The Girl Who Dared to Descend Read online

  If so, it meant my parents were in grave danger, especially from Lacey’s people. Because there was nothing to stop Lacey’s group from trying to eliminate the competition—not if they truly believed their cause was great enough.

  Unless of course my parents were already involved. A sickening thought occurred to me on the tail of the last: what if my parents had been working with Devon all along? I sucked in a deep breath, my stomach churning at the implications. They certainly didn’t have any compunctions about killing off those who weren’t “of service” to the Tower. But that didn’t necessarily mean that they were actively trying to destroy Scipio… right?

  “What’s wrong?” Leo asked from across the table, and I looked up at him, realizing that I had gotten lost in the tempest of my thoughts.

  “Sorry,” I said, clicking off the pad and straightening. “I just drifted off there.” I didn’t feel comfortable sharing my revelation with my friends until after I had more time to think about it.

  “You okay?” Zoe asked from the kitchen, elbow deep in dirty dishes.

  “Of course,” I lied. Then, as an afterthought, I added, “Pretty tired, actually.”

  “Oh, of course you are!” Eric exclaimed, his eyes growing wide. “You guys should get back to your quarters for some rest. The first challenge is tomorrow.”

  I nodded, but a part of me didn’t want to go; the last few hours had been really fun, once we had all settled down and gotten to work. Dinner had been delicious, and we had laughed and joked for at least an hour after it was finished. If it had been Grey rather than Leo sitting next to me, it almost would’ve been perfect. It’d been a long time since I’d just gotten to relax like this.

  And it would be a while before I would get to again. With the official challenges starting tomorrow, I had already ordered everyone on the team to stay sequestered inside the Citadel until everything was over. We’d only be leaving our rooms for whatever event was happening during the day, and then returning as soon as we were done. It limited our exposure, and was one of the few protocols I had come up with to keep Ambrose and everyone else safe. And even I was aware of how feeble it really was.

  And now on top of everything, the idea that my mom and dad were caught in the line of fire—or possibly even responsible for said fire—was wriggling away like a massive earwig in my brain, and I couldn’t seem to process the feelings it was creating in me. Namely, an urge to warn them to watch their backs… or to confront them for what they had done.

  I firmly broke off the thought and smiled. “Yeah. Sorry, guys. I don’t know about Leo, but I had a great time.” I stood up. “Next time, we’ll have to do it at my place.”

  “Okay,” Zoe said with a smile, coming out of the tiny kitchen space with a towel in her hands. “Thanks for the help. We were going to have to deliver in two days to only half the people on the list, and explain to them about the supply problem, but now we can deliver to everyone.”

  “Are you sure you’re up for that?” I asked, referring to the group of strangers who were probably not going to be pleased to be cold-contacted by someone other than Roark or Grey, and Zoe smiled coquettishly.

  “Who could ever stop a girl with a face like this?” she declared.

  I laughed, amused by my friend’s confidence, and moved over to give her and Eric a hug. “Keep me updated,” I breathed as they wrapped their arms around me, allowing myself to feel the love emanating from them.

  “Of course,” Eric answered.

  We let each other go, and I stepped back so Leo could say his goodbyes.

  “I had a lovely time,” he said, shaking Eric’s hand first, and then Zoe’s. “And truly, the food was delicious. You know, I have access to some recipes that existed before the End that I think would be very easy to replicate here. When we have some free time, maybe we could try some of them out? They were Lionel’s favorites, and I always wanted to try them.”

  Eric smiled kindly. “Of course,” he declared. “I’d be happy to.”

  Leo gave him a look of deep gratitude, and bowed his head some. “Thank you. Farewell.”

  “To you as well,” Zoe said.

  Moments later, Leo and I were outside in the hall, the door closing behind us, and I exhaled. It had been easy enough to say our farewells, but as soon as it was done, my mind immediately returned to my parents and the problem I seemed to be having with them being in danger.

  I turned to start walking, heading deeper into the halls—and deeper into my own thoughts. Or, at least, I tried to.

  Leo, however, was in a chatty mood. “This was a really beautiful night,” he said, slanting his eyes toward mine, a boyish smile on his face.

  “It was,” I agreed, hoping that would be the end of it.

  “And if you think about it, there’s probably dozens of people doing something just like it right now. Maybe not just with friends, but families too. All of them sitting around laughing and enjoying one another’s company.”

  I frowned, thinking of my own life at home, before everything had happened. Dinnertime was never a happy affair in my house. My parents would grill me on protocol and statutes, and too many wrong answers could result in dinner being taken away.

  “Not all families are like that,” I said bitterly, unable to hold it in.

  Thinking about how my life had been when growing up made me mad, and I immediately used the anger to demonstrate to myself why I shouldn’t even be worried about my parents, and should instead treat them like potential criminals. They had done it to me, so why shouldn’t I treat them the same way? Their behavior toward me my entire life certainly proved that I didn’t owe them any consideration, and as much as it hurt me to admit it, there was a chance that they were involved. That they had been involved all along.

  “That’s too bad,” Leo said sadly, and I glanced over to see him giving me a pitying look. “Family is supposed to make you feel safe.”

  “I suppose so. It didn’t, in my case.”

  We rounded a corner and entered one of the main halls that ran through the residential apartments in Cogstown. It was wider than the rest, and more prone to foot traffic, but still relatively empty since it was a few hours until shift change.

  “Is that why you don’t want to help the Tower?” Leo asked carefully.

  I gave him a look. “I stayed out of it, remember?”

  He nodded and then shrugged. “You may not have voted, but I could tell you didn’t like the idea. I just don’t understand why. You told me the area around the Tower is still irradiated, so what could possibly be worth taking that risk? What do you expect to do once you’re outside, and how will you survive if everything else is destroyed? How do you plan to get everyone supplies, like fresh water, food, shelter…? I mean, don’t take this the wrong way, but leaving the Tower seems shortsighted on your part.”

  We exited the main hallway, taking one of the corridors that branched off, and I found the sign pointing toward the elevator banks and pointed it out to Leo. The entire time, however, my mind was considering his question. They were all valid points, but he didn’t know what we did: the desire to leave had been Roark’s, based on his wife’s accidental contact with an alien human who had survived outside the Tower. According to him, the alien human had not only survived, but was part of another civilization—one that was thriving. But Leo knew none of this.

  I didn’t see a problem with telling him, so I did. “Roark’s wife, Selka, was a medic, and one day, twenty-five years ago, some Knights brought in someone they claimed was an undoc. Only she wasn’t. Selka’s examination of her revealed rudimentary medical practices that were so antiquated, apparently, that it didn’t take her long to determine that the girl wasn’t from here.”

  “What happened?”

  “Devon Alexander and Raevyn Hart, the head of the Farmers at the time, asked Selka to leave. She didn’t know what happened after that, but it doesn’t change the fact that there is life out there. The council probably kept it secret to keep citizens fr
om leaving, although that was some time ago, so I don’t know.” I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. “What I do know is that Raevyn Hart died some time afterward, and Selka was taken and presumably killed. I know it’s all hearsay—we have no proof beyond anecdotal evidence, and yet… once Roark laid out the pieces of it, it made sense. And it wouldn’t exactly be the first conspiracy we’ve discovered to be true in the Tower.”

  He gave me a curious look. “Why don’t you just use the monitoring station to find out if anyone is living out there?”

  I frowned. “The monitoring station?”

  Leo turned and gave me a pointed look. “You don’t know what the monitoring station is? Somehow that doesn’t surprise me, given how ignorant the people here seem to be about the Tower itself. Basically, it’s a room inside the Tower that monitors all frequencies for communications coming from within five hundred miles.”

  Huh. That was interesting. And irritating. I always seemed to be finding out about something else inside the Tower that I had no previous knowledge of.

  But if Leo was right, which I was certain he was, then that meant there was a way to find out, once and for all, if people were actually out there. Which meant we could confirm that there was a place to go before we left.

  “That’s great news,” I said with a smile. “That means we can find out who’s out there and where they live!”

  There was a flash of disappointment on his face, and he looked away from me.

  “What?” I asked, already knowing what his answer would be.

  “Nothing,” he said. “I just… I just think it’s weird that you don’t want to stay and help me. Especially knowing what you know about Scipio, now. Don’t you feel bad about abandoning all of these people to die?”

  I fidgeted and looked away, watching the hall ahead. His question hit a nerve with me, and I immediately felt defensive. “Look, the people here practically worship Scipio like a god. They’ll lose their minds if they find out something is wrong with him.”

  “So? That’s not their fault. Somewhere along the line, someone started to make the comparison, and it grew into a popular idea! They just believe something that many other people also believe in. You don’t punish a child for not being able to read if you haven’t first taken the time to teach them. This is the same thing.”

  I clenched my teeth and looked away. Leo was right, and we both knew it. But a part of me could only ask why. Why was it my responsibility? Why did I have to be the one to do it? I’d never asked for this, and I sure as hell didn’t want the responsibility. It was too much for one person. I could barely keep on top of the responsibilities I did have, and that was more than enough for one person.

  “Look, Leo, I’m not trying to be rude, but you need to understand that seven lives are already depending on me, and seven is enough. One life per day of the week is something I can stay on top of. But the entire Tower? That’s too much for one person to handle.”

  “But you wouldn’t be alone,” he said earnestly. I slid my eyes over to him, and found him looking at me with a hopeful expression. “I’d be there to help you. If you decided to stay and help me. I-I can’t do it by myself.”

  I bit my lip and looked away, uncertain of what I should do.

  My mind chided me, though, reminding me that I knew exactly what I had to do. It just meant convincing everyone else that we needed to change our minds and commit ourselves to helping Leo and getting him inside the mainframe. That we needed to try to stop the Tower from dying, instead of trying to get away from it.

  In my heart, I felt torn. I wanted to believe that if I just told my friends what I knew, they would want to do it as well. But I couldn’t be sure. Zoe and Eric would say yes, because their families were still here, but Quess and Maddox? Tian? The Tower had brought them nothing but tribulation and horror—I doubted they wanted anything to do with it anymore.

  How could I possibly ask them to change their minds? Staying in the Tower for longer—trying to go against those who had been slowly destroying Scipio over the years—put them in danger. Bad enough we were allied with Lacey, and targets for having assassinated Devon. But this? This was no easy task.

  Then something—a tangent memory from the net—gripped me for a second. Just words, and a picture of a woman I suddenly knew was someone called Kami Garcia. A writer.

  The words burned in my mind, like a torch guiding me from the darkness.

  The right thing and the easy thing are never the same.

  And with that, I knew. Knew that I couldn’t abandon the Tower, Scipio, Leo, or the thousands of other people who would die because of my inaction. I could put up a front, act like it didn’t bother me, but the fact that it did told me that I wasn’t doing the right thing. I was doing something that would haunt me my whole life, and I was doing something that almost everyone in my life had done to me: dismissing it as someone else’s problem.

  I couldn’t ask my friends to stay behind for this—but there was nothing to stop me from making sure that I did, when the time came. And in the meantime, I’d use every waking moment, outside of getting Lacey’s goal accomplished, trying to help Leo find a way to fix the Tower.

  I was opening my mouth to inform Leo of my decision when I saw something shift out of the corner of my eye. A coarse black bag dropped over my head, and several pairs of hands seized me at once.

  It took me a moment to register what had happened, but as they began to push me forward, I couldn’t hold back. “Are you freaking kidding me with this stupid bag thing again?”

  There was a chuckle—one I recognized as belonging to the only one of Lacey’s men who had talked to me the last time. “Relax, girl,” he said soothingly. “Lacey just wants a chat.”

  I rolled my eyes—for all the good it did me in the dark of the black sack—and continued to stumble forward, hoping Lacey had chosen somewhere nearby.

  23

  Luckily, Lacey had chosen a nearby place, and after a minute or so of walking, we were shoved forward a few steps, the hands disappearing. I ripped off the bag as soon as I realized the hands were gone, and whirled, trying to catch a glimpse of them purely out of spite. But the door was already closing.

  I helped pull the bag off Leo’s head and looked around. We were standing in the entryway of an apartment not unlike Roark’s. Image grabs of a family featuring two middle-aged adults and two small children hung on the wall, but I didn’t recognize any of them. This wasn’t Lacey’s apartment; that much was certain.

  I stepped in deeper, moving into the common area, and continued my exploration. The living room was empty and devoid of life, but the kitchen looked recently used. Pots and pans were stacked on the stove, and the smell of roasted spices filled the air. I heard something coming from the dining room across from it, and made my way around the partition wall. The table was loaded with food, four plates set in front of accompanying chairs, but the chairs were empty. Unless the family that lived there was hiding in the back, it seemed that they had departed in a hurry, with their supper unfinished on the table.

  A table that Lacey was still standing next to, in fact, picking at a partially eaten roasted platter.

  “Invite yourself to dinner?” I asked, but she ignored me, her fingers shoving the food into her mouth.

  “I don’t typically get a chance for a homecooked meal,” she said around her mouthful. She examined the table and picked up a cup, bringing it to her nose for an experimental sniff before taking a sip.

  “Still,” I said, observing her dining with growing unease. This was someone’s home, and she was just eating their food. “I assume you evicted some family for this impromptu conversation. Do you have to eat their food, too?”

  The look she gave me was purely bemused, and she came around the table and picked up a roll from a basket next to the platter. “My Cogs like to take care of me,” she replied. “They understand that running an entire department takes a lot of work.” She tore off a chunk of bread and ate it, washing it down with
another sip from the cup, and then sat heavily in one of the chairs, sighing.

  I waited. I had no idea what she wanted to talk about. Half of me wondered if she was about to dress us down for our performances in the Tourney. Maybe it didn’t matter to her that we’d qualified. Maybe she was either angry or upset that we had failed to make her cousin look good. Another part of me wondered if it was something else—possibly another dangerous task she wanted to compel us to do.

  Luckily, Lacey didn’t leave me stewing long. “I wanted to congratulate you on your performance at the qualifiers,” she announced softly. “It seems like things are going better with Ambrose?”

  I eyed her warily, wondering why she had broken protocol. I knew she wasn’t here to talk about Ambrose. We had agreed at the meeting the other day that it would be the last until after the Tourney was finished, so she hadn’t risked this exposure just to talk about Ambrose.

  I had a choice as to how to handle this. I could either ask her directly what she wanted, or play along. I contemplated the options for a second, and then crossed my arms. It was too late, and I was too tired to play along.

  “What do you want, Lacey?”

  If my rudeness at ignoring her question shocked her, she hid it well behind an amused smile. “Straight to the point, I see,” she said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a pad. “I’ve got an update on that Frederick Hamilton. We just uncovered it a few hours ago.”

  “Oh?” I asked, mildly curious. His file had been similar to Dylan’s in that he was a good and dutiful Knight. He transferred in from the Medica when he was fifteen, and had led a rather unremarkable life as a Knight. Lacey’s report at the last meeting hadn’t reflected any sort of legacy heritage, but I was guessing that had changed, given the look Lacey was now giving me. “I take it he’s a legacy?”

  “I’m not sure,” she replied honestly. “But we did uncover that he is distantly related to Ezekial Pine.” I stiffened at the name, recognizing it immediately. Ezekial Pine, one of the original founders of the Tower, and the head of the Knights at the time, had murdered Lionel Scipio in an attempt to kill Leo.