Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Read More by Bella Forrest
The Girl Who Dared to Think 2: The Girl Who Dared to Stand
Bella Forrest
Copyright © 2017 by Bella Forrest
Nightlight Press
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Read More by Bella Forrest
1
Before the Tower, humanity dreamed of being the first—the first to discover a new land, the first to innovate, the first to unify, the first to destroy. Once something was done, it could never be undone, but it could always be improved upon. Art, writing, math, science… always pushing further and accomplishing more than those who came before them.
Those who came first were remembered in great monoliths that survived eons of war and weather. Some were only written about, their histories and deeds recorded for the world to marvel at. Some did great things. Most did not.
Yet we remembered them anyway—learned about them through books and song. We evolved through them, through their deeds, learning about what was good and what was evil, what was right or wrong, and what worked and what didn’t. In exchange, we held the light of their history in our hands, cupping it tightly to protect and shelter it, carrying it forward through history. Their memories and legacies were preserved for as long as humanity continued to survive.
Before the Tower, we knew our legacy. Now, it seemed the last innovation we had was the only one we remembered anymore—the Tower, and the great AI who guarded it, Scipio.
Who had somehow managed to find me, in spite of my desperate attempts to escape his eye.
I managed to sit down before my legs gave out, my heart still pounding so loudly that I could hear its frantic beat in my eardrums. There was not enough oxygen in the Tower to satisfy my lungs, and yet I still tried to find it.
I stared numbly around the old office I found myself in, my eyes tracing the well-used but dusty furniture, the dim lights, the sealed and shut door. Evidently, nobody knew it was here. I hadn’t known it was here, but then again—why would I? We were nestled beneath Greenery 1, one of the many long farming floors that jutted out from the sides of the Tower, dangling over the river that provided us with power and fresh water. I was mostly unfamiliar with these floors: I hadn’t grown up inside them. But this room was here nonetheless (and decidedly odd, considering it was an office situated directly under an animal farm), buried under the miles of concrete and iron and glass that made up the frame of the Tower—the structure that had both saved and enslaved us nearly three hundred years ago. Although, not many people shared my views on the whole enslaving thing.
Which was only the genius of Scipio, the AI supposedly created to keep us safe. He protected them from so-called dissidents like me.
And here I was—Liana Castell—speaking with him. Scipio. The guy—or thing—that ran the Tower itself. One who would kill me and my friends without compunction because he was the one who ultimately decided who or what was dangerous to the Tower. Frankly, I didn’t think an AI should have that much power.
“Are you all right?”
A surprised laugh escaped me as I looked around, trying to pinpoint the source of the voice. How could I even explain the irony without dissolving into tears or screaming in frustration? How could I express the way I felt like I was drowning in the fear that, once again, I had led Scipio and the Knights to our doorstep, and this time we had nowhere to run?
“Hello?” The voice came again, brimming with concern and confusion, and I recognized it for the trick it was. He was trying to distract me.
“How long do I have?” I asked abruptly, my mind already spinning. Maybe if I moved fast enough, I could give everyone time to run away. I could shout a warning down the vent shaft they were undoubtedly still working their way through. Grey had been ahead of me when I’d turned off to investigate the strange sound I had been hearing. If I shouted loud enough, he would hear. Then maybe I could get outside—to the underside of the greenery—and lead the Knights away. Buy everyone time to find somewhere else to hide.
“Have before what?”
I bit back a growl. “I never imagined Scipio as the sort of AI to play dumb.”
“I’m not playing.”
“So you’re just dumb, then. Interesting.” Okay, maybe mocking the computer that basically controlled every aspect of life inside the Tower wasn’t the best idea, but after losing Cali, a woman who had opened her home to me and my friends in our hour of need, and Roark, the man who had saved me by creating a drug called Paragon to hide my rank, I couldn’t seem to care. Devon Alexander, Champion of the Knights, had killed two people who had actually cared for me the way I liked to imagine my parents would have if they weren’t so devoted to the Tower. And now I was talking to the very thing that had probably ordered Devon’s actions—and could lead him here to finish the job.
“I am not dumb,” the synthesized voice exclaimed indignantly. “And you’re not asking clear questions.”
There was no way to tell if he could see my eye roll, but that didn’t stop me from doing it. In no interaction I’d ever had with him had he expressed himself so… forcefully. His demeanor had always been cold and arrogant, making me think of a prince seated on a frozen throne. Then again, perhaps it was due to the fact that I was merely a Squire, an apprentice to the Knights, and wasn’t worthy enough for him to be polite. Former Squire, rather. Having filed my letter of resignation in the form of breaking my future boyfriend, now future cellmate, out of a gas chamber meant to kill him.
The Scipio I had imagined had always seemed like a no-nonsense sort of AI. So if I was meeting him face-to-face, I would have expected at least the decency of a straight-up conversation. But nope, it seemed Scipio was
just a jerk all around. I shouldn’t have expected anything less.
“Fine,” I breathed, fighting back my frustration. “How long do we have before the Knights show up?” Each word was punctuated by a slight pause, and I hoped that Scipio somehow managed to interpret those as periods, so he could have a double dose of my annoyance.
My mind was already introducing me to worst-case scenarios, the cruelest of which was being forced back into that tiny split room in the Citadel—where the Knights lived and worked—and being forced to watch my friends die one by one, drowning on the poisoned air that was pumped into the room. And me being helpless to stop it.
Then again, that was a nightmare I had been suffering ever since my mentor had first taken me to that room—and made me watch him kill a woman. Nothing could compare to standing helpless as a woman died, her hands clawing at her throat, her eyes begging for help, and being able to do nothing to stop it. Because the expectation was that I would go blindly along with it. Because Scipio decreed it. Because it was what was best for the Tower.
Suddenly a slight hum came up through the chair I was sitting on, and I looked around, searching for the source. But I found nothing in the dimly lit office space.
I waited for Scipio to reply, wondering if he was now just messing with me, and had gone offline in the hopes of keeping me here while the Knights got closer.
I should go—get out of this dusty secret office and back to the others, to warn them. The whole thing felt like a trap. One that Devon had set up just in case we escaped.
In that moment, I felt defeated by the sheer idea of Devon Alexander. He was the Champion of all the Knights. He had fought and defeated challenger after challenger in the Tourney—a month-long competition designed to find the person most capable of leading the Knights. He had thirty years of experience on me. He was fast and strong and had tracked me back to the Sanctum before killing Cali and Roark. So of course I had wandered into his delightful little trap.
I lurched up and moved toward the ventilation shaft, intent on leaving as quickly as possible, but Scipio’s voice brought me up short.
“I’ve searched my data banks for any records of a Knight, and it says here that they were lesser forms of nobility who served monarchs as warriors in the Middle Ages. So, unless we have somehow traveled back in time—a prospect that I would remind you is completely preposterous—then I imagine they aren’t coming, considering that feudal style of government went extinct over a thousand years ago.”
The tempestuous storm of emotions churning in my stomach suddenly grew very quiet, and I stilled, listening to not only his words, but the smug way in which he’d delivered them. Like he’d caught a child pretending, or in the midst of some poorly conceived lie.
He had, in a sense. But he wasn’t acting smug because of that. He was acting smug because he thought I was saying something stupid. I was certain Scipio held a certain amount of disdain for me; my failure as a productive citizen of the Tower became evident every time the number on my wrist tracked downward. But for him to be dismissive of my intelligence by pretending he had no idea what a Knight could be was beneath him. He knew I was smart, so why even pretend?
Something was off about him—and I needed to know what it was. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it beckoned to me. I had always had a desire to understand, to know things, and this time was no different. It held me fast, begging me to speak, to ask, and before I could stop myself, I did.
“You don’t know what a Knight is?”
The room practically bristled with irritation when he answered, his voice strong and rich. “I just told you. They are—”
“No,” I interrupted. His reaction had been automatic, with no time to manufacture a lie. Or, at least, I hoped so. In fact, I knew next to nothing about how fast the great computer could respond to things. But something inside me told me that it was genuine, which made me reconsider how I phrased the question. I restructured it into one I hoped would shed more light on the oddity of his behavior. “Let me try it like this: do you know what a Knight is, specifically in context of the Tower?”
“In context of the Tower? Um… No. Not really. Why? Should I? What are they? Who are they? Do they wear heavy metal armor?”
My eyes widened at the rapid-fire questions coming at me, and I found myself baffled by the curiosity and excitement in his voice. It sounded genuine. As genuine as an AI could get, I supposed—but still, it was there, and right behind it, a whole slew of other questions.
Which led to my own questions. Why would Scipio be curious about the Knights? How could he not know about them? He dispatched orders to them, for crying out loud. And also, what was he even doing down here? He was supposed to be contained inside the Core, able to directly interact with us through our nets, but with no direct way of interacting with departmental computers outside of it. Supposedly none of the other departmental computers could handle the massive load of data that made him up.
And then there was this office, hidden away underneath the Tower. The door that had once functioned was now welded shut, making the vents in the room the only way in or out. Dust covered everything in the room, from the flat surfaces, like the shelves and desk and small table, to the two large sofas, and even the carpets. My footprints on the blue fabric were the only sign that anyone had been down here in a very long time.
Why would Scipio be in an abandoned office? Why here, under Greenery 1, where there was nobody? Except for me and my friends. The answers suggested that this was a trap, but even that didn’t make any sense. How would Scipio or Devon have known we would be here? As far as I knew, this place didn’t even seem to exist in the eyes of the Tower. It had been sealed away.
“What is this place?” I asked, finally settling on one of the millions of questions flying through my brain.
“Oh, this is my home. But it was once the office of my creator, Lionel Scipio, for whom I am named. But he’s gone now. He’s been gone for, oh, I’m not even sure how long.” Scipio’s voice was wistful and resentful, and I immediately empathized with him, the pain of Roark and Cali’s deaths fresh in my mind and heart.
He had said “Lionel Scipio,” and it made sense to a point. The man had been the mind behind the Tower, and had brought together the best and brightest of the age to help him make his Tower a reality. Those minds later went on to be the Founders of each department and created the first council. There were several history classes on each of them that I’d had to take when I was younger, but most had been devoted to the visionary behind the Tower. How he had made his dream of a place that would survive the End a reality. How he had spent his life devoted to making that place as ecologically sound as possible, so that humanity could continue to survive, safe from the devastated world outside. How he had created Scipio, a computer that would work effortlessly to avert disaster and keep us safe. How we all owed our lives to him and his creation.
We never talked about the nuclear Armageddon that had occurred three hundred years ago. Or how it came to pass. Or how Lionel had seemed to know it was coming in time for him to finish the Tower before it happened—which was one of my biggest pet peeves.
We knew so little of the world before. There were stories, but the history was short and brief: mankind failed, and the Tower was the ark in which we all hoped to survive the endless radiation that kept us trapped in here.
The only thing that really changed about the Tower was the land around it. Images of the outside world as it had been before confirmed that something had happened outside the walls. Stories were told of gray earth, gray clouds and gray ash that reportedly hadn’t stopped falling for decades. The river had been so contaminated that minute doses of radiation managed to avoid getting filtered out, killing many of the young and elderly alike. Then the atmosphere had finally failed, due to the damage caused over centuries of neglect and abuse, and things changed again.
The environment outside had shifted dramatically in the opposite direction. When humanity sealed itself inside c
enturies before, much of our power was generated by the solar panels covering the walls of the Tower and quite often needed repairs over time. Repairing the panels had invariably carried a death sentence, even at night. Yet the citizens did their duty, and died for the cause of the Tower.
And then that changed, too. The heat grew less and less intense, and soon fixing the panels only resulted in second- or third-degree burns, and then one day, no burns at all. It was a little less than two decades ago that we were able to step outside without protection. By that point, the radiation levels had fallen, especially higher up on the Tower, and we were able to emerge without the white protective suits.
Without the AI Lionel had created, none of this would have been possible, as the machines that kept us alive performed constant checks on the world outside and transmitted the results to Scipio, who would then recommend changes to help bolster the Tower’s defenses and preserve as much life as possible if things went wrong. He was not without checks in that regard; each department had its own computers that would investigate and verify Scipio’s findings in a matter of seconds. But without him and his checks and balances, we would all die via starvation or suffocation—or we’d be making a mad dash over the irradiated sand outside, trying to find a place to hide.
But that did nothing to help me understand what was happening here. I bit my lip, trying to find some logical explanation to explain this Scipio. This one who experienced sadness—an emotion that I would never have thought to hear from the cold and arrogant voice that had always transmitted to my net.