The Girl Who Dared to Think Bella Forrest (best classic literature txt) 📖

“It’s dangerous.”

“More dangerous than hacking an elevator?”

I nodded.

“How dangerous?”

“Very.”

“Is it those pills?” she asked, her brows furrowing. “Did you get involved in something illegal?”

I kept my mouth shut and my jaw tight, but the words were there, threatening to spill out of my mouth. I wanted so badly to tell her everything I’d seen since last night. She was my best friend—and I needed to talk to someone.

“They’re killing people,” I whispered, and all the emotions that I had been holding inside spilled out in hot tears. My anger at my parents, my fear for Grey, my frustrations with Roark, and the feeling of being completely untethered and out of control. I sobbed into Zoe’s shoulder, and she clutched me close, patting my back as I explained the whole situation. It took a while, and by the end my eyes felt red and raw, and I was hiccupping.

Zoe was quiet for a long time. “The Knights are killing the ones?” she finally asked, her eyes glancing over to me.

And I could see the hope there, begging me to tell her it was all a sick practical joke. “Yes.”

There was another span of silence, and a glance at Zoe told me she was struggling to process this. Eventually, she said, “And they want you to do it as well, and it just so happens that the man they picked out for you is Grey.”

“Yes.”

Another long, halting silence. Then, “And you have a pill that could get his number up, but you don’t know how to get it to him?”

“Yes,” I grated out, trying not to grow impatient with her and her need to fact-check every point I’d told her. I dried some more tears while she stared off, deep in thought. “Look, I need a way to get this pill to him, but they won’t let me into his cell before I’ve killed him.”

“Which would be counterproductive,” Zoe said hollowly. “What about his food?”

I met her inquisitive gaze with an angry one of my own. “They’re not feeding him.”

Zoe paled. “That’s unconscionable,” she declared.

“That’s an understatement,” I replied. “And a big one. It’s awful. That woman... she looked so thin it hurts me to think about it. There’s no way of knowing how long they kept her alive before they killed her—but it seemed like a long time.”

Zoe turned even whiter, her lips losing color, and I reached out and took her hand. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you,” I said.

She shook her head. “You shouldn’t have to go through this alone. I mean... No one in the Tower would ever believe... Do you think your parents have—”

“They have,” I said harshly, my hand cupping my cheek, feeling the phantom sting of my mother’s slap.

“Oh.” She fell silent, and I did as well, still scrambling around for an idea.

“You said there was a white mist?” Zoe suddenly asked.

I blinked. “Yeah. Why?”

“How long did it remain in the room?”

“Gerome had it sucked out a moment or two after she... stopped moving,” I replied, my voice coming out strangled at the end.

She rolled her lips between her teeth, her expression thoughtful. “What did they do with her, after they... after she... after—”

“They came in and dragged her out,” I said, trying to understand why she was asking all these questions. “But what does that have to do with—”

“How fast?” she asked, interrupting me, and I frowned, trying to remember. Most of the details stood out with perfect gut-wrenching clarity, but my perception of time was odd—I had only been down there for a little over six minutes, but it had felt like eternity.

“Fast,” I said, finally able to remember, and she smiled. “What?”

“I think I know a way to help you,” she said. “But it’s tricky.”

“What is it?” I asked, allowing the thin thread of hope to rise up inside me.

“It’s really simple when you think about it,” she said with a small, sad smile. “You’ll have to give him the pill after you press the button.”

17

I blinked at Zoe’s words and then gave her an incredulous look. “That kind of defeats the purpose, Zo. If we let them gas him first, then the pill won’t exactly be effective.”

She grinned at me, revealing white teeth, and shook her head. “It will be,” she announced as she pulled herself back up. “C’mon, we gotta stop by my house. I need a pipe chart.”

I retracted my lashes and let them pull me up before disconnecting them, still mystified by her statement. “Zoe, stop planning and start telling me what your plan is before you go running off the deep end.”

“I always run off the deep end,” she replied as she hit the button to the access hatch. It grated as it slid open, and she cast an eye at it as she passed through. “This door needs to be oiled,” she chided.

I stepped in behind her and placed my hands on her shoulders. “Zoe. What are we doing?”

“We’re going back to my house to get the pipe chart,” she said, shrugging out of my gentle hold. “We’re close to an elevator that runs all the way to Water Treatment. C’mon.”

She darted away down the left tunnel, moving quickly. I sighed and followed her as she moved down the tight, narrow passages that seemed to run on endlessly throughout the shell. My legs, still aching from the mad dash up here, were already protesting the fast, jerking speed as I tried to keep up with my best friend, following the flashes of her blue uniform as she navigated them effortlessly.

We came to a stop at an elevator, and I stepped on, immediately wincing at the buzz in my head as the computer scanned us. It instantly checked my wrist, confirming the blue nine was still there.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I had been holding and then crossed my arms, expecting it to start moving after it said Zoe’s name.

To my surprise