I could’ve dropped a pin in the silence that followed my statement, and the sound would’ve been louder than any bell or klaxon. I watched Sadie’s face as her jaw dropped, her eyes widening in shock, and felt that savage pleasure again. We’ve caught her unaware. Quess was right: she had no idea we were coming. We’ve got her. I shifted my gaze to Plancett to confirm, and sure enough, his eyes were practically bulging out of his skull, and I feared one good slap to the back of his head would pop them right out. We got you too, you rat bastard.

Suddenly the doors pushed open, and Dylan strode in with the contingent of Knights, jerking Sadie’s gaze toward them. Any blood that remained in her face drained completely out, but I could see her already looking around, her eyes calculating. “This is preposterous,” she sputtered. “I am a loyal—”

“Yes, but loyal to whom?” I interrupted, unable to keep the smugness out of my voice. “Because I have evidence that proves that it hasn’t been to the Tower. And it certainly hasn’t been to Scipio. In fact, you and your family come from a long line of dissidents who have been slowly subverting Scipio’s coding for the last two hundred years.”

“That’s insane,” Sadie said, standing up and taking a step back as Dylan threw open her door, hard enough to make the wood reverberate. “Lord Scipio, I’m innocent. This is clearly an attempt to—do not touch me!” She recoiled from Dylan as if she were a rust hawk and thrust her wrist up. “Scipio knows the truth! He blesses me with a ten because of my service!”

“Actually, he grants you a ten because your predecessor some two or three generations ago ripped out his emotional core and replaced it with a program that ensured that those in the upper echelons of power would remain there—no matter what—while those who weren’t privileged enough to earn those positions would fall faster and faster in rank. But we’ll get to that.” I looked over at where Dylan and Sadie were eyeing each other warily. “Dylan, restrain CEO Monroe. Gag her if she can’t remain quiet. I have quite a lot to go through, and it’ll go faster without interruptions.”

“I stand with Sadie in that this is preposterous!” Plancett declared, finally breaking out of his shock. I glanced at him to see that another Knight was already placing the cuffs on his wrists.

“Can’t you see what’s happening?” Sadie shouted, and I looked over to see that Dylan had grabbed her and pressed her over the desk, holding her still so she could restrain the struggling woman. “This is nothing short of a coup! The new Champion is trying to institute a regime change in our departments so that she can—”

Her shouting quickly became muted as Dylan pressed a metal muffler over her jaw, molding the pliable material against her mouth and cutting off the cries.

“That’s better,” I said, pressing a finger in my ear. “Now—”

“Champion Castell, explain yourself,” Scipio interrupted, his voice an ice-cold vice that promised death should my answers not satisfy him. “CEO Monroe has my endorsement as—”

“You’ll forgive me, Lord Scipio, if your endorsement can’t possibly hold much weight in this issue,” I interjected softly. “CEO Monroe’s family is part of a centuries-old terrorist cell, bent on controlling you for their own purposes. And they have been succeeding, sir. Your opinion is suspect, because you are lacking the important elements of your code that you need to make your own determination.”

Scipio froze for several long seconds, his face locked in an impassive mask. “I show no degradation of my systems,” he said, sneering. “And you are not qualified to make such determinations on my coding.”

“And yet I have evidence, taken from Sadie Monroe’s terminal,” I said, trying to maintain my calm. “As well as several parts of your missing code. Parts that Sadie and her family stole.”

“And Plancett?” Sage asked, finally breaking his silence. “What is his role in this little melodrama?”

“Conspiracy. Sadie was purchasing Plancett’s loyalty and voting power on the council, in exchange for making it more difficult for his workers’ ranks to drop and supplying him with ration cards.” I paused and tapped on my screen. Sure enough, the file containing all of the pertinent evidence was sitting there waiting for me, sent by Cornelius right after I started speaking. “On the council server, you will each find a message with files recovered from Sadie’s terminal. Included among them are messages between her and Plancett, discussing issues like this. The messages were encrypted, but thanks to the bits of Scipio’s code we recovered, we were able to decrypt them.”

I watched Sage lean forward and tap on the screen, his eyes scanning through his messages. “There are hundreds of files in this,” he said. “Thousands. How did you recover them?”

“I broke into her quarters,” I admitted. “We knew that she had parts of Scipio’s code stored in there and had reason to believe she was planning to use those parts against him.”

Sage cocked his head at me for a second, and then his eyes narrowed. “Your quarters resetting. You did that?”

I hesitated. I hadn’t expected anyone to figure that part out, but Sage was smarter than most. “Yes. It was necessary to cover our movements. You see, Sadie isn’t alone in this. She is part of a massive family, half of whom have been infiltrating departments all over. The other half are living as undocs, and soldiers in her war against the Tower. If they had caught on to what I was trying to do, they would’ve tried harder to kill me and everyone working with me to keep it secret. I have evidence that they did it before, twenty-five years ago. I also have evidence that Sadie was responsible for the sentinel that attacked the contestants in the Tourney, killing Min-Ha Kim and my mother, Holly Castell.”

Sage frowned, his bushy brows drawing together. “That is a very long list of some rather serious allegations. And it does nothing to answer Scipio’s question. How are you or any of your people qualified to identify Scipio’s coding? For that matter, what happened twenty-five years ago that bears any relevance to this matter? I’m sorry, but before I can sign off on you arresting the heads of two different departments, I’m going to need to see this evidence.”

I swallowed. I had known this moment was coming, and now that it was upon me, the confidence I had been feeling earlier drained out of me. I was about to reveal Jasper, Rose, and Tony to both Sage and Scipio. I had no idea how this was going to go, and that was causing me no small amount of anxiety. Mostly because they weren’t sure how he was going to react, either.

“I will answer your questions gladly,” I replied. “But first my Knights will need to clear the room. May I have your permission to move Sadie and Plancett to cells in the Citadel, pending the result of this meeting?”

Sage stared at me for several seconds, and then looked up at Scipio. “Lord Scipio?”

“You may remove them to the antechamber,” he said after a pause. “I will not allow them to be shuffled out of this room in handcuffs, and marched to the cells, without first having justifiable cause. If the Tower learns that two councilors might have been involved in a plot to overthrow me, there will be a reckoning, and I would like to avoid that in case these allegations prove untrue.”

I heard the warning in his voice and got the message loud and clear. If I wasn’t able to convince them that I was telling the truth, then I would be the one being escorted from the Council Room. It was hard not to make a gulping sound as I swallowed the lump that was my fear. I couldn’t fail in this. If I did, there would be nothing to do but run away with everyone, join my brother, and leave the Tower to its fate. Thank Scipio I’d had the foresight to make sure that everyone was ready to go at the first sign of failure. All we would have to do was hide out until my brother and the others arrived.

“As you wish. Knights?”

Dylan finally let Sadie up, hauling her back and then pushing her down the stairs. Sadie struggled, crying out in spite of the muffler over her mouth. I could feel the hatred and spite in her eyes as Dylan shoved her past, the blue of them so dark with anger that they were more black than anything else. Dylan kept her firmly under control, though, and within moments, the Knights had left, leaving the hard drives containing Jasper and Rose on the central dais.

I pushed away from my desk and moved down the stairs, then stepped through the door. “Lord Scipio, does this room have a terminal independent of your own systems available?” I asked, heading for the dais in the middle of the room.

“Yes,” he replied. “I trust you need to interface the hard drives to it?”

“Yes,” I informed him. “I will also need you to share control of your holographic projectors and speakers.”

Scipio blinked at me, and then nodded. I made it to the dais just as a slot opened up from the floor, and a terminal on a table was lifted up from a storage area below. I could see the connection cables waiting, and picked up both hard drives, carrying them over to the table. Setting them down carefully, I plugged Jasper in first. Here we go, I said, hitting the button to initialize the download.

“The reason I know that Sadie was responsible for stealing parts of Scipio’s code is because the parts she targeted were parts of other AIs, used to enhance Scipio’s original programing. They were all candidates for Scipio’s position, once, but ultimately weren’t selected when their programs failed. However, aspects of their personalities were added to give him extra checks and balances in his decision-making process. Allow me to present the first one: Jasper.”

Jasper’s download had just finished, and I nervously turned and looked up to where Scipio was sitting on his chair. Seconds later, his form grew less defined as some of the blue beams being emitted by the projectors above shifted, the color changing to an orange hue. Moments later, a ghostly outline of Jasper in his full glory stood next to Scipio, his white hair slicked back and his mustache impeccably groomed.

“Greetings,” he said, giving a nod of his head. “It is good to see you, Brother.”

Scipio looked up at him… and then back to me. “What is this?” he asked.

I frowned. I had wondered if Scipio had been aware of his loss, and now that he was peering at Jasper like he was an absolute stranger, I was starting to realize that he hadn’t been. Hell, watching his face, it was almost like he didn’t even remember Jasper in the first place. Disappointment rippled through me as it hit me that Scipio might not be able to help us fix his programming on his own. Especially if he wasn’t even aware he was broken.

“That is Jasper. He made up the core of your logic, before he was taken twenty-five years ago.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “I think I would know if my—”

“Are you telling me that you haven’t yet deduced that convincing your diagnostic subroutines that you are perfectly well would be the first step any subversive group would take against you?” Jasper asked, and I squinted at him, taking a moment to rephrase his question to Scipio in a way I could understand: You don’t think they’re smart enough to make you think you’re okay?

“I…” Scipio faltered, and my heart stopped. I’d never seen the great machine look so flustered, and I suddenly worried about what he might do, now that he was beginning to realize that there was a problem. I prayed he didn’t shut down. The last thing we needed was for him to go offline.

“How many of these… parts of Scipio have you collected, Champion Castell?” Sage asked, and I looked back to see the old man standing, his arms crossed over his chest. “I see another hard drive there.”

“Three,” I said. “I have Rose and Jasper, while Engineer Green has Tony.” I paused to look at Lacey and saw her setting a hard drive of her own on the desk in front of her, resting one hand on it and giving me a nod. “There are two more—Kurt and Alice. I know that Kurt was stolen first, over a hundred years ago, but we haven’t been able to discover his whereabouts. We have no idea what happened to Alice.”

“But they were all stolen?” he asked, spearing me with a look.

“Ye—” I paused, and then shook my head, realizing I was about to lie inadvertently. “I don’t know about Alice. All I know is that she is likely missing as well. Tony made his way to Engineer Lacey on his own, when he realized that they would probably be coming after him next. But I haven’t questioned him. I am uncertain of his story.”

“So that explains it,” he muttered. I squinted at him, baffled by his response.

“Sir?” I asked.

Sage blinked owlishly down at me. “Hm? Ah, yes. My apologies.”

Apologies for what? I wondered as he unfolded his arms from under his armpits. I started to follow where his hand was pointing, assuming he was about to ask me some sort of question.

Until I saw the object he was gripping, the familiar, matte black L-shape of it barely registering until the first flash of fire erupted from the tip with a violent BANG! Strum jerked in his chair, a red hole forming between his eyes. The back of his skull exploded in a wet mass across the wood of the wall behind him. I stared at it for a second, so shocked that I was unable to fully comprehend what had just happened.

Then Lacey gave a shrill scream of horror. I snapped my head toward her in time to see her standing, staring at where Strum was still sitting, his body still and lifeless. Suddenly another BANG barked from over my shoulder, and I ducked down instinctively, covering my head with my hands. Blood spurted from high up on Lacey’s chest, just below her collarbone.

She staggered back, and the next bullet caught her low in the stomach, at which point she disappeared behind the desk. I whirled around, finally breaking through the shock of his attack and already starting to call Dylan, when Sage said, “Scipio, lock down this room and jam all transmissions coming from this building, authorization code Pine, Ezekial 0-1-9-5-1.”

“Authorization confirmed,” Scipio replied automatically, and I heard the metallic grate of locks being slammed into place and additional security doors being lowered. My breath caught when I realized that I was trapped. Alone.

With a man I feared I had gravely misjudged.

* * *

Dear Reader,

Thank you for reading .

Book 7, , is the grand finale of the series!

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Bella x

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