The Girl Who Dared to Endure (The Girl Who Dared #6)

“Listen to yourself,” I begged. “You want to kill a defenseless man. This isn’t you.”

His pupils dilated, his mouth pulling into a line hard enough it could’ve broken diamonds. “Maybe it isn’t, but at least I am looking to the future. You barely have a plan! I can’t believe that you’re being so blind about all of this.”

His condescension rankled me, and my doubts and concerns evaporated under a glowing heat that began to burn from the pit of my stomach. “Blind or not, Big Brother,” I spat, spearing him with an angry look, “you need to understand that I am the Champion, not you. I make the decisions; you do not. If you cannot get behind that, then there is no place for you here, comprende?”

I turned away and resumed walking, leaving Alex to decide whether he could abide by my rules or not. Clearly, he wasn’t willing to see reason, and if he kept fighting me, I would make him leave.

I had to. I couldn’t afford the consequences if I didn’t. If he didn’t.

Unless this is just a ploy to get rid of him because you don’t want to deal with this new, scary version of your brother, a spiteful voice whispered. I ignored it, but it was hard. It also had a point. I was so used to running things that it was possible I wasn’t prepared to accept the fact that someone might have a better idea than me. And it wasn’t like I hadn’t harbored secret jealousies of Alex in the past. He had always been the “good” child. But I never held onto it long, especially when he made sure that I felt loved by him no matter what my rank was. I owed him so much; he’d always tried to take care of me.

But he had changed. He was changing. And that terrified me.

When I got to the war room, the first thing I did, after setting my boxes down on the conference table, was go up and see what was going on with Leo. He was sitting behind the desk on the dais overlooking the entrance and conference table, but to my surprise, he wasn’t looking at the screen on the terminal and typing relentlessly. Instead, he was flipping through the files we’d recovered from Lionel Scipio’s office.

“Hey,” I said, coming around the desk. On the screen, I saw multiple windows and progress bars, and realized Leo was running some sort of diagnostic. “How are—”

“Incoming transmission from Lord Scipio,” Cornelius, my virtual assistant, announced. “CEO Monroe has requested an emergency council meeting.”





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I looked at Leo and realized that this was it—we were going to find out if Sadie believed that her room resetting was a coincidence, or if she had somehow figured out what we had done and planned to accuse us. My stomach clenched with nervousness, but I forced my breathing to remain deep and even. There was no room for nerves, only calm, and what I hoped would be one amazing theatrical performance.

“Put him on speakers,” I told Cornelius.

There was a soft pop, and then: “Champion Castell.” Scipio spoke evenly, but with the ever-present curl of arrogance in his voice. “You are required for an emergency council session.”

“By Sadie, yes. But whatever for?” I asked, putting just the right amount of curiosity in my voice.

“Please hold all questions until the other council members are online.”

I shut my mouth and continued to focus on my breathing. Inside my head, I was imagining my reactions to certain things. If she accused me, it would have to be shock and righteous outrage. Maybe make a few comments about her inappropriate behavior with Quess while she was here, just to muddy up the waters. If she reported the reset, I needed to be concerned, but not overly so. Maybe I could be the first to suggest that someone had tampered with it—with both of ours—so it would continue to create confusion. But only if I felt the conversation slipping that way. I had to do this perfectly. One little slipup could have our entire house of lies crashing down on us.

Fingers crossed.

“An emergency council meeting was requested by CEO Monroe, who has reported a malfunction with her virtual assistant. CEO Monroe, is this problem related to the one that Champion Castell reported earlier today?”

For some reason, Scipio’s words went a long way to soothe me. He didn’t jump right to “secret plan to break in,” which made me hope that the others wouldn’t, either.

“It would appear to be,” Sadie said, an undercurrent of anger in her voice. “I arrived back at my quarters to find the entire floor reset. I’ve run a diagnostic and found the same errors in my assistant’s code that I found in Champion Castell’s terminal.”

Relief. Quess had done a good job covering the virus’s tracks when he wrote Sadie’s report for her. I looked over and gave him a grateful smile, earning me one of my own.

“Is this a problem that could affect any of our quarters?” Lacey asked, drawing me back to the matter at hand. We hadn’t informed Lacey what we were up to, but her reaction told me that she was buying the story without me having to prep her at all. That was good.

“That is unclear at this time,” Sadie replied unhappily. “When I first saw the error, I assumed it was a random glitch. It still seems like it should be, except that it happened in my rooms as well. It’s downright odd—almost as if it was engineered to hit multiple areas.”

Alarm skittered through me as she spoke, and I realized that she already had her suspicions. How I handled what happened next was everything. “What are you saying?” I asked, keeping my voice even. “Could this have been… malicious programming?”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Marcus Sage, the head of the Medica, interjected with a wry twist in his words. “Nothing has breached these particular security systems since the Tower’s conception.”

These security systems have never met a “nothing” like me before, I thought to myself. It was a stupid joke, but it made me smile, inwardly at least, which helped relieve some of the tension. Outwardly, I said, “But you cannot deny that something odd is going on. First my quarters, then Sadie’s?”

“CEO Monroe, you will conduct an investigation into the other virtual assistants,” Scipio commanded. “Determine whether this is just a coincidence, or there is a problem with the assistant programs, and update your report accordingly. We will be waiting to see if there is anything the council should be concerned about.”

“I want to add that something odd happened to the desk I was using,” Sadie cut in. “The materials I had inside of it didn’t show up with the rest of my personal belongings, and I have no idea what happened to them.”

Ice washed down my spine, but I kept my mouth shut and waited to see what Scipio would say.

“If the item was damaged during the reset process, protocols dictate that it be recycled after personal property is removed. If the damage was extensive, the system might not have been able to discern between the furniture in question and the personal items inside, thereby destroying everything. You may access the storage room where the items are being kept, but if the desk is no longer in the inventory and your belongings are missing, they were most likely destroyed. I am sorry, CEO Monroe.”

I blew out a thin stream of breath, trying not to vocalize any of the relief I was feeling. It was a stroke of luck that the system had destroyed damaged objects, as I’d hoped. We’d had no way of knowing that for sure until now, but I was so glad we had gambled correctly.

“Thank you, Lord Scipio,” Sadie said. “I will inform the council of my findings as soon as possible.”

“Any objections?” Scipio waited for a span of five or six seconds, and when no one spoke, he finished with, “Thus concludes the emergency meeting of the council. Until next time.”

The hum of the speakers died suddenly, prompting Cornelius to announce, “Lord Scipio has ended the call.”

I leaned on the desk with both hands and tried not to show how shaky my knees were. “So that went well,” I announced into the empty silence of the room. “Good job, everyone.”





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