The Girl Who Dared to Think by Bella Forrest (best novels of all time TXT) 📗

a note of disdain in his voice. “Can’t say I’m surprised. Cogs always been trouble, since day one. And this one had damned beady eyes, you know?”

I didn’t know, and I didn’t agree, but I kept my opinion to myself. “Thank you, Diver,” I said, and he waved a dismissive hand over his head.

“Give me a ride,” Zoe ordered as soon as I turned around, and I groaned, but bent over while she climbed up on a pipe behind me. She gently settled onto my back, and I took a moment to adjust and shift her weight around until she felt balanced. I switched the settings on my suit so that the leads came out of my waist. I needed them lower to help center our collective balance. If I was going for speed or accuracy, I used the wrists. Her arms wrapped around my neck, and within moments I was lashing us both up and toward the beam of light the man had pointed out.

I landed on a platform about midway up, the yellow markings next to it telling me the elevator was ahead. Zoe slid off my back and looked down the narrow hall.

“This area always gives me the creeps,” she said softly, flicking on her flashlight to provide more illumination than the dim red bulbs provided.

“Me too,” I replied, eyeing the gloomy shadows that threatened to swallow the hall in the flash of one bulb blowing. It was a simple, primitive fear—the fear of the unknown that could be lurking there—but it was fear all the same. “So… do you have a way to get us into Cogstown proper, and not the reception hall the elevators dump all non-Cogs into? Because I don’t have the ranking to override the elevator protocols.”

“I’m going to hack the elevator,” Zoe replied with a grin. Her hands dipped into her bag, and I gaped as she pulled out a small black pad, modified, like the ones the Eyes always carried. Upon closer inspection, I could see that it wasn’t exactly the same; in fact, it looked like she had pieced it together out of odds and ends from around the Tower.

“How’d you get that?” I asked, warning bells going off.

“This thing was five months in the making,” Zoe said excitedly. “I’ve actually hacked two elevators with it already—nothing too exciting; I just wanted to see if I could do it.”

“Zoe!” I said, wide-eyed as I watched her drop to her knees in front of the shaft. She rummaged around in her bag, pulled out a screwdriver, and began unscrewing something from the back of the black metal control panel that sat just outside of the elevator, a long metal rod holding it up in the air.

“What?” she said. “I had a manual on how to fabricate your own pads—in case of emergency—and it was too fascinating to pass up. I had to learn how to code, and it took me ages to find something that taught me how to do that. The Eyes really don’t like their manuals floating around.”

“Zoe, if you get caught—”

“I’m not doing anything that could hurt the Tower,” she insisted. “I’m not touching the security protocols, or any of the base functions. I’m just overriding the controls to make them think we’re Cogs, okay?”

“Yes, but this is pretty serious. I just want to make sure you’re sure you want to do this.”

Zoe gave me a withering look as she lowered the now freed panel to the floor. “You asked me to be here. Besides, do you want to find this guy or not?”

I did. Still, I couldn’t help but feel guilty. Zoe was tampering with the Tower, and that was a severe offense, and always came with a charge of terrorism. Altering anything in the Tower without permission was like that, as the smallest change could cause catastrophic failures (or so the department heads wanted us to believe). In Zoe’s case, it would be made worse, as she was tampering with something that didn’t fall under Diver jurisdiction—another big no-no in the Tower. I looked at my wrist and found myself wondering if I was actually carrying some sort of psychological contamination. If Zoe’s number fell because of me, I would never forgive myself.

“Damned thing!” Zoe said as sparks shot out from where she was connecting a wire. She shook her hands and stared down at the pad, the screen turning her face a soft aqua blue. A screen popped up, and she sat down and began inputting commands into it. “So, I found a pretty exploitable flaw in the elevator’s security protocols, and have written an algorithm of my own to make use of it. I trick the system into performing what it thinks is a test, and tell it what floor to go to.” A platform slid out of the wall, covering the shaft, and she grinned victoriously as she began disconnecting the lines and screwing the plate back into place, making the entire thing look just as it did before.

I looked around while she did this, keeping an eye out for anyone approaching, but the halls were deserted. She stood up and nodded toward the elevator.

“Let’s go,” she said, gliding over the ramp and coming to a halt on the platform.

I followed her quickly, crossing my arms in preparation for the inevitable elevator lecture, and then smiled when the voice never came and the lift began to descend. Apparently, it couldn’t chastise people during a test, and I wasn’t going to complain.

I felt a trill of excitement as it moved—this would be my first time actually inside Cogstown proper. Cogs were very protective of their home, and didn’t like uninvited guests visiting. Knights with a rank of eight or higher could overrule the protocols, but Gerome and I had never had cause to go down there even once during my apprenticeship. Suffice it to say, the two of us were going to draw some attention.

“I’m still surprised you didn’t accept recruitment into the Eyes,”