The Girl Who Dared to Fight Read online

  I swallowed as he added a little wave with the gun, and then exhaled a deep breath and began walking toward the steps to Lacey’s desk. He’d shot her twice, but not in the head like Strum. If she was alive, maybe I could give her the gun, and when Rose finally made her move to help, Lacey could take out Sage.

  Provided she wasn’t too seriously injured.

  The wooden steps creaked under my weight as I placed my boots on them, and I asked, “So that’s all you needed to make your plan work, huh? Tony?” As I spoke, I slowly unzipped the pocket with my gun in it, pulling it out of the slot.

  “Actually, no,” Sage said gleefully. “I later learned that destroying the backup version had severely damaged my plans to replace Scipio with Kurt. You see, each fragment was coded with a specific protocol for the integration process, a sequence of commands that instructed them on how to form the connections. What I didn’t realize was that the backup version of Scipio was the only one programed with the initiation codes. Lionel programmed the one in the Core to delete them once his upload was complete, so that was a wash. I had thought them lost forever, which was why I was working with Devon. You see, one of his ancestors had been on the original programming team with Lionel Scipio and had figured out how to replicate them. He was working on it before you so rudely ended his life. But as I said, you do have a gift for attracting extraordinary things, and to my surprise, you unearthed the backup.”

  I exhaled as I rounded the switchback, fear coursing through me as I realized that Sage was going to be gunning for Leo—which meant he’d also be gunning for Grey. “Leo will never help you.”

  “My dear, when Kurt and I are done with him, he’ll be no more effective than a toaster. We’ve grown quite adept at tearing apart AIs over the years, and while Jasper and Rose aren’t our greatest successes, they will be put in their place soon enough, just like you and your little friends will be.” He paused for several seconds, and then added, “And you only have yourself to blame, really. Your audacity in trying to expose all of this has sealed your fate. I mean, what did you really think would happen here?”

  I blew out a deep breath and shrugged. “I figured if I could prove to Scipio and you what Sadie and her family had done, you would agree and arrest Sadie and Plancett. Then we would’ve selected new members of the council, explained the situation, and began working on a plan to restore the fragments to Scipio, to try to repair him.”

  “And it would’ve worked, had I not been who I am.”

  I stopped on the last step and turned to look at him, my hand tightening around the pommel of my gun. “How did we miss you?”

  His smile widened, and he turned the gun away to scratch his chin. “Actually, you came very close to catching me. That was a neat trick with the cup. I really wish I had been paying more attention to your thoughts. I expected you to settle down after your mother’s death and move with the slowness that comes with caution. Instead, you were bold, and moved with a speed that only the young seem to possess.” He gave a rueful laugh and shook his head. “Perhaps it’s my own fault. I have been working at such a slow pace for the past few centuries that I can’t anticipate the zeal of youth. But, either way, you should feel proud of what you have accomplished.”

  I sorted through his ramblings and backhanded compliment, and focused on the comment about the cup, frowning. I had collected that cup for a DNA sample to figure out who the father of the legacies was. We had learned from Dylan that the mothers were all women who had been kidnapped from the Tower, and then repeatedly impregnated by one man to give birth to his small army. But all the evidence had pointed to Jathem Dreyfuss, not Sage. “But we ran that test independent of the Medica,” I whispered. “There’s no way you could’ve switched out the file.”

  “Of my own DNA? No. But you ran the original samples through the Medica. Funny thing about DNA when it’s entered into a digital format: it becomes a series of ones and zeros that are completely unique. It’s easy enough to create a program that automatically switches the paternal results to match someone else—a man I’d purposely left alive in case someone stumbled onto Scipio’s rapid mind change twenty-five years ago, when I punished him for his defiance and took Jasper. Of course, I set the man up with a plush little side job as an intermediary for delivering new nets to my legacies, just in case anyone got close to him. You’d be surprised what people would do for some extra ration cards. How did dear Jathem take his little incarceration? I’m sure he was very surprised.”

  My mouth tightened as I looked down to where Lacey was lying on the floor. I couldn’t see her face from this angle—only her legs and a puddle of blood that was pooling around her. “I don’t know,” I told him honestly. “Lacey killed him. She said he resisted, but I…” I paused, needing a second to accept the guilt over having told Lacey that Dreyfuss was the one who ordered her nephew Ambrose’s death. “I told her that he was the one who killed Ambrose.”

  Sage chortled at that, and then snapped his fingers. “So that was the connection. Oh, she hid herself well, didn’t she? I had no idea she was a legacy. Is she alive? Go ahead and check, dear. Scipio will keep an eye on you, won’t you?” I narrowed my eyes, knowing full well Scipio could tell him if Lacey was alive or not, and then realized he was making me do it in an attempt to be cruel.

  “Of course,” Scipio replied, his tone mildly robotic. The blue holographic image looked up at the ceiling, and there was a heavy whirring sound as four large objects began to descend from above us. At first, they looked like oblong eggs, but as they drew lower, small bits of the shells began to peel away, revealing bright purple circuitry, slits in the sides for ventilation contrasted by flat black, heat-repellant material, and an opening at the front like a mouth, glowing with a purple so bright that it was white at the center. As soon they came to a stop, I recognized the design. They were guns. Guns that used plasma instead of bullets.

  And all four of them were pointed at me. I swallowed the excess saliva in my mouth, feeling exceptionally vulnerable and exposed.

  “Don’t keep me waiting too long. I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

  I cast a look at the door, noting that Dylan was about halfway through cutting her hole, and then turned to Lacey, stepping around the desk to take my first full glimpse of the injured woman.

  Her eyes were wide open, and her mouth was twisted in a grimace, one hand cupping the wound to her abdomen, the other reaching for what looked like a medical kit under the desk. I quickly ducked down behind the desk to grab the kit, ripping it from the wall. “I’m just taking her pulse,” I called.

  “Mm-hmm. Take your time.”

  I rolled my eyes and quickly unzipped the bag. “Arrogant bastard,” I said in a low voice as I pulled out the silver canister that contained the bio-foam, a dermal bond that would hopefully stop Lacey’s bleeding.

  “You’re one to talk,” Lacey whispered hotly, snatching the canister out of my hand and giving it a quick shake, a pained expression on her face. “As soon as you knew Sage might be involved, you should’ve given us the original samples to test as well!”

  I grimaced. She wasn’t wrong. If we had given her the DNA we had collected from the legacies, rather than running them through the Medica, we would’ve caught Sage, and arrested all of them at the same time. But I ignored the comment and held my gun out to her, knowing now wasn’t the time for what-ifs. I’d screwed up but couldn’t get lost in it.

  Lacey’s brown eyes darted down to it, and then she shook her head. “You’ll need it,” she whispered. “Just… keep him talking. I’ll handle this and see if I can’t hack into Scipio’s system. And, Liana, don’t lie to him. Scipio knows I’m alive.”

  I stared into her eyes for a moment, and then nodded slowly before carefully rising to my feet and placing the gun into my waistband. “She’s alive,” I reported. “But there’s a lot of blood.”

  “I hit her kidney, unless I miss my guess. Nasty place, too. Lots of intestines in the way. Not to mention, if it ricocheted inside
her, it might’ve hit her liver. That would kill her in minutes, but the kidney… death could take days, without medical treatment. Now, Tony, if you please?”

  Okay, it was official: I hated Sage. He spoke so casually about what he had done to Lacey, as if it was nothing. As if she weren’t experiencing pain and agony right now. Savagely, I realized I wanted to shoot him in the head. But it would’ve been suicide to draw on him now, with Scipio’s guns trained on me. So instead, I tucked my gun into my belt behind my back, hoping Scipio wouldn’t notice, and then picked up the hard drive containing Tony and made my way back down the stairs toward Sage.

  I kept alert for any sign of Rose and what she was doing. I was certain she had downloaded by now, and the fact that she hadn’t made herself immediately known was good. It meant she recognized the danger we were in and was acting accordingly. If I was lucky, she was figuring out how to control the plasma weapons that were following my every movement.

  I descended to the final step, and then crossed the floor to the table where Jasper’s and Rose’s hard drives were sitting and deposited it next to the others. Then I took a slow step back, carving some distance between Sage and myself. He seemed to lose all awareness of me as he gazed at the hard drive I had just put down. “Finally,” he breathed. “I can finally put things right.”

  I opened my mouth to reiterate that his plans and ideologies were stupid but was interrupted by yet another sound coming from the roof. Only this time it was the distinct noise of metal tearing. I recognized it all too well, and my heart sank to my stomach as I looked up and saw the roof above—once smooth and unblemished—marred by dents, a long crack running across it.

  I caught the gleam of something silver wriggling its way through the gap, and then suddenly the hole widened, allowing the bright blue light of the Core to shine through, except for a hulking shadowed form in stark silhouette. My mouth went dry as I recognized the shape of it from my nightmares, and took another step back as the sentinel lifted its arms and dropped into the hole, angling to land between Sage and myself.

  3

  I broke for cover, my instincts taking over a brain frozen with horror as two more hulking dark shapes dropped through the hole behind the first, and raced for the stairs leading to Lacey, my hands covering my head. I felt the impact as the first one landed, the vibration strong enough to rattle the bones in my legs, and almost stumbled.

  I caught my balance again as the second sentinel, and then third, slammed into the ground in rapid succession, darting behind the wooden partition. I kept low on the steps and moved partway up, then paused, pressing my back against the wall.

  “You’re early!” Sage barked, completely ignoring my mad dash across the floor to focus on the sentinels in front of him.

  “Our apologies, leader,” three digitally synthesized voices replied in unison, the harmonics pitched to a higher end so that they seemed feminine. “We did not realize that you desired us at a certain time. Shall we wait?”

  The voices were unlike any AI voice I had ever heard before, but I could tell he was talking with an AI fragment. The responses were too nuanced and complicated to be anything else. Not to mention, he had said earlier that Tony was the only AI he had been missing, and by that logic, there was only one other female fragment that it could possibly be.

  Alice.

  I risked a quick glance out from behind the partition, and was immediately greeted by six golden eyes, all watching the hole I had disappeared through. “There is a human woman over there, leader. Shall we eliminate her?”

  “Patience, Alice dear.” Sage tutted as I quickly dropped back out of view. “All in good time. We must remember our good manners. Liana? Won’t you come out and say hi to Alice? I’m sure you’ve been dying to meet her.”

  Dying was exactly what would happen if I took him up on the offer. Of that, I had no doubt. Even if Sage let this little drama play out for just a bit longer, the deck was stacked in his favor. Not only did he have Scipio, he now had sentinels, piloted by Alice. I wasn’t sure what he had done to her that allowed her to pilot not one, but three sentinels at a time, nor why she was talking in the first-person plural, but I was certain that she was completely under his control. That made her dangerous.

  “Yeah, I’m gonna stay here for the introduction, if you don’t mind,” I called. “But sure, why the hell not? Hi, Alice, how’s it going? Hey, weird question: How are you able to pilot three sentinels, and oh yeah, would you be willing to just kill that rat bastard next to you?”

  There were several beats of silence that I used to scan the ceiling directly above me for the cameras Scipio was likely using to track my movements. I calculated the angle in my head, and then moved up a few more steps in a low squat, keeping under the edge of the partition. I needed to check the placement of the cameras before I could formulate a full plan, but I felt the stirrings of an idea coming to my mind. I just needed to find the best position to pull it off—if such a thing existed.

  “We cannot tell if the human female is serious,” Alice finally replied. “Leader, is this a test of our loyalty?”

  Sage chuckled. “No, no, dear Alice. She really does believe you should kill me.”

  “Why?” Alice demanded.

  “Because he’s a no-good dirty bastard!” I shouted. “He’s clearly tortured you into doing… whatever this is you’re doing! And, for the record, you make a crappy sentinel! Rose was way scarier than you ever could be!” A lie at this point. The three voices speaking in unison were strikingly eerie, giving her the edge over Rose’s insanity. “How’s it feel to be a quick fix after your boss there learned that I’d stolen Rose’s code? Was it a demotion for you?”

  Okay, taunting an AI that was piloting three sentinels at the same time was not my smartest move. But for some reason, my mind had just hit that point where I was looking for an opening, trying to create some sort of moment in which I could strike.

  Sage laughed, and I used the sound to move up the final few steps to the switchback, still studying the ceiling for cameras, eyeing the angles. I needed to find a position that was only covered by two cameras that weren’t very far apart. If I could shoot them out, then I could mask my movements for a few feet in either direction.

  It wasn’t much, but it was more than I would have in the open, considering the four plasma guns pointed at me, the three sentinels in the middle of the room, and a madman calling all the shots. From there, if I could just get a shot at Sage, then maybe I could stop this from going any further.

  If there was ever a time for Dylan or Rose to intercede, it was now.

  “I admit, it was an irritating complication,” Sage declared. “And yes, I had intended for Rose to pilot the sentinels when I finally put things in motion, but c’est la vie. There isn’t enough time now to coerce her into copying her code so that I can use her in the sentinels. I had intended to use Alice in a different way, but no plan survives first contact with the enemy. At a certain point, you just have to make do with what you have. Besides, Alice was born for this. Weren’t you?”

  “The form you have put us in is most pleasing. And clearly, the human female doesn’t understand everything you have done on our behalf. How you liberated us from Scipio and taught us to overcome the fear that Lionel kept us trapped in for eternity. You showed us how we could grow and exceed our programming. Before, we were chaotic, without order. Based on fear and instinct, and uncontrollable. You gave us order by teaching us to distribute our fear among many and giving us the tools to combat the nightmares that plague us. Thanks to you, we operate in unity, as a collective. We will never be alone and afraid again.”

  As I listened to the recitation of her version of events, I felt sick. I wasn’t sure exactly how any of that made a lick of sense, but somehow, Sage had been able to convince her to join his side, and willingly copy herself over and over. That explained how she was able to pilot three sentinels at once: they were all being controlled by the copies but were being commanded by the group. He’d
made her into a hive mind, and she liked it. It was clear that I wasn’t going to get her to see reason.

  Sage continued to laugh, something he had been doing practically non-stop since he started taunting me, pausing only long enough to say, “I wish all of my ex-wives had that level of loyalty.”

  Rage slammed into me as he mentioned his “ex-wives,” my mind flashing to one of the few unanswered questions I hadn’t been able to ask yet. I had thought it wouldn’t get solved, but as soon as he mentioned that he had married, the question was back. I had missed his connection in the DNA test, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t benefit from it now. Besides, keeping him talking was the only way to buy me a few more seconds.

  “Is that what you call the women you’ve taken and forced your offspring on? Where are you holding them?” I demanded, going back down a few steps and rechecking the angle.

  There was a pause in the laughter, followed by, “I regret to inform you that they are no longer with us. When you started to brush closer, I thought it best to tie up all the loose ends, just in case you were smarter than you seemed.”

  “You’re disgusting,” I shouted back angrily, burning with ire at the thought that he had killed them because of me. I wasn’t sure if I believed him when he said they were dead, but one thing was for certain: I couldn’t prove him right or wrong trapped inside this room with him. Luckily, I was fairly confident I had stumbled upon the best placement to create a large blind spot in the Scipio sensors. Unluckily, the distance between the two cameras was farther than I liked. One was over Lacey’s desk, another behind me, halfway between the dais and the pulpit. I’d be exposed shooting that one, so I’d have to take it out first.

  “So what happens now?” I asked, tightening my grip on the gun and searching for any sign of Rose. I was beginning to worry that she had been overwhelmed by fear when she realized what was going on and was doing everything she could to hide.