Insignia

  And Wyatt Enslow was glaring over at them, keyboard raised.

  Vik made a strangling gesture at her, and Tom aimed his fake gun.

  “You know what she can do,” Tom said out of the side of his mouth to Vik. “Do we really want to make an enemy of her?”

  “She’ll probably try to sit out. She can’t go all-out.”

  “Right.” They were free to posture all they wanted.

  As class concluded, someone asked Blackburn when the war games began. He paused before striding from the podium. “Right. When does it start? Well, I’d say you’re open to attack as soon as you’re in the hallway.”

  Stunned silence followed that.

  Blackburn’s unpleasant chuckle trailed him out of the Lafayette Room. He left the entire class sitting there, erupting in frantic whispers. Tom saw the sea of dipping heads, division members plotting their escape.

  “Ten bucks says Blackburn’s watching a security feed of this and laughing,” Tom muttered to Vik.

  “I’m not betting against that.”

  Tom waited. Still, no one rose. Every was waiting to see what would happen to the first people out—if they’d get attacked, if someone in their midst had already cobbled together a program.

  “Want to run the gauntlet, Doctor?” He glanced at Vik, feeling antsy like he was ready to burst out of his seat.

  Vik nodded. “We should, Doctor. One, two . . .”

  “Three!” They both jolted to their feet.

  Every eye in the room swung toward them. Tom ignored them and shoved his way across the bench to the aisle. The silence loomed in his ears, pressing in around them, as they walked toward the doors. It seemed to take forever.

  Vik burst into laughter. He hurled triumphant fists into the air and kept walking—daring anyone to attack. Tom smiled at his back, but his grin faded when he detected movement out of the corner of his eye.

  Karl Marsters was rising to his feet.

  Tom slammed Vik’s back with his palm. “Move!”

  He didn’t need to tell Vik twice. Vik leaped forward, sprinting toward the entrance, Tom right behind him.

  Tom’s last glimpse of the classroom was of Karl and a handful of Genghises shoving their way down the aisles after them.

  THEY RAN SO fast, their breath came in ragged pants. It was like Calisthenics on speed. They reached the empty mess hall before it occurred to them that this would probably be one of the easiest places for Karl to attack them. An open space, more than one entrance . . .

  “Come on, let’s find a place we can defend ourselves!” Tom fumbled through the video games he’d played, and came up with a fitting reference: “This is our Alamo.”

  “Didn’t Davy Crockett die at the Alamo?”

  “Okay, we’re the attacking cyborgs, then.”

  “There weren’t any cyborgs at the Alamo.”

  “Yeah, there were, Vik.”

  “I’m confused. Are you talking about the game Alamo or the actual event?”

  “Wait, the Alamo really happened?”

  Vik whapped the back of Tom’s head. “I’m not even from your country and I know that.”

  They charged past the painting of General Patton and locked themselves into one of the mess hall’s private meeting rooms. Tom sprawled on the floor, back against the wall, and propped his arm up to type in Zorten II code, readying an attack virus for the inevitable moment when the Genghises caught up to them.

  Vik stared down at him. “What are you doing?”

  “Virus.”

  “But you’re a terrible programmer, Tom.”

  “You do it, then.”

  “I will.” Vik dropped down next to him, and started typing at his own forearm keyboard.

  “So what do I do?” Tom asked him.

  “Stand between me and anyone else long enough for me to finish coding.”

  “You want me to be a human shield?”

  “You can do it, Tom. I believe in you.”

  “I’m not questioning whether I can do it, I just—”

  Suddenly, the room’s locks were overridden, and the door slid open. Karl filled the doorway. Vik shrieked in a very un-Doctor of Doom–like manner, and Tom felt a thrill of sheer terror.

  Karl leered at them. Then raised his forearm and began tapping at his own keyboard, forehead furrowed, thick fingers banging away.

  It was anticlimactic, the way the Genghises trickled in, and yanked Karl’s arm back and forth between them, manipulating the keyboard on his forearm.

  “That’s not how you do it,” Tom said, seeing Vik mistype a segment of source code that he remembered seeing once before. He grabbed Vik’s arm and took over.

  Then Vik said, “That’s not it, either. Back to your station, human shield!” He yanked his arm away and shoved Tom into position between him and the Genghises.

  Tom looked nervously at the Genghises, expecting to be slammed by a virus from Karl and company any minute. They, meanwhile, were arguing over Zorten II themselves.

  “You dunce, this isn’t working,” Karl snarled at someone.

  “Wait, how do you do that error checker program?”

  “Why’s this value null? What’s a null?”

  “Give me my arm back! ‘Null’ means it’s not working, idiot.”

  Tom leaned back against the wall, the room filled with the tapping of keys. The sense of menace and excitement was steadily draining away, hearing Vik curse quietly as he messed up the program yet again—and Karl and company arguing until Karl actually started threatening to clobber them with his keyboard rather than let them type on it.

  After some time, Wyatt wandered in and looked back and forth between them. “You guys have been in here for twenty minutes. You still haven’t written one program yet?” she remarked. “That’s kind of pathetic.”

  “Stop distracting me, Man Hands,” Vik ordered. “It’s not like I see you racking up the victories.”

  Wyatt flushed.

  “Man Hands,” Karl repeated with a snigger from across the room, typing at his own keyboard. “Hear that?” he said to one of his friends. “‘Man Hands.’”

  Wyatt glared at Vik. “Thanks for spreading that nickname around. You know what? I hope Karl gets you first.” With that, she stalked from the room.

  Another five minutes crawled by. Tom had given up playing human shield. He was pretty sure now it wouldn’t be necessary. “Karl, Vik—everyone, stop!” he called out.

  To his surprise, they did.

  “This is so stupid,” Tom exclaimed. “We’re all lousy programmers.”

  The Genghises exchanged uneasy glances. It was true.

  “We’ve been at it for a half hour and none of us has managed a program yet.”

  “What do you suggest, then, Plebe?” Karl folded his beefy arms.

  “We go our separate ways, program on our own time, come up with some great attacks, and then meet again later.”

  Karl’s eyes narrowed. “Like a duel.”

  “Yeah, like a duel. Tomorrow night. In the plebe common room.”

  Karl stroked his chin, as if he had an invisible beard there. “Okay, I’d go for that. But night after that instead.”

  “Night after?”

  “Yeah, you have a problem with that? I said the night after tomorrow, ’cause tomorrow night, I’m scheduled to go get a haircut. I can’t cancel without twenty-four hours’ notice.”

  “Night after, then.” Tom was fine with it. More time to program.

  Karl gave a satisfied nod. “I don’t know anyone who can cobble together a program on the run, anyway.”

  And then the doors slid open, and Tom glanced over carelessly to see Wyatt standing there again, her keyboard out this time.

  “If you came to see Karl get us, you’re out of luck,” Vik informed her.

  “That’s not why I’m here,” Wyatt replied. “I decided not to sit this one out.”

  Vik blinked. “You’re not?”

  “You changed my mind, Vik.” She typed somethin
g on her keyboard, and immediately Karl and the Genghis trainees dropped onto their hands and knees and began baaing.

  Tom whirled toward the Genghises, watching them all nuzzling their noses at the carpet as sheep. “You sure about this?” he asked her.

  “Very sure.”

  “Huh,” Vik said. “Well, guess we can have three Doctors of Doom, then.”

  But Wyatt still had her keyboard up, a ruthless gleam in her eyes. “Why, Vik, we’re in different divisions, remember?”

  Vik’s eyes widened. “Human shield, save me!” he cried, grabbing Tom by the shoulders.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Wyatt assured him, smiling. “I have enough for both of you.”

  A flick of the button on her keyboard targeted both their IP addresses at the same time and sent text flashing across Tom’s vision center: Datastream received: program Bleating Sheep initiated.

  TOM CAME TO himself, munching on a plant in the arboretum behind the mess hall. He wasn’t the only one. Far from it. Wyatt had left carnage all over the first floor—some trainees were sheep, the way Vik still was. Some were gathered in a crowd, speaking together frantically in a cycling roster of languages, unable to remember English, and others were stumbling over their legs over and over again like they’d forgotten how to walk. She’d taken out a good thirty people luckless enough to cross her path.

  “Ugh.” Tom swiped his sleeve over his mouth, scrubbing off the taste of tomato vine, and ignored the frantic baaaas of people he passed, hunched on all fours, being sheep.

  Tom found Vik and nudged him with his foot, ignoring his baas of anger, until Vik snapped out of it. “What—what—”

  Tom reached out and hoisted him up. “Wyatt went on a rampage. The Doctors of Doom can’t let this insult stand.”

  TOM AND VIK decided to confront Yuri that night over whether he planned to unite with his fellow Alexanders to help take Wyatt Enslow down. Their tentative questions over dinner convinced them he understood just enough of what was going on to be of use to them—unless he planned to be a dirty, rotten traitor. But Yuri wasn’t in his bunk.

  Beamer was.

  Vik strode inside. “Hey, man, have you seen the Android?”

  Beamer just lay there in bed and didn’t say a word. Tom and Vik exchanged an uneasy glance. Beamer hadn’t been at classes today. He must have spent the whole day in bed.

  “What’s going on with you, Beamer?” Vik asked him. “Why are you being such a pansy today?”

  It was worse than Tom would’ve done. He jabbed his thumb toward the door. Vik raised his arms and left him to it.

  Tom took over his spot at Beamer’s side, then realized he had no idea what to say, either.

  “Look, I’m sorry I beheaded you, okay?”

  Beamer opened his eyes. “God, Tom, you are so selfish! This is not about you.”

  “Then what? I don’t get it. I don’t. Do you need the social worker?”

  Beamer shook his head, staring at the ceiling.

  “Look, I’m not trying to make fun of you. I can get her to come up here.” He braced himself, because this was about as self-sacrificing as he could ever remember being. “I will even say it’s for me if you’re embarrassed.”

  Please say no, Tom added mentally.

  “No,” Beamer said.

  Tom’s shoulders slumped in relief.

  “Don’t you see, Tom? Don’t you see what my problem is?”

  “Yeah, you thought something was wrong with the program and you were gonna die. So you got freaked out.”

  “No. Yes, but not just that. I thought I was going to die. And afterward, it made me think. Really think. About this.” He tapped his head with a pale finger. “About what I’ve done. I thought this would be fun, Tom, okay? Coming to the Spire, messing around with machines. But I didn’t think it through. I didn’t think about whether this is what I want. What if I die?”

  “You’re not gonna die anytime soon. You’re fourteen.”

  “How can you know that?” Beamer sat up in bed, red spots on his cheeks. “We don’t even know what this stuff in our heads is. Are there any eighty-year-olds walking around with neural processors?”

  “They didn’t have this tech back then. But look at Blackburn. He got it sixteen years ago. Other than the acute psychotic break, he’s fine.”

  Beamer rolled his eyes and slumped back down. Tom could admit that “other than the acute psychotic break” was a pretty stupid thing to say, but he didn’t know why Beamer would be so touchy about the details right now.

  “It’s not even that, Tom. Don’t you get it? We never get these out. Never. We signed up for a few years in the Spire, but this stuff in our heads ties us to the military for life. Do you realize that? They own it. They own us.”

  Tom found his thoughts turning back to his night in the infirmary, the way Dr. Gonzales had a final say over his hGH and not him. But he just said, “What does it matter? They need us. They’re not going to do anything bad to us.”

  “We will always be the front line. The military gets first dibs on us for the rest of our lives, whatever we do from here—don’t you see that? Who’s going to repair the processor when it breaks, otherwise? And what happens if the Russo-Chinese programmers come up with some great new computer virus to vaporize our brains? . . . If Russia and China ever have a chance to really take down America, we’re the first ones they’ll kill!”

  Tom laughed at that. It sounded so ridiculous. “Come on. No one kills in war anymore.”

  “It’s war, Tom. War. That used to mean stuff like the Battle of Stalingrad, get it? And one day, it might again. Someone might remember one day. Someone might remember this is World War Three. Blackburn said it—don’t you remember? He said they want to cut open our heads and look at the coding inside!”

  “That’s Blackburn trying to scare us. Look, I get it, Beamer. I was actually worried about some of this stuff, too, back before I got the neural processor.”

  “You. Worried.”

  Tom shrugged, trying to remember his conversation with Heather back when he was making up his mind about whether to enlist. It was funny how much murkier his memories before the neural processor felt—not time-stamped at all, not perfectly detailed. Like a different person had those experiences.

  “Yeah, I was worried. About the brain surgery being a surprise and the way the military was . . . well, just some of the same stuff you mentioned. But . . . come on. Come on, Beamer. Look around you. Who else gets to do what we do? Who else gets to be what we are? We’re important. We can learn any skill with a download. We can speak any language we want. We’re faster and smarter than regular people. We can do anything now.”

  Beamer rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. “I could’ve done anything before if I’d tried really hard. I started a business, you know. I figured out how to make some things, so I sold water filters and grills at tent cities. I mean, ever seen one of those places? They’re not completely poor. A lot of them have jobs, but they just can’t afford a real place.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen a few.” Neil always pointed them out to him. He said they were the only alternative to moving from casino to casino.

  “Well, people bought my stuff there. I made money. I was doing just fine before the neural processor. You could’ve done anything before the processor, too, Tom. You won spelling bees, remember? That must’ve taken a lot of work.”

  Tom didn’t say anything. He knew he hadn’t won spelling bees before, or even contributed to the world’s largest ball of earwax. The old Tom Raines couldn’t even make it at a reform school.

  “I see you and Vik—and even Yuri, who doesn’t have a chance here and has to know it,” Beamer said. “You guys are just devoted to this thing. And I came here, and I wanted to do well, but I just don’t care about it anymore. Ever since that thing happened with my girlfriend and I got stuck on restricted libs, it’s like it’s all gone into perspective. I keep wondering why I’m still here. I don’t want to be Camelot Compan
y. I hate it here. I keep thinking about high school and all those movies I saw about it, and wondering if I’m missing out on something. I want to get older and go to college. And buy a house. And have kids and marry some woman and have block parties and barbecues.”

  “Beamer,” Tom latched onto that, “if you want a barbecue, you and me, we can go have a barbecue right now, okay? Forget restricted libs. We’ll reroute your GPS signal to the bathroom, then we’ll go outside and barbecue anything you want.”

  Beamer gave a pained sigh. “You don’t understand, Tom. You can’t.”

  He turned around to face the wall and buried his head in the covers.

  Tom realized it, then: he didn’t understand. He couldn’t. Beamer wanted to be normal. Tom couldn’t imagine ever wanting to be nothing.

  Tom would never willingly give up what he had here. He would never willingly lose the neural processor, the life full of possibilities.

  He couldn’t bear to be worthless again. He’d rather be dead.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  Chapter Thirteen

  MOST OF THE viruses on the second full day of the war games came courtesy of Wyatt, but there were a few exceptions. Franco Holbein of Hannibal Division wrote one called Icy Night that caught a few Machiavellis when they hooked into neural access ports in their bunks. They spent all of lunch huddled together, teeth chattering, bellowing out demands for someone to turn up the Spire’s thermostat. Then Nigel Harrison pulled off a virus called Food Face that caused people sitting in the mess hall to smash their own faces into their meal trays. By the end of the day, Britt Schmeiser of Napoleon Division had retaliated with a Trojan named Nigel Harrison that triggered whenever an infected trainee’s vision center registered that Nigel Harrison was nearby.

  The Trojan infiltrated the homework feed overnight and managed to infect most of the Spire. On the third day of the war games, Nigel strode into the mess hall for lunch, and the Trojan triggered in almost a hundred trainees at the same time. A sea of faces began twitching just like his face always did.