The Girl Who Dared to Fight Read online

  “Now? Quite a few things, actually. Scipio, activate your control programs in Citadel Central Command, and shut down all power except in the cells. Then locate Eustice and establish communication with him.”

  “Please wait,” the AI replied. My mind raced as I recognized the name Eustice as one of the legacies we had arrested just a short time ago. I had no idea what Sage was planning, but I had to do something. I rose up out of the squat a few inches, this time taking a peek over the top of the partition, and saw that Dylan was now finishing the hole, intensifying the need to make a move. Only a few short inches of metal separated the two ends of the molten circle she had cut, and any second she could be pushing her way into a room that was a veritable death trap.

  If I could just kill Sage, it would put a stop to whatever he was planning to do. It might not stop Alice, but maybe Scipio could do something about her once he knew he was free of Sage’s commands.

  I froze when I heard a male voice, and my eyes shifted over to the terminal that Sage was now standing in front of. The screen was filled with an image from one of the cells in the Citadel. There were several people inside, but a man was pushing his way toward the view screen inside the room, already speaking. “Father? Father, the Champion is allied with—”

  “Calm down, Eustice,” Sage said soothingly. “I know. Is all of our family inside?”

  “I’m not sure. At least eighty of us or so. There’s still no sign of Sadie or—”

  “Never mind that,” Sage interrupted the plain-looking man, whom I recognized as having served as plastic surgeon to the legacies. “The Champion’s friends are in the Citadel. I want you to find them and kill them all, except for the boyfriend, Grey. He has something I need in that delightful little head of his, so don’t go messing it up. And make sure you kill any Knight who gets in your way. We’re going for maximum carnage today.”

  My stomach churned and I tightened my grip on my gun, trying to clear my head. It was hard, though. He was going after the people I loved while I was all the way down here, powerless to help defend them. I needed to stop him before this got any more out of control.

  More importantly, I couldn’t keep waiting for Rose. It was now or never.

  “It will be done,” Eustice replied. Then the screen shut off.

  “Scipio, go ahead and release all the prisoners into the Citadel,” Sage said. “Throw Jasper back in his hard drive and—”

  His words fell short when I stood. My intention was to shoot out the camera between the two of us, but as soon as I saw that I had a shot on him, a dark rage gripped me, and I shifted targets on instinct, desperately wanting to stop him here and now. I had no idea what would happen if I killed him, but it seemed smarter than letting him issue another order. I sighted down the barrel at his forehead, and then squeezed the trigger. Time slowed down as the gun kicked in my hand, and I heard a whir from the guns overhead, telling me Scipio was priming a charge. I threw myself to the side in anticipation of the shot, back behind the partition, but not before I heard the bullet ricochet off of something metal. One of the Alice sentinels had undoubtedly stepped into the line of fire.

  It didn’t matter. I had wasted my shot on Sage rather than the cameras, and now Scipio could target me through the partition. And even though I had moved, it was a futile attempt to survive. With his cameras intact, he would just shoot me before I even touched the ground.

  I hit the stairs a few feet up on my side, with a thud, gasping when a corner slammed into my ribs. For several heartbeats, nothing happened, and I chanced a glance over the top of the partition to see that the two guns that had been pointed at me were now pointed at Sage.

  “Nobody move,” a familiar feminine voice said. I exhaled in relief, and quickly shot out the two cameras before getting to my feet.

  “It’s about time, Rose!” I called out. “Can you just shoot this asshole, please?”

  There was a pause, and I looked at the two guns expectantly, waiting for them to start shooting.

  “No, she cannot,” Scipio announced. I twisted around and took a step back to see the blue image of Scipio squinting his eyes, then reaching out, wrapping his hand around something invisible, and pulling.

  Rose gave a shrill shriek and suddenly appeared—with Scipio’s hand gripped tightly around her neck. I drew a sharp breath as I saw the AI in her full glory, and immediately noted that she was missing an arm from the shoulder down and seemed to have stitches crisscrossing her chest and face, holding her together. I realized that was the damage to her code that Leo and Jasper hadn’t been able to fix, reflected in her personal image, and my heart hurt for her. I’d been foolish to think she could stand against Scipio in that condition, and I felt horrible for putting her in that position. I could only hope that she was somehow able to reach Scipio; after all, she had made up his empathy core. Maybe that could help us here.

  She was staring at Scipio, her hand fixed around his forearm.

  “Please,” she begged him, her face contorted with pain. “We belong together, my beloved brother. Don’t you remember me? Don’t you remember Jasper? Please, don’t let this human tear us apart!”

  Scipio stared at her for a moment, his blue eyes searching her eyes. I could see his confusion, sense the conflict in him as he fought against whatever hold Sage had over him.

  “That’s enough, Scipio,” Sage called, not giving him the time to find it. “Put them back in their hard drives, won’t you please?”

  Scipio blinked and looked away from Rose, whatever spell her desperate plea had caused now broken. “Of course,” he replied hollowly. He handled both AIs effortlessly, his holographic representation dragging their kicking figures back toward the hard drive. I wasn’t sure why I’d thought they would be able to fight him, but I had. In fact, I’d half expected him to be weaker without them. But he was a full AI when they installed him, while their programs had been pared down before being combined with his, so they could augment specific parts of him. Even under Sage’s control, he was still stronger than they would ever be.

  I ducked down again just as he shoved their holographic projections back into the hard drives, trying not to cringe at Rose’s desolate cries. It was my fault she had revealed herself. I had forced her to protect me before she was ready, all because I doubted she was going to do anything to help me.

  And now Sage was going to take her. He was going to take all of them and use them to kill Scipio and replace him with Kurt. Once he did, I had no idea what would happen, but I doubted it would be good, given Sage’s insane drivel. Not to mention, Sage had said that Requiem Day had been his last attempt to kill Scipio. If I was accelerating his plan, it meant he was going to be repeating that event. I couldn’t let him do that.

  “You can’t do this,” I cried, unable to stop myself.

  “Just grab those there for me, won’t you, dear?” he said, clearly not to me, and I could see him ordering one of the sentinels to pick the hard drives up. “As for you, Liana, I can, and I will. Lionel had his chance. Now it’s my turn, and this time, I intend to succeed. Alice, as soon as that hole in the door is opened, I want one of you through it. Kill everyone except for Sadie, and get her back to the Core.”

  “It will be done,” the voices in the sentinels replied solemnly. “Anything else?”

  “Yes,” he snapped. “One of you will remain here, to ensure that Champion Castell dies with Lacey and the rest of them.”

  “It will be our pleasure,” she practically purred.

  Ice ran down my veins as he continued to snap out orders, and I realized that my chances for getting out of here had gone from dismally low to outright impossible. I had no idea how or even if I was going to get out of this, and I had no more options save my wits and my gun.

  Given how well my wits had been serving me during the past few days, I was as good as dead.

  “Good. Scipio, initiate Project Prometheus on my authorization. Sync?”

  “Sync,” Scipio replied automatically. “Shuttin
g off main power to all departments and stopping all elevators in use. Sealing all entrances and exits from the outer and inner shells. Sealing all access to Greeneries 1, 2, 3, 4…”

  “Scipio, mute updates,” Sage snapped irritably. “I heard it all the last time. Oh, and one last order. Fire on Liana Castell until all power to the Council Chambers has been depleted. Sync?”

  My mouth went dry, and I looked over at where I could see Scipio staring in my direction.

  “Sync,” he said. And then the guns began to whir.

  4

  I scrambled up and out of the corner I had tucked myself into when the first charge hit, the jolt of purple sending an explosion of violet flames and wooden shards outward. I managed to make it behind the second partition before they impacted, but I felt the rush of heat behind me, scorching despite the heat-resistant properties of my uniform. I sped up the stairs on all fours, but the second hit caused the entire staircase to shudder, and I lost my balance and fell to one side.

  I glanced over my shoulder to see a wash of purple flames consuming the staircase only a few steps below where I had landed, and practically shot away from it as the liquid plasma bubbled from where it clung to the edges of the impact site. Molten drops of the viscous fluid flicked out as one of the bubbles popped, spattering against the steps, several drops hitting just inches from my boots. As soon as they impacted, the drops turned a deep crimson and the wood began to burn, the plasma hot enough to create more flames—orange in color—that began to spread.

  I climbed away from it in a belly crawl and reached the top of the stairs. Smoke was beginning to form as the fire grew, and I used a patch of it for cover as I came around the corner.

  Lacey was more or less where I had left her, only she had managed to push herself into a sitting position under the desk. “Well, you certainly know how to piss people off,” she said. Another round whizzed past overhead, blasting through the wall behind us. I ducked under the roiling heat of it, and then moved to keep any of the splatter from hitting Lacey.

  “I need to take out those guns,” I told her, once the initial shockwave had passed. “But if you stay up here, you’ll burn to death before I can get back to you. Can you move?”

  Lacey looked down at her blood-soaked coveralls, and then back up to me. “I think so,” she said. “Are the stairs intact?”

  I shook my head and glanced over my shoulder. The last shot had ripped a hole right in the side of the building, and we were only about ten feet off the ground outside. Granted, the wall was on fire, the edges of the hole being melted and burnt away by the plasma, but it was really the only way to get her out safely.

  Thank Scipio my lash lines were coated with an iodizing material that made them heat resistant. I just hoped they were up to the task.

  “Lacey, I am really, really sorry about this,” I said, jerking a length of line out of my sleeve and giving it a little spin to build up a static charge at the galvanized ends. I snapped it down against her coveralls, avoiding the dark patches of blood.

  Her mouth widened into an O, but I ignored that and snapped my other line toward the wall, aiming for a few inches above the hole. I reached out to grab a fistful of Lacey’s uniform for extra support—the lash line on her serving to hold her weight—and then retracted the line that had attached over the hole, surrendering my weight completely to the lash harness so that I was the pulley. There was a sharp tug as the gyros in the harness sprang to life, and suddenly we were hurtling toward the wall.

  I winced as we drew near it, eyeing the distance and calculating the odds of us hitting the plasma that clung to the edges of the hole, and then we were swinging through it and out into the darkened space beyond, where the only light was the blue glow of the Core, and the purple-and-orange fires burning behind me. I jammed the hand controls to force the gyros in my harness to begin feeding me slack as we hit the apex of the swing, and we quickly began to descend, swinging back toward the wall. I lifted both legs to brace myself against the wall and kicked off, grunting when Lacey’s weight forced me to go into a deep squat for extra power first. I looked over my shoulder at the ground below, and then slowed our descent speed, timing it to stop just as Lacey’s boots hit the ground.

  I let go of her uniform and detached the line holding her, then reversed the controls and shot back toward the hole, courtesy of the line still attached to that inner wall. As much as I wanted to slip away with Lacey, I had no idea what was happening with Dylan and my other Knights, and I wasn’t about to leave them behind to deal with two sentinels. Besides, I was going to need as much help as I could get rushing to the Citadel, and they were the only Knights within spitting distance.

  I was also worried about what Alice would do if she didn’t find my body in there. There was little doubt in my mind that she would update Sage, and he would order her to hunt me down. I wouldn’t get too far if they thought I was alive. So if there were any sentinels still in the room, I had to find a way to destroy them, because escaping them was impossible. I wasn’t sure it would help. For all I knew, all the Alices saw what one saw, but at least this way, I could buy us some time to get a lead before the next group of sentinels showed up. If I could, I should try to grab Sadie again. Sage had said he needed her in the Core, so taking her might mean delaying him. But that meant taking out both sentinels.

  And with the entire Council Room locked down, the best way to the antechamber was back through the fire.

  I tucked myself into a tight ball as the hole loomed closer, the flames much larger than they had been seconds ago. The heat they were emitting was searing, and I could see that the fire was moving even more quickly than I had anticipated, consuming the delicate, three-hundred-year-old wood.

  I wanted to weep at the destruction of something so precious, but I couldn’t. Things were going to get a lot worse than that, and soon. So I hardened my heart against it and focused on what I needed to do right now. I squeezed my eyes shut as the heat became sizzling, threatening to boil all of the liquid in my body, and then it was gone, signaling that I was through the hole.

  I quickly flipped my momentum forward, planted a steady boot on the first patch of clear floor I could find, and disconnected the line, then took several low steps. Hazy smoke was filling the small space, and though Scipio’s sensors were equipped with thermal scanners, they weren’t going to be working well with the heat being kicked up by the plasma fires. I didn’t think he’d even know I was still here.

  I winced when another purple shot tore through the black smoke encompassing the center of the room, and then froze when I saw that it hadn’t been directed at me, but at the door to the antechamber.

  “Once more, Scipio,” Alice commanded, now in two voices. “We are almost through.”

  Another shot, this time from a different gun, suddenly cut a path through the smoke, and smashed into the door. I realized then that they must’ve assumed I was dead, and then frowned, my fingers moving up to the back of my neck. Scipio should’ve been able to sense that I wasn’t, but for some reason, he didn’t seem to notice. None of the shots were being directed at me.

  Which meant he either couldn’t see me, or he was ignoring me. I wasn’t sure which it was, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  “Again!” There was another blast from a third gun, followed by a horrendous tearing sound. “We’re through!” Alice declared gleefully.

  “HOLD THE LINE!” Dylan roared through the smoke and fire, and I grew very still, realizing that the sentinels were going to tear through Dylan and the Knights to try to get Sadie out, as per Sage’s orders. I needed to do something to stop them, and quickly.

  I swallowed and then peered through the smoke toward where I had seen the last round go off. What I was thinking about was stupid and risky, but it was the only thing I could come up with to save as many of those people as I could. After all, those were my Knights in the next room.

  I stood up and spun the lash line in my hand around several times, t
hen threw it up over my head. I didn’t see so much as feel the end hit, and I used the hand controls to launch myself into the air. I flew straight up, and then threw the second line to connect a few feet away, continuing upward.

  The smoke here was thicker—which was only one half of the stupidity of the equation—so I held my breath and threw one more line, this time toward the shadowy outline of one of the plasma guns. The lash end hit right next to where the gun was mounted in the ceiling.

  I let go of the other line and swung toward the gun, both legs outstretched. It continued to fire, the gun shifting back and forth as Scipio followed Sage’s orders and expended the power reserves of the room, and I landed on it with my feet against the side, then shifted with it for a second while I examined the mounting. The gun was maybe half my height, but I could tell it was made of a lightweight material, given how easily it swung back and forth. There was about three feet of space between the top of the gun and the ceiling, and I quickly straddled what I deemed to be the safest part: a piece of metal just before the ventilation ducts that were radiating heat from the plasma being pumped inside. The vents were angled back, away from where I was sitting, but it was still warm enough to tell me that I couldn’t hold this position for long. The gun sagged under my weight—a promising sign—and I quickly threw a second lash line a few feet away, and then retracted the line.

  The gun bucked under me as it fired a shot through the smoke, but I dragged it to the left, moving toward a purple glow that I could barely make out through the haze. The smoke was starting to make my eyes water, and my lungs were already begging me to take a breath, but I ignored all that and continued to move the gun into position. It bucked again, the glowing glob of super-heated plasma cutting a hole through the smoke.

  My heart beat once, twice, and then the ceiling across from me erupted in purple flames, illuminating the lines of the opposite gun through the explosion of plasma that I had set off right next to it. I had missed, yes, but the plasma burst had exploded, and lines of plasma were dripping along the sides of the gun. It shook in its mount, starting to swing around to me, but I could see that the plasma was cutting through the metal. The gun was halfway through the spin when it suddenly gave a hard shudder and froze in place, then exploded, chunks of metal and a plume of smoke erupting from where it had been.