Leo and I entered a storage room in the Attic through a hatch from the Citadel, and Leo quickly hacked the door into the Tower open so we could get to the corridors beyond. From there we walked confidently through the halls, but I worried about the efficacy of Quess’s face spray the entire time, certain that someone would notice. Our destination was two storage rooms over, and we located it easily, hacked the door in the hallway, and then exited through another hatch that brought us out to the span of ceiling between where the Citadel and the Core dangled over the Grounds. We transitioned to our lashes and quickly traversed the remaining distance between us and the Core. It took about twenty minutes all in all, and by the time we reached the hatch toward which Dinah had pointed us, my arms were aching and a fine sweat had formed on my brow. Leo input the code and ushered me through the hole that opened up seconds later, and we were in a crawlspace.

As I slid in, two things struck me at once. Number one was that it was hot. Uncomfortably so. Number two was that the crawlspace wasn’t like others I’d encountered in the Tower. It was made of a black mesh that was slightly flexible under my palms and knees, and didn’t make any noise as I moved on it. It was also cool to the touch, untouched by the hot, dry air, which helped battle some of the heat, but only a little. I crawled forward a few feet into the darkened space, and then stopped to catch my breath while digging out my hand light.

Leo crawled in behind me, and seconds later the hatch was closed. “You okay?” he asked, also slightly out of breath.

“Good,” I told him as I found the familiar oval shape of my light source in my pocket and pulled it out. “Get your light.” Leo began to look for his while I unraveled the strap mine was attached to and clicked it on. A bright light erupted from it, and I winced and quickly twisted down the setting using a control on the base, softening the light to something less obnoxious and noticeable. Satisfied, I wrapped the strap around my head, and then looked down the shaft. “Dinah should be straight ahead,” I said softly.

“About forty feet or so,” he replied, showing me that he also remembered Dinah’s instructions. “Let me go first.”

There was a seriousness in his voice that made me want to smile in spite of the nervous roil of my stomach, but I remembered my promise to him and flattened myself to one side. He squeezed past me, his side brushing against mine, and then pulled away, crawling ahead. I took a deep breath, reminded myself that everyone’s life was on the line, and then pressed after him.

We just need to get in and out, I told myself as we went. Get Jasper. Get Rose. Trigger the death protocol. Get back to the Citadel. In and out.

I hoped everything was going all right back at the Citadel. Without my net, I had no way of knowing what was going on, but I trusted my friends to handle it.

I just worried about any curveballs our enemies might throw at us in the process.

Don’t think about it, I ordered myself as Leo started to slow. Focus on this.

Leo stopped, forcing me to follow suit, and I waited for several seconds. There was a soft grating sound, and then bright light cut in around Leo’s hunched-over frame.

“Don’t just stand there gaping at me, boy,” I heard a familiar voice snap. “We don’t have all damn day, and you two owe me an explanation.”

“Hey, Dinah,” I called behind Leo. “Thanks for this.” I paused and then swallowed. “Is Alex with you?”

“No, he is not. I managed to convince him to stay behind, but just barely. Hurry up and get down from there.”

Leo had already started moving before Dinah’s retort, and I backed up a little as he leaned toward me and brought his legs around so that he was sitting on his rear. That told me our entrance was a little bit off the ground, and I moved to do the same, contorting myself in the tight confines of the vent.

Leo slid out seconds before I was finished, but as soon as I was, I scooted forward on my butt and pushed my legs through the hole. I leaned forward to see that the floor was about three feet down, and then eased myself over the edge, dropping to the ground of a small room with a bench, some lockers, and a door. Dinah was standing next to the wall as I slid down, her gaze locked on Leo.

Even though it was my second time seeing her, I still couldn’t get over how different she was from how I had imagined. When I’d first encountered the elderly woman, she’d only been a digitally synthesized voice who went by the name of Mercury. I’d assumed she was a middle-aged man—or possibly even my brother—but when we’d had to come rescue her from Jang-Mi, I’d learned that she was neither of those things.

Her wrinkled face was pulled into a frown as she examined Leo, her hunter-green eyes considering. “So this is Grey Farmless,” she said, giving me an arched eyebrow. “From the way Roark talked about him, I was expecting someone a little less… serious. This kid looks like he’s ten years older than he is.”

She turned to fully face me, her cane tapping on the floor as she adjusted her weight. My eyes tracked down her dark gray uniform to her leg, which was twisted at an odd angle, and then snapped back to her face when I realized what she had been saying: she had expected him to be less Leo-like and more Grey-like. I glanced at Leo and then back to Dinah, wondering if she could actually pick up on the difference—and if I should say something to explain it away, or just ignore it and move forward.

“Thanks,” Leo said, an edge of sarcasm on his voice. “You’re no spring chicken yourself there, Ms. Velasquez.”

I blinked, and then smiled. Thank Scipio Leo was quicker on his feet than I was. To be honest, I hadn’t expected Dinah to have any real knowledge of Grey except through us, but I had never considered that Roark had mentioned him enough for her to get an idea of his personality.

Dinah rolled her eyes at his comment, and then turned and picked up two square, dark gray packages. “Put these on, quickly. We’ve only got three minutes before the cleaners finish in this area, and the sensors will be restored once they’re done. That gives you two time to tell me what the hell is going on.”

I took the packages from her and handed one to Leo. Ripping open the lining, I shook out a uniform and began to undress and talk at the same time.

“Okay, do you know anything about how Scipio became… well… Scipio?”

“He’s the creation of Lionel Scipio, made possible by the invention of intelli-programming, which is just a fancy way of saying that he was able to digitize emotions and free will,” she replied without missing a beat. “Scipio was created from that, in order to marry the impartiality of a machine to the complexities of emotions, so that each decision he made carried the best possible outcome for our future survival. Every Bit knows that.”

“Well, every Bit is wrong,” I told her. “Scipio is actually the neural clone of Lionel Scipio, augmented by fragment AI programs that were created from the minds of the other Founders.”

“What?” She looked between the two of us. “Why… How do you know that?”

“We discovered Lionel Scipio’s office,” Leo replied, working on his harnesses. I had a split second of nervousness that he was about to reveal himself to her, but he finished with, “And found files there that described the process. There were five scans made of the five different Founders of the Tower, and then they were put through simulated versions of the Tower, given problems that they had to overcome without losing too much of the population or the resources necessary for maintaining life.”

I slipped my own harness off my shoulders and continued when he seemed to lose momentum—though to be honest, he might have been distracted by taking off his boots. “Lionel’s was the one that did the best job, but the program wasn’t strong enough on its own to run the entire Tower, so fragments from the other AIs were introduced to enhance his decision-making process through the lenses of what they excelled at during their simulations.”

I toed off my boots and then bent over to start tugging my legs out of my uniform, losing the thread for a second as I rushed through getting dressed. Luckily, Leo was there to pick it back up for me.

“Right, so some bad people have stolen those AI fragments, we think to try to manipulate Scipio’s decisions. One of them was being used in the Medica before all this went down. His name was Jasper, and he and Liana became friends. He helped her out once or twice, and then they pulled him from the Medica and downloaded him into Sadie Monroe’s computer.”

He stopped there, and I didn’t continue because that seemed like more than enough for Dinah. I’d let her process it while I finished getting dressed.

Dinah was silent for several long moments—long enough for me to get my legs through the IT uniform she had given us, and pull it up and over my hips.

“So Sadie has an AI fragment from Scipio’s code in her terminal, and you’re going to go bust it out?” she asked, and from the sound of it, she still hadn’t fully accepted it as the truth.

“Yup,” I replied with more confidence than I felt. “She’s unconscious, and I have the net to her quarters. We go in, get the program, wipe the computers, and get out.”

“How, exactly, are you even going to get to the terminal to wipe it?” she asked, one eyebrow going up. “You have your own assistant, so you know that Sadie’s will pick up that you aren’t her, and turn the defenses on you. You’ll be killed before you even reach it!”

Leo and I exchanged looks. We’d told her about Jasper, but we hadn’t mentioned Rose. I was playing things close to the vest, and didn’t want anyone to know that we had her. Sadie thought only Jasper was on her computer, and that he would be the only one missing after we did what we came to do. I didn’t want to even breathe Rose’s name for fear that the legacies would find out. Keeping the fragments safe was the most important thing we could do, as they were the only ones who could fix Scipio, and so keeping our enemies guessing about what we had was the only way forward.

“We’ve disabled her assistant,” I said carefully. “We used the council’s server as a way into her terminal, and managed to take it offline. We had hoped to do it more remotely, but we underestimated her defenses. It doesn’t matter—we have a way in, and a way to cover our tracks.” At her raised eyebrow, I added, “We’re going to digitally convince her virtual assistant she’s dead.”

If I’d thought Dinah processing the whole AI fragment thing was good, the way she gaped at the two of us now was positively priceless.

“You’re going to what?!” she exclaimed, and my smile broadened.

“The only way to do that is to convince the system she died,” I told her. “The protocols will activate and wipe her files, and then Grey will scrub the buffer, just to be sure. Since mine did it first, it’ll look like a problem with the assistants, and no one will be the wiser.”

She was already shaking her head before I even finished. “You two are insane. I can’t do this. I won’t.” She began to move to the door, but I zipped up my suit and slipped in front of her, stopping her in her tracks.

“Dinah, please,” I said, not wanting to resort to my backup plan to get her to participate. “Without Jasper, Scipio’s going to continue to degrade until he falls apart, and you know that his death will be the death of everyone in the Tower!”

Dinah stared up at me, her mouth in a stubborn line. “Who cares!” she shouted, waving her hands in the air before tapping her cane on the ground with an angry thump. “The Tower is rotten, and all I’ve ever wanted you to do was resume Roark’s plan and escape!”

“But you don’t know that there’s anywhere to go!” I said, exasperated. Why couldn’t she see that there was every chance that the Tower would die before any escape plan was underway? Why did she cling to the dream of leaving when none of us had any proof that there was life outside? Yes, we had Roark’s story, and yes, I wanted to believe it, but wanting to believe in a reality outside of your own only made you ignore the problems, and I couldn’t do that. I had to focus on what I could fix now, and so did Dinah.

“I do know!” Dinah replied with a hiss, and I frowned at the conviction in her voice. She knew there was somewhere to go? How did she know that? I let her continue, but to my surprise, all she said was, “I…” before stopping, and then slammed her mouth shut with a click. “Never mind. I’m not doing this. Let me pass.”

Crap. I wanted to know more about how she knew there was somewhere to go, but we didn’t have time for an interrogation, or for Dinah’s refusal to help. So, as much as I didn’t want to, I set it aside and focused on what I wanted: the location of Sadie’s apartment.

“Look, I didn’t want to have to do this, but if you don’t at least tell me where her home is, then I am not supplying you with any more Paragon,” I said evenly, meeting her gaze. “I’m assuming that we’re close, and that this… cleaning thing you were talking about will also knock the cameras offline in the area, so just show us, and we’ll take it from there.”

Her brows furrowed and her nostrils flared. “You’re threatening me?” she asked.

“I am,” I replied, feeling a little guilty. But only a little. Our priority was Jasper and Rose, and I’d blackmail the devil himself if it meant getting them out of Sadie’s clutches. “I really don’t want to, though. Just… please, Dinah, we can’t let Sadie keep control of the fragment. She’s going to do something really bad with it, and this is the only way we can even begin to slow her down.”

She hobbled back a step to put some distance between us, and I gave her a moment while I retrieved the bag I had shed earlier to get changed, now made heavier with my uniform and lash harness. Slinging it over the bag Dinah had handed me, I turned back to her, having given her as much time as I could. “What’s it going to be, Dinah?”

She gave me an irritated look and then blew out a breath. “Move, girl,” she said gruffly, abruptly marching forward. “And stay close to me,” she ordered brusquely as she opened the door.

I moved to follow, and hid my smile when I heard her breathe, “I’m too old for this crap,” as she stepped over the threshold and into the hall.