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

She barely had a chance to register my presence before the bullet caught her in the center of her forehead. The force of it threw her back against the wall, and I was up and moving before she had even started sliding down it. I wanted to stare, to process what I had just done to another human being without giving them the decency of a warning or a fair fight, but there were two big problems with that. First, they didn’t deserve a fair fight, and second, the strange legacy memory was fully in control.

I’d had almost nothing to do with it. I had been shocked when I felt myself pulling the trigger.

I knew that should frighten me, but I felt like I could control it, as long as I didn’t try to fight it. The goal was now made simple: kill the other legacies, except for Baldy, before they could net anyone that we were here. Baldy, I wanted alive, to see what I could get out of him. But the rest had to die. Then we would get Jasper and Rose and the files, reset the room, and get the heck out of here.

I crossed the room in three short steps and emerged into the hall. Sure enough, a large man with cropped blond hair was staring at Claire’s slumped form with confusion and alarm. I pointed the gun at him and squeezed the trigger twice, and he jerked as the bullets hit him on the left side of his chest, within an inch of each other. I knew I had hit him in the heart. Blood spurted, hitting the wall, but the net kept me strangely calm.

I motioned for Leo to follow, and then moved down the hall. “Claire?” Baldy called from up ahead in the office, a worried note in his voice. “What was that?”

The hall was curved, but the distance between the two rooms was short, and as I swung into view, I saw a man, blond as well, but lankier and shorter than Callum, leaning on the doorframe. His eyes widened when he saw me coming, and he started fumbling at his belt. Some cruel part of the legacy net let him struggle even as I closed the distance between us—or maybe it was wise, I wasn’t sure—but as soon as he began to pull the familiar shape of the pulse shield out of its holster, I squeezed the trigger.

The bullet exploded from the end of the gun in a flash of fire, and I heard the wet sound of it striking a moment before the back of his skull exploded all over the wall and doorframe.

“Sam!” Baldy shouted, his voice suddenly panicked. “We’re under attack! Weapons!”

My hand went up behind me, and I realized that the legacy net was forcing me to sign to Leo that he should go right while I went left. I felt him grab my hand, pulling me to a stop, and realized that he wanted me to let him go first. But the net wasn’t allowing it, and I twisted my wrist free and plunged through the doorway, arms and gun extended in front of me.

Something dark and gray raced up a set of stairs in the corner of the room that led to the dais, and I homed in on it, shooting the person twice in the back before I consciously ascertained that it wasn’t Baldy. His hair was way too long.

Another shot sounded to my right, completely unexpected, and I looked over to see Leo standing at the threshold, his gun pointed at a woman who had been hiding in the corner. I saw the pulse shield in her hand and realized that she had been about to shoot me with it. Leo had stopped her. His face was grim as he turned his focus back to the desk, and the legacy net echoed the movement.

It was already forcing me forward, racing toward the desk. Everyone was dead except for Baldy, but if he managed to net someone and let them know we were here before I got to him… I ducked as he swung up from where he had been hiding, his hand filled with a white pulse shield. I dove low, even as Leo shot from behind me. The bullet caught Baldy in the shoulder, flinging his arm up and back, and he cried out in pain and then disappeared behind the desk as he fell.

I was up and around it in three seconds, horrified at the thought that he could already be netting someone. Sure enough, he had his wrist up, and his flat, circular indicator was glowing, telling me that he’d touched it. He looked up at me with alarm as I slid to a knee beside him.

Reaching out, I grabbed a fistful of his uniform and hauled him up, my gun pointed right at his head. It was in my heart to squeeze the trigger right then and there; after all, he’d played a part in so much death in the Tower. And the personality in the net that was guiding my actions urged me to do just that. But even as my finger started to squeeze the trigger, I beat it back, forcing the tension in my finger to relax.

I drew the gun back, and a vicious hatred filled his eyes. “You!” he spat.

“Me,” I agreed, and then slammed the butt of the gun down against his temple, feeling the blow all the way down to my hip. There was a sharp crack, and he went limp. Fingers at his neck told me that he was still alive, though, and I felt a grim sense of satisfaction.

It was quickly replaced by a sense of weakness as the net stopped buzzing, the weird memory/personality sensation dissipating. I sagged, suddenly shaky from the onslaught of adrenaline, and took a moment to catch my breath.

As I did, I realized that I had just killed four people in quick succession.

And we didn’t have a moment to waste. We had a minute—maybe two—to cover their deaths up before the system confirmed that they had died and the alarms went off. If we could disable their nets before that, then they wouldn’t show up as alive or dead, because the net would be too damaged to transmit their life signs and the system wouldn’t have confirmation one way or the other. That meant cutting or burning them out, and one was far faster than the other.

“Leo?” I said, straightening up and switching the gun to my other hand so I could draw my baton.

I wasn’t surprised to find him right there next to me, brown eyes brimming with concern. “You okay?” he asked.

I nodded and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, suddenly remembering the way the man’s head had exploded when I shot him but managing to hold it together despite my churning stomach. “Yeah, but we have to hurry. I need you to remove Baldy’s net so they can’t track him, and he can’t net anyone. I’m going to fry the other ones before the system can register they are dead. How long until Jasper and Rose are downloaded?”

He turned and looked at the monitor, and I saw a flashing blue status bar on the screen, two-thirds of the way full. “Four minutes,” he replied. “I’ll get to work on this guy. You get the others. We’ll move the bodies to the emergency exit and hide them there.”

I nodded, recognizing the wisdom in his words. Each department lead’s apartment had an emergency escape route in case the Tower fell, maximizing the opportunity for some humans to survive, and utilizing Sadie’s was the only way for us to get out undetected, as there were no sensors inside them. I knew from the reset of my own quarters that Sadie’s personal items would be sorted out—which was why I was planning to destroy the desk, to cover the fact that I had stolen her files—so it stood to reason the bodies would remain as well. We had to remove them, or Sadie would find them when she got back and know something had gone down. Hiding them upstairs, in the escape tunnel, was the best thing we could do until we could deal with them. Not to mention, we could probably leave them there indefinitely. I doubted Sadie used her escape tunnel, so she wouldn’t think to look inside it for some time.

As long as we took care of the nets first. I slid the bag over my shoulder and handed it to Leo. Then I moved to the first body—the woman in the corner—flipped her over, charged my baton, placed the tip at the back of her neck, and expended the electrical charge. Her body flopped like a fish for several seconds as I held it there, and I cringed against the horrific feeling it produced.

I relaxed slightly when it was over, but the feeling was brief. I turned to the next one.

One down, I thought as I approached it with grim purpose. Three more to go.





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