“I GOT IT!” Leo cried from the thick of things, and a second later, the lights in the room flickered on, momentarily blinding me.
Several things seemed to happen at once in my momentary blindness: the sound of something heavy hitting the ground, a sharp gasp from Eric, beside me, and then something slamming into my chest hard, too heavy to be just a simple baton.
It threw me back, riding me down, and as I blinked against the weight of it, Tony was already responding for me, curling my spine and lifting my feet up. My boots hit something solid, and Tony pushed as I slammed into the ground. I rolled with the blow, flipping the attacker over my head with a strong push of my legs. Whoever it was grunted and lost their grip on my uniform, and I skidded to a stop. I scrambled to get my legs under me and looked up at the dais, where I could now see Leo being physically dragged away by not one, but four legacies, each holding a flailing limb while a fifth began walking toward… me?
I frowned, confusion washing over me at why they would come at me when I was on the opposite side of the room from the door, and then I shrugged it off and scrambled to my feet. I made it halfway there before something heavy fell on my shoulder, and I heard Zoe scream behind me.
Stupidly, I turned—just in time to see a chrome fist flying toward my head.
Then I saw nothing.
31
My eyes jerked open and darted around the darkness, searching for any sign of the sentinel that had hit me. I was already panicking, and that sensation doubled when I realized I was no longer in the war room.
Was I a prisoner? Had the sentinels grabbed me to take me to Sage? If so, where was he, and why wasn’t I tied up? Where was I? Where were my friends? The softness beneath me told me I was lying in a bed. I started to sit up, trying to find some clue as to where I was, or hint of who I was with.
A wave of nausea, accompanied by a throbbing pain in my head, had me lying back down for a moment while the world spun rapidly on its axis. I cried out as the pain in my head intensified to a sharp stabbing and my vision spun faster and faster, and closed my eyes against the sensation, reaching up with my hands to grab my head as if I could somehow contain the agony by pressing them against my scalp.
It’s okay, Tony said softly, his voice somehow modulated to be as gentle as possible, making him sound like he was standing on the opposite edge of a distant shore, calling his message to me. You’re suffering a severe concussion, but I’m working to correct some of the damage. Just hold on.
Wait, I thought, ignoring the pain that focusing brought. Where am I? What’s going on? How long have I been out?
I’m not sure where we are. Unlike that time in Cogstown, I was inside your head when you went out, and the shock of it took me offline as well. The only thing I can tell you is that we’ve been out for two hours. Now stop thinking so hard; the pain is unbearable.
I ignored the last part, my mind still in shock over the fact that I’d lost two hours and had no idea what had happened to Leo or my friends, or where I even was! I needed to get up, figure out what was going on, and maybe contact Dinah again to figure out how far along Sage was—
Seriously, stop it, Tony snapped, and as soon as he broke my thoughts, I suddenly became aware of an intense pressure making my entire head feel like it was swelling, while simultaneously being squeezed by a vice. So I lay there and let him work, my skull feeling like it was shattered into pieces and digging into my brain. I knew if I tried to move again, I was going to lose the meager contents of my stomach and then pass out, and I couldn’t let myself do that. I needed to know what had happened and where we were.
So I exercised patience, trying to focus on my breathing and not the searing lines of agony crisscrossing my brain. Tony worked slowly and methodically as he did whatever it was he was doing to correct the damage to my head. It started with a slow lessening of the pain, making my tense muscles relax and my breathing come easier. Then he corrected my balance, sending electrical impulses through my brain to my inner ears and doing something to them that made the world slow until it felt still again. My stomach was last, and after a few moments, the only thing I was left with was a mild headache and a bone-deep exhaustion.
I was so tempted to just let myself fall back into the pillow, and my eyelids started getting heavier just thinking about it, but I jerked them open and slowly worked myself into a sitting position. My entire body felt like a giant bruise, and I winced at an ache in my ribs that I hadn’t noticed through the agony of my head, and then cried out as the muscles on the left side of my face erupted in fire at my facial twitch, the pain damn near blinding.
My eyes teared up from the sting of it, and I immediately lifted my hand to feel what the damage was, moving gently. My fingers touched something hot and swollen, and I jerked my hand back with a hiss as the tender flesh erupted in pain. I took a second or two to blink against it, then looked around.
I spotted a small candle burning on the floor across from me, right in front of an open door, and set that as my first goal as I gingerly got out of bed. I had no idea where I was, but since the door was open, and the room design was one that the Citadel used, I surmised I wasn’t a prisoner. Which meant I was with people I knew and trusted. But who?
The aches in my body ran deep as I surrendered all of my weight onto my feet, swaying back and forth for a second before finding my balance. I limped over to the candle, moving at the hobbling pace of an eighty-year-old Hand who’d worked harvesting duty her entire life, and felt a rush of success for every step I made that brought me closer.
By the doorframe, my breathing had turned into a sharp pant as the line of pain against my ribs continued to tighten with each jerking step, and I paused, leaning onto the frame and pressing my heated face against the cool metal. The unbruised side, of course. I wasn’t a sadist.
As I stood there, trying to catch my breath and summon up enough energy to start the next leg of my journey, a dozen questions began to form in my mind, the first being, “What happened?” I remembered the sentinel, but what I didn’t know was how it had gotten in. I had no idea what had happened to Leo, either; the last I had seen of him, he was being dragged toward me… No, toward the sentinel next to me. The sentinel who had come in through the emergency escape shaft from above. It must’ve dropped down and crashed through the ceiling—that was the sound I had heard during those seconds when the lights had blinded me. It had blindsided me, knocking me unconscious, and then…
And then what? Where were my friends, and how did I get here?
The litany of questions was beginning to make the pain in my head intensify, so I quickly shrugged them off. The only way to get answers was to find out who was with me. I pushed away from the doorframe and stepped out into the hall, looking in both directions. There was a door across from me that was closed, but I ignored it, focusing instead on the candle burning at the end of the hall, where the living area should be.
I braced myself against the wall as I walked toward it, still not fully confident in my legs’ ability to keep me up. As I drew nearer to it, I could hear the soft exchange of quiet voices. It took me a moment to recognize them, as most of my attention was focused on getting there, but when I did, I relaxed a little bit more. It was Quess and Maddox.
I slowly emerged from the hall and scanned the living space, spotting them at a dining room table beyond the kitchen to the left of me. There were several pads lined up on the table, along with batons, my gun, a few cutters, and a lancer. The two were sitting side by side, heads pressed together as they looked at a pad, but their demeanor was grim, telling me that our situation wasn’t good.
Quess noticed me first, his dark blue eyes darting up toward me as I came around the counter. He was up like lightning, moving over to me. For a second, I tensed, expecting him to order me back to bed, but to my surprise, he simply put an arm around my lower back and held on to my arm with the other, letting me lean into him while he helped me to a chair.
The gratitude I felt for him was imme
asurable, but next to the relief of just sitting down, it was nothing. My legs felt rubbery, and the pain in my head had shifted to a throbbing sensation that seemed to be connected to the beating of my heart. I closed my eyes for a second, taking a moment to regain my composure. When I opened them again, Quess was setting a glass of water in front of me, along with an assortment of pills.
“What are these?” I croaked, and then winced around the pain in my jaw.
“Nerve blockers, pain pills, a stimulant, some vitamins… Something to help you regain some of your wind. No offense, but you look like hell.” Quess spoke gruffly, his voice thick with something I couldn’t quite place, and I looked up at him, a frown tugging at my lips. I resisted it, knowing that the side of my face the sentinel had smashed would not respond well, but the fear remained.
“Where’s Leo?” I asked, my heart in my throat. “Is he…”
Quess shook his head and looked away, folding his arms across his chest. I continued to gaze at him, trying to figure out if he was telling me Leo was dead or taken, but his face revealed nothing.
“They got him,” Maddox informed me when Quess didn’t say anything, and I turned toward the tall girl to see her looking at the table, her face lined with exhaustion and sadness. “Tian got the room controls working when Leo restored the power, and she managed to drop walls between us and the bulk of the legacies, as well as the sentinels, but Leo was on the other side when the walls came down. As it was, we barely got out alive. We’re not sure where he is, but—”
“He’s with Sage,” I interrupted automatically. I wasn’t sure why I was even talking—how I was still rooted in the moment in spite of the news that Sage had both Leo and Grey now—but I was. “Sage is Ezekial Pine and has spent the last three hundred years trying to kill Scipio to replace him with Kurt. Sage needs the protocols that Lionel Scipio programmed into Leo if he’s going to kill Scipio and install Kurt.”
And now Sage had him. And I had no doubt he was going to do whatever it took to get those codes from Leo, even if it meant killing Grey and then ripping Leo’s code apart piece by piece.
A wave of despair crashed into me, and I felt the overwhelming urge to break down and cry. I wasn’t sure I could go any farther—wasn’t sure I had what it took. I’d gone through hell and back to get to him, to stop all this, only to have our one chance slip through my fingers.
And I was losing both the men I loved at the exact same time. Even if Grey was alive, he wouldn’t be for long. And as for Leo…
I squeezed my eyes shut and blew out a slow breath, trying not to give in. I could do this. Maddox and Quess clearly had a plan, and Quess had given me medication that would hopefully give me enough gas to see this through.
Opening my eyes, I reached out, grabbed the pills off the table, and began popping them in my mouth one by one, taking careful sips of water in between each. If I could, I would have taken them all at once, but as it was, I doubted I would be able to eat anything other than broth for the next week or so.
But that was the least of my worries. “Everyone else is okay, right? Where are we, by the way? Still in the Citadel, but—”
“We’re on one of the lower floors, hiding out,” Maddox interrupted softly. “But the fighting in the hall is getting worse, and our side is losing. I’m getting fewer and fewer reports from the Knight Commanders loyal to us, which either means that their runners are being taken out, or that they’ve fallen. Sentinels are beginning to pour in from the Attic, and it’s only a matter of time before we’re discovered here.”
I took another sip of water, using the action to process the bleak picture that Maddox had just painted for me. It wasn’t good. But then again, nothing about today had been. We might have to fight our way out, but where there was a will, there was a way.
Or at least I hoped there would be. On both fronts, as my will was rapidly burning out, and the way was growing increasingly dark and filled with terror.
“Then we should get everyone up and moving,” I said. We’d already been here for two hours—which was probably one hour too many at this point. “Where’re Tian and Liam? We’ll have to get them out of here and find them a good place to hide, but—”
“Liana,” Quess interrupted, his tone heavy and hesitant. I shifted around in the chair to look at him, and found him staring at his shoes, a pained expression on his face.
The hairs on the back of my neck rose as I realized his reticence to talk earlier wasn’t about Leo. There was something more going on. My heart skipped a beat when he chanced a glance up at me, his dark blue eyes filled with horror and… guilt. Quess was feeling guilty about something, but what? And why the theatrics?
“What is it?” I demanded. He shifted his weight and continued to fidget, his nervous delay causing my anxiety to grow. I glanced over at Maddox to find her gaze still fixed to the table, her mouth turned down as if she had tasted something awful. “What’s wrong? Is it Tian? Is she o—”
“It’s Zoe,” Quess whispered, his voice breaking on her name. I whirled back toward him and then stood up, panic growing at the dark way he had said my best friend’s name.
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head when I saw remorse glittering in his eyes. “No, she’s okay. I saw her between Maddox and Eric. She was safe between them; they wouldn’t let anything happen to her.”
I looked over to Maddox for her confirmation, and found the raven-haired girl pressing her hand over her mouth, on the verge of tears. I took a step away, knocking the chair to the ground, and shook my head harder, as if I could shake away this reality and what they were telling me. “No,” I repeated, when nothing about them changed, trying to will it to be so. “She’s not dead. Quess, tell me she’s not dead.”
Quess met my gaze, his eyes shimmering with tears. “She’s not dead,” he said grimly. “She’s dying. And I… I can’t save her, Liana.”
32
“No,” I repeated adamantly, trying to refuse the defeat I saw on their faces. It was starting to scare me, make me believe they were telling the truth, but they couldn’t be. Zoe had to be all right—she was my best friend. They were lying. They had to be. It was a sick joke.
Quess and Maddox would never do that to you, a small voice inside of me whispered, and I took a step back, as if I could reject even having the thought. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t done so before. They had to be doing it now. Zoe couldn’t be dying.
I tried to get the words out, but all I could seem to get out was a litany of noes that grew more panicked as the expressions of my friends remained unchanged.
Finally, I couldn’t take looking at them anymore, and turned my back to them, already searching the small apartment for my best friend, determined to show them they were wrong. “Zoe?” I called, my voice coming out small and thin through the tightness in my throat. I took a few staggering steps forward, toward the living area, and saw Tian’s familiar blond form curled up on a couch, tucked in tight next to where Liam was sleeping sitting up, one arm curled protectively around the young girl, and a baton within reach. No sign of Zoe or Eric, and the two young people remained sleeping in spite of my call.
I ignored them, turning back toward the hall, toward the closed bedroom door that I had walked by earlier. She was there, probably just sleeping. I’d open it up for Quess and Maddox and show them that she was just fine.
I started hobbling toward it but reared back when Quess suddenly stepped in front of me, his face a tight mask. “Get out of my way,” I grated out. “I don’t know what trick you’re playing, but Zoe is just fine.”
My voice broke on the last part, and suddenly, I realized that deep down inside, I believed them. They weren’t lying. I’d never actually thought they were. I had only wanted them to be.
A cry escaped my lips, and I cupped my hand over it, taking a step away from him. “Please tell me it’s a joke,” I begged as tears started clouding my vision. “Please, please…”
My chest started to shake as his face only grew m
ore and more broken, and I began to sob. “Nooooo,” I keened, unable to stop myself. All I could think of was my best friend in the world, the way she had laughed at my jokes and made me feel accepted in a world that had rejected me. She was everything to me—at the center of me. I loved her as much as I loved my brother, as much as I loved Grey and Leo…
Quess crossed over to me and threw his arms around me, holding me tight, and I sobbed against his chest, unable to accept that my friend was dying.
“What happened?” I croaked out, needing to know.
“The sentinel that attacked you,” Maddox said, her voice thick with tears. “You went down and… it was going to kill you. Just step on you like you were nothing. But Zoe got in the way. She saw you go down and just… ran to help you.”
My grief and pain grew tenfold as I realized that I had caused yet another one of my friends’ deaths. First Roark and Cali, then Dylan and Rose, now Zoe. I wasn’t worth it. I didn’t deserve it. Everything I’d done had made things worse, and now I was going to lose my best friend as a result.
“The impact damaged almost all of her inner organs,” Quess said when Maddox stopped talking. “I thought she was fine. She was up and moving almost a moment later, but once we got down here to look at you, she collapsed. I scanned her and found small holes in her spleen, her liver, her intestines—too many for me to repair without the use of a surgical bay and a microlaser, and the one in the Citadel is offline, so she’s just been… slowly bleeding to death. I’ve been periodically draining her inner cavity to alleviate the pressure, but it’s just… slowing everything down.”
“Quess,” Maddox cut in harshly, and I wasn’t sure if I should be grateful to her or not. Quess’s list of Zoe’s injuries had only twisted the dagger of guilt stabbing through me, each wound more evidence of how I had failed her—how I had failed all of them—and yet I needed to know what was wrong with her, if only because I secretly hoped he would say something that would spark an idea for how to save her.