Catalyst

  “Your mind, Mr. Raines.” Vengerov weighed the glass in his hand. “It seems your acuity with machines stems from a neural graft you received as a child. Computer-stimulated neurogenesis . . . The brain tissue is grown with the assistance of a machine and then implanted amid the healthy tissue.”

  Tom caught his breath. So that was the reason for his ability. And it explained Medusa’s, too. She’d told him she had a neural graft after her accident.

  “It seems,” Vengerov said, “that the process primed your brain and enabled you to interface beyond the capability of others with neural processors. It’s a pity. Neural grafts only take in the very young. I’d hoped to figure out the source of your ability and take advantage of it myself. Now I can’t.”

  “I’m so sorry for you,” Tom said sarcastically.

  “No need for regrets,” Vengerov said, his pale eyes steady on Tom’s. “This development simply means I need to keep you around. Alive. To be of use to me.”

  “I won’t help you. You might as well kill me, because I think you’re just a power hungry scumbag—”

  “Activate,” Vengerov said.

  The word triggered something, something that had already been installed in Tom’s processor while he was unconscious. Abruptly a stream of code filled his vision center, and Tom knew this was it, he was being reprogrammed, he was losing himself. He felt a surge of anger, fear, knowing he couldn’t stop this . . . but then the negative feelings swirled away like they’d circled down a drain, a sense of calmness, a sense of peace brimming through him.

  “Mr. Raines.”

  Tom met his eyes across the room, and his hostility and mistrust was gone, buried, a giddy wave of understanding washing through him that there was no danger here, nothing to fear. He’d been worried over nothing. Joseph Vengerov was a great person. A good person. One of the good guys.

  “Do you understand me now?” Vengerov said softly.

  Amazement filled Tom, because he did. The world suddenly seemed full of unnecessary chaos, shortsighted humans making stupid decisions. People couldn’t rule themselves. Better to have someone wiser, someone smarter, making decisions for them. Someone like Joseph Vengerov.

  And that applied to Tom, too. He was an idiot. He was a fool. He couldn’t control his own life, make his own choices. He should let Joseph Vengerov make them. The situation suddenly wasn’t so fearsome to him. In fact, Tom was so glad Vengerov had kidnapped him. He was so glad to be here.

  “I want to help you,” Tom said eagerly.

  Vengerov smiled. “Good. Lean over. I’m going to hook a neural wire between our processors.”

  Tom bowed his head, waiting for it, and then something reared up from somewhere in the back of his mind. A Trojan that had been lurking in his system activated. More code streamed before Tom’s vision center, and suddenly it was like Tom became himself again, breaking through a thick layer of ice. He slapped the neural wire out of Vengerov’s hand and received a sharp shock from the restraining node for it. He scrambled back away from Vengerov, that deceptive illusion of trust, peace, breaking away, shattering.

  The scream ripped from his lips. “Get away from me!” Tom’s heart was pounding, his breath coming in quick gasps. “What did you— You reprogrammed me! You did it again! I want to . . .” He reached out at the air, raging inside that he couldn’t just rip the man apart.

  Vengerov stared at him, uncomprehending, his hand still up where he’d been holding the neural wire. “How did that happen?”

  Tom saw the words before his vision center now: Malware neutralized. Read-only mode activated. He understood it. He suddenly understood it all.

  Tom laughed, but stopped laughing when Vengerov snapped, “Sit down!” and he found himself sitting automatically, the muscular impulse coming right from the restraining node.

  A malicious satisfaction warred with frustration as Tom sat there, and Vengerov began working on his processor, trying to figure out how Tom had snapped out of his program. He fought all night to regain control of Tom’s neural processor, but some program lurking in Tom’s system kept his processor in read-only mode, completely locking Vengerov out of his system.

  “James Blackburn,” Vengerov finally said.

  Tom grinned. “He beat you.”

  “You think he’s done you a favor,” Vengerov said coldly, when he finally gave up on his efforts.

  “Yeah. Kind of do.”

  Vengerov grabbed Tom’s hair and forced their eyes to meet. “He set your processor to overload if I take you out of read-only mode. Do you know what that means? It means he would rather kill you than let me reprogram you.”

  Tom swallowed. “I’d rather die than get reprogrammed, so I guess he is looking out for me.” He wasn’t surprised or betrayed, if that’s what Vengerov thought.

  Blackburn meant to stop Vengerov. He wanted to save the world. He’d always made it clear to Tom that his priority was the greater picture. He’d killed Heather for that reason, and he’d kill Tom, too, if that’s what it took to stop Vengerov.

  So, no, Tom wasn’t surprised to find he was as disposable to Blackburn as anyone else. On some level, Tom was grateful for that.

  Even if it did sting a bit.

  BEFORE LEAVING HIM locked in the opulent room, Vengerov hooked a wire between a neural access port on Tom’s restraining node and a port on the wall. Tom waited until he was out the door, then tried ripping the cord out, hoping to take the restraining node with it. It didn’t give. It wouldn’t come out of the wall, either.

  He tried pulling as hard as he could, putting all his weight on it, even biting it, but he couldn’t break the wire either. There was indistinct code flickering too quickly before his eyes even for his computer-enhanced brain to follow.

  What is he doing to me? What? Tom thought.

  And then Blackburn appeared. “Tom?”

  Tom yelled out, startled, and looked urgently over at Blackburn, who was suddenly in front of him. He couldn’t make sense of how Blackburn had come to be there, but he felt a great burst of relief, seeing that he was. “You’re here! You found me.”

  “I’m not here.”

  Tom stared at him. “You’re standing here. Right in front of me.”

  Blackburn lowered himself down to sit next to him. “Raines, your GPS signal disappeared several days ago. I’m manipulating your sensory receptors so you see me. I have access to . . .”

  “Yeah, yeah. You can do this because there’s that neural link between our processors. So you can see I’m in trouble. Vengerov has me somewhere. I don’t know where. He knows.”

  “He knows what?” Blackburn breathed.

  “Everything.” Tom realized he was shaking. “I don’t know where I am. I don’t even know how long I’ve been here. The chronometer in my processor is disabled. He took my dad. I had to tell him the truth or he would’ve killed him.”

  Blackburn swore softly. “He’s going to pull you apart to find out how your ability works, if that’s what it takes. Do you understand that?”

  “No, no, he already had his techs examine me. He can’t take my ability. It’s my brain, not my processor, so he tried to reprogram me into cooperating with him, but your countercode kicked in and put me in read-only mode. So is it true, he tries to end read-only mode, and he’ll fry my brain?”

  Blackburn was silent a long moment. “Yes.”

  “Okay. Just so that’s clear.”

  A strangeness fell between them.

  “I installed it after Capitol Summit,” Blackburn said. “Your first one. I never wanted it to be necessary. I’m sorry.”

  Tom wondered why he was bothering to apologize. He wasn’t surprised at all.

  “What’s he going to do to me now, sir?” His heart began racing. “If he can’t reprogram me, then I’m useless to him, right? Like, this restraining node thing, he can order me to sit or not to leave a place, but if he could just order me to help him, he’d have done it already.”

  Blackburn nodded. “A restrainin
g node can regulate your muscular impulses via your spinal cord. It can make your body move or stop it from moving. It can’t control your mind. Your mind is yours to control and I made sure of that.” He was silent a moment. “He can’t reprogram you behaviorally and he can’t erase your memory. He can access superficial directories—knowledge, skills, anything we’ve implanted while you’ve been at the Spire.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now Tom, he can’t take any memories out of you, but he’s not cut off from, say, flooding you with images or any number of pieces of information to manipulate you. You still need to be able to gain memories—I couldn’t disable that—and he can use that in many ways.”

  Tom felt sick. “What about culling me?”

  “The census device can damage your brain. I’d be surprised if he’d risk a neural culling without some urgent reason.” He rubbed his palm over his mouth. Tom knew Blackburn’s real life movements were being translated into his vision center. The familiarity of it made his stomach hurt. “Do you know about neural sovereignty, Tom?”

  Tom shook his head, then realized if Blackburn was seeing what his senses saw, he wasn’t gazing directly at Tom.

  The mirage of Blackburn moved closer to him and knelt right in front of him. The illusion was so complete, Tom could feel his arm brush his leg. “Our neural processors—Vigilant-grade neural processors—work in tandem with the human brain. That means your processor, when it’s inserted, maps your brain. It learns exactly where it accepts your conscious thought commands from. Are you following?”

  Tom nodded. “So my processor knows what comes from me.”

  “Precisely. It learns to obey your brain. That’s what happens when you first get the processor. So let’s say I hook a neural wire between your processor and mine.” He pointed between them. “I couldn’t interface and take control of you like you’re a standard machine, because your processor can distinguish between my neurons and yours. It knows your neurons usually give it commands, and mine don’t, so it will reject anything that comes from me. But there’s a way around that.”

  “Of course there is,” Tom said tiredly.

  “Has he tried hooking his processor into yours?”

  “Yes,” Tom said, remembering what Vengerov was about to do before Blackburn’s Trojan kicked in. “He didn’t get a chance to do anything, though, because your countercode activated and I stopped cooperating.”

  “And that’s the key right there. Cooperation,” Blackburn said. “If I hook my neural processor into yours and order you to interface with a machine, you won’t simply interface at my command because your processor doesn’t acknowledge my neural sovereignty. However, let’s say I order you to interface with a machine and you cooperate: you choose to accept the command and interface with a machine. If you do that, your processor begins a learning process. It will learn that it’s supposed to receive commands from my neurons as well as yours. That means it can learn to acknowledge neural sovereignty from me as well as you. This is very important for you to understand: if you let Joseph Vengerov gain neural sovereignty over your processor, he’ll be able to use your own processor to control you. He’ll be able to hook into you like any other machine and issue orders. If he ever gets neural sovereignty, you will never get that back from him.”

  Tom laughed disbelievingly. “Why would I ever cooperate? He had a gun to my dad’s head. That’s why I told him what I did. He doesn’t have any leverage now.”

  “You don’t think you’re going to do anything he says, but there are ways of manipulating you or coercing you or playing into your needs or desires. There’s no scale here, Tom. Something so minor as telling you when to blink, and you obeying that command, begins the learning process. He can use any number of psychological stressors to force you to comply. You have to hold out as long as possible until I find you. The only way you can fight back is to stay alert, and know exactly what he’s aiming to do with his actions. I might not be here to give you advice for much longer.”

  “What do you mean?” Tom said, suddenly afraid.

  “This link,” Blackburn said, gesturing between them, “can be jammed. He probably sees you on surveillance talking to thin air. It won’t be hard for him to put two and two together and find out that I’ve linked our processors. The only reason he hasn’t jammed it yet, I would guess, is because he’s hoping you’ll say something of interest while you talk to me.”

  Looking at him, Tom suddenly grew aware he was talking to someone in his head, someone who could be thousands of miles away.

  Someone who couldn’t help him.

  But there was someone who could.

  “Listen,” Tom said intently, “you need to do something for me. There’s someone who can help find me.”

  “Who?”

  Tom licked his lips, aware Vengerov was likely to be eavesdropping on him. He couldn’t say her name outright. So instead, he said, “Murgatroid.”

  “Is this a joke?”

  “No,” Tom said. He couldn’t say “Medusa.” “Just—just put something in the Spire system saying what’s happened to me and write in the name ‘Murgatroid.’ Trust me.” Medusa had search algorithms in the Pentagonal Spire’s systems. She’d notice it. She’d find it. She and Blackburn would get in contact. “And then warn Murgatroid not to ever answer to Murgatroid again. Also, tell my friends, um, that I’m fine, okay? They’re gonna wonder when I don’t come back. If I don’t.”

  Blackburn met his eyes. “I’ll do that,” he said. He reached out and gripped Tom’s shoulder. It was an illusion, and Tom knew that, but it felt real—it made him feel a bit safer. “Don’t give up. We won’t.”

  “Never,” Tom vowed fiercely, and he meant it with every shred of his being.

  TOM HAD DREADED the moment Vengerov used a census device on him. It was bad enough facing a neural culling at Blackburn’s hands. He couldn’t imagine how awful it would be at Vengerov’s. Despite Blackburn’s certainty Vengerov wouldn’t risk the damage a neural culling could wreak, Tom thought a neural culling was about the worst thing in the entire world—and it was the only thing he could imagine Vengerov doing to him.

  But Vengerov surprised him. Sure enough, day after day, he left Tom under the census device as it ran, sometimes watching, sometimes not, but the machine was on a standard setting that gave Tom total power over what memories were extracted from his head.

  Utterly bewildered, but relieved, Tom avoided giving Vengerov a single weapon to use against him. He plastered none of his bad memories on the screen, dwelled on none of his secrets, none of those things he could not share. He avoided the very thought of Yaolan, and after practicing thought interfaces as a Middle, and then using them as an Upper, he found it easier controlling the whole process.

  Instead, he threw forward things Vengerov couldn’t possibly be interested in. Running through the mess hall with Vik during the war games. Laughing with his friends after that first programming class when he’d been a dog in front of everyone. Neil and Tom teaching card games to some homeless teenagers sleeping in the same boxcar with them. Wyatt hugging him for the first time after he lost his fingers. Nothing bad. Nothing important. All the tedious, inconsequential stuff Vengerov couldn’t gain anything from and couldn’t possibly find interesting.

  Yet Vengerov never rebuked him, and Tom couldn’t figure out his game. Blackburn didn’t visit his head again, and Tom suspected Vengerov had jammed the neural link between them. He never spoke a word of it, though.

  Finally, a day came when Vengerov announced, “We’re done. I think I have more than enough.”

  “Enough for what?” Tom said sharply.

  Vengerov did not answer, giving him nothing. “You must be famished. You’ve been living on sandwiches, I understand. My apologies.”

  Tom heard a door slide open somewhere behind him, and then closed again. A familiar smell pervaded the air, and the arm straps flipped open, releasing Tom from the chair. He hurled himself to his feet, and followed Vengerov as he cro
ssed to a distant desk.

  To Tom’s shock, there was a pizza steaming in an open box. He’d been given cereal, soup and turkey sandwiches the last few days. He’d be glad never to see another turkey sandwich again.

  “Where did that come from?” Tom wondered.

  “Oh, we’re going to be traveling soon.”

  “Traveling where?” Tom demanded. He didn’t even know where they were now.

  “That’s not your concern.”

  It was probably Antarctica. Tom’s heart sank. Vengerov was going to imprison him in some obscure wing of the facility . . . unless they were there now. He hadn’t been outside this room, or the narrow hallway between it and the census device. The restraining node wouldn’t even let him near the doors.

  “I saw this in one of your memories.” Vengerov gestured to the pizza. “It seemed a fine gesture to welcome you to what I’m sure will be a very productive partnership.”

  “I’m still not helping you.”

  “Your favorite, I believe?”

  Tom drew closer warily, his stomach growling, his eyes riveting to the pepperoni and sausage pizza. He gave a derisive laugh. “Do you seriously think you’re gonna get something from me for a pizza?”

  Vengerov could at least try to buy him off with actual money. Tom wouldn’t take it, but a cheap pizza seemed insulting.

  “This isn’t a bribe. I thought you’d be hungry. Am I wrong?”

  He wasn’t wrong. Tom felt like he could inhale the entire thing. He knew if Vengerov took him to some cell in Antarctica, there would be none of this available.

  So he drew forward and snatched a piece. He was only half aware of Vengerov plucking up the neural wire still locked into Tom’s access port, and popping it into the back of his own neck.

  Tom only realized Vengerov had interfaced with him when he felt a sensation like he’d connected with a machine. His hand flew back instinctively to tug out the neural wire, but he still couldn’t touch it. His teeth ground together as Vengerov’s neural processor buzzed in his brain along with his own.

  “Eat,” Vengerov bade him, eyes fastened on him from where he’d settled on the other side of the desk. It was the fixed, flat stare of a predator, and Tom felt a cold pit in his stomach, thinking of Blackburn’s warning about one Vigilant-grade neural processor trying to control another. The impulse filled his brain, like a command coming through a hazy curtain.