The Girl Who Dared to Descend

  “The edges of the wounds are cauterized,” Leo said softly, and I looked up from the head that was split open like a melon to see him squatting down, inspecting one of the mostly intact bodies. Only an arm and a foot were absent.

  The man lay on his back, hazel eyes wide and sightless. Blood was still oozing from the open wound where his shoulder used to be. I forced myself to ignore it, and focused on the edges of the wound. They were black and charred, with deep black cracks and crevices radiating up from the char marks and disappearing under his shirt. Leo reached over and gripped the edge of the man’s uniform firmly with two fingers, lifting it up so he could peer underneath it.

  “Only this side is scorched,” he said absently, his fingers moving down under the still-oozing stump. “Whatever did this lost the charge it had to cauterize the wound halfway through, but was still sharp enough to finish the job. It’s weird. It seems like it was both super-heated and electrically charged. That takes a degree of sophisticated engineering. Frankly, I’m at a loss as to how this is even possible.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t have a clue either, and engineering wasn’t exactly my strong suit. “Any sign of who did this?”

  Leo straightened in his squat and looked around, scanning the bodies and blood. “It’s a lot of blood,” he said optimistically. “Surely the killer or killers stepped in some. Check the floor.”

  31

  I immediately looked behind me to check the way we had entered, and was relieved to see that there was no sign of any footprints heading back the way we came. There was a chance that whoever it was could circle back around, though, so we needed to be careful.

  I began picking my way across the floor, looking around for any sign of footprints while trying to avoid the eyes of the dead. But there was so much blood on the floor, and the lighting was not ideal. Leo found his own way beside me, and together we fanned out.

  I stepped around a boiler tank and paused when I saw something on the pipes across from it. From its outline, it was a handprint, but it wasn’t filled with the normal swoops and whorls one would expect. Instead, it was a straight outline of the edges of fingers and a palm—as if someone had used a stamp to apply it. I was staring at it, wondering if it could be some sort of trick of the light, when Leo made a surprised sound just past me.

  I turned carefully, trying not to slip on the blood, and saw that he was once again squatting, staring at something farther down the passageway. The space he was standing in was free of blood, and I stepped in behind him so I could peer over his shoulder, to see what he was looking at.

  A hexagonal shape as wide as both my hands put together was imprinted onto the floor, the blood slightly smudged. I looked down the passage and saw another one a few paces past it, and I realized I was looking at footprints. Only, they weren’t like any footprints I had seen before.

  “Leo, what is that?” I asked, unable to keep the fear out of my voice. “Those aren’t… They can’t be human.”

  Leo swiveled around to look up at me. “I don’t know,” he replied honestly. “It could be a trick. There are ways of designing things like these to… to cover your tracks. But they give us a clear path. Let’s follow it.”

  I hesitated, looking back down the corridor. There weren’t many prints there, only the one set, which meant whoever did this had acted alone. It was hard to process; the level of violence used to kill those people had literally taken them to pieces.

  But he could have Tian. Or be after her. Or worse. And we would never know if we didn’t follow.

  “Let’s do it. Quess, are you monitoring?”

  Our lines had been open the entire time, so I knew he was listening in. His silence during our speculation over the bodies was probably due to his focus on finding Tian, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t listening.

  I am. The drone is already with you. Sending it ahead.

  As he spoke, the drone came swooping down from above and pushed into the hall. Leo and I followed a few feet behind, our batons out and at the ready. The floor began to slant downward, and as we moved forward, the pipe walls boxing us in became flat metal. I realized we were moving under the condenser unit in the middle of the room.

  At the bottom of the descent we came to an intersection with a long trough filled with warm, humid air that made even more perspiration form on my skin. I drew in a breath with a wheeze, the air almost too hot to breathe.

  “Do you see anything, Quess?” I asked.

  No, and all this humidity is messing with the drone’s controls. I gotta back it out.

  “Do it,” I said, with a small amount of disappointment. We could really use the eyes in here, but we needed the drone working just as much. Its thermal scanners could help us find where Tian was hiding—if we could get a reading. “Keep looking for Tian.”

  “Liana, look!” Leo pointed at something down in the trough, and I leaned closer, trying to see what he was looking at. I spotted it, although… I wasn’t entirely sure what “it” was. It looked like several dozen black strings balled together in some sort of chaotic mess. It wasn’t coming out of a panel—the threads were too small to be wires. It was definitely out of place.

  Leo reached over to pick it up by a single strand, and then the mess shifted and came tumbling apart. Suddenly I realized what I was looking at. They were nets. Several of them, with the tendrils extended. As one of the tendrils fell, I caught a glimpse of something pink and bloody attached to it, and realized that the nets had been yanked out of their owners’ skulls, tendrils and all.

  My stomach lurched, and I quickly turned away and clapped my hand over my mouth, trying not to vomit.

  “Are you okay?” Leo asked.

  I sucked in a deep breath and moved my hand long enough to say, “We are going to get through this a lot faster if you stop asking me that.” I knew he was concerned; I’d been in shock not minutes ago, and I was definitely having a hard time keeping hold of my emotional state, but I was managing. I was trying to, at the very least.

  I used another slow, steady breath to combat the queasiness that was threatening to boil over, and slowly moved my hand away. “How many nets are there?”

  “Um, it looks like six. They’ve been badly damaged, though. And the room is too moist for the blood to hold form. The water has diluted the blood, making it impossible to see in these conditions.”

  I ran a hand over my face, wiping away the moisture that had formed there, and grimaced. “Well, let’s just head in the direction they were last going, and hope maybe we find some other sign.”

  Leo hesitated long enough that I turned around to face him. Doubt and a heavy melancholy were etched into his face, and I realized he didn’t think it was possible to find where the killer had gone now that the blood trail was gone.

  “Fine, then we need to find—”

  Liana, Quess said, his voice hurried. Lacey’s here. She brought friends.

  Leo and I exchanged looks and then hurried back. Zoe and Lacey were standing practically chest-to-chest by the time we got there, and I could tell my best friend was already trying to find out if Lacey had anything to do with the six people lying in pieces on the floor.

  “No, you need to answer me right now,” Zoe seethed, a finger right up in the councilwoman’s face.

  Lacey, for her part, was calm, but I could tell her patience was already beginning to stray. As soon as she saw me, her face lit up, and she neatly stepped around Zoe to move forward and meet me.

  “Liana, what is going on?” she asked, her tone exasperated.

  “You tell me,” I demanded as I came to a halt in front of her. “When we first agreed to do the Tourney, I asked you to leave the youngest in our party alone. Well, she reached out to her guardian and said she was being chased. She told us where she was, but when we got here, she was gone and these people were dead!” Accusing Lacey outright was a tactic meant to unbalance her.

  And to my surprise, it worked.

  She frowned, a deep furrow forming between
her eyebrows. Her eyes went over my shoulder to the horrific scene behind me, and a haunted look came over her face. “I… I was having her followed.”

  “WHAT?” I thundered, taking a step toward her, angry beyond belief. “You gave me your word!”

  Lacey’s eyes flashed angrily, and she took a step toward me as well, not backing down. “You didn’t leave me any choice! Your lack of interest in our cause is beyond baffling. It’s like you don’t care about what happens to the Tower, yet your actions tell me the opposite! You didn’t have to try so hard with Ambrose—you were being forced to look after him, after all—but you did. You cared about a man who was making you do something inconvenient! It was too inconsistent for me to fully trust you!”

  “And the little girl’s ability to disappear didn’t help, either,” a man said from behind her. I looked beyond her to see a group of eight or so standing there, waiting. The one who had spoken had a dark beard covering his cheeks, and perhaps the kindest eyes I had ever seen. Our eyes met, and he smiled. I looked away, uncomfortable with everything that was happening.

  “You didn’t apply that designer bacteria to us?” I scoffed, not entirely believing them. Lacey had given me her word that she wouldn’t follow us, but since she had broken it, I had no reason to believe that she had kept her word about the bacteria as well.

  “No, per your request,” he replied coolly. “And for the record, if we had, we could’ve grabbed her easily. As it was, we could barely keep up with her half the time, and the other half of it she ran us in circles. We knew something was up when the net she was using was letting her access parts of the Tower she shouldn’t, but Lacey only told us to watch out for her. See what she was up to, and protect her if anyone tried to hurt her.”

  I looked at Lacey, some of my anger fading into a small kernel of guilt. “You were keeping her safe?”

  To my surprise, Lacey’s mouth tightened. “I don’t owe you an explanation,” she said tightly. “Two of my people are dead now. The other four men… I don’t know who they are, but they were probably the ones Tian called you about. Now they’re dead, she’s gone, and there is a killer on the loose. Let me help you—if only so I can find the monster that did this to my men.”

  Two of her people were dead. That meant four of the men on the floor were the ones who had been after Tian. Maybe Lacey’s men had tried to intervene, and then were interrupted by the killer? It would explain why all the bodies were together like that.

  But it didn’t explain where Tian was—or who had killed the men. Had the killer taken Tian, or had she gotten away? Was she somewhere inside, too scared to say anything to let us know she was here?

  Was she dead?

  “We recovered some nets over there,” Leo announced softly beside me, snapping me out of my grim thoughts. “Presumably they were yanked out by their assailant, but they are badly damaged. Perhaps you can recover their identification through them?”

  I doubted we’d be able to. Whoever had pulled them out had gone through great pains to destroy them. Still, it was a lead. If we could find out who was after Tian, we could find out who their enemies were, and go from there. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

  “I’ll look into it,” Lacey said. “In the meantime—Liana, where is Ambrose?” Lacey directed her gaze to me.

  “He’s with Maddox,” I said after a pause, trying to remember. “He’s fine. We need to find Tian.”

  I turned to go, but Lacey grabbed my arm, stopping me. “We will look for Tian,” she said firmly. “You and Grey need to get back to Ambrose.”

  “No,” I said, tugging my arm from her hand. “You’re going to need as many people as you can to look for her!”

  “And I will get more men,” she said patiently. “But Ambrose only has Maddox to defend him.”

  “So send some of your own men!” I said, throwing up my hands. “I’m not leaving here until I find Tian!”

  “You absolutely will leave, or I will hand over the evidence I have that implicates you and Grey in altering Scipio’s memories to get away with murder!”

  She ended her sentence with a shout, and I tensed, readying for a fight. If she wanted me to leave, she was going to have to physically remove me. Damned if I was going to let her threaten me.

  The air was still and silent as we faced off, and for several long seconds, nobody moved.

  “Lacey’s right, Liana,” Leo finally said, his voice gentle. “We should get back to Ambrose and… tell Maddox what we found. Zoe, Eric, and Quess can help Lacey look for Tian, and Maddox can come join them, but Ambrose doesn’t have enough protection on him right now.”

  I glared at him, instantly wanting to condemn him for being a traitor, but stopped when I realized he was right. We couldn’t leave Ambrose alone for too long—his friends were no doubt gone by now, and he and Maddox would be all alone. We had to get back.

  I made an irritated sound and then sucked in several deep breaths, trying to ease the fiery tempest that had built up inside me at the very idea of abandoning Tian in her moment of need. I wanted to tell Leo and Lacey both to go to hell, and keep searching. That was the right thing to do.

  But so was going back to protect Ambrose.

  “Quess, coordinate with Lacey and keep me updated. I’ll break the news to Maddox.” I bit the orders out and then ended the transmission with Quess before I could second guess myself. Looking up at Lacey, I saw her watching me warily, as if afraid of what I was going to do. “Find her,” I forced out between clenched teeth, trying not to cry. “Please.”

  Lacey nodded solemnly. “I will do everything I can,” she said softly.

  I nodded once, and then left, while I still could.

  Leo let me stew in silence as we made our way back to the apartment. Maybe he sensed that if he said anything, he would interrupt the tightly repeated mantra that was the only thing keeping me from going back to help look for Tian.

  I am doing this for Tian. I am doing this for Tian.

  It was occasionally interrupted by wandering thoughts about the room and the violence within, and all the questions the entire situation brought up. Why had someone gone to such elaborate lengths to disguise their feet? Forensically, there was nothing that could be determined by someone’s footprint that gave conclusive proof as to who they were. And then there was that strange handprint—merely an outline with nothing inside. What could’ve left a print like that?

  And the sheer level of violence behind the kill. The nets yanked out of their skulls. So many questions, with not a lot of answers. That frightened me, and it was hard not to feel like we were being watched.

  I picked up the pace as our doors came into sight, but then stopped right outside of Ambrose and Leo’s, hesitating. In a moment, I was going to have to tell Maddox that a group of people who had been following Tian had been torn apart, and that we had no idea where Tian was, nor any way to find her while her net was offline.

  Maddox had lost so much. This was going to devastate her.

  “I can tell her,” Leo offered suddenly, and I looked over at where he was standing next to me. I offered him a sad smile, and shook my head.

  “It’s not your job,” I replied simply. “Open the door, please.”

  Leo nodded, and pressed the button. I looked down at my shoes as it slid open, and took a few steps inside, dreading looking at Maddox. I moved into the open space between the dining room and kitchen, looked up, and froze.

  Maddox was lying propped up against the island in the kitchen, her face bloody. All around her was an array of pots, pans, dishes, cutlery, and food, and I realized she hadn’t gone down without a fight.

  I was crossing the room to her before I even knew what happened, my heart in my throat while my fingers went to hers, feeling around for a pulse.

  She coughed wetly as soon as I touched her and flinched back, her hands going up defensively.

  “Maddox,” I said soothingly. “It’s me. It’s Liana.”

  She stilled, lowering her arm
s to peer at me. Her eyes were purple and swollen, her green gaze slightly glazed, and a stab of pain wrenched at my heart to see her so battered. I struggled to find a place to touch her without hurting her more.

  Recognition finally bloomed in her eyes, and she lowered her arms, hurriedly, as if she couldn’t keep them up any longer. “Ambrose,” she said hoarsely.

  I turned around and stood up, my eyes roving through the small kitchenette and then into the living area. I left Maddox and moved into the living area, searching.

  Leo was already there, kneeling next to Ambrose’s fallen form. His fingers were withdrawing from Ambrose’s throat, and as he swiveled his head to look at me, I could see the grave expression on his face.

  “No.” It was a flat-out denial, but it did nothing to change the look of sorrow in his eyes.

  “He’s gone,” Leo said.

  I clenched my eyes closed and balled my hands into fists. First Tian, and now this? It was untenable. We had lost. Lacey was going to turn us in, and we would be caught long before we could find a way to replace Scipio, escape, or find Tian.

  And long before I could find whoever had done this and kill them for it. I needed to think. There had to be some way I could get the others out of this. Maybe if I went to Lacey and begged her, she would just punish me and not them.

  “What is going on here?!” a voice bellowed, and my eyes snapped open to see Lieutenant Salvatore Zale enter. In his early thirties, Zale was a handsome man with a thick, strong jaw and a swath of wavy, ink-black hair that he kept cut short on the sides, but thick on top. His eyes, however, were cold, like two chips of sapphire, and they blazed with open hostility as soon as he realized who I was. “You,” he snarled, and I took a step back, alarmed by the anger there.

  He took a step forward, deeper into the room, and saw Leo standing there. “I should’ve known.”

  This was bad. He clearly thought Leo and I had done this, and based on our history with Devon, I couldn’t say I blamed him. Then again, the timing of his arrival, just moments after our own, was pretty suspicious, and I realized that I could easily be looking at Ambrose’s murderer. It was the same move Devon had pulled on me—only this time it had worked, and Leo and I were caught.