The Girl Who Dared to Think 2: The Girl Who Dared to Stand (The Girl Who Dared #2)(9)

“Well…” Lacey paused and looked at Strum, who shrugged. “Designer bacteria can be used in all sorts of ways to help further medical studies or find health problems, but this one was designed specifically for us. Remember the bags over your heads before and after the meeting? They were laced with the cultures, and when you inhaled, you drew them into your body and infected yourselves. Don’t be alarmed, though—it can’t hurt you. All it does is raise your body temperature to a certain level so that we can track it through the nets.”

What? I shook my head twice and wondered how the heck she could track body temperatures through the nets. I looked at them both and raised an eyebrow. “Quess—”

“No, wait.” Lacey sighed and ran a hand over her face, and I realized right then that the woman was tired. She looked about as tired as I felt, only she wasn’t riding the tension high like I was, so she felt it more. “Look, the nets take your temperatures up until the fifth point after the decimal. It’s just a way to gather as much information as possible for Scipio to process and refine his algorithms. It’s also used to study how fast nets are currently degrading, and so forth and so on. As you know, we all run a little hot as a side effect of the nets, but that temperature fluctuates naturally. The bacteria strain we have raises your body temperature to a specific point, designated by us, to the fifth decimal point. We have a backdoor into the thermal scanners, and we just had them scan for that exact temperature.”

I frowned, thinking. There were tens of thousands of people inhabiting the Tower, and odds were likely that someone else could’ve been coincidently running the same temperature at that time. I opened my mouth to make that observation, but Lacey’s approving smile stopped me.

“You’re asking yourself how we picked yours over anyone else’s that was, at that moment, the same?” I nodded, and her smile grew. “I knew you were smart; that’s why I like you. In answer to your question… turn around.”

I didn’t, because I knew exactly what she wanted me to look at: my friends. “I transmitted it to them,” I said with a groan. “You just had to see where the most people with the same number were concentrated.”

“Indeed,” Strum supplied. “Shared communal spaces, talking, kissing, sharing food… You infected the others. We never would’ve found you all otherwise—which would have meant we didn’t follow through on our promise to you. Our people tell us the paint that you put up is quite effective at blocking net data. While you’re in there, of course, Ms. Euan. As soon as you stepped outside, we picked you up. It wasn’t hard to figure out where you were hiding after that.”

He winked as he purposefully used the last name of the fake ID that I was hiding behind, but I just narrowed my eyes at him. “Let me make this clear to you: you came into our home,” I said, stressing the word. “You had people go in there and scare a young girl. That wasn’t part of the deal, and I say again: if you wanted me, you should’ve let me know to meet you somewhere.”

I was being obstinate, but I wanted them to understand that this was serious to me. They needed to understand that I didn’t take intrusion into my home, or the kidnapping of my people, lightly. By demanding an answer, no matter how good their intentions, I was showing them where my boundaries were—which would make them think twice before crossing them again.

“We didn’t have a choice,” Lacey replied. “I’m sorry, Liana, but we didn’t. You’re on everybody’s radar now. Everyone in the Tower wants you. I had to risk six of my people for you and Mr. Farmless alone, and even then, we were damned lucky that you’d somehow overcome the lockdown procedures of the Medica and were able to get that elevator to take you to a higher floor. The Medica is one of the few places we can’t seem to break into, so if you’d gotten trapped in there…” She trailed off and frowned. “Speaking of which, how were you able to do all that?”

“That’s my secret,” I replied, keeping my eyes on her. I had no intention of telling her about Leo, or about his residence inside of Grey—and if I looked at him, it would be noticeable. Not because they could ever guess that there was an AI actually inside of him, but because they might question him, and realize that a huge part of his memory was missing, like his designation number, and just… general knowledge about his life or the Tower itself. That was what Leo was working desperately to save, and I couldn’t have them looking into his memory loss and discovering the damage. Or the net. “And I’m not sharing.”

Strum looked ready to argue, but Lacey reached out and laid a hand on his forearm. “That’s fair enough,” she said with a nod. “You don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to. I also want to assure you that your home is fine. We didn’t take anything, except for maybe a few samples of that paint.”

I considered her statement. “So you stole from us as well.”

“Guilty, but as you can see, we aren’t exactly on the right side of the law, either, and that paint could be useful to us.”

“Then make a deal with us for it,” I said flatly. Strum and Lacey exchanged surprised looks, but I didn’t stop. “If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about being part of the fringe community of the Tower, it’s that we’re going to have needs while we’re in hiding. You now have a sample, and presumably it won’t take you long to figure out how to make it. You took it, and now you owe us.”