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

I met Grey’s gaze, and gave one single nod. Then I began to creep forward, through the pillows on the floor and toward Devon, Grey mirroring me on the other side.

“Everyone in here is going to die. I can’t stop it.”

Cali smiled. “You’re right, but only partially,” she said, and I noticed her fingers moving, and realized she was signing to me in Callivax. L-a-s-h-e-s, she said, and alarm coursed through me. I turned and hurriedly signaled to Grey, waving a hand to get his attention. He looked at me, and I began to sign Cali’s message, translated for Grey: G-r-a-b s-o-m-e-t-h-i-n-g.

“And how’s that?” Devon asked.

“You and I are going to die, at least.”

Grey gave me a confused look, and then movement from Cali dragged my attention back to her as she lifted her right hand up—the one that had been hidden to me behind her body. I got a flash of the small black item in her palm before she slammed it down on the glass floor. There was a high-pitched tone, and then all of the glass shattered, the floor vanishing from beneath all four of us.

I didn’t even get the chance to check whether Grey had grabbed something in time before I started falling, shards of glass sparkling all around me as I succumbed to the laws of gravity. My body worked from muscle memory, so used to the sensation of falling, and threw the line. It hit and connected on the ceiling above, arresting my fall some fifteen feet below where the floor had been.

Immediately I spun around, searching for Grey. To my relief, I spotted him hanging from a thick pipe on the ceiling, his arms and legs wrapped around it. He must’ve grabbed it as the glass broke.

With Grey momentarily handled, I spun around and searched for Cali, finding her tangled in her own lashes, forty feet beneath me, frantically trying to break free from the lines around her body. I grabbed my other bead, intent on making my way over to her, when I sensed something stirring in the shadows above us. It was Devon’s dark form, clinging to a ladder, having apparently used it to stall his fall. He was moving to where Cali’s bead was connected—to the metal framing the glass had been seated in. Cali looked up from where she was dangling, and I could practically see the realization in her eyes as to what was about to happen as he drew closer.

He thrust out his boot and pressed it against the bead that held her in place, disconnecting it.

“No!” I screamed, my lash already spinning out, trying to catch her with it, but it was too late and she was too far. She fell, and I was helpless to do anything at all.

Anything, except for run.

And I had to. Cali was gone, and the others needed me. There was no time to grieve.

I lashed up to where Grey was clinging to the ceiling pipe, already in a panic. Devon wasn’t far away, though at least the humid atmosphere down here meant his lashes wouldn’t work. Grey climbed onto my back as I watched Devon, his back still to me, staring down at where Cali had dropped into the deadly churn of the waters below. It was all I could do to not lash over there and kick him in, but the knowledge that more Knights were coming was too heavy to ignore. There wasn’t anything I could do.

I threw my lash from the ceiling, connecting it to the concrete floor that made up the kitchen and swinging down between the frames of metal where the glass floor had been seated. Grey’s fingers dug in tight as I used faster speeds to propel us across, under the pod that formed Sanctum, dangling under the arm of the greenery, then back up the other side, fighting back the urge to cry.

I caught sight of Quess hanging by his lashes over the pod, Eric on his back, familiar red goggles over his eyes. “Hey!” he shouted when he spotted us, and I shook my head, pressing a finger to my lips.

Eric’s hands flashed in Callivax, signing for me to follow them, and I nodded, keeping pace as they lashed away. Quess wasn’t a terrible lasher, but with Eric’s heavy frame on top of his own, he was struggling a bit to keep their balance and momentum going. Still, he managed.

We lashed for what felt like forever, moving farther and farther away from the Tower’s walls and into the open air beneath the greenery’s arm. The farther we got from the hydro-turbines, the quieter and clearer the atmosphere became. Catwalks cut this way and that, and Quess took a route that allowed us to avoid swinging over or under them, just in case anyone was around to notice.

It all seemed to blur together after a while, and I just focused on keeping up with his shadowy figure. A deep weariness had settled into my bones, making me feel numb and robotic. Eventually, we stopped and crawled into a hatch where the rest of our group was inside, waiting. I looked at all of their faces, and then looked away.

“Cali’s gone,” I announced hoarsely, bracing myself.

Tian started crying first, softly in the beginning and then faster and harder. Maddox immediately pulled the girl into her arms and held her, rocking her back and forth. The larger girl was struggling not to cry, but her eyes were filled with anguish and horror. She looked so lost, and in that moment, so very small and vulnerable. My heart ached for her. For them both.

Quess was less overt—his expression stony, his jaw tight. I could tell he was hurting too, because he shuffled up to Maddox and Tian, clearly needing to be close to them. I wanted to cry with them, wanted to ask Maddox about her mother’s marriage to Devon, ask how it had been kept so