More importantly, I needed to know where Leo was. Quess was supposed to be watching after him, and someone had hurt Quess right in front of his door—and the who of it all was at the forefront of my mind. Was it the legacies? Had they tracked Baldy down? My heart pounded in my chest as a deep fear gripped me, and I stood up and rushed to the door, pressing the button in it and barely giving it time to fully open before I threw myself through it.
The room was just as I had left it, but Leo wasn’t on the bed. He wasn’t standing anywhere, either. The room was empty, save for a pair of open cuffs on the floor. I stared at it for half a second, wondering if the legacies had grabbed him thinking he was Baldy. If they were here for him, then that meant they were escorting him out right now. Which meant…
Tian! She was with Liam! If they knew Baldy was here, then they knew about him. And they had hurt Quess… What would they do to her?! I whirled away from the door, the fear an acrid taste in my mouth, and raced back down the corridor to the next door, the one opposite Grey’s. I pushed the button on the door. The pneumatic hiss was harsh as it opened, setting my teeth on edge.
Tian looked up from where she was bouncing on the bed, her blue eyes widening in surprise and then concern. “Liana?” she asked, casting a look at the lanky, dark-haired boy who was standing in the corner of the room, and then glancing back to me. “Is everything o—”
She stopped short as a loud bang echoed down the hallway, followed by the unmistakable sound of Zoe screaming. “Stay here,” I ordered, slapping the button again to shut the door. “Cornelius, lock this door until I or Maddox order otherwise.”
I barely heard his affirmation as I spun away from the door, my legs beginning to churn, my heart stamping out its fear in a rapid staccato against my breastbone. The sound had come from the war room, and I sped toward it, a thousand images racing through my mind. Maybe the legacies had busted in and gotten all the way to the center of my quarters! Somehow, they had ignored Grey and me, but had gotten to the others in the war room. Sadie must have figured out what we had done and called the council as a ruse to get us to let our guard down. They were going to try to break into the terminal and get Jasper back, and one of them must have come across the gun. Maybe they had a net that recognized it, like I did.
And how’d they know how to use it? a voice inside me asked, but I ignored it. The truth was, I wasn’t sure what was going on. All I knew was that I’d heard a gunshot and Zoe’s scream. Leo was missing, and Quess was unconscious. Something was happening. Something bad.
I slowed as I approached the end of the hall, which curved abruptly left and then back around to the right before opening into the war room, forcing a U-shaped turn that I’d designed to act as a bottleneck to slow the enemy down, if they ever got in.
Useless, apparently. The design and Cornelius both, because he hadn’t been able to turn his defenses against them, either. Hell, he hadn’t even told me they were here! What was the point of having impenetrable quarters if they were that easily penetrated?
The sound of Zoe’s crying cut through my thoughts, and I heard her trying to say something, her words thick with the sound of tears and panic.
“Leo, just put it down,” Maddox said, her voice firm despite the thread of fear twisting through them. “I’m sure it was just an accident. Let it go.”
“Shut up, bitch,” a voice snarled, and I cringed at the hostility in it. Not Leo’s, I realized as I approached the doorframe. It’s Baldy. He somehow managed to wrest control from Leo. A solid shard of ice sank into my heart, so intense that it was all I could do to keep from shaking with fear. What happened to Leo? Was he hurt? Had Baldy damaged him?
This was bad. I slid to the doorframe, my back against the wall behind me and my gun pointed down. I took a quick glance in and saw that Baldy was on the stairs leading up to the dais, backing slowly up them, a gun in his hand. He held it awkwardly, but I saw his finger curled under the trigger guard, which told me he understood the concept of how to use it. The barrel was trained down at the recessed floor between us, where Zoe and Maddox had their backs to me, kneeling on the floor. Zoe was crying, and hunched protectively over someone, and as she clutched him tighter to her chest, I caught a glimpse of Eric’s eyes, wide and filled with confusion, blood trickling from his mouth.
I ducked back around the corner as a wash of pain hit me. He’d shot Eric, I realized. I knew from the legacy net the damage the tiny hunks of metal could do, and my hand tightened around the butt of the gun, the rough surface grating against my skin. If I didn’t do something now, he could—
“Leo, Eric’s really hurt,” Maddox said again, clearly trying to reach the AI.
Instead of an answer, though, there was another sharp bang, followed by Zoe’s squeal of terror, and her desperate sob of alarm, and there was no time to plan. I was already pushing off the wall and moving through the door.
“I TOLD YOU TO SHUT UP!” Baldy was screaming, wildly brandishing the gun toward Maddox. I itched to look at my friends, to make sure my hesitation hadn’t killed any of them, but I kept my gaze on him. His red face snapped toward me, the gun following right behind. My arms lifted of their own accord, and I stared him down from behind the barrel of my own gun.
“I’m much better with this than you are,” I told him, my voice ice cold.
In truth, I didn’t know if I was. The legacy net had guided me the last time, helping to dictate my actions. Still, something had lingered from the experience, and I lifted the gun and aimed it in a straight line, focusing on center mass through the sights on the gun. I didn’t intend to pull the trigger—but he didn’t know that.
Or, hopefully he didn’t. If he knew how precious Leo was to me, then he would have complete control over this situation. Because there was no way I could shoot him, not with Leo inside. I could wind up killing not just one, but both of them. Or worse, the bullet could ricochet inside of him and somehow manage to damage the net. I couldn’t bear the idea of Leo getting hurt, let alone at my hands. I had to deescalate the situation. Somehow.
That meant talking. With him. The man who had cut my throat and told my brother that he laughed and laughed at the video of my mother’s death. This was going to go great. I just had to convince him, somehow, that we weren’t going to hurt him. After my brother had beaten the crap out of him and we’d locked him in a room.
Two of my people were down, Zoe was next to useless in her current state, and Maddox was doing her best to keep herself between Baldy and Eric, while simultaneously trying to stop Eric’s bleeding. I had no idea where Alex was, and I couldn’t rely on Leo to reestablish control. I wasn’t even sure how Baldy had gotten it in the first place. Basically, I was on my own, trying to talk down a clearly upset enemy before he shot me or any more of my people.
“How’d you get out of your room?” I asked. It seemed the simplest place to start.
His blue eyes narrowed, and he shook his head. “You’re not in control here,” he said, sneering. “Let me go, or we stand here while your friend bleeds out. Now, how do I get out of this place?”
My design had confused him, I realized. He was looking to escape, and willing to stand there while Eric bled out on the floor, to make me tell him how. I swallowed and tried not to think about it. I had to focus entirely on Baldy.
“That’s not going to happen, Baldy,” I told him calmly. “This place is huge, and I already called my Knight Commanders for backup.” A lie, but hey, he knew I could do that from our fight on the bridge. It wasn’t out of bounds to try to use it again.
His lips twitched into a smile for a fraction of a second—so fast that I thought I imagined it—and his eyes narrowed. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Put the weapon down and move.”
“Liana?” I heard my brother’s voice drift down the hall behind me, but I ignored it. Internally, I screamed for him to go back. I didn’t want him coming here. I had no idea how Baldy was going to react when he saw the man who had attacked him, but he was already agitate
d enough. I didn’t need Alex making the situation worse. I had to get this under control before Alex reached us.
“It’s not going to happen,” I said with a slow shake of my head. “But if you put yours down, I promise that no one’s going to hurt you again.”
“Quess?!” My brother’s voice was closer, his exclamation telling me he had found Quess. That meant he was closer than I’d thought, and I had even less time than I’d hoped. Maybe I would get lucky and he would stop to help Quess before coming for me. But when he called my name again, I knew that it was a fool’s hope to think I could be that lucky. I blocked everything out—from Zoe’s desperate sounds to Eric’s choked, gasping breathing—knowing that if I looked away, even to check on them, or to tell my brother to stop, Baldy would shoot me, and then my friends.
His face darkened to a peculiar shade of purple, and he straightened his arm out at me, the gun shaking in his hand. “You’re hurting me right now!” he screeched, spittle flying from his lips. “You think I can’t feel you, digging around, in here?” He touched his head with his free hand, rocking back and forth for a second. “GET OUT OF MY MIND!” he screamed so suddenly that I took half a step forward, my finger tensing on the trigger for a second before easing back as I realized he could sense Leo inside of him.
That was a relief in some ways, because it told me that Leo was still there. But I had no idea what was happening, or whether he was okay. Baldy could clearly fight him, something Leo had insisted wasn’t possible, and maybe it had surprised Leo, caught him off guard. That would explain Baldy’s erratic behavior and gave me hope that Leo was fighting for control. He probably just needed time to… figure out how to hack Baldy’s brain. If I could just stall Baldy long enough, maybe Leo could re-exert control and take over.
Baldy gripped his head with one hand, his mouth open in a desperate howl as he began to scratch at his scalp, digging red furrows into the skin, as if he were trying to claw the net Leo was in directly out of his skull.
“Stop it,” I told him, fear for Leo radiating through me. “And we’ll help you! We’ll get it out.”
“LIAR!” he bellowed, his voice filled with fear. “I can feel the disgusting abomination in there, trying to pry my secrets from me. Well, you can’t have them!” He blinked, his brows furrowing slightly. His eyes stared down, growing unfocused in contemplation, and then brightening in some sort of realization. The shift was as blatant as it was rapid, and it unsettled me. “You can’t have them,” he repeated, nodding, his voice almost wistful, like he had come to some sort of great decision.
“Okay,” I said carefully, hoping that this was a sign that he was calming down. “We won’t take them. Just put the gun—NO!”
I held out my hand as he put the barrel of the gun up to his temple, his finger on the trigger. I could imagine the bullet tearing through his skull and brain matter, destroying both it and the net that Leo was in at the same time. Talking him down had clearly failed, but I desperately needed him to become very unconscious—very quickly. But how?
“This is my duty,” Baldy muttered.
“It’s not,” I said, my mind whirling. I was too far away to use my baton, and I didn’t have any sedatives with me to knock him out. If I started toward him, he could pull the trigger before I could get close enough to stop him. If I shot him, he might retaliate by firing at Zoe or Maddox. Annoyance flashed hot over me, along with frustration that I couldn’t find a way out. Leo was close to being killed, Eric was bleeding out, and I was fresh out of ideas! Why did it have to be this difficult? Why wasn’t Cornelius pitching me an idea, or—
Cornelius! He had nonlethal takedowns all over this place. I was certain that he had a way to do something. I immediately started to think my command to him, using the neural transmitter to relay the message so Baldy couldn’t see me give it.
“Put the gun down, okay?” I told Baldy soothingly. “I promise, you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to die. I know we’ve treated you unfairly, but we’ll get the net out before it can take any of your secrets.” Meanwhile: Cornelius, can you electrocute him remotely?
Yes, I can electrify the section of floor plating he is standing on, came the virtual assistant’s voice in my ear canal, buzzing sharply. I hesitated for a fraction of a second. Would frying Baldy hurt Leo? It didn’t matter. I had to risk it. If I let him pull the trigger, Leo would be dead anyway. I had to.
Baldy stared at me hard, his hand shaking. “You’re lying,” he said.
“No,” I replied. “I’m not.” Prime whatever charge you have to and wait for my signal, I thought at Cornelius. “You don’t want to do that, do you? Pull the trigger? End your life? You want to get out of here, tell the others what we’ve done. You can’t do that if you’re dead.”
Baldy’s arm began to move down, then, his hand trembling as he slowly dragged the end of the gun away from his head. Suddenly he swung it back out at me, and I tensed, thinking he had changed to a target more appealing than himself—me. And then his arm began to drift lower. My heart skipped a beat as I followed it, my breathing tight, but hope beginning to blossom.
If he continued to lower his arm, I could just—
“Liana!” my brother said sharply, from directly behind me, and Baldy’s eyes flared wide in fear as he saw my brother.
“You!” he growled, and his eyes narrowed on me. “I knew you were a liar! This was a trap!”
“NO!” I shouted as he yanked the gun back toward his temple. I knew where he was going, what he was planning, and I squeezed out, Now, Cornelius, just as a strong hand grabbed my own hand around the gun… and squeezed. The gun kicked, the jerk of it reverberating through my wrist, forearm, elbow, and shoulder, and then blood blossomed in the middle of Baldy’s throat, his eyes going wide.
The gun in his hand flashed once, and then the hand around mine became two, pulling me down, tucking me under and behind my brother’s body. I was already pushing away from him, my heart in my throat as Baldy continued to fall, blood splattering on the stairs in the wake of his passing.
“LEO!” I shouted, shoving at my brother’s hands as he continued to grab at me, trying to pull me back to safety.
13
I scrambled forward as Baldy stumbled back and tripped on the stairs behind him. He gave a surprised and wet gurgle that I not only heard, but had experienced from his side, and my innards twisted as another jet of blood spurted from the hole in his throat.
“Liana, no!” my brother shouted, his hand clamping like a vice around my forearm and holding me back. “He could still be dangerous! I warned you something like this was going to happen, and…”
I couldn’t listen anymore. An intense anger twisted up inside me, forcing me to whip around and face him. His eyes widened, his grip loosening around my arm, but I shoved him back. He’d forced me to shoot at Leo. He couldn’t have waited—he just had to react. I didn’t care that he was saving my life, that he didn’t know that Leo was inside of Baldy. I cared that he had just barged in and ruined everything. I had been about to get Baldy to back down, and he had charged in without waiting, or listening to what was going on!
“Leo’s inside of him!” I shouted as he stumbled back. He came to a stop, some of the anger draining from his face.
“What?” he asked, but I was already turning away and racing toward the stairs.
“Maddox, grab some smelling salts and get Quess up to help Eric. And bring me a net transfer kit, now!” I shouted as I dropped to my knees next to Baldy. The gun had fallen from his grasp, and I shoved it aside and lifted my hands to… help him?
I stared down at him, suddenly transfixed by the blood spurting from his neck. He was bleeding out fast, and I had none of the dermal bonding agent on me to stop it. His arms struggled as his mouth opened and closed like a fish’s, blood gurgling in the back of his throat as he choked on his own blood, causing my own memories of being in his spot to flash before my eyes.
Did I look like that? I wondered as he continued to
flop around, helpless. Did he look down at me and see that?
A cold, hard part of me wanted to watch him bleed out. He’d taken Maddox in the Core, attacked us in the Medica and again on the catwalk, and then cut my throat in the Attic. He was the source of so much trouble, and a leader of some sort in the legacies. Countless people had probably died at his hands or by his orders, Ambrose’s among the names of the dead.
Luckily, the part that was worried about Leo was far greater. Bullets could ricochet inside the body; if the one that shot him had somehow found its way into his brain or shattered one of his vertebrae, then Leo could already be damaged. He could already be dead. And what would happen if he was inside someone when they died? Would he die as well? What must he be feeling?
To hell with saving Baldy, I decided. I had to get Leo out, and that was all I was going to worry about.
“Maddox, I need that kit!” I shouted, shoving my hands under the man’s side to flip him over. He made a gurgled sound of surprise that made my skin crawl, and I was hyperaware of the fact that he was going to bleed out faster like this. I was consciously expediting his death, and the thought made me grim as I yanked down the back of his collar.
“Liana!” Zoe sobbed.
I looked over to see Eric gasping, too, his face ashen and gray. Zoe was rocking him back and forth, her hands pressed over a hole in his chest. Blood was spurting from the wound. “Keep pressing,” I told her. “Quess is coming! Maddox is getting him.” At least, I hoped she was. She wasn’t in the room anymore, which made me hope that she had leapt into action to get Quess up. But I couldn’t stop what I was doing here to help Zoe. Leo could be hurt or dying inside of Baldy. I had to get him out.