“What the—” Dylan shouted as she stumbled, clearly shaken from her short fall. But she cut off when she saw me. “Liana?”
The chair I was sitting in swiveled, so Tony twisted my body around to face her, smiled, and said, “More or less. I’m in control for the drive, but Liana’s here too.”
She blinked her blue eyes at me several times, and then pressed a fist to her forehead, sighing heavily. “This AI stuff is really weird,” she finally said.
Tell me about it, I thought, wishing I could share my own experience with her.
“Liana said, ‘Tell me about it,’ which I think is rude, considering how helpful I have been!” Tony retorted, turning back to the windows to correct our course.
“I’m sure she doesn’t like sharing her body with you,” Rose said. “And you should be mindful of that. Now, tell us what happened!”
“And how you got a ball that can fly,” Dylan added wryly.
“You guys are going to love this,” Tony announced, and I could tell from his thoughts that he intended to inform them of everything we had experienced since we had jumped. “So, after I disconnected the lines, Liana was all like ‘Aaaaah, we’re going to die,’ and I was like, ‘Naw, girl, we got this.’ We fell—”
If I had had control over my own mouth, I would’ve shut him up. Not because I didn’t want to tell the others what had happened, but because I knew Tony was about to over-embellish the story.
But since I couldn’t stop him, I did my best to distract him with corrections whenever the opportunity presented itself.
22
“So, let me get this straight,” Dylan began as soon as Tony had finished his explanation. I wasn’t surprised. Tony had gone above and beyond, crafting the adventure to be more fraught with action and adventure then it actually was, and I had no doubt that Dylan could smell something fishy in the air. “You rappelled down the Tower face at unimaginable speeds?”
“Right,” Tony said with a nod, flicking a switch and repositioning the pod as it continued to head up, fighting the pull of gravity. We had long since passed Greenery 9, but I had told Tony to ignore it and head higher, to Greenery 13. The only reason we had been angling toward Greenery 9 was that it was on level 85, which would’ve given us access to the bridges. It had been the best option for us at the time, considering we had to climb nearly seventy-five stories to get there. Adding another fifty would’ve just been insanity at that point and added another two or three hours to our trip.
But now that we had the pod as an option, I wanted to get to the next one up, as Greenery 13 was on level 125—the starting level of the Attic. To me, it made the most sense tactically. Not only were those levels mostly deserted during normal Tower operation—meaning they should definitely be deserted now—but if I could just get to the right storage room, I could use the escape hatch into my quarters to get in and avoid the Citadel altogether.
“And you got into Lionel Scipio’s secret office under the Menagerie, and found a holograph of him, and it gave you orders for replacing Scipio with the backup and a new full neural clone to make a stronger Scipio.”
“Check and check,” Tony said, scanning the multitude of dials and digital displays and pausing on a blue one. He leaned forward and tapped the blue glowing panel, and suddenly I felt a surge of urgency coming from Tony. “No more questions,” he said abruptly, and sent me a picture of us running out of fuel faster than he had anticipated. “Are you strapped into the chair?”
“Yes,” Dylan replied, suddenly nervous. “Rose is, too. What’s going on?”
Tony was opening my mouth to tell her when the entire pod wobbled, and then we were falling. A moment later the thruster caught again, and we were slammed into our seats and hurtling upward.
“Hold on!” Tony shouted, grabbing on to the controls and shoving the rudder forward, giving it more juice. But the fuel reserves were almost depleted, and before I could even ask why, he sent me a picture of how much weight we were hauling with Rose, as well as several complicated algebraic and geometrical questions that I didn’t fully comprehend but got the gist of.
Gravity had already been weighing us down due to the design of the pod, and Rose was only making it worse. Compensating for both those things had started eating our fuel at a catastrophic rate.
And Tony had missed it. But whatever savage satisfaction I had that the fragment wasn’t as perfect as he made himself out to be was dwarfed by the colossal terror that we were going to die.
Suddenly my great idea to land on Greenery 13 didn’t seem so great anymore.
I agree, Tony thought sourly as he started to pull away from the Tower, creating some distance for a landing. I made a mistake by not taking Rose’s weight into account! Now hold on, this is going to get rough!
Through the window on the door, I could see the bright brown of the side of Greenery 13’s farming floor shooting past, and then we were over it, and Tony was rotating the pod and turning us away from the Tower to angle for a landing across the roof. The trajectory we were on gave us at least two hundred yards of space to land on, but even as Tony began yanking back on the stick to slow us down, I could tell we wouldn’t need that much. Because the fuel reserve was almost dry.
As if my thoughts lent power to action, the roar of the thrusters behind us suddenly cut out again. For several seconds, we continued to glide forward, as if we hadn’t just lost our only source of propulsion, and then we slammed down on the greenery arm.
Tony grabbed on to the harness as we were suddenly thrown to the right side of the escape pod, bouncing once, twice, then a third time, and then rolling through the air. My stomach lurched, and I could tell Tony was overwhelmed by the sensations my body was experiencing, because the AI quickly receded into the back of my mind, giving me control (at the worst possible moment, I might add), and I felt, more than saw, the world spinning all around me. In my head, I could see us careening off the side of the greenery—and dropping to our deaths.
There was a loud scraping sound as we hit for the fourth and final time, and I squeezed my eyes shut as sparks exploded from somewhere within the walls. I could vaguely hear Dylan shouting something, but it was mostly inaudible due to the terrible screeching sound that was now surrounding us as we slid across the greenery roof.
When the pod finally came to a jerky stop, I was certain it meant that we had slid right to the edge. It felt like we had used up every bit of space the farming floor had to offer, and that any second, I would feel gravity pull us downward as the pod plummeted to the Wastes below. The certainty was ice under my skin, dread in my heart.
“Liana?” Dylan groaned from behind me, coughing. I heard something metallic shift, and there was a sharp jolt underneath us that jerked me in my seat.
“Don’t move,” I said, my eyes popping wide open. If there was a jolt underneath me, then that meant that we had stopped on the greenery’s roof—and were about to crash right through it, the weight of the pod and the damage it had caused to the glass undoubtedly making the support struts bend and break. The slightest misstep would send us all falling through.
I looked out the window and saw that we were lying on our left side. A quick glance down showed me a glimpse of darkness framed by shattered bits of brown glass, confirming my theory.
“We have to get out of here without jostling the pod too much,” I said softly, slowly shifting my position in the seat and harness to reach up to the door. “We broke the glass over the greenery.”
Dylan cursed, but I ignored it as I carefully stretched my weight forward, bracing it all on my hip and keeping the lower half of my body as still as possible. My fingertips brushed the handle of the door, and I carefully wrapped my hand around it, pulled down, and then slowly started pushing it back, trying to keep as still as possible.
It was halfway open when it hit something. I froze, but the hit was enough to jostle the pod slightly. There was a groaning sound beneath us, and I held my breath and closed my eyes, praying to whatever god was
listening that the panes and supports holding us didn’t snap.
For several heartbeats, the entire pod quivered—and my stomach clenched, the image of us dropping five stories to the greenery below carving its way across my mind. But when no drop came, my eyes snapped open, and I let out my breath.
“Okay, Dylan,” I said shakily, craning my neck to look at the girl. “You go first. Use your lashes to pull yourself to the hole, and then crawl out carefully. Try really hard not to shake the pod.” I wanted Dylan to go first because of the balance in the pod. If I went first, it could tip too far back toward Rose and Dylan, and likely send them crashing to the floor below. We needed less weight in the back before I could move.
But Dylan, being Dylan, had to choose right then and there to pick a fight about the order.
She pressed her lips together, a flash sparking in her blue eyes. “You should go first,” she said, and I rolled my eyes. I did not need her doing this hero schtick right now; my reason for wanting her to go first wasn’t based on anything other than our mutual survival. “You know the most about what’s going on. You have to be the one to carry on, get to the Citadel, and—”
I groaned as theatrically as I dared and gave her a bored look. “Rose is four hundred and fifty pounds of awesome, and you’re a hundred and eighty, unless I miss my guess.”
Her eyes narrowed to slits. “One seventy.”
“Fine, whatever,” I snapped, not really caring if she weighed a hundred and seventy tons at this moment. She was being bullish and missing the point. “If I move before you’re out, the entire pod is going to shift. I can’t get Rose to go first, because when she makes for the door, the glass below us will probably buckle and break. So that leaves you, sweetheart, like it or not. Think of it as going up to make sure we’re not wandering into a trap.”
Dylan blinked at me, a surprised smile forming on her face. “Sweetheart?” she asked, and it was my turn to blink, suddenly confused. I hadn’t intended to call her sweetheart, or anything, really. In my head, I had intended to say, “So that leaves you, like it or not.” Bewildered, I looked at her, and then felt a high-pitched giggle in the back of my mind.
A flash of anger washed over me.
“Tony!” I snarled, looking away from her. “Is this really the time for practical jokes?”
I’m sorry, he replied, but his voice was filled with mirth, telling me he wasn’t actually contrite. You were just all intense and gruff, and I couldn’t help it!
I groaned again, and to my surprise, I heard Dylan start to chuckle. “Even without the ‘sweetheart,’ you still have a point,” she announced. I looked down to find her unhooking her harness. Rose was carefully holding an arm across the woman to keep her from falling farther to the side when the harness came off.
Dylan gingerly planted a foot on Rose’s leg, shrugged her shoulders from the straps, and then pulled a lash end out and started spinning it up in her hand. She flicked her wrist, and a second later I heard the tink of it hitting. A second one followed, and Dylan expelled a deep breath, and then slowly began reeling herself up, carefully navigating around the pilot’s chair as she did so.
I tried not to hold my breath as she painstakingly climbed out of the hole, doing her best not to rattle or shift the pod, but at several points, the area beneath us creaked and groaned as she moved, making me clutch at my harness in terror.
As soon as her legs were clear, there was another groan, followed by a series of thumps and a small squeak. Then silence, telling me she had gotten off the pod.
“I’m clear,” she called a second later, confirming my suspicions.
“Awesome,” I called, feeling slightly breathless and lightheaded from the experience. I pushed it aside and started shrugging out of my harness, bracing my weight completely on one hip. “Do you think you’re going to be able to make it?” I casually asked Rose while I worked.
Her purple eyes stared at me for a second, and then she nodded slowly. “I believe so, but as soon as I move, this thing will break through. I will have to be fast, and there is a chance I might miss. My safety is irrelevant, however. You must go first.”
I gave her a sheepish smile as I carefully pulled a lash end from my sleeve. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Rose, but I was planning to. You’re in an armored death machine; if anyone can survive the fall, it’s you.”
She cocked her head at me, and then nodded. “A fair point, I guess,” she replied uncertainly. “I still would much prefer not to fall.”
“Me too,” I said, spinning the line and looking away to throw it. “So let’s both of us promise, here and now, not to. Besides, I’m certain that you can make it.”
The end hit just to the left of the door, and I quickly threw the second one, aiming for the door itself, on the opposite side of the gap. It connected, and I used the hand controls to retract the small bit of excess line I had created for the throw, and then began giving my weight over to it, letting it pull me up.
The pod shifted slightly, rolling some toward Rose’s side, but I didn’t stop, carefully pulling my legs out from under the dashboard and lightly stepping on the arm of the seat. The pod stopped moving a second later with a slight groan, but I was already reaching for the edge of the door, grabbing it, pulling myself up, and dragging myself out. There was another long groan beneath me, making my heart beat furiously, and I sped up my actions, knowing that if the pod started to fall, I needed to be clear of the door so Rose could escape. Getting my legs under me was the trickiest part, as the entire pod was beginning to shake, but as soon as they were under me, I carefully stepped over the sheared-off edge of the pod’s hull, which was smoking slightly, and leapt toward the crimson figure standing a few feet away.
Dylan caught me before I could stumble, and I turned around, terrified that I had dislodged the entire pod in my haste to get off of it.
It was moving, the entire thing wobbling back and forth. There was a tinkle as more glass shattered, and Dylan and I danced back a few steps as cracks began to snake toward us.
“Rose!” I shouted, worried that she was waiting for me to give her the all-clear.
I was worrying needlessly, though, because even as her name left my lips, I saw her pulling herself through the door. The pod shook under her weight, and then dropped several inches, with a sickening shriek of rending metal. Rose ignored it all as she lifted her legs out, balancing only on her arms. She placed a foot against the hull and was carefully starting to shift her weight onto it when the pod dropped again, and then began to rock to one side, rolling. Rose’s response was even faster, and she quickly sprang up off the only foot she had planted, throwing herself from the pod and into the air toward us.
She landed hard, the glass cracking under her weight, but she quickly caught her balance and moved off the crack before she went crashing through.
The pod, however, was not as lucky, and with a final creaking groan and the tinkle of broken glass, it dropped through the rest of the roof, into the darkness below. I prayed it wouldn’t hurt anyone but couldn’t stick around to find out. My friends needed saving, and I needed to get to Leo to tell him everything that was going on.
“Let’s go,” I said to the others, turning away from the hole and toward the face of the Tower. “We need to get moving.”
23
While I could’ve used Lionel’s command code to open the door to the shell, I let Dylan and Rose do it manually as I kept an eye on the area around us. I had a feeling that at any second, the Hands were going to be making their way up to the hole, whether it was to escape, or to figure out who had just crashed through their ceiling. And I didn’t want to be there when they arrived.
The door opened easily under their ministrations, giving a creaking, metallic noise that had me turning and shouldering the plasma rifle, just in case something was waiting on the other side. As before, water began splattering out across the glass and through the door the moment it was open. The outer shell was still flooding but was not fully flo
oded. And even though the sun was still shining down brightly from overhead, the darkness inside already seemed imposing. I pulled my hand light from one of the bags on Rose’s back, wrapped the strap around my forearm, and clicked it on. Dylan followed suit, and after a moment’s deliberation, I handed her the handgun and extra clip, wanting her to have a way to defend herself that didn’t require hand-to-hand combat.
“In case you need it,” I told her when she looked up at me in surprise.
She favored me with a lopsided smile. “Show me again how to use it,” she said, and I quickly ran her through the basics: shooting, ejecting the magazine, clearing the chamber. She seemed nervous, especially when I told her exactly what a bullet could do, but it was an apprehension born from the realization that she held someone’s life in her hands when she pointed it at them.
Regardless, I knew she could use it responsibly.
She put the safety on under my watchful eye and then tucked the gun into a pocket on her hip. “I’m in front, okay?”
“Okay,” I replied, swallowing back some of the resentment that she was still following that ridiculous rule. I knew it wouldn’t matter what order we were in if the sentinels found us—they’d kill us all the same way. But I pushed the thought aside and focused on a more relevant question. “Do you know where we’re going?”
“We just need to get to the Citadel, right?” she asked, and then went on without waiting to hear my response. “The closest hatch to the Attic should be maybe three hundred yards from here.”
I hesitated, unsure whether accessing the Citadel was the best idea. We had no idea what the internal situation was like, and since Scipio had used my position as Champion and my bogus crimes against him to declare the department irrevocably contaminated, we could be walking into a civil war—between those trying to win back Scipio’s favor, and those who still believed in me.