Catalyst

  “But it’s someone who’s managed to get into machines like they can walk right through a firewall, and plant malicious code in them without anyone noticing. Who else can do that?”

  “Yes,” Yuri chimed in eagerly. “It is as if someone is dressed as Batman, but also has Batman’s powers, which makes one think it must be Batman.”

  Despite the direness of their conversation, Tom and Vik both gasped, shocked by the words.

  “Batman doesn’t have superpowers,” Vik told Yuri, appalled.

  “Yeah, he’s just very clever and inventive,” Tom explained, aghast.

  “And rich,” Vik added. “How do you not know this, Yuri? What cave did you dwell in the entirety of your youth?”

  Yuri shrugged his large shoulders. “My apologies, Vikram. I suppose I was too busy climbing mountains, training for triathlons, and bench-pressing more than you and Thomas are able to manage with your combined efforts, to read many comic books.”

  Vik sighed and shook his head. “And this, Evil Wench, is why I do not mock the Android.”

  A smile flitted over her lips. “I get it now.”

  Tom looked around at his friends, a realization sinking over him that they knew everything now . . . everything. And they were still here. Still . . . themselves. Sure, Vik was freaking out, Wyatt was neurotic, and Yuri was . . . was superhumanly awesome as always, but they hadn’t grown angry with him, they hadn’t stormed out or rejected him.

  Maybe he hadn’t lost them.

  Maybe he wouldn’t lose them.

  And it wasn’t until the enormous relief poured through him like a dam breaking that Tom realized why he’d really hidden so much from them. It wasn’t only to keep them safe.

  It was to keep them from leaving.

  He bowed his head so no one could see his face, the way he was suddenly struggling not to say something stupid and embarrassing and sentimental. An asteroid wasn’t about to hit Earth, after all. This wasn’t the time for it.

  But he was so grateful and so relieved, he could’ve hugged them all. All at once in a big cheesy group thing.

  “You know, we were onto you,” Vik said suddenly.

  Tom raised his head. “No, you weren’t.”

  “Oh yeah? Wait and see, Gormless One.” He bared his forearm keyboard and said to Wyatt, “We can use that program and reverse the memory we erased.”

  “What memory?” Tom said sharply.

  Wyatt’s cheeks flushed crimson. “Um, Vik, maybe . . .”

  “Yeah, we knew something was going on,” Vik said with a laugh, and sent Tom the program. Tom ran it immediately, intensely curious, and remembered . . .

  Lying on the carpet, Vik and Wyatt and discussing how secretive he was . . .

  “You were actually—” Tom began.

  Wyatt kissing him.

  His jaw dropped as he remembered her telling him she’d liked him.

  His eyes shifted to hers, and he felt his own cheeks burning suddenly, and Wyatt looked so painfully embarrassed, Tom didn’t know whether to laugh or not, but then . . .

  Blackburn, on the vactrain, “I’m creating a link between our processors. With a thought, I’ll be able to access your sensory receptors and see exactly what you’re doing anytime I want to.”

  Tom went very still. “What the hell is this?”

  HE WAS STILL boiling inside when he headed to the Upper common room before dinner. As far as Tom could figure, Blackburn wasn’t watching him twenty-four hours a day. . . . He would’ve come already and tried to delete the memory again.

  No, he had to tune in selectively. Tom didn’t know how, or when, so he held his peace and didn’t tell his friends. He couldn’t shake a sense of eyes on him, watching his every step.

  He nearly jumped out of his skin when he ran into Irene Frayne by the door outside Alexander Division.

  “Hello, Mr. Raines.” She gave a thin-lipped smile. “I think we need to talk.”

  Tom eyed her warily. “What about?”

  “I’m in stealth mode, so other cadets shouldn’t be able to see me. Let’s chat in your bunk.”

  Tom nodded mutely, and at her gesture, led the way back into Alexander Division. A sudden thought came to him: he’d promised Vik he’d warn him if the “invisible woman” was ever in their division. He discreetly pulled back his sleeve and fired off a net-send.

  A crashing sound echoed down the hallway like someone in one of the bunks had tumbled to the ground. There was a high shriek of fear, and Clint backed out of the bathroom suddenly. “My God, man, what are you doing?”

  And then Vik strolled out into the hallway buck naked and looking very proud of himself.

  “Howdy, Tom,” Vik said jovially, and walked on. Tom struggled against laughter.

  It grew worse when Clint rounded the corridor and his jaw dropped. “Ashwan, what are you doin’, fella? No one wants to see this.” He chased Vik down the hallway. “Ashwan, Ashwan! Are you listenin’ to me?”

  Frayne cast Tom a hard, irritated look, and stepped into Tom’s bunk. The door slid shut behind them.

  Tom had wanted more of a reaction than that to report to Vik, so he said, “Huh. We don’t usually have naked people walking around here.”

  “I raised two teenagers,” she said coldly. “I recognize when someone is attempting to send me up. I don’t appreciate you spreading word of my presence here to the other cadets. You will use more discretion in the future, am I understood?”

  “Sorry,” Tom muttered.

  Frayne peeled off her coat, and surveyed Tom and Clint’s beds, before settling upon draping her coat on Clint’s. “I’d like to ask you about Lieutenant Blackburn.”

  Blackburn. Just the person Tom didn’t want to talk about. He wondered suddenly if Blackburn was watching them. “Uh, why?”

  Frayne studied him a moment. “Are you familiar with the ghost in the machine?”

  Tom’s brain ground to a halt. His mouth went dry. Why was she asking him about this?

  “This terrorist,” Frayne said, “has been systematically killing members of the Coalition. Now, in light of recent events, many people are overlooking this cyberterrorist, but I am more convinced than ever that it’s imperative to track down this agent of chaos now.”

  Agent of chaos. All Tom could think for a moment was that it was a great call sign.

  “I have a theory,” Frayne said. “I think this ghost in the machine plants his malicious code in the drones well before he uses them. Perhaps years before. I don’t think the ghost has been hacking them one at a time. I think the ghost is someone inside the Pentagon or even inside Obsidian Corp. who accesses the machines while they’re connected with the local server. He contaminates them well beforehand, and that’s why he’s simply skated through our firewalls.”

  So she didn’t think it was someone with a special ability with machines. Tom almost laughed. Good. Because no one in the entire world could accuse him of being the ghost if it was someone devastatingly good at programming.

  “I also think it has to be someone with a neural processor,” Frayne said. “The skill with which the assailant maneuvered those drones in several attacks simply couldn’t be matched by an ordinary human operator with a set of remote controls. There’s a machine-enhanced mind behind this. That’s why I’ve brought Ms. Enslow into my search.”

  Tom’s awareness sharpened. “Why Wyatt? You don’t think she’s a suspect, do you? Because that’s—”

  “Of course it’s not some teenage girl,” Frayne said dismissively.

  “Yeah, definitely not. Or a teenager at all,” Tom said, relieved.

  “But she is, however, in the confidence of my person of interest.”

  Tom froze.

  “I probed her for information, but there was very little she could tell me about Lieutenant Blackburn.”

  Tom stared at her. “Blackburn?”

  “He has the ability, the access privileges, and most of all, the motive, given his personal history with Obsidian Corp. and the m
ilitary.”

  And suddenly, Tom knew she was right. It was Blackburn. Of course it was Blackburn. Of course! He agreed with Tom that the Austere-grade processors needed to be stopped, but he didn’t believe nonviolence would work, he didn’t believe a revolution would work. . . .

  What had Blackburn said? If there was a revolution like you’re suggesting, the individual power players—the people who are the real problem—would simply fly abroad until the violence died down. That’s why the only way to act effectively against them is subtly and silently, involving as few people as possible or even acting alone.

  This was a third path without revolution or passivity: a campaign of targeted assassinations using the technology the Coalition executives relied upon to protect themselves from the public. Not only had Blackburn ensured the men and women with real power hadn’t escaped the violence, he’d destroyed Obsidian Corp.’s reputation in the process. . . . It was all so very deliberate, so carefully done.

  The other ghost in the machine was Blackburn. He knew it was Tom, so he felt at liberty to use the persona the Coalition feared, and direct it towards his own agenda.

  Tom remembered something, then: the whisper he’d heard in his ear at the party right before the drones began firing, the one telling him to look around. Blackburn could see through his eyes. He’d been in control over those Corday-93s.

  He’d been using Tom to acquire targets. And since he had access to all of Tom’s sensory receptors, he’d been able to make Tom hear a whisper in his ear . . . just like in the loyalty sim. That had been Blackburn warning him Frayne was watching them. It was all Blackburn.

  “He’s my primary suspect,” Frayne said, “but I’m operating on a gut instinct and I need proof if I’m going to challenge a member of the military.”

  “Not like if he was a lowly civilian, huh?” Tom said darkly.

  “Mr. Raines, you’re going to serve as a set of eyes and ears for me.”

  Tom almost snorted, realizing Frayne wanted the same thing Blackburn had. He’d been playing nice ever since the last Capitol Summit, when it had seemed the only alternative to rigidly holding his ground was lying to people’s faces and undermining them in stealth. He knew the smart thing to do here would be to agree to spy for her and then figure out what he’d really do. But something stopped him from playing nice this time. Despite the fact that Blackburn had been spying on him, despite knowing Blackburn had killed Heather, had killed those executives, Tom had this sudden, deep conviction there was one person on his side in this scenario, and it wasn’t Irene Frayne.

  Tom couldn’t bring himself to even pretend otherwise.

  “No,” Tom told her.

  “Excuse me?” Shock transformed her face.

  “I said I won’t spy for you. No.”

  She drew a step toward him, her eyes narrowing. “You understand, your father’s continued freedom is contingent upon your cooperation.”

  “Oh, really?” Tom met her eyes, his heart suddenly pounding. “Where is my father?”

  He saw it, then. The tiniest flicker on Frayne’s face.

  “Is he alive?” Tom croaked. His chest grew tight. “See, I haven’t heard from my dad at all since the asteroid hit. Not once. And that’s not like my dad. He wouldn’t do that. So my question is, if you’ve been spying on him and following him around, where is he? I don’t see much reason to cooperate with you when the guy you’re threatening might not even be here to suffer consequences for me now.”

  She folded her arms. “Mr. Raines, our resources have been very strained this past month. We couldn’t waste personnel following a person of middling importance—”

  “Oh, so now he’s not worth the effort, huh?” Tom said sharply. “Before, when he was just going about his business, you were glad to follow him and spy on everything he did, but now when you could actually be useful and find him, you’re useless?” He let out a bitter laugh. “Of course you’re useless. You’re not really about protecting people like my dad, you’re about keeping him in line and protecting the precious Coalition executives. Why should I care if someone’s offing some trillionaires? They’re your concern, not mine.”

  “You should care because this ghost in the machine has already inspired copycats, Mr. Raines. They’ve unleashed a wave of violence.”

  “What wave of violence? I haven’t heard anything.”

  “We’ve instructed the media to keep it quiet. The last thing we need is another batch of domestic terrorists inspired to act. A caterer laced all the champagne glasses at a lobbying event with ricin. There are fifty people—two US senators among them—dying in Washington ICUs as we speak. A lone-wolf terrorist smeared a culture of bacterial meningitis on the buttons of the members only elevators in the congressional office buildings. This ghost in the machine threatens to destabilize the power structure of this society—”

  “So what?” Tom cut in.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You still haven’t given me one reason I should give a damn. Yeah, it sucks that people are dying, but these aren’t innocent little lambs. The power structure of a society is supposed to serve the people who live in it, but these people own our parks and our roads and our schools, and what does someone like my dad get? He gets jailed for speaking up against them in public and threatened with indefinite detention whenever someone like you decides he’s getting inconvenient. Am I supposed to be sorry some scumbag executives are getting some vigilante justice? Maybe if I stab myself in the gut, I can force out a tear or two. Maybe.”

  Frayne paced away from him, visibly agitated. “There is a lot I’d change about this society. We all wish we lived in a utopia where life was fair, but it’s not and it never will be and this is certainly not the way to get there. This is a revolution in slow motion and I assure you, revolutions almost always have tragic endings. When you remove a ruling body, more often than not, you don’t end up with a George Washington, you end up with a Robespierre or a Hitler. We live in an age of hydrogen bombs and biological warfare. We have the technology now that one madman in power could use to obliterate all life on Earth. We can’t afford sweeping change this late in history.”

  She didn’t even seem to realize one madman had already threatened all life on Earth. One of those same men in power she was protecting. To Tom, that invalidated her theory that total surrender to people like Vengerov could save the world.

  He looked out the window, thinking of the Austere-grade processors, the future they were sliding toward. Total control over the mind and spirit of humanity in exchange for “safety.” To Frayne, a boot stomping on the face of humanity forever was merely the price to be paid to ensure something worse didn’t crush them permanently. She believed it was impossible to make the world fair, so she preemptively surrendered the idea. To her, that was realism. It struck Tom as hopelessness. Defeat. Cowardice.

  He refused to believe the sole reason for existence was the perpetuation of existence at any cost. There had to be a reason for it all, a meaning, a point to living in the first place. A better future had to be possible.

  He knew with certainty that the only way to make a brighter future impossible was to surrender to Frayne and Vengerov and their security state. Their road led straight into a black hole the world would never escape from again.

  “I knew the loyalty test was a simulation,” Tom told Frayne.

  Her gaze swung to his.

  Tom raised his eyebrows. “Don’t tell me you’re shocked. Sure, no one tipped me off, no one warned me or anything, I figured it out on my own, then I did what I had to just to win it. That’s why I had my eyes closed for so long, I was deep in thought. The truth is, if there was ever an uprising of soldiers like that with the demands those guys had, I’d step aside and let them at it. They could kill all the Coalition CEOs or every member of Congress for all I care and I’d let them do it.”

  Her voice was tense. “Why come clean now?”

  “Because I’m not who you think I am. I’m not loyal to the powerful
people in this country. Why should I be? They’ve proven over and over again that they feel absolutely no loyalty to me and mine. They can send a thousand people like you, but you won’t scare me into bending the knee. If there was a choice between a future where we give up all our choices for a guarantee of safety, or a future with a minuscule chance of a better world and an enormous likelihood we’ll all destroy each other using our infinite range of choices, I’d pick the second one every single time before I’d throw in the towel and bow my head like you have. All this stuff you’re doing, surveilling us, searching for dissent—you’re on the wrong side. You’re helping the wrong people. The world won’t be a utopia, it will never be fair, because there are people like you doing your best to keep it that way.”

  Frayne swept up her coat, her face like stone. “Very well, Mr. Raines. I think matters are very clear between us now.”

  Tom turned away, undaunted by the threat in her voice. What could she do—take it out on his father? She didn’t even know where he was.

  Frayne paused in the doorway. “Regardless of everything else, Tom, I do hope your father is found.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Tom said, staring out the window. After all, none of Frayne’s threats had any power over Tom now if Neil was dead.

  TOM ARRIVED AT dinner before his friends, and waited at their usual table. The crowd parted a bit around him and he found himself meeting Blackburn’s gaze where he sat at the officer’s table. Doubts washed over him as he realized he’d basically allied with him when he refused to help Frayne—allied with the same man who’d once tried to drive him insane with the census device.

  Tom knew what Blackburn was doing was wrong, but he also couldn’t see any alternative. Blackburn was right about one thing: every single check on the power of the Coalition executives had been neutralized, dismantled, hobbled. If there was no nonviolent way to contain them, then the choice was between surrender or opposing them violently.

  Tom shifted uneasily in his seat, because he knew murder itself was wrong, but what about murdering, say, Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler? They were both men who inflicted terrible suffering on the rest of the world. Killing them wasn’t wrong. In fact, stopping someone from killing them—that was the greater evil by far.