The Girl Who Dared to Think by Bella Forrest (e reader for manga TXT) 📕

I just couldn’t fathom why anyone would want to kill him. Sure, he had been a ten, and didn’t tend to emote anything, remaining stern and stoic. And, yeah, he’d devoted himself a little too blindly to the Tower. But at the end of the day, he had been a person. A human being.

My paranoid side—never one to miss a beat—suddenly managed to put the severity of the situation into context, and realized just how dangerous communicating like this could be. It did not escape me that if I were found to be alive, I was also going to be charged with Gerome’s murder. But what bothered me more was the timing of it all. It seemed so odd that everything had happened at once—and then Gerome had been killed by someone who just happened to be in the area?

It was all too surreal. Cali and I had just finished our conversation with the mysterious Eye contact, and now Alex was netting me? How had he found me, and how exposed was I?

“Alex, how did you know to net me?” I asked, following the impulse.

I… well… He swallowed hard, the sound an odd cadence of tones in my ear. I’ve built a backdoor into the programming attached to your net, so that when they declared you dead and deactivated it, I could still pull it up from time to time. Just to… Just to see.

Something inside me cracked under the pain of his words, and I felt awful. God, how terrible it must have been for him; how powerless he must have felt. He was used to taking care of me, and when he had been told I was dead, it must have devastated him.

“Alex, I’m—”

It’s not your fault. I’m just glad you’re alive.

I was too, but all this information was terrifying, and I kept thinking about Gerome, his murder, and what it meant for all of us. They thought Grey had done it. That meant they were looking for him. I had supposedly been in pursuit of him, and they assumed he’d killed me too. I had to be sure Alex netting me wasn’t putting us all in danger.

“Alex, tell me that netting me hasn’t alerted anyone to the fact that I’m alive.”

You know, I am the older twin, which means I’m the smarter one, right?

“Define ‘smart,’” I grumbled, but his enigmatic answer—classic Alex—was reassuring. He had taken precautions in keeping my living status protected. He wouldn’t tell anyone, either. “Listen, Alex, after we are finished, can you destroy any record of this net coming up in the mainframe?”

Well, yes, but you’re going to have to give me a very good reason why.

“Alex, the Knights are killing the ones. They’re not even bothering to restructure anymore; they are just gassing them in cells like they’re no better than rodents.”

There was a long pause, followed by, I know.

My stomach churned. “Was this what you were talking about when you mentioned people dying?”

Yes. Although at the time I only knew that ones were dying somehow, and that was just because I’d noticed a discrepancy in the annual death rate. There was a five percent spike in accidental deaths in the Tower, starting nearly twenty years ago. Since then, the number of deaths that involve ones has nearly tripled. I only pieced together that it was the Knights a week ago, and I was grappling with how to tell you when—

“I disappeared.” I closed my eyes, wishing I had figured out some way to reach out to Alex sooner, but glad he was on my side. “I’m so sorry, Alex. I feel awful for what I put you and everyone else through, but... God, this is such a long story, and I don’t have a lot of time. The people I’m with are extremely cautious, and want me to lie low until the heat has passed.”

Liana, that’s going to take a lot longer than you think. Things… Things have changed up here.

I frowned as I lashed around an obstacle in the path. “What do you mean?”

The council voted, and it’s now mandatory for anyone of rank four or lower to get Medica intervention. Threes are automatically detained there for an undetermined amount of time, and all of it is being enforced by the Knights. The council voted five to two on this, Liana. That’s unprecedented.

“Who were the two against?” I asked. The information wasn’t necessary, but it could come in handy if it told me where to find allies.

Mechanics Department and Water Treatment.

I absorbed the information, but moved on to my most pressing concern. “Alex, have you heard anything about Zoe and her rank? The last I saw her she’d dropped to a four. We... We had a fight, and I’m just really worried about her.”

There was a long pause, and my anxiety hitched up a notch. “Alex?”

She’s a two, Liana. She’s being held in the Medica as a critical threat to Tower security.

For a second, I couldn’t feel anything. Then it came pouring in, my greatest nightmare realized. Zoe was locked up inside the Medica, isolated, alone, and afraid—and thinking her best friend in the whole world had betrayed her and left her all alone.

And it was all my fault.

“Access her net,” I said. “What’s her current rank, and is it possible to tell how long it’ll be before she drops to a one?”

Alex didn’t offer a word of argument, so it was a little unnerving when he suddenly came back with: She’s still a two, but her levels are low. She… She doesn’t have long, Lily.

I closed my eyes, fighting against the pain and panic that threatened to consume me. “Alex, I gotta go. I need you to keep everything under your hat, and I’ll try to net you soon.”

Liana, what are you—

“I love you,” I added, before I shut down the connection with a touch on my display.

What was happening with Zoe wasn’t right, but I had no idea what to