The Girl Who Dared to Fight

  I tried netting her again as we walked, but after a few seconds of buzzing in my skull, the call immediately died, telling me she had rejected it again. She had to be physically rejecting the calls; if she were dead, the net would refuse to even establish a connection. Was she in trouble? Had Sadie figured out that she was spying on them and gone after her? Why wasn’t she picking up?

  My anticipation grew as we approached the curved wall at the end of the hall, the oval-shaped opening that normally stood open now closed tight. I approached the security keypad next to it and tapped in Lionel’s code, eyeing both sides of the hall as I did so. There was a half-second delay as I waited for the code to be accepted, thoroughly convinced that Sadie had already figured out we were coming this way and set up some sort of trap on the other side, but then the two halves of the door split, swinging to the side and revealing the dimly lit shadows of the spires and twisting architecture outside, and nothing else.

  I approached the edge, leaned out to make sure there were no sentinels perched outside, lying in wait, and then backed away to let the others exit the Citadel before me. Maddox went first, to ensure that we were alone, and once she gave the all-clear, I began waving everyone out. Tian went next, the young girl sprinting down the hall with her own lash line a blur in her hand. She threw it just before she leapt out over the void, connecting with a gargoyle that jutted out a few feet to the right of Maddox, and then reeled her line in, flying upward until she reached it and then scrambling onto the grotesque thing.

  I waited until she was situated to give the signal for the next person, Liam, and had just urged him forward when my net began to buzz, startling me.

  I took a quick look at my indicator, and to my surprise, it identified the caller as Alex Castell, my twin brother who had left only two days ago with the Patrians. For several seconds, I stared at it, confused at how my brother could even be there. And then I realized it wasn’t him. We’d taken Alex’s net when he left, so he had no way to net me.

  Which meant that it was either Dinah, doing something to cover her tracks, or it was a trap of some kind. I considered for half a moment that it was a trap, but if so, it was a highly specific one, considering they were calling me on Lidecher’s net. They would’ve had to know I had it, and I doubted Lacey’s people had let Lidecher out of their sight long enough for him to call and warn IT that I had his net.

  But even if they had, it was worth the risk of picking up to find out. I needed Dinah’s help that badly.

  I tapped the indicator, accepting the call, and was relieved to hear Dinah’s voice on the other line, even if it was rife with anger.

  ’Bout damn time you picked up, she said gruffly. I’ve got problems—big ones. Some of Sadie’s goons figured out I was trying to hack into Scipio’s data stream, and she sent a hit squad out after me. I barely got out alive, and I’m hiding. I need help!

  You and me both, I thought at her as I watched Liam sail through the opening. His technique was sloppy, but his form was good. My quarters have fallen, and Sage has damn near everything he needs to kill Scipio and replace him with Kurt. We need a way into the Core, and for you to find us a sneaky way to get into the integration room where all the power is being directed to. Please tell me you can help us.

  There was a pause on her end, which I used to motion for Eric to go, and then she said, Liana, all I want to do is get out of here. What you’re asking… It’s a lot. They could find me while I’m working on it, and I guarantee they aren’t going to wait for the expulsion chambers to come back online before getting rid of me. They came into my department with their pulse shields out. If we hadn’t been preparing for something like that, there would’ve been a lot more death than there was. I barely got out of there alive, and I know they’re going to be chasing me. So, no, I don’t think I can help you this time.

  I gritted my teeth in frustration. Dinah’s reticence to help us, to even reveal her identity to us, had been a problem in the past, and today, of all days, was when I needed that trend to end. Luckily, I knew exactly what she wanted—and how to give it to her.

  Dinah, all I need is a way in and what you’ve got on that integration room. I’m sure you’ve found blueprints by now, and I know you’re smart enough to have downloaded them to your pad before fleeing. So how about this: if you meet us where you intend to escape the Core, and give us the schematics, you can go with Tian to the roof and wait for Alex and the Patrians to come rescue you. Deal?

  Another pause, and one that had me wincing. Not because of Dinah, but because of Eric’s awkward and tentative lash-throwing. The man had never had a handle on the mechanics of it, and even though his line did stick, the execution of his throw and jump was just terrifyingly bad, making me concerned for how well he was going to fare at this. I made a mental note to stay close to him, in case he wound up in any trouble, and then motioned for Quess to go.

  Deal. And you’re lucky you’re right—I do have the schematics for that room. And, I’m not making any promises, but I might be able to find you a way into it. Stand by for a second. I need some time to do a little creative hacking.

  Take your time, I thought as I watched Quess awkwardly swing out through the door. Quess had a great many skills, but like Eric, lashing wasn’t one of them. Luckily, however, he’d improved significantly since joining the Knights. But significant improvement didn’t necessarily translate to being a good lasher, and Quess was still very stiff at it.

  Thankfully, Maddox would be keeping an eye on him.

  I waited until everyone was clear before doing one last check down the halls, making sure we were alone. Then I leaned out, threw a lash end to connect just over the door, and surrendered my weight to the harness, reeling myself up to the control panel on the outside of the door and taking a moment to seal it behind us. It wouldn’t help if Sadie and Sage were tracking us using Lionel’s code, but it would slow down anyone in the halls coming after us, and that was something.

  I kicked off the wall and threw my other line to a nearby arch, and within moments, my team and I were moving up the side of the Citadel.

  It was hard not to move quickly. I’d lived in the Citadel my entire life; I knew every buttress, arch, and line of the structure by heart from lashing around them when I was younger. Not to mention, scaling it was far easier than scaling the Tower, as there were obstacles in the way to hook onto for gaining momentum.

  But I kept close to Eric, moving at his lumbering speed while I waited for Dinah to resume talking. Seconds had already bled into minutes, and if it weren’t for the buzzing along the tendrils of my net, I would’ve assumed something had happened to her.

  When she finally did start speaking again, we had already ascended twenty floors, and had maybe another forty before we hit the ceiling above. Okay, I think I have the rudimentary outline of a plan. I want you to get to hatch 54-Q. It’s facing the south side of the Tower, up near the top of it. Wait there for me to exit, and I’ll fill you in on the rest of the plan when I join you. How long will it take you to get there?

  I paused in my lashing long enough to eye the distance and my friends, then did some fast guessing. Maybe twenty minutes, if we’re lucky.

  Then let’s hope we get lucky. And that my bum foot doesn’t get me caught between now and then. I’ve got to end the transmission now before someone stumbles onto it or me, so… See you in twenty minutes.

  Just be careful, I managed to get out right before she terminated the link.

  I took a deep breath, unnerved by how quickly she’d ended the transmission, and put my concern for Dinah to one side. There wasn’t anything I could do for her where I was, so the only option now was to keep moving forward and hope that she could stay under the Core’s radar long enough to give us entry and make her escape.

  Because if she didn’t, we were all screwed.

  35

  For once I was spot on with my time guesstimate, because nineteen and a half minutes later, we were all dangling from the side of the Core, wa
iting for hatch 54-Q to open. Our passage between the Core and Citadel had gone largely unnoticed, partially because the lighting from the Core wasn’t enough to fully beat back the darkness, but mostly because the bridges and platforms outside the two structures were completely devoid of life. It was as if some great and terrible presence had plucked every human being up and out of the Tower, leaving only us.

  I should’ve counted my lucky stars that there were no sentinels patrolling, but the question their absence created only left me feeling deeply afraid. If they weren’t out here, where were they, and what was Sage using them for?

  I had a handful of ideas, none of them good: They’d been moved to Cogstown to remount the attack on them. They were moving to the greeneries and killing the citizens there. Sage had ordered them into the Core to defend it.

  I knew there was a chance that the lack of sentinels in the atrium area was a result of the destruction of Alice’s download pad in the Attic, but it was a slim one. It had been hours since I’d done it, and I was certain that a man who’d spent three hundred years trying to put this plan together had been prudent enough to have a backup route stashed away. I had no idea how long that other plan might have taken to set up, but odds were if they didn’t have it up and operational now, they would soon.

  My grim thoughts were broken by a sudden hiss from the hatch, and I tensed in alarm, one hand going to my baton. I was dangling to the left of the hole and was the first to see a flash of silvery hair and crystal-clear blue eyes—wide and furtive—as the hatch swung open.

  “Hello, Dinah,” I said, letting go of the baton. “Are you okay?”

  “No, I am damn well not okay!” she snarled, pulling herself forward to the edge. “I—oh, my. This is very high.”

  I blinked in surprise at the older woman’s sudden change in tone, amazed at how she could go from anger to trepidation in just a matter of seconds. The elderly woman was now staring down past the fingers she had curled around the ledge to the dark depths below. The fires from the Council Room had died down, but there was still a deep red glow from the embers of where it remained, marking just how far away the floor below was.

  “You know what, I made a mistake,” Dinah said abruptly with a nod, her voice now high-pitched. “I think I’ll just take my chances and walk out of here. There’s got to be a crew heading somewhere. I’ll just forge some credentials and—”

  She had started backing away as she spoke, and I suppressed a curse as I realized how quickly she could move when properly motivated. Before I could even stop her, she was out of reach—and still talking to herself. I exchanged an irritated look with Maddox, as we had intended to pass her one of the spare harnesses and help her put it on before we got through the hole, but now that she was heading back in, we were going to have to chase her down and convince her that leaving with Tian and Liam using the lash lines was the only option.

  “Liam, you and Tian stay here and make sure this hatch doesn’t close, all right? Maddox, give Tian the Patrian communication device and follow. The rest of you come with me. We’ve got to get to her before she accidently gets caught.”

  I climbed into the shaft while I handed out orders and didn’t stick around long enough to see if my friends would do what I said. Dinah was still backing away in front of me, sliding a cane I hadn’t noticed before along with her as she crawled backward. I pursued her as quickly as I could on my hands and knees, trying to catch her before she reached the end, but she managed to scramble out of the vent opening and to the floor, dropping out of sight.

  I growled in irritation and quickly exited behind her, scanning the room for her as I did. We were in some sort of bathroom, with chest-high lockers creating rows across the space, and I spotted her heading for the door.

  “Dinah, stop!” I called, practically leaping out of the hole and chasing after her. “Don’t be crazy. If there are people in that hall, they will see you, and we’ll all be caught!”

  Her limping gait came to a slow stop, and I breathed a sigh of relief when she turned around to face me. “I can’t do it,” she said, thumping her cane down on the floor and taking a step toward me. “That is just… way too high.”

  “Well, guess what,” I said, unwilling to let her fear get the better of her. “The Patrians that we’re planning on sending you with can fly, which means you’ll be even higher off the ground, with nothing between their ship and the earth below. If there was ever a chance to get over your fear of heights, now is the time.”

  “You don’t understand! I didn’t even know I had a fear of heights. Liana, I really don’t think I can do this! I don’t want to plummet to my death.”

  I drew in a deep breath, trying to calm some of my irritation with her. I could tell she was deathly afraid—her face was damn near white, and her hands were shaking—and realized she needed a little handholding. “Look, Dinah, I get it. But if you go back in that hall, you’re taking a big chance. I promise you, the lash harness isn’t as hard as it looks, and you’ll be with one of our better lashers.”

  “Tian?” she replied, hope curling in her voice, and I smiled encouragingly at her, even though it was slightly forced.

  “She and her friend Liam are…” I paused to check over my shoulder and saw that Maddox, Quess, and Eric were all inside, with no sign of Tian or Liam. Good. That meant they had followed my orders. It was important to me, because I didn’t want them getting sealed in here accidently by someone in the Core’s command center seeing that there was an open hatch and closing it—with no way for us to open it again. But I also didn’t want Dinah trapped in here with us, especially if Sadie was hunting her down. “Waiting outside,” I finished, turning back around to face Dinah. “You know how good Tian is with lashes. You can do this.”

  Her lips trembled uncertainly, but after a moment her mouth tightened, and she gave a barely perceptible nod of assent. I turned to ask for the harness only to find Eric pulling it out of Quess’s bag. He moved toward us, but instead of handing it to me, he stepped around me to begin helping Dinah put it on.

  I was surprised, but relieved he was helping. It gave me time to run her through the basics of lashing. “Okay, Dinah, the lashes aren’t difficult to use unless you’re trying to go fast. But you won’t be. Tian knows to take it slow and easy. So that’s the first thing, okay?”

  The elderly woman bit her lower lip nervously, watching Eric as he quickly snapped her into the harness. “Okay, I’ll go really slow.”

  “Good,” I said, pleased she was repeating it back to me. It meant she was focusing on what I was saying, and retaining it for the future, which I was all for, given how nervous she was. “Now, the lash ends are going to come out of this strap wrapped around your hips. There’s one on each side that you can easily grab. Can you reach them?”

  She reached down with both hands, smoothing her palms over the straps until she found the little beads, and pulled them out. “Got them,” she said with a jerky little nod.

  “Excellent,” I praised, noticing that Eric had finished cinching her in. “Now, when you throw these, they are going to build up a static charge. However, it’s always good to spin them first, before you throw, for more static. Go ahead and spin one up and then throw it at the ceiling.”

  I moved to one side and watched as Dinah pulled out a little bit more line to give herself some slack, then tentatively began to swing the lash end in a circle. It took her a few painful seconds to catch the rhythm of it, followed by several more while she fidgeted with her footing, her stance, her arm, all the while looking back and forth from the ceiling to her hand, as if trying to make the line move by sheer will alone.

  It took everything I had to be patient with her until she finally released the line. Luckily, she had been spinning it long enough that it had a hell of a charge on it when she threw. Unluckily, her release was sloppy, and she hit the top of the row of lockers several feet behind her. She darted a look over her shoulder, and then turned back, her cheeks flushing.

  ??
?It’s okay,” I said immediately, stepping close and gently grabbing her hand to get to the hand controls so I could disconnect and draw in the line. “It just takes a little practice to get used to, but Tian and Liam will help you, even if they have to throw your lines for you. Besides, throwing isn’t the most important part. The controls are.” I lifted her hand, flattening it out so she could study the small hand controls located on the strap running across the middle of her palm. “So these two buttons control whether you go up or down, and the dial controls how fast you go. This button disconnects your line, so only hit it when the next line is attached, okay?”

  She nodded again, sucking in a deep breath as she did so. “Yeah. Don’t disconnect until the next line is holding me up. The… only line holding me up. Just… a hunk of metal and some thin line holding me to the ceiling some eighty floors above the ground.”

  I could hear her starting to unravel, and quickly seized her shoulders and gave her a good shake. “I’ve used these damn things every day for most of my life, Dinah. They will keep you up and get you out of here. Now, do you understand the instructions?”

  She shifted slightly, and then nodded. “Go slow. Spin up line to gain static charge. Don’t hit the disconnect button until second line is attached. Follow Tian’s instructions.”

  I nodded approvingly. “Good. You’ll be fine. Now, how do we get into the integration room?”

  The woman blinked in surprise, and then snapped her fingers together before reaching into her pocket to retrieve a pad. “Here,” she said, holding it out to me and clicking it on. “This is the schematic of the integration room. It’s right below the bottom of the shaft where the power is transmitted into the Core. There’s one other way in and out of the room, and that’s through the air filtration system, but you have to crawl through a pipe meant for liquid nitrogen to cool the room off to get there. There is a virus on the pad that will shut the nitrogen off for a hundred and eighty seconds—that’s three minutes—during which you’ll have to crawl through about ten yards of pipe and slip out through the emergency relief valve. Both the entry point and the valve need to be closed before the time has elapsed, or you’re going to get sprayed in the face with liquid nitrogen, and the alarms will go off. To get there, I suggest taking this path to an access panel that leads to the shelf.”