The sentinel wasn’t facing us. It was marching down the cross hall, heading toward the center of the Tower. Dylan quickly clamped her hand over her light, cutting the beam off in a mad attempt to shield us from notice, but I knew it was too late. I was already shouldering the plasma rifle, intent on taking it out, when my light caught a shadow forming on the wall behind it.

Another sentinel entering the junction behind the first.

I took an alarmed step back, even as Rose moved forward, planting a hand on each of our shoulders and shoving us back a few steps, then creating a barrier between us and the sentinels. “Run,” she instructed, her stance becoming defensive.

I hesitated, not wanting to leave Rose behind to deal with two sentinels when I had a perfectly good rifle, but it finally dawned on me that the sounds we had been hearing were them—the sentinels. They were marching, likely from wherever Sage had stowed them to whatever department they intended to hit next. And it wasn’t just one or two or three of them, but a seemingly never-ending army of the mechanized monsters.

We had to run. At any second, they were going to spring on us like ants defending their colony.

Dylan got there faster than me, her hand grabbing my shoulder and forcibly pulling me back. I took a few stumbling steps in her direction, my mouth dry and heart racing, then cast a look at Rose, watching as she activated something in the sentinel to make the lines of it start glowing purple, acting like a beacon. My heart was ripping in half at the thought of her sacrificing herself for us when something about the darkness beyond her gave me pause.

Where were Alice’s golden eyes?

“Wait,” I said softly, the absence of them intriguing enough to bring me to a halt. I knew that if I was wrong, I could delay our escape by precious seconds, but this was important. When Rose was in control, her eyes glowed purple nonstop. So why weren’t the other sentinels the same?

In fact… I cocked my head, listening intently. The sound of their feet marching was still there, thundering down the hall, but there was no other sound of movement on top of it. No sets of feet running out of rhythm with the marching, or anything that signaled pursuit. No sounds of voices calling for us to stop.

“Liana!” Dylan hissed, urgently tugging on the shoulder of my uniform.

But I shook my head, shrugged out of her hold, and moved back toward Rose. Even her posture was relaxing some, her head cocking quizzically as she peered down the hall. She glanced at me when I stepped up next to her, and then gazed down the hall.

“I don’t understand,” she said softly, shifting her weight nervously. “Why are they not chasing us?”

“Maybe they didn’t see us,” Dylan whispered, taking a few steps forward before stopping again. “We need to run.”

I understood why Dylan wanted to run, but I was curious. Curious enough to do something reckless.

I took another step toward the line and lifted my light. I hadn’t done much to mask the intensity of it, so the sentinels should’ve noticed it already. But when I raised my arm, taking the beam from the corrugated floor to their feet, legs, hips, arms, necks, and heads, they completely ignored me and continued their steady march down the hall. Their eyes were dark, completely unlit, and staring straight ahead.

Three passed us, then five, then eight, their pace keeping them within ten feet of each other.

“What is this?” Dylan breathed, finally coming forward to stand next to Rose, her tone bewildered.

I studied them, my mind already wrestling with that question. I considered for a second that maybe they were damaged in some way, but there were too many for that. Sentinels were almost impossible to damage with conventional weapons, so I’d expect only one or two, even if someone had managed it. Not this many. No, whatever they were, it was for something else. Maybe it had something to do with Alice, or maybe they were being used to retrieve something Sage needed, but either way, I wanted to know.

No, scratch that; I had to know. If Sage was using these sentinels for something, I had to know what. If I could figure out how to stop them or slow them down, then maybe I could also keep him distracted—or better yet, force him to call some of the legacies from the Citadel up here, to help him handle it.

And though it was keeping me from getting to my friends, I made the decision in a split second, seeing the benefit of at least figuring out what Sage was up to. “We’re going to follow them,” I announced to the others before turning back to face them.

Dylan was frowning at me, and as always, Rose’s face was difficult to interpret. But it was Dylan who spoke first. “We have to get to the Citadel, remember? Sage needs your boyfriend, and every moment we take away from that is a chance for those legacies to grab him!”

I nodded, swallowing down the uncertainty her words created. “I know that, but whatever is happening here is part of Sage’s plan, too. We have to figure out what it is, and whether we can disrupt it somehow. It’ll distract Sage, and maybe get him to pull some of the legacies out of the attack to fix it, or complete whatever task these things are meant for. At the very least, it’ll slow him down and give us more time to save the others.”

“Yeah, if there’s anyone left to save,” Dylan said, exasperated. “You’ve been pushing for us to get to the Citadel and your friends since all this started!”

“I know,” I grated out, annoyed that she was acting like I had completely forgotten about my friends or the Citadel. “But this is important too, and I’m doing it. You can continue on to the Citadel if you want, but as you said, we need to trust that they can take care of themselves. Besides, the sentinels are heading in that direction anyway. What can it hurt to kill two birds with one stone?”

Dylan frowned and looked up at Rose. “What do you think?”

“I think that the last report we had of the Citadel showed that the Knights were fighting against the legacies, and that power was still on inside. That bodes well for our friends, but not for long. Liana is right: these sentinels are nothing but shells with basic instructions programmed in. For all we know, they are being utilized to manually cut the power to the Citadel. Stopping them would buy our friends more time.”

The tall blond woman sucked in a deep breath and looked back and forth between us, her face torn. “I really do not want to die up here,” she said tiredly, giving me a pointed look. “But you both have excellent points. How do we do this?”

I turned back to the line of sentinels marching past, and then shrugged. “Let’s just join the convoy,” I suggested. “Rose, they aren’t going to stop us, are they?”

“They shouldn’t,” she replied, taking several steps toward the line to examine them closer. “It appears they aren’t really programmed to interact with anything. Like I said, just basic instructions.”

She moved into the line between two of them, facing the next one, and I held my breath, waiting to see what it would do. It continued to march toward her, but slowly began adjusting its course, until it was moving past her and then back into line. She looked at us, gave a thumbs-up, then turned and started to follow the one that had just passed.

Dylan sighed beside me and unzipped a pocket in her uniform to draw out the gun. “If these things’ eyes turn yellow for even one second…”

“I know,” I said, a thread of fear crawling up my spine. “But it’s a risk we have to take.”

I strode forward, with more confidence, hoping to hell that this gut instinct of mine didn’t get my friends killed, and led to something we could use to stall Sage.

The sentinels continued to march forward, completely ignoring our presence as they proceeded in a straight line down the hall. We passed by massive doors leading to storage bays, the numbers increasing the deeper we went into the Tower. I kept a careful eye on the sentinels on both sides of us, looking for any glimmer of a golden glow to signal that Alice was inside, but their eyes remained dark, their movements stiff and clunky.

The line made several turns during our trek, and after a few passageways, I worried about how far we were drifting from the Citadel.

Until we took an unexpected turn back toward it, down a hall that had a glow emanating from ahead, courtesy of the overhead lights that were on. I quickly pulled up a mental picture of our route and realized that we were actually closer to the Citadel than I had originally thought. In fact, it was seated beneath this floor. Power from there must also be feeding into this section.

Or Sage had allowed power to be diverted here for some other reason.

Either way, we were going to have to step carefully. If there was light here, that meant there might also be people. More importantly, it meant the cameras might be running. I prayed they weren’t, but if something important was happening up here, then it seemed likely the Core was watching. I looked up and spotted the camera mounts, studying their position. We could disguise our movement behind the sentinels if we alternated where we walked as we passed the cameras, using the machines to hide us, but there was a chance someone would notice our movements, or even pick up on the fact that Rose was different from the other sentinels, making it risky. But we had to do it. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to follow them or get into the Citadel.

I motioned to Dylan, flashing her a few hand signals in Callivax to explain the problem and my plan. As soon as my hand stopped moving, she looked up at the approaching cameras, and then nodded, dropping back to the left side of the sentinel behind us and leaving me to get close to Rose. She glanced down at me, her head cocked quizzically, and I quickly signed a message to her as well, letting her know what was going on. She nodded and returned her gaze down the hall, trying to assume the same walk that the sentinels around her were using. I tucked up next to her, walking in short steps, but quickly enough to keep up without being noticed.

We stepped into the light together, and I fought the urge to increase my speed or turn back, suddenly feeling exposed. I kept my eyes ahead, even though my impulse was to check on Dylan, and watched as the first camera passed us. I was guesstimating where the image would end and where the next camera would pick us up, and, after ten of Rose’s steps, I quickly darted around to her other side, praying that neither camera picked up the movement.

I put a hand on her arm this time and chanced a fast glance at Dylan. She was still on the left side, but when I glanced back, she quickly mimicked my movement, coming around to the other side of the sentinel. Exhaling, I returned my gaze to the line in front of us and saw that they were turning right and heading closer to the center of the Citadel. I checked the cameras down the hall across from us, but realized I had no way of knowing where the cameras were placed in the other passageway intersecting with this one, making it difficult to gauge how best to mask our movements.

If I broke cover to check, and someone was watching the screens, they’d know we were here.

My mind was searching for something as the corner loomed closer, trying to figure out how to handle this turn, when Rose whispered, “Get behind me. I’ll tell you which side.”

Of course! I could use her massive frame to hide my own for the turn. Appreciation surged through me, even as I realized there was still a chance that the cameras in the adjacent halls would see us, but there was nothing I could do about that anyway. Either way, we were going to have to get through this section, so it was a risk we had to take.

I quickly signed a hasty “do what I do” message to Dylan and then stepped behind Rose as she started to turn the corner. It was all I could do not to cringe at the exposure I felt in the intersection, but I kept moving forward.

As soon as Rose whispered, “Go to my right,” I was speeding up my steps and tucking in on her right side. A glance over my shoulder told me Dylan had followed. We kept walking, but for several seconds, I felt breathless as I waited for any sign or hint of an alarm.

There was nothing. The sentinels continued on for several more junctures, with Dylan and me dodging cameras in between, and by the time we arrived at the next turn, I was feeling exhausted and my heart was pounding desperately against my ribs in protest of the prolonged exertion of everything I had put it through over the past twenty-four hours.

I ignored it—I was getting good at that—but also knew that I wouldn’t be able to do that for much longer.

Although, if I could just reach Leo and initiate the process Lionel had told me about, it might end this fight, and I might finally be able to get some rest. After we found and caught Sage and the legacies, of course.

As ideal as that picture was in my head, I knew there were a few steps between here and there, and for it to actually work I had to get to Leo. And then… I paused, a sudden question occurring to me. Did I tell him about the New Day protocol? Should I? I felt like I should. But what if my time with Leo had somehow changed his priorities?

What if he refused?

Tony kept trying to reassure me that he wouldn’t, and truth be told, I didn’t believe he would either, which was probably why my initial idea was just to use the activation code without telling him. It would be easier that way, and potentially less painful than dragging out any sort of goodbye. And while I still secretly hoped we could copy him, I couldn’t justify the loss of life that would occur if we delayed the protocol while we figured out how to do it.

If we even could, that was. I had no idea whether that was something he could do in Cornelius’s terminal, or if we needed a bigger computer to do so. Leo was full AI, meaning it took a lot of energy for him to copy himself, and a lot of space to house him. Cornelius’s terminal was probably too small to handle the process. And even then, what if we did copy him? His clone would have all of his memories of us, and share his feelings toward me, and I would be consigning him to a future without me, all so I could keep a version of him to myself. It didn’t feel right.

It would be easier if I knew my neural clone was the one that made it through the vetting process, because at least then he’d have some version of me to be with. But I highly doubted it would, and I didn’t want to fill him with false hope. I wasn’t suited to be an AI; I barely had it together as a human, and even that was questionable at the best of times. Not to mention, I had failed more times than I could count, trying to keep the people in the Tower safe. That alone would probably disqualify me.

I shook off the dark musings and focused on keeping up with Rose as we took another corner, moving to her left side when she told me to. As I did, I realized that this was it—the sentinels were turning in to one of the storage rooms. I checked the cameras, and then told Rose, “Move to one side and stop by the door, and act like you’re malfunctioning a little bit. I’ll hide behind you and look inside, see what they are up to.”

Rose nodded, and a moment later, her steps became jerkier, loud whirs and straining noises being emitted from her legs. She began altering her trajectory, and I followed her, shifting behind her as she walked. I motioned for Dylan to tuck in next to me as her sentinel went by.

Within moments we were stopped just to the side of the door, Dylan and me pressed together behind Rose’s back. It wasn’t the best cover, but it was all we had.

While Rose continued her ruse of her legs not working, I quickly slid up to the edge of the door and looked in.

And what I saw made my heart stop.