The Girl Who Dared to Think 2: The Girl Who Dared to Stand (The Girl Who Dared #2)(6)

“I don’t understand why you didn’t just say no in the first place,” Quess protested. “I mean, we are talking about two members of the council who are trying to institute a regime change in another department. And having the leaders of other departments assassinated for good measure. We should not be involved.”

“I know that,” I replied, with more patience than I felt. I glanced at Eric, but he was in no shape to back me up and confirm that I had been pretty upset after the meeting. “I did give this whole mess a lot of thought, even before it became a mess. Getting us involved in some sort of shadow war that seems to have been raging since the beginning—”

“The beginning?” Maddox asked, cocking one dark eyebrow. “What are you talking about?”

“You missed a lot, Maddox.” It was Grey’s voice, but I knew it was Leo speaking. “Apparently Devon is part of a family that has been working to subvert Scipio and take control of the Tower. He was allied with someone in the IT department—”

“We don’t know that,” I interjected softly, and he looked at me, brown eyes widening in surprise. “Just because those other two Inquisitors were part of IT doesn’t mean that whoever they are working for is. If these are family units, starting from the beginning, it makes sense that they would plant future generations in other departments, as they needed to.”

Silence met my statement, and I felt the weight of the truth I had been carrying for the past twenty-four hours settle in on them.

“Liana, what was the deal you made with them?” Zoe asked carefully.

“Supposedly, they’d be able to exonerate Le—” I caught myself, remembering that they weren’t ready for that particular truth bomb yet, and continued on quickly, glossing over my mistake. “Grey and me, and integrate all of you back into the Tower.”

“All of us?” Quess asked. “Back in the Tower? And what if we don’t want to go?”

I looked at him and shook my head. “Again, I didn’t plan to kill Devon today. I meant to ask you guys about everything first. It just—” I glanced at Leo and back at Quess, my fingers itching to touch my neck again, if only to confirm that Devon’s fingers weren’t still there. “—happened,” I finished lamely. “They said they’d take his death as acceptance of their proposal, so I’m hoping all of this means that they’re putting their plan in motion. Although, what concerns me more is how they knew to grab all of us. And whether Tian is okay…”

And whether Grey was okay, but that was a question I would ask Leo personally. And one that I was sure the AI would get sick of.

“We never made it back to Sanctum,” Zoe said, indicating herself and Eric. “After we hurt Maddox, we were heading back, but were jumped from behind.”

“I got one of them,” Eric said quietly, and Zoe smiled down at where he was still lying, his head in her lap. He’d grown less panicked and calmer under her care, but I could tell he was still feeling the tight confines of the space, and empathized with him. “Not dead, but I definitely cleaned his clock.”

“Good for you,” I replied. “Quess? What happened with you and Maddox?”

“Well, Leo led me to a room, and I administered the counter drug to the sedative they had given Doxy. We made it out, and were just over the bridge and into the shell when they grabbed us. How did they know how to find us?”

“Or who we even were?” Maddox asked on the tail of Quess’s question.

“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. I tried to recall whether they had touched me at all during that first meeting—perhaps they had slipped a locator on me without my knowing, or used some sort of radioactive isotope like Devon had. But there was nothing that stood out. “I suppose they could’ve followed us, but Eric and I were so careful…”

“What about Mercury?” Zoe asked, looking around. “He brokered the whole deal, after all. He certainly could’ve told them our new net IDs. If they knew who we were pretending to be, it would be a lot easier to track us.”

I frowned. We’d only just gotten new nets—stolen directly from the IT department. Mercury, along with my brother, Alex, had been responsible for the plan to get us in. It seemed counterproductive of him to go to such great lengths, only to turn around and sell our net information to Lacey, but it was a theory. He had wanted me to make a deal with them, after all. He knew, better than we all did, that being integrated back into the Tower gave us a better chance of replicating Paragon—the only chance he had of hiding his failing rank and escaping the eye of the Tower. There was a very real chance he would’ve sold us out, if only to force my hand.

And if he had, they knew where Tian was, too.

An icy wash of fear and anger raced down my spine, and I balled my fists. If they harmed one hair on her head, I wouldn’t wait for them to exonerate me. I’d be adding their murders on top of Devon’s, and combining it with the laundry list of charges the Tower had likely stacked against me. Even though Lacey had told me in the hall she was upholding her end of the deal, I didn’t like the idea of anyone going after Tian when she was alone and defenseless.

I realized I was being overprotective and emotional, but I didn’t care; Tian was perhaps the brightest part of my life, next to Grey, and even though I had known her for only a short time, I’d come to care for her deeply. Couple that with the fact that she was a young girl, incredibly child-like and na?ve, and add my protective instincts, and, well… it didn’t matter how much I’d liked Lacey before.