Catalyst

  Close the curtain, rang in his mind.

  Tom could have fought it. He could have. But he closed it because he couldn’t bear to look at the emptiness a moment more.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THE FIRST CONCESSION to Vengerov’s will was a small step but it was the beginning of the end. If Vengerov had just flared the fires of Tom’s rage, he could’ve fought back with righteous strength, but it was all so much more insidious than that. It was slow and all done from afar. Vengerov simply left him to his own demons, trapped, and when Vengerov did come, he was the sole relief, his words always coated in a smooth, poisonous kindness, like he was extending a hand of friendship Tom kept slapping away. Tom began to doubt every word out of his lips, every decision he made.

  All sense of time, all sense of scale vanished from his world. Tom grew so desperately lonely in the enclosure, and so afraid Vengerov would one day decide never to return, that he began to feel profound relief when Vengerov arrived. Relief turned to gratitude. To eagerness. When Vengerov opened the slats, the world flared to life again. In those moments, Tom knew he still existed, he hadn’t vanished off the face of the universe.

  He forgot to hate Vengerov. There were other things much worse than Vengerov. Like no Vengerov. Like nothingness. A new daydream burgeoned in Tom’s mind during the idle hours: he imagined the next time Vengerov would come back and let him out again. He replayed it over and over in his mind, and occasionally he caught himself and was ashamed and horrified.

  But Vengerov was the only source of hope now. No rescue had come. No reprieve. It all came down to Vengerov, Vengerov, Vengerov.

  And then something strange began to happen. All the memories he’d given Vengerov with the census device began pouring back into him through the neural wire perpetually hooked into his access port while in the enclosure. They settled there in Tom’s brain, side by side with the original memories, every bit as real and yet different.

  His friends looking at him with disgust the day after Blackburn had used a computer virus on him that fooled him into thinking he was a dog . . . Yuri slamming his boot into his ribs, into his back after Tom kissed Wyatt . . . Vik after Tom escaped Dalton’s reprogramming, laughing at him when Tom wanted help getting revenge and telling him he’d brought it on himself . . . Wyatt in his bunk with him after he lost his fingers. “They’re disgusting, Tom.”

  Tom grew enraged, and when Vengerov returned, he shouted at him, “This isn’t going to work! I know my friends. You can’t trick me into believing these memories are real!”

  “I don’t appreciate that tone,” Vengerov said, and then the slats snapped closed. The time Tom spent alone after that stretched on for so long, he grew afraid again that Vengerov wouldn’t come back. He felt so sorry about everything he’d said. He’d give anything to go back in time and fix it. So when Vengerov finally showed up again, he dared not say a word.

  More and more of the modified memories crowded into his processor, until Tom tried to sort out which versions were true, and the context grew skewed. It was easy convincing himself that Yuri hadn’t dropped the weight bar on his chest and grinned down at him as he pressed it harder and harder, Wyatt smiling on malevolently, when he had so many other memories of his friends caring about him to cast it as unreal. . . .

  It wasn’t easy when he began to accumulate so many of them, so many tainted recollections of his friends. The poison began to creep into the memories Vengerov hadn’t altered, hadn’t modified, casting them in a new light. Had they been laughing with him or at him? Maybe Vik really did think he was every bit the idiot he’d always called him, and there wasn’t anything friendly about that. Everything, everything began to shift, change.

  In one of the rare moments of perfect clarity Tom still had sometimes, he stared into the darkness on all sides of him and understood exactly what was being done to him, exactly the way he was buckling under the utter manipulation, the total oppressive cruelty of his situation.

  He understood then that he would’ve been better off giving Vengerov his nightmares, his horrors, his worst moments. Those already hurt. There was nothing more they could do to him.

  The best things in his life were his friends. They defined him, they kept him alive. They gave him strength. In giving them to Vengerov, he’d pointed the deadliest weapon right at his own heart.

  But he couldn’t change it now. Not any of it. And every day that passed as his captivity drew on into what seemed to be eternity, Tom found his conception of who he was receding until it felt like he was on a stray boat in the ocean, farther and farther from the shore until everything existed at a distance, so tiny he could barely make it out anymore.

  A DAY CAME when Vengerov joined their processors together and his mind commanded Tom to lift his arm and Tom’s arm lifted. It was like it happened completely independently of Tom, unmoored from his own thoughts. Vengerov looked so pleased by it that Tom felt an enormous surge of relief.

  Again and again, Vengerov interfaced with his brain, and Tom felt it happening, felt himself slipping to the back of his own mind, far away. Vengerov thought for him to sit down. To look to the left. Look to the right. Tom did it all. Tom’s brain didn’t even engage.

  Then he hooked Tom into a machine, and with a push of Vengerov’s brain they were interfacing with it. They did it again and again, Vengerov driving them forward, Tom’s mind moving them from one system in the ship to another, but not a hint of Tom’s will driving it.

  Vengerov started staying longer, visiting more often. Tom spent less time trapped. His legs regained their strength, lost the cramped feeling of never stretching out all the way. He knew he’d committed some terrible wrong here and he should feel so guilty for it, and some part of him was dreadfully ashamed, but mostly it was relief. It was all a great relief.

  One day, Vengerov told him, “I’m not pleased.”

  Tom’s heart seized. “Why?”

  Vengerov rubbed the back of Tom’s neck. “You’re simply too present when I interface using you. I can’t make use of your ability with your mind still blaring into mine.”

  Tom didn’t know what that meant. He hunched down, knowing it didn’t matter if he understood what Vengerov was talking about or not. Nothing he did changed the outcome of his situation anymore.

  “I don’t want to feel your thoughts when I use you to interface,” Vengerov said. “I want to hear only my own. I want only my own will mirrored back at me.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to do.” Tom’s voice was jagged whisper. “You have everything now.”

  “No, I don’t.” The hand kept rubbing his neck. “Not just yet. But we’ll correct that soon, won’t we?”

  THE NEXT TIME Vengerov removed Tom from the enclosure, an ominous calm hung on the air as he waited for Tom’s eyes to fully adjust. They were both seated on the couch. Tom looked at the cushions, waiting for whatever happened next.

  “I’ve been pondering something,” Vengerov told him, connecting the neural wire between them. “Look at this screen.” He offered Tom a tablet computer.

  Look at the screen, echoed in Tom’s mind.

  Tom looked at it, and saw a graphic of himself. It was all footage of him, seen through Vengerov’s eyes. He didn’t even recognize himself at first, he looked so small now. And when he did, a great surge of revulsion gripped him, and he had to look away.

  “Please turn it off.”

  “Your friends have to be wondering about you. Perhaps I’ll send them this update.”

  Everything in Tom woke up, contracted in sheer horror. “No.”

  “Don’t you want them to know you’re alive? And well? Very well, indeed.” Vengerov mentally ordered him to look again, so Tom could see himself again. His eyes blurred and he shrank back, wishing he was back inside the enclosure, in the darkness, where this sort of
thing never happened and he said, “No. No. No, don’t send this to them, don’t do it.” He couldn’t stand them to see him like this. Useless, pathetic, afraid.

  “Oh, but surely they’d be interested to see what’s become of you.”

  “DON’T!” Tom screamed at him. “Don’t show them. Don’t.” Tears spilled out of his eyes, a feeling inside him like he was ripping in two.

  Vengerov’s hands contracted around his shoulders, pulling him up until his eyes were inches away. Look at me, echoed in Tom’s mind, and Tom found his eyes open, blurry with tears, Vengerov’s gaze very close to his.

  “One reason. Give me one reason not to send this to them and I will refrain.”

  “Because.” Tom choked.

  “One reason.”

  “Because they’ll think I’m . . . I’m . . .”

  “What?” Vengerov’s grip tightened. “They’ll think you’re what?”

  Tom hid his face in his hands.

  Vengerov gripped the back of his neck. “Tell me or I send this right now.”

  “Disgusting.”

  “Speak louder.”

  “They’ll think I’m disgusting!”

  And he couldn’t hold it in. Sobs racked his entire body and he was done. He knew he was done. All he could see were those memories of how Vik and Wyatt and Yuri despised him and how there was nothing out there anymore, and when Vengerov drew him into his arms, Tom couldn’t even pull away.

  “There, there.” A hand stroked through his hair. “Of course they will. Look at you. How could anyone care about you now? Certainly your friends don’t. Your parents never did. Your father begged me to take you from him. They would all be glad to see you here in your little cage all by yourself for the rest of your life.”

  Tom shook all over, crying hopelessly, every bit of pride, every reserve of strength he’d had gone, crushed, decimated. He was nothing now. He was all gone, and when Vengerov pulled back, clutching the back of his neck, he couldn’t do anything but let the words bombard him as Vengerov whispered to him, intimately like they were sharing a secret, “How exhausting it must have been, all that rigid pride just to hide what you really are: a sad, lonely little boy no one could ever love. But, then again, that was Thomas Raines. He had to be broken. He deserved everything that happened to him. But Vanya is very different, isn’t he?” Vengerov’s fingers stroked the tears from his cheeks. “He’ll always have me and that will never change. Don’t you remember your bunny, Vanya?”

  Tom looked up at him, confusion washing through him, his eyes misted with tears. “W-what?”

  “Don’t you remember the bunny rabbit, Vanya?” Vengerov repeated, his pale blue eyes boring into Tom’s.

  And as though Vengerov’s words triggered something, it trickled into the front of Tom’s mind like some half-remembered dream: the Christmas his family spent at their countryside dacha. His older brother, Joseph, had given him a small rabbit for Christmas. He recalled the way its fur had felt so soft, the way those small eyes were beady and watchful and . . .

  Tom shook his head. He shook it again, aware of Vengerov still holding him close like he was something beloved, because, no, that wasn’t his memory.

  “That’s not . . . that shouldn’t be there. You . . . That’s not mine.”

  Vengerov smiled and stroked his back. “You’re confused, my little Vanya. You’re very confused and afraid. But you needn’t be. You have me.”

  THE NEXT TIME the slats of the enclosure popped open, Tom saw something strange above him: giant, block letters proclaiming IVAN’S ROOM.

  “No,” Tom whispered, but even then he was touched with doubt, because he remembered these in his room when he was little. He remembered being Vanya. Ivan. Little Vanya. With his big brother, Joseph.

  But no.

  No, that wasn’t him. That wasn’t right.

  Was it?

  Joseph let him out almost every day. He stayed for weeks on end now, because he didn’t need to return to Earth to oversee his affairs when he could use Tom for them. He was still learning how Tom’s ability worked, how to follow the connections from one satellite to another, and Tom grew so used to being driven to the back of his own mind that all he needed was the feel of Vengerov’s hand squeezing the back of his neck for him to shut off mentally.

  Vanya was always treated well. But Tom knew he wasn’t supposed to be Vanya, even if more of the memories appeared in his brain. Always Vanya feeling lonely and lost and confused, struggling to make sense of letters while other kids held books, sitting alone behind a curtain so no one would hit him . . . His only savior in the whole world his brother, Joseph. His protector, Joseph.

  One time Tom looked at the bathroom mirror and grew sure he was seeing someone else, but if this wasn’t him, what was he? This boy had blond hair raggedy and long, down to his chin, and a body so skinny and huddled, he looked years younger. He looked away and didn’t dare peek again, but the last of his mental image of Tom the Intrasolar cadet, who’d been so confident, who’d been strong physically, mentally, faded until he could barely remember he’d existed.

  And then one day as he sat on the floor, waiting for Joseph to connect a neural wire between them, struggling to remember whether he was supposed to be doing anything, trying to figure out whether he was still a person or if he was something else or whether anything he saw around him was even real, his brain latched upon another question, one he couldn’t figure out no matter how hard he thought about it . . . until he grew frustrated and afraid at how he couldn’t make sense of it.

  He turned to the only person in his life. The only person who might know because he knew everything.

  “What happened to it?” he asked Vengerov.

  “To what?” Vengerov said from above him.

  “The rabbit. The bunny.” His words seemed to grow clumsy on his tongue. “I c-can’t remember what happened to it. Did it die? Did it run away? I don’t remember.”

  Vengerov was kneeling before him so suddenly, he cringed back. “Really?” His voice bounded off the walls, his eager hands clutching, shaking lightly. “Are you really asking me this? Are you really? Is this . . . genuine?”

  “I don’t remember,” Vanya told him. “Why can’t I remember?”

  Vengerov laughed and swept him up, delighted. As Vanya ducked his head, bewildered and confused, Joseph Vengerov settled them on the couch, beaming proudly.

  “You were very sick, my Vanya,” Vengerov said. “You couldn’t take care of the rabbit anymore so it had to be taken away from you. But that’s all going to change now. Everything will change now.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  SOON AFTER THAT, Vanya woke up to find the slats already open, a bunny rabbit in a cage outside, standing on wood shavings, his nose twitching, eye fixed on him.

  “I brought her back for you. You never named her,” Vengerov noted. “Do you want to name her now?”

  But Vanya couldn’t. He couldn’t. He couldn’t make a decision because he was sure he’d pick something bad and wrong. “C-c-can y-you do it?” He had started stuttering. He wasn’t sure why but he couldn’t seem to stop it.

  The answer visibly pleased Vengerov. “Very well. What makes a good name for a creature like this? Hmm. I see her as . . .” He considered the rabbit a moment, then smiled. “An ‘Ushanka.’”

  Vengerov moved the cage into the other end of his enclosure, just beyond Vanya’s feet so the cool metal brushed his heels. Vanya spent hours in the darkness listening to the scuffling of Ushanka moving about. The next time he woke, he was afraid she’d be gone, but then he heard the scuffling again, and knew she was still there, and joy poured over his heart like a monsoon over parched desert.

  Ushanka became all Vanya could think about. When the slats were open, he spent hours watching the rabbit move about her cage, nose twitching, be
ady little eyes always looking back. When they were both let outside, he took her out and cleaned her cage if Vengerov let him use his fingers. When Vengerov used him to interface, his mind was on his rabbit. All he wanted was to hold his pet. He liked to watch the way she sniffed her food, and feel the way she was so fragile when he picked her up, the tiny little bones he could break so easily if he was careless, but he never would be, not with her.

  There was nothing else in his control anymore but this. The whole of his being began to rivet around the single thing of value anymore. He daydreamed endless hours about how he’d build her a better cage. How he’d make a running wheel for her. Vanya was able to make creative use of the idle materials around the room, and Joseph didn’t mind. He was so pleased with Vanya’s care for her that he gave Vanya a manual instructing him how to better take care of his rabbit. Vanya read it over and over again. He’d finish the last page and flip back to the first again, thirsting for every word on the page.

  Meanwhile, Vengerov began to destroy the systems of his enemies, walking through the firewalls at rival Coalition companies and plundering their financial information. He took a similar tact as Blackburn, seizing control over any and all automated security machines not designed by Obsidian Corp. and LM Lymer Fleet, then unleashing them in deadly attacks.

  Blackburn had been careful only to hit the targets he’d thoroughly vetted. Vengerov killed his target’s children and brought down whole buildings of innocent people without a flicker of remorse. Sometimes he amused himself by plastering a message from the ghost afterward.