The Girl Who Dared to Endure (The Girl Who Dared #6)(7)

My eyes scanned the corridors as we flew through them, searching for any sign of movement, but the Attic was, as always, devoid of human life. It didn’t make me feel any better, however, and when we finally reached the storage room that would lead back to the Citadel, I almost quivered with relief.

It was too soon to feel it, though. I still had to get Sadie out of my quarters, and Jasper and Rose had to be downloaded before the hard drives ran out of power. AIs needed an energy source at all times, or they would die. It was why Scipio had backup source upon backup source, powered both by the hydro-turbines and the energy harvested from the sun.

When we got to the end of the hall, I slowly lowered myself to the ground just as Leo went for the door. My boots hit the floor, and in my impatience to get this whole mess over and done with, I disconnected the line prematurely—and my knees immediately buckled under Baldy’s weight. Leo moved to help, but I waved him off as I took two staggering steps, trying to catch my balance. I smiled triumphantly at him a second later, managing to center myself, and then toppled right over onto my side, Baldy’s extra weight too much to handle after moving all of those bodies.

We hit the ground with a thud, and I heard Leo tsk and move over. There was a jerking against my back as he disconnected Baldy from where we had hooked him onto my uniform, and I took a moment, feeling weak and sweaty, my muscles aching and burning from the exertion.

Then Leo’s hand filled my vision, and I took it, gingerly allowing him to pull me up. “I netted Maddox, and she’s on her way,” he reported softly, his hands going to the back of his neck. I realized he had pulled the neural scrambler off to do so and was in the process of putting it back on. I prayed that the activity hadn’t been enough for anyone to triangulate his position. If they did, and saw two Knights randomly lashing through the halls of the Attic in the vid files, one with an unconscious man on her back, the legacies might piece together that Baldy’s disappearance and Sadie’s quarters simultaneously being reset was not a coincidence.

And that we were responsible.

“Good,” I replied softly. “Help me get Baldy over to the hatch.”

Leo shook his head and took off the bag he had carried. “I’ll stay here with him,” he replied as he knelt down and opened up the bag. I watched him pull out the slaved hard drives, which were bound together with wires and tape. “You have to get these to Quess as quickly as possible,” he informed me. “As soon as you get Sadie out, start downloading them. Too much time has already passed.”

I glanced at my wrist and saw that he was right: it had already been seventeen minutes since we’d downloaded Jasper and Rose. Which meant we only had thirteen minutes left before the hard drives failed.

But still I hesitated. Sadie Monroe was in my quarters. Drugged, and slightly out of it. I had to get her out of there quickly, but we still had to knock her out again, put her net back in her head, give her a small bit of Spero, and then get her out.

Right. There wasn’t any time to waste.

I squared my shoulders and took the hard drives in my hand, glancing at Baldy’s still form. “Better shock him again, just to be sure,” I said.

Leo gifted me with a lopsided smile and reached out to smooth a bit of the hair that had escaped my braid away from my eyes. My heart skipped a beat as the simple gesture sucked my breath out of my lungs, and I quickly took a step back, my cheeks flaming at the intensity of my reaction. Now wasn’t the time, and feeling things for Leo while he was inside Grey was the very definition of a complication I did not need right now.

“I’ll be fine,” he told me firmly, ignoring my discomfort. “Hurry up. Maddox is on her way.”

I nodded as he brushed past me and moved toward the hatch we had come through earlier, walking down the aisle. I followed him, cradling the hard drives in both hands, and came to a stop as he knelt on the floor twenty feet deeper into the room and pressed on a section of it to reveal a digital keypad. He pulled something out of his pocket and connected it through a wire that he jacked into a port, and the display turned from red to blue, lighting his face with a glow that reminded me of his holographic image when I had first discovered him in Lionel Scipio’s secret office.

The display turned green a few seconds later, and a square piece of the floor slid back, revealing a shaft with a ladder. And though I wanted to move quickly, I carefully tucked the hard drives under one arm and stepped onto the first rung, and then to the next, awkwardly balancing myself with one hand. It took a second to get the rhythm, but once I did, I descended as quickly as possible, barely giving Leo one last glance before he slipped from view.

I heard a grating sound seconds later, signaling that he’d closed the door, but focused on the climb down. It took me longer than I cared to admit before I made it to the bottom of the shaft, and when the door below slid open so the bottom section of the ladder could descend into the hall, I was unsurprised to see Maddox already standing there, waiting for me.

What did surprise me was that my twin brother was standing right next to the raven-haired girl, his eyes narrowed at me in displeasure. I had forgotten that he had been on his way over to force himself into the investigation, but was relieved that Maddox had intercepted him. He, however, looked less than happy.

“Your stupid Lieutenant kept me locked in an elevator for forty minutes,” he bit off angrily, his dark eyes flashing behind the spectacles on his nose.