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

“Cabbage soup?” the old man sputtered, looking up and around. “Guys?” His eyes found us, and he paused. Then he zeroed in on my crimson Knight’s uniform, and a flash of anger consumed his face.

“Who is this?” he snapped at Grey. “Who have you brought into my home, boy?”

“This,” Grey said, casually pointing at me with his knife, “is Squire Castell from the Citadel. She’s the one who tried to arrest me last week. I’m sure you remember me telling you.”

“That’s nice,” the man groused. “But that doesn’t explain why she’s here.”

He looked around, not nearly as good at masking his emotions as Grey, and I could see the nervousness on his face plain as daylight as he examined some rows of samples. I followed his gaze, and saw nothing but liquids in a range of colors in their containers, tiny labels marking them. I took a step closer, trying to study the labels and make sense of the very small print, but he quickly grabbed the tray in front of me and clutched it to his chest.

“My work is delicate,” he hissed. “I would like you to remove these two from my space. Immediately.”

Grey sighed as he artfully sliced up a carrot. “She knows where we live, Roark—she could just come back.”

“Then you need to do something about them!”

“What would you propose I do?”

Zoe finally found her tongue and stalked around me to look at them both, her finger pointed. “Excuse me,” she said testily, “but would you explain what the hell you mean by do something about us?”

“We could kill them and throw them into the Depths,” the old man continued, ignoring Zoe’s statement, and I had to reach out and catch her arm before she could launch herself at him. My other hand went automatically to my baton.

“Calm down, Zo,” I ordered, and I speared the old man with a look. “Are you threatening a member of the Knights?”

Grey lifted his hands, knife-free. “I certainly didn’t mean kill you,” he said. “But you’re doing a lot of snooping, and it’s beginning to feel like harassment. I was thinking I should report you.”

The man stared blankly at Grey, then shook his head and turned to me.

“Your name,” he said flatly.

“Squire Liana Castell, designation—”

“I don’t need your designation,” he said, cutting me off and waving his hand irritably. I noticed the crisp blue ten on his wrist, and a trill of excitement ran up my spine. “I can tell by your expression that you’re not going to let this go, so I’ll keep it brief. My name is Roark. I’m a chemist helping to develop Medica mood adjustment therapy.”

I blanched, thinking of the pills waiting for me back home, and he must have guessed because he raised one eyebrow. “No, not those pills. I’m conducting research on alternative methods and their effects on a user’s outlook, to see if there are other, healthier ways of helping a person’s ranking.”

I leaned forward, unable to keep the eagerness off my face. “Have you found one?”

He shrugged noncommittally. “I have found some interesting chemical interactions, but my work is private, sensitive, and secret.”

Here he took the time to actually glare at Zoe, Grey, and me individually. I didn’t pay any attention to it, instead looking at the tubes now in his hand. I thought about the pill in my pocket, and Grey’s miraculous rank improvement. About how he was here in Cogstown.

“Does the Medica have you working from here?” I asked after a moment, and he glared at me.

“What part of ‘secret’ don’t you understand?”

“The part where if this was Medica-sanctioned, you’d be doing it in the Medica, and not in Cogstown.”

Roark glared at me for a long moment, and then looked pointedly at Grey, his expression thunderous.

“It’s time for both of you to go,” Grey said, turning his gaze to me. “Roark’s tired.”

A flare of panic rose in my chest, and I realized I might have gotten too aggressive in my questioning. I just wanted to know if there was a way for me to stop the insanity of Peace and Prim, while improving my number.

“Wait!” Everybody stopped, staring at me. I flushed, but spoke anyway. “You said your name is Roark, right?”

The old man nodded.

“Roark,” I said, “I’m sorry for interrogating you, but I’m here because I need help. I want to be a Knight, you see, and the ranking requirement is—”

Roark raised an eyebrow. “I know what it is, and I don’t care. Shields aren’t welcome in my home. Get out.”

“Please,” I said, holding out my wrist. “They’ve got me on Peace, and it’s killing me!”

Roark looked at my wrist for a second, seeming to notice the four/five fighting again, and then looked away. “Get this Shield out of my house, Grey.”

I wanted to scream at him, yell at him, beg for some semblance of humanity, but Grey’s hand unexpectedly landed on my shoulder and I looked over at him, at the carefully reserved features he was holding on his face. There was nothing I could say that was going to change his mind, I realized. Suddenly, I just felt tired; this was my one chance to get away from Prim, away from losing myself to the meds—possibly even stronger meds, if they found out Peace wasn’t working—and he wasn’t going to help me.

“Thank you for your time,” I managed after a pause, before turning slowly toward the door. “Come on, Zoe… We should go.”

Grey just watched me leave, and I moved back out into the cool tunnel. Zoe was quiet beside me as I headed back toward the ladder, pausing when the wall disappeared, revealing the open space of Cogstown some thirty feet below. The entire Tower was one complex machine, everything serving a purpose, everything sharing a goal: keep us all alive. It was something you knew, but rarely got to see in action. All the gears, all the steam, all the electricity feeding in and out of each and every