The Girl Who Dared to Think 7: The Girl Who Dared to Fight

The Girl Who Dared to Think 7: The Girl Who Dared to Fight

Bella Forrest




1





Before the Tower, humanity trusted much of its power to individuals. Most people let others make decisions on their behalf and believed their leaders would keep everyone’s best interests in mind. They tried to be careful about who they gave their power to, but often chose badly. It took time and experience for them to learn whom they could and could not trust, and even then, it didn’t always work.

So humanity adapted, creating laws that people hoped would protect them from those who would take advantage, or who sought power over and above anything else.

But systems could be dismantled. The people who were given power could be corrupted by it. And more often than not, those who sought power and had only their own self-interests at heart rose to the top.

After the move to the Tower, humanity expected that to change. When the very survival of our race required us to put aside the petty disagreements of the past and work together, we assumed that the corruption would fade—that our leaders would work with our collective survival in mind. Hell, we even created an AI, which was supposed to remain impartial and intervene in cases where our leaders weren’t acting within the best interests of the Tower.

How silly it was for us to expect that the never-ending need to consume and control would be put to rest with the ashes of our past mistakes. How arrogant to assume that Scipio would protect us forever.

And how stupid I was, for thinking I had actually succeeded in uncovering and stopping those corrupted individuals.

I stared at Marcus Sage for what felt like an eternity, memorizing the weathered lines of his elderly face and trying to figure out how I could’ve missed the fact that the head of the Medica was involved in a plot to control Scipio. Because I didn’t think there had been a single shred of evidence to indicate that the ancient man was involved. Not in the files we had stolen, nor in the DNA evidence we’d collected. Everything had pointed to CEO Sadie Monroe and a retired Knight named Jathem Dreyfuss being the heads of an inter-generational organization—members of which were called legacies—who were hellbent on controlling Scipio. As head of the Core, which housed Scipio, Sadie had access to Scipio’s code—which we knew she’d been manipulating, following the examples of her predecessors. And her files revealed that she had planted members of their group in other departments, to help with her plans.

As for Dreyfuss, DNA evidence showed that he was the father of many (if not all) members of their small army. He’d kidnapped women from the Tower over the years, impregnated them over and over until their bodies failed them, and then tossed them aside to start the process all over again. Their children had been indoctrinated into the legacy ideology. The most recent batch of mothers hadn’t been with any of the legacies we’d taken. And now that Lacey had killed Dreyfuss, I wondered whether we would ever find them at all.

But it was all irrelevant now, because even though all the evidence had pointed to them, and them alone, I had clearly missed something important. Despite the fact that we had managed to round up every single legacy and put them in cells where they belonged, one had managed to escape our grasp. Even with all the time and effort we had put into capturing them without tipping our hand, we had failed.

A strange sort of madness gripped me as it sank in that I was trapped in the Council Room with Marcus Sage, the man who had fooled me, the man who currently had a gun pointed at me. I knew I was in danger—knew he could shoot me at any time, like he had Praetor Strum and Engineer Lacey Green, the heads of the Water Treatment and the Mechanics Departments. But he hadn’t yet.

His mistake. I didn’t quite know how I was going to get out of this, but if Sage was the last legacy standing, then I had no intention of letting him out of here alive. But that meant having a plan.

I began cataloguing everything in the room, trying to figure out what I had available to me, to try to turn the tables on him. Strum was definitely dead, given the hole in his head and the brain matter on the wall behind him, but Lacey might not be. Still, she was somewhere behind her desk; I couldn’t just get over to her, check her condition, and see what she had by way of an escape plan. The woman was downright paranoid, and was bound to have something. I had my gun, but it was in my pocket, and I couldn’t get to it without Sage and Scipio noticing.

I had already uploaded Jasper, one of the fragment AIs that had made up a part of Scipio’s decision-making process, into the terminal, to testify against Sadie and Plancett. I knew he would help me if he could, but a quick glance at the dais where the holograms had been standing showed the ghostly image of Jasper being physically restrained by Scipio. The great AI effortlessly held him by the throat, in spite of Jasper’s struggles. Scipio looked empty, his expression devoid of almost any emotion, and he was watching Sage intently, as if awaiting the next order.

My stomach churned at seeing the AI so vacant of anything resembling life, and I turned back to Sage, swallowing. Jasper couldn’t help me right now, but maybe someone else could. I had brought another fragment AI with me—Rose. She’d been extensively damaged by the torture she’d been subjugated to over the years, but her erratic emotional state might be enough to overwhelm Scipio, if I could just figure out how to plug her in. Her hard drive was on the table next to the terminal, only a few feet away. If I could only get close enough to it to plug it in…

A dry chuckle dragged my attention back to Sage. “I can see those plans of escape racing a mile a minute through your head, Champion Castell. Don’t worry, I don’t plan to kill you yet, and we have a little time. In fact, as you’re one of the first people to get this close to me in almost three hundred years, I have some questions, and I am certain you do as well! Let it not be said I don’t play fair. I’ll answer yours, if you’ll answer mine.”

Fear raced through me at how calm and seemingly in control he was. Granted, he had a gun. But so did I. Mine, unfortunately, was still in the pocket of my uniform. And with Sage’s and Scipio’s eyes on me, I couldn’t go for it. But that didn’t explain all of his confidence. He was still trapped with me, and I with him. Sure, he had control of Scipio, but why had he sealed us inside this room together? He couldn’t call anyone for help, could he? We’d collected all of his people—there was no one left for that. Yes, he could kill me, but Dylan and my friends would figure out what had happened and go after him.

What was he planning?

I suddenly wished I could net my friends right now. Maddox, Quess, Tian, Zoe, Eric, and Leo/Grey, my human and AI boyfriends, were all in the Citadel, some eighty stories up, overseeing the final transfer of the legacy prisoners they had collected only a few minutes ago. If they could somehow hack into the Council Room…

I put it out of my mind; they couldn’t help me, so I had to help myself, and Rose was the best option. She might be emotionally damaged, but she was the only thing within reach that could distract Scipio so I could maybe get the drop on Sage.