The Girl Who Dared to Endure (The Girl Who Dared #6)(2)

He was a legacy who had tried to kill me—and now he was here. It only confirmed in my mind that he and Sadie were working together, but in what way? Was he in charge? Was it her? Or someone else?

And why was he here? Did he happen to notice Sadie’s net transmission in the brief moment when I had removed the neural blocker to gain access to her apartment? I knew the legacies had a way of monitoring the system, so it wasn’t that far outside of our belief that they could have. But it had only been active for a few seconds, while we gained access to the room. Did he actually know we were there, or was he there for something else? Fear crept along my skin, and my stomach quivered with uncertainty.

“I don’t know,” Leo replied in answer to my question, his voice also as soft as possible. “But Jasper and Rose are still downloading,” he said, tightening his grip on his gun. “Even if they aren’t here for us, they are going to notice that something is off as soon as they go in her office. We left the desk a mess.”

He was right. Even if they weren’t here for us, they’d soon notice the general state of disarray I’d left the office in when I was searching for anything we could use against Sadie. As soon as they did, they’d investigate, and it wouldn’t take them long to find us. I needed more information on where they were before I could figure out what to do next. Focusing on the door, I considered it for a moment. I couldn’t hear anything going on out there, and now that we weren’t in the office, we had no way of monitoring their location. Running had lost us that advantage, and I felt stupid for having done it in the first place, but it was too late to take that back now. I had to deal with the situation in front of me.

That meant knowing if they were here for us, or if this was an unfortunate coincidence. If it was the latter, then we had the element of surprise and could capitalize on it. If it was the former, then it made things worlds more complicated. They’d be ready with weapons, prepared for a fight, and had us outnumbered two to one. We had guns—instruments of destruction that no one else in the Tower had access to—and Leo could more than hold his own in a fight, but they still had more people than we did, and that could make all the difference.

And if they were prepared for us—or any intruder, really—then that might mean they were being monitored. If any one of them managed to send out a message to Sadie or anyone else about what we were doing or who we were, then all of our planning would result in nothing, and we would be caught and executed. Either by the legacies or by the council.

I couldn’t let that happen. So if they were here for us, or even if they saw us, we would have to stop them immediately. Not a single one could escape, or we risked the legacies learning what we had done, and who we had stolen.

But I didn’t mind that conclusion, because I didn’t want them to escape. Especially not Baldy, their leader. He had information we needed, like who was running everything, who was helping them, and what they were planning to do. Those were answers I craved more than anything, as they would lead to the person responsible for the deaths of too many people, including my mother. It would stop the attack on Scipio and give us time to recover the remaining fragments so we could repair him. It would finally allow us to take the Tower in the direction that the founder, Lionel Scipio, had intended.

“Can you crack the door open just a little bit?” I whispered to Leo, deciding I needed to hear what they were doing. Before I could even come up with a plan, I had to know why they were here, and where they were.

Leo nodded and moved over to the door, and I followed, holding open the bag I had so he could get at the tools inside. He turned and started working, and it took him a few agonizing seconds to pry the cover from the door control that activated the motor. I watched impatiently as he disconnected a few wires from some of the glowing crystals and then dragged the tips of them together, experimenting. On combination number three, something sparked, and the door lifted up a few inches from the floor.

A male voice that I recognized as Baldy’s wafted through, but it was too muddled to discern what he was saying. I hesitated, and then slid down onto the ground. I hated making myself even the slightest bit visible, in case they were just around the bend, but I had to know what was going on. I glanced under the door first, to make sure there were no shoes waiting on the other side or in the vicinity, and then pressed my ear to the gap. Holding my breath to keep from making any noise, I strained to hear what he was saying. Even my heartbeat seemed too loud in my ears, but I closed my eyes and focused.

“—down, I’m here,” he said, his voice growing louder in my ears. “We got slowed at a checkpoint because Sadie couldn’t make it, but it’s fine. All we have to do is grab it, and we’ll be on our way. It’s a little weird though. Alara isn’t responding to me.”

He paused, and I waited for someone to respond while puzzling over what he was talking about. Who was Alara? Why would he be expecting her to respond?

Then I realized that Alara was probably the name of Sadie’s virtual assistant. Rose had knocked it out when we sent her in after Jasper, which was the only thing that had made this mission possible. If Sadie’s assistant had been online, it would’ve killed us before we even got past the first room, with or without Sadie’s net.

But back to the important thing: it was clear that Baldy was transmitting to someone over the net, and from his words, it sounded like he was here by coincidence. And to pick something up. If we were lucky, that something would be in one of the other rooms before the office, and they would get it and go without questioning things too much.