoughts back into place. “It’ll be easier if I explain from the beginning,” she finally announced, looking at us. “Easiest if you all shut up and let me tell the story.”
I smiled and gave her a nod. I could identify with her request that we all shut up so she could tell her story; I’d often been in the same position she was now, with everyone picking things apart before I could get the story out. It was frustrating at the best of times, and downright fury inducing at the worst. Besides, I was curious to know what was going on with this sentinel, and why Tian felt so strongly about protecting it, in spite of what it had done.
“We’ll wait to ask any questions, Tian. Go ahead.”
Tian sucked in a deep breath and then nodded. “As you all know, I wasn’t happy when Liana told me to stop looking for a new Sanctum, so I left. I knew you were all worried about what would happen if we didn’t find a place to hide if you lost, and I didn’t want anyone to worry! So I started looking again. I was following the water’s song through the pipes when I realized someone was following me. And it wasn’t any of Lacey’s goons.”
“You knew that Lacey’s people were following you and you didn’t tell us?” Maddox asked.
“Let her finish her story,” I said sharply, giving Maddox a firm look. Maddox narrowed her eyes at me, clearly displeased, but Tian’s look of gratitude was far sweeter, so I focused on that. “Go ahead, Tian.”
Tian shifted slightly and resettled into another position. “So anyway, these jerks start following me, and I realize I’m close to the armpit room.” I blinked, and then made an intuitive leap to realizing she was talking about the condensation room, due to the warmth, humidity, and slight odor. “I head there, because I’ve lost Lacey’s people there before, but these guys managed to keep up with me even though I was using my super-secret way through the pipes. The five of them enter, all wearing these clothes that make them hard to see, and one of them says, ‘Kill her.’”
I heard Quess’s grip tighten on the arms of the chair, the fibers squeaking slightly under the pressure of his now-clenched fingers, but he didn’t interrupt, much to my relief. My own heart was pounding hard, and I had to remind myself that she was here. She’d survived whatever had happened next.
“One of them—the tallest one—broke off from the other four and came toward me. I could tell something was weird by how it walked, and the sounds that it made, but I couldn’t see what was under the cloak it was wearing. Then it pulled down its hood and…” She shuddered, her eyes drifting closed. “It was the scariest thing I’d ever seen,” she said softly, and I realized she was talking about the sentinel. It had been there, with the people tracking Tian down. So then why did it kill the people it had arrived with?
“What did you do?” Zoe asked softly, her eyes brimming with concern.
Tian gave her a sullen look. “I did what anybody would do—I cried my eyes out!” Her cheeks darkened slightly, as if she were embarrassed to admit it, but I didn’t care. If crying her eyes out had spared her life, then I was ready to tell her to start crying as early and often as possible in a crisis. Anything to keep her safe.
“It’s okay,” Eric said soothingly. “I cried when my sister hid under my bed one night and made monster noises at me. It really is okay to cry.”
Tian rolled her eyes and pursed her lips. “I know that. I just didn’t want to at the time! Anyway, once I started to cry, its eyes… they changed. The evil, angry red color suddenly lightened, and became this lovely purple swirl. She reached out and touched my hair, and said the name Yu-Na. Then she…” Tian paused, and then seemed to steel herself. “She turned around and killed them all. They kept shouting at her to stop—one of them even had some sort of remote control for her—but she took it and killed them. She was yanking out their nets…”
Tian stopped and swallowed, panting slightly. Her face had turned stark white, and beads of sweat had popped out on her forehead, but she kept going, forcing the words, her story, out there for us to hear, and understand. “She was yanking out their nets when Lacey’s men showed up. One of them went to distract her while the other one tried to grab me, to get me away, but she…” She faltered again, and then shook her head.
“It’s okay,” I announced gently. “We know that it killed those people. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. What happened next?”
Tian’s mouth worked, but she nodded, relaxing slightly. “She took me away, down to the sub-level. She started talking to me. Lots of it didn’t make sense, but she said she was stolen, and that those monsters that were controlling her were making her do horrible things. I could tell it hurt her just to talk about it. She was so embarrassed, and kept asking for my forgiveness. She really seems to care about what I think of her.”
Tian began finger-combing her hair nervously. “I wasn’t sure what to do, but I could tell that she didn’t want to hurt anyone, so I… I wanted to stay with her to keep her from being hurt any more. But when she figured out that woman was tracking her down, she went after her, convinced it was one of the people who was making her kill people. Then you were there, and she assumed it was a trap. When your brother grabbed me…”
“She went crazy,” I said, remembering the never-ending streaks of crimson flying overhead as the sentinel shot its deadly weapon at us. “She thought we were taking her child?”
Tian nodded, her eyes dark and solemn. “There’s more,” she said, shifting her gaze over to Leo. “The people who are controlling her can only make her do things at certain times now, when she’s the most stressed, like when she was trying to kill that old lady in the apartment. They know something’s up, and keep sending people to repair her, but she’s been avoiding them to keep me safe.” She smoothed her skirt down, and then cleared her throat, clearly not finished. “Also, before she went to sleep tonight, she started telling me what the name ‘Yu-Na’ means. It means ‘moon’, by the way, but her name… Jang-Mi? It means ‘rose’, in her native language.”
“Rose!” Leo exclaimed, taking a step forward before going stock still. “Oh my God,” he whispered seconds later, horrified. “Oh my God!”
?
??What is it?” I asked, confused by his sudden reaction.
Leo stood locked in place, his eyes shining with a haunted pain, and I began racking my mind, trying to recall where I had heard the name Rose before. It took me only seconds, but I felt like an idiot for not getting there sooner: she was one of the fragments that had been combined with Leo’s clone, in the process of creating Scipio.
Jasper was the first fragment I had met, back when my rank had dropped to a three and I had been forced to undergo rank intervention services. He had wound up saving my life, and the lives of my friends, but at the time, I hadn’t known what he was. I hadn’t known about any of this, but…
Leo had thought the original fragments had been destroyed, much like he had almost been, but when I’d told him Jasper was still alive, I had given him hope that he could somehow replicate the process that went into Scipio’s creation. Now, with another of the AI fragments popping up, it became possible that he could find out where the others were through them—or, better yet, figure out how to use them to repair Scipio, or even replace him.
My heart lurched at the idea of Leo suddenly undergoing the procedure to become Scipio, and I found myself wondering how exactly he would change in the process. The AI was special, and I suddenly grew very upset by the idea of him sacrificing himself—his very personality—in order to serve the Tower and keep his creator’s dream alive.
“It’s Rose,” he stuttered, whirling away to start pacing back and forth in the small space next to the sofa and chair. I turned away from my confusing thoughts on Leo, and focused on what he was saying. “She’s… She made up…” He paused and looked at me, his eyes haunted. “Her program was the one used to create Scipio’s empathy core. Her brain was modeled after the agricultural director’s neural scan, a woman from South Korea. She died before Scipio went online, before there even was a council, but I never knew her name. The program identified itself as Rose, and she… she was highly empathetic, to the point where she refused to accept even one human life as the cost in keeping the Tower whole. Her program started off strong, and the creative ways she navigated the tasks set in front of her worked. At first, anyway.”