The Girl Who Dared to Lead Read online

  “The net in which I am stored has a transmitter inside of it,” he replied.

  “Huh,” I said, slightly confused. I had been under the impression that the neural transmitters were a separate implant, as evidenced earlier, but maybe they hadn’t always been separate? Maybe they’d been packaged together at some point?

  It made a certain amount of sense. After all, the original nets had been created to keep and store the memories of the users who came before. But they had also been recyclable, meaning that after they were removed from one citizen’s head, their data could be erased and new credentials uploaded. This led to criminals inside the Tower resorting to stealing them from other citizens, often even killing for them. Supposedly, the new nets were designed to prevent it from happening, but now I wondered if that entire story had been a fabrication, created by a legacy group early on, and used as an excuse for tightening the reins of control over the population by restricting their access to the knowledge the nets had provided. It didn’t matter, either way. To outside eyes, it was just another innovation that had been backward-engineered into a cruder version of itself, a bastardized copy with limited capabilities, but infinitely more controllable than before.

  Suddenly the net in my skull began to vibrate slightly, and a second later, I was caught in the grips of a memory that was not my own.

  “I don’t care what the reports say,” I said, waving my hand emphatically through the air. “These nets are the only connection our people have to the past, now that Pre-End history has been abolished.”

  “Not this again,” came a snide voice, and I turned to look at Lead Farmer Vladimir Strutz, a middle-aged man with broad shoulders and a thick, dark beard. “The vote to remove that course from our education was based on Scipio’s analysis that it was a root of discontent for the citizens. This vote is about allowing IT to manufacture new versions of the net that can’t just be stolen from the backs of our citizens’ necks! People are being murdered because the current nets are transferrable!”

  “But getting rid of them at the cost of denying people the memories of their ancestors?” I argued. “The people won’t stand for it!”

  “They will,” replied a feminine voice, and I pivoted in my seat so I could regard Praetor Ressa. She was young—twenty-five—but smart and insightful. I was a little surprised to find her agreeing with Strutz, since the two hated each other, but I leaned back and let her have her say. “Lead Engineer Summers, you know that Farming, Cogs, and Water Treatment all bear the brunt of these net thefts in the form of human lives. We have to do something to preserve our population and the peace, and this is the course that Scipio and IT have come up with, backed by the resources they have available. We weren’t prepared to redesign these nets because we never anticipated that people would steal them in order to escape the sensors. Because of that, we don’t have the resources to recreate the nets with advanced security features, and mineral production in the Core wasn’t designed for some of the elements necessary for recreating the functionality of our pre-End-designed nets. Maybe if we could go outside to hunt for some, but we can’t. So we’re forced to adapt, and this is the best way. I don’t like it either, but the survival of humanity is more important than the memories of the past.”

  She had a point, though it was easily defeated with a simple question: how did we know that we didn’t have the resources? I didn’t know how to make a net. No one but IT did. We were taking their word that they couldn’t fix the flaw in the existing nets, and their word that they couldn’t recreate the technology that allowed people to imprint their memories into them. I hated the idea of another law coming into existence that would further restrict people from knowing about their past, and I couldn’t help but feel that there was something dark and sinister behind this.

  But there was nothing I could do. The rest of the council had made their decision based on Scipio’s recommendation, and we were supposed to trust in him. He knew what he was doing—he’d been programmed for this. Maybe I was being too sentimental. After all, people were getting murdered for their nets. Something had to be done.

  But I would be damned if they were taking my net from me. It was the only connection I had to my father.

  I jerked out of the memory with a soft gasp, feeling slightly dizzy and disoriented. A strong hand wrapped around my forearm, keeping me on my feet as I blinked rapidly, expecting to see the Council Room, but only finding the shell.

  “Are you okay?” Leo asked, concern in his voice. “Was it a memory?”

  I nodded, unable to speak. I needed a moment to process what I had just seen. I didn’t recognize the name “Summers”, but that wasn’t surprising. There had been many people on the council over the years, and not all of them were particularly memorable. Strutz and Ressa should have been clues as well, but I was the first to admit that I wasn’t familiar with many of the other departments’ past leaders. They weren’t particularly relevant to me, but I’d do a little research to figure out when all this had gone down.

  But the decision… the actual decision that changed the nets was there, embedded in the legacy net that Lacey had given me? And this Summers had decided to keep his net because he didn’t want to lose his connection to his father? It was fascinating—and made me think my guess about the neural transmitters had been spot on. The transmitter had to have been another one of the accessories built into the original net, likely eliminated to make it easier to monitor citizens’ net conversations.

  I sucked in air, using it to calm myself, and then focused on Leo. He was still watching me, a concerned expression on his face. “Sorry,” I said, straightening. “It just caught me off guard.”

  “It wasn’t bad?”

  I shook my head and blew out. “No. Just… informative. About the law that got the original nets changed out.”

  “Ah.” He let go of my arm. “Anything of note?”

  “More of a distraction, actually,” I said. “I’m going to have to learn to control my reaction to them. They’re pretty disorienting.”

  Leo nodded sagely. “Lionel said as much. I’m sorry that it’s so disorienting.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “At least it helps to answer some of my questions. I wish I knew how to control it. It seems to happen randomly.”

  The elevator slowed to a stop, and Leo stepped out first, his expression pensive. I followed him, and moments later realized we were at one of the bottommost levels. It was a curious choice, but one that would ensure some privacy, so I didn’t question it. Instead, I followed him as he led me through the narrow halls, heading for some unknown destination.

  “I wish I could help you with that,” he said. “Lionel told me a lot about the science behind them. He also tried to explain what it felt like, but I have to admit it was difficult to comprehend. I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it.”

  I smiled at that. As odd as it was to hear him talking about the founder of the Tower, I also loved it. My entire life, I had grown up hating the man because of the system I’d thought he created, but Leo had taught me that he was much more than that. Now I saw him for what he really was: a human. Flawed, but with honorable intentions.

  “I really like it when you tell me about him,” I admitted.

  “Really?” Leo smiled, his eyes growing light. “I feel like I could talk about him forever. He really was my best friend.”

  “Don’t you find that to be a little bit weird?” I asked before I could stop myself. It wasn’t the most appropriate question, but I couldn’t help but ask it. “You are technically him, right? You were created from his neural scan?”

  To my surprise, he chuckled. “I guess in a way that’s true. But it’s a little more complicated than that. The memories that made us the same were taken away from me, so that only the underlying aspects of Lionel’s personality remained—the things that drove him or helped him to survive. The rest of this is me, and believe me, we were very different.”

  “In what ways?” I asked, too curious not t
o. I knew we were supposed to be talking about him and me, but this was too fascinating to pass up.

  “I’m a lot more patient,” he replied automatically, and I could tell he’d thought about this a lot in the past. There was no hesitation, no arrogance—just blunt honesty. “And I tend to be more self-aware with my feelings than he was. He was better at jokes, though.”

  “You are getting better with joking,” I told him, and he glanced at me long enough to give me a smile before turning his attention back to the halls we were in and continuing to lead us at a languid pace.

  Silence lapsed between us, and while I felt a need to fill the air with conversation, I remained silent, wanting to give him some space to focus on the real reason we were taking a walk together.

  “Is Grey funny?” he finally asked a minute later.

  I thought about it, and hated myself for having to do so. I should have been able to remember something like that so easily, but it felt like I had known Grey a lifetime ago. “He is,” I replied to his question.

  My answer didn’t please Leo, who frowned. “I see.”

  I studied him, and sighed when I realized that he was now questioning whether his newly developed sense of humor was his… or a result of being implanted in Grey. “Leo, just because you have been making jokes more successfully does not mean that it’s Grey influencing you. You just didn’t have anyone to practice on for a while, is all.”

  He seemed to consider this as we came to a slow stop in front of a sealed door. I glanced at it, and then back to him, watching as he reached out toward the door controls. “Where are we?”

  “A place I wanted to show you,” he replied cryptically, and pressed the button.

  There was a roar of sound and a burst of air as the door slid open, carrying with it a slightly damp feeling. I looked through the door to see a metal catwalk, and then realized I knew exactly where we were: right in the heart of Water Treatment, where the hydro-turbines were.

  I stepped out into the roar, my heart pounding. We were forty feet from the bottom floor, which held several collection pools and the massive, rotating turbine. Water spilled over and around it, creating a fine mist that seemed to sparkle in the artificial lighting. Catwalks laced the horizon and the walls, cutting multiple pathways through the open space, but they were largely deserted, as it was the middle of a shift.

  Leo stepped out past me, his hands gripping the rails on the catwalk. “Isn’t it beautiful?” he said with a smile, leaning his weight forward so he could stretch out over the edge a little. “When I found it, I immediately wanted to bring you here. But there’s never really been a good time to show you.”

  I looked up at him, and then back out at the sight, uncertain of how to reply. No, scratch that. I wasn’t sure if I should even say it. It was clear by the enthusiastic sparkle in his eyes that he was beyond ecstatic about getting to share this place with me, and it only made me want to swallow back the words and simply smile at him, pretending nothing was wrong.

  But I couldn’t do that to him. He deserved to know the truth.

  “Leo…” I said, searching for the right words. When he’d asked me to talk about his feelings toward me, to try to determine whether they were Grey’s or his own, I had hoped for an easy way out. Now that I was staring one right in the face… I looked around the room again. Nothing I was coming up with was nearly good enough, and I wondered if I should even utter anything—and risk hurting him.

  “He brought you here?” he asked, and my heart broke at how small the words made him sound.

  “Not exactly,” I said, looking back toward him, but not able to meet his gaze head on. “And not to this exact spot. I followed him—I thought he was a criminal, and…” I trailed off as Leo turned away from me. I wanted to reach out and touch him—comfort him—but I worried it would confuse the issue in his mind.

  He needed a moment to come to terms with the fact that I’d been in Water Treatment with Grey long ago, and that his desire to bring me back here was probably a result of that. Which meant his feelings for me were now even more in question.

  Time stretched on like a thin rubber band, and I felt anxious that I had somehow broken his heart with the revelation. I wanted to say something, but there was nothing I could say. I could only wait, watch, and be ready to listen when he spoke next.

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” he finally said.

  I had been completely unprepared for that reaction.

  “Excuse me?” I asked, needing to make sure I had heard him correctly. “It doesn’t mean—”

  “Anything,” he declared, whirling back around to face me. There was a ferocity in his eyes that made my breath catch in my throat, and the hair on the back of my neck rose up as I saw the underlying hunger, which was blatant with longing. “It means nothing. I know how I feel. I know what I want.”

  As he spoke, he stalked nearer, pressing close until we were inches apart. I sucked in a breath at his proximity, overwhelmed by the sheer confidence he was exuding and the impression that he was causing all of the air between us to disappear. My body responded, a throb of excitement strumming through me, and I had to look away, my cheeks heating with embarrassment at my body’s reaction to him.

  I told myself that it was because I was so lonely. I told myself that my body’s reaction to him was because it was Grey’s body. I told myself that I was just looking for something—anything—to distract me from my own problems.

  I told myself all those things, but when Leo reached down, gently pressed his fingers under my chin, and slowly lifted it, those excuses evaporated under the scorching heat of his eyes as they traced over the lines of my mouth, as if he were already imagining what it would be like to have his own mouth fitted to them.

  I licked my lips without meaning to, and watched as his eyes tracked the passage of my tongue, his hunger mounting. “You don’t know how badly I want this,” he admitted hoarsely, and my heart thundered, galloping madly across my ribcage. “I’ve thought of little else since I met you. You constantly amaze me, Liana, with everything you do.”

  I knew I had to stop this. We were standing on a precipice, and if I let it go on, we were both going to tumble over the edge. “Leo, I—”

  “No,” he said, his eyes blazing. “I have something to say, and dammit, I’m going to say it.” He took a step closer, his hands grabbing my shoulders. I wished I could say it was aggressive, but it wasn’t. If anything, it was tentative, almost as if I were part of a dream that was about to fall to pieces at any moment. And that only served to confuse my body and mind even more.

  “You asked me how I survived my grief after being alone for so long when Lionel died, and the truth is, I’m not sure all of me did. I was beyond distraught. I was downright melancholic.” His eyes grew distant for a second, trapped behind a distant memory. “I even considered suicide. Especially when there was no one around to talk to about it. I thought I’d go mad from the lack of interaction, and who knows… maybe I did.

  “I was so isolated and alone. I had no way of knowing what was going on with the Tower, and no way of gaining revenge for Lionel’s death. I don’t even know how I survived those first few years. I was so lonely.

  “I found ways to pass the time that helped distract me from my loneliness. I’d use my imagination to create holographic stories, revisited old conversations with Lionel, invented games for just one player, and most importantly, I didn’t give up. I kept hope alive that someday someone would find me and rescue me. And you did.”

  The air in my lungs disappeared completely, and I struggled against the impulse to close the gap between us.

  “I know you feel something for me, too.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but it died on my lips. He wasn’t wrong; I was clearly feeling something for him right now. But there was a massive problem with all of this, and he knew that.

  “But Grey…” Leo’s grip tightened slightly—not painfully, but I could tell he didn’t like this train of thought, so
I stopped, trying to find some other way to phrase the argument.

  “I know this is confusing for you,” he said moments later, while I was still struggling. “I know that looking at me and seeing his face is confusing. But I also know that you can see beyond this exterior and see me inside. You’re one of the only ones who does, really. I know you want this to be a result of Grey’s feelings toward you, but I promise you that it’s not.”

  “But how can you know that?” I whispered, wondering how he could possibly be so certain.

  “Because he knows what it’s like to taste your lips, whereas I can only come to places like this, and imagine.”

  I gaped at him, and his hand came up to grip my chin, pressing my mouth closed. I expected his hand to leave me, but it didn’t. Instead, he ran his thumb over my chin, right under my bottom lip. Shivers erupted from the places where his calloused finger gently grazed my lip, and a gasp escaped me before I could snatch it back.

  “And, God help me, I have spent so much time imagining what kissing you would be like. How you would react when I skimmed my lips over yours, pressing my tongue against the seam of them and begging for entrance. And you opening your mouth to me. Just me. I have always been endlessly fascinated by what it must feel like, and now…”

  I grew lightheaded at his words, arousal crashing into me as if someone had flipped a switch. I bit my lip, and Leo zeroed in on the action, his own lips parting on a small groan. Pleasure blossomed in me at the raw look on his face, knowing that I had put it there.

  I really, really needed to stop this.

  “Leo, I—”

  “Screw it,” he muttered, and then he dragged me to his chest and smashed his mouth to mine.

  Shock shot through me at the brazenness of his actions, making me freeze—which was all the invitation my body needed to take over. It responded where I could not, melting into his touch like butter in a pan.