Insignia

  Tom opened his mouth to correct him, but Vik caught his eye and mouthed, “Don’t ask.”

  “You got it,” Tom said, bewildered.

  Yuri bellowed a hearty laugh. “It’s very fine to meet you. I’m Yuri—but this you know.” He tapped his own temple.

  “Yeah, this I know,” Tom said.

  “I do not see your achievements listed.”

  “It’s a mistake. We’re getting that fixed,” Vik told Yuri.

  “Er, yeah,” Tom agreed.

  A ping in his head. Morning meal formation is in five minutes. Tom was caught off guard by the sudden notice, plastered there in his brain like one of his own thoughts. The other boys in the room responded to the same notice. They all jumped to their feet, except Beamer—who kind of lurched upright and then keeled over again. Yuri caught him at the last minute.

  “Ready?” Vik said to Tom.

  Tom nodded eagerly, ignoring the butterflies fluttering inside him. “Ready.”

  Yuri hauled Beamer up from the floor and hoisted him over one broad shoulder for the trudge down Alexander Division’s corridor to the elevator. He hummed merrily the whole way.

  “I can walk,” Beamer protested blearily.

  “You said that last time, and then you bopped your head,” Yuri told him. “This is no trouble, Stefan.”

  Beamer raised his bleary head, and squinted back at Tom. “Huh. New guy doesn’t have any achievements.”

  That stupid profile.

  Vik sidled up to Tom. “Told you that would get annoying. Want it changed or not?”

  “You said there’s a girl who can do that?”

  “Wyatt Enslow,” Vik answered. “It’ll take some doing, but I can talk her into it.”

  “Why does he think I’m Timothy Rodale?” Tom nodded toward Yuri’s large back.

  Vik spoke in a normal tone of voice as though Yuri couldn’t hear them: “Well, there’s never been an official explanation for it, but Yuri’s scrambled. Something’s wrong with his software, and none of the officers want to fix it, which makes us think he’s scrambled deliberately. We figure the military thinks Yuri’s a spy, and they couldn’t keep him out of the Spire because he has family connections, so they admitted him and then planted a worm in his neural processor’s software so he can’t hear anything classified.”

  Tom glanced at Yuri’s wide back, but Yuri hummed and showed no signs of having heard them. “His neural processor distorts the info he hears?”

  “Exactly. From what Beamer and I have figured, he seems to understand the basics of the Spire, but not our identities, IPs, strategies, or anything that might compromise the war effort. His processor’s rigged so he doesn’t hear our real names if someone mentions them. And forget confidential info. I’ll show him some code from Programming, for instance, and he’ll look at it and know just what it is, then remember it all wrong. You know how we’re talking about him right now literally five feet behind him? Yeah, the processor’s interpreting it as something else entirely, I bet.”

  “Seriously?” Tom was both impressed and disturbed. This was one thing he hadn’t even thought about. He should have realized having a computer in his brain made him susceptible to misprogramming like a computer. “Vik, if they mess with Yuri’s software, how do you know they can’t do something with ours?”

  Vik shot him a creepy, unsettling grin, and his eyes gleamed like a madman’s. “Why, Tom, we don’t.”

  “That’s reassuring. Thanks.”

  “Anytime, pal. It’s what I’m here for.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  Chapter Five

  THE PATTON MESS Hall was already crowded. Meal trays sat at each place on the rectangular tables. The trainees were a sea of black and camouflage. Tom looked over the crowd, identifying the division insignias on the arms: a quill for Machiavellis, an ax for Genghises, a sword for Alexanders, a musket for Napoleons, and a catapult for Hannibals.

  Vik elbowed him, then nodded for him to follow. They headed toward what Tom’s neural processor identified as the Hannibal female plebe table. The girls all sat one end of the table, talking to one another—ignoring a tall, gawky girl with flat brown hair sitting alone at the other end, her shoulders hunched, eyes darting furtively between the other girls and her tray.

  “Hey, Enslow!” Vik called.

  The girl looked up, her eyebrows drawn closely together in a solemn, oval-shaped face. Tom’s brain identified her as

  NAME: Wyatt Enslow

  RANK: USIF, Grade III Plebe, Hannibal Division

  ORIGIN: Darien, Connecticut

  ACHIEVEMENTS: Mathlete of the Year, Riven Middle School; twice annual winner, Scholar Mathlete Award; Gold Medalist, International Mathematical Olympiad; first place James Lowell Putnam Competition

  IP: 2053:db7:lj71::335:ll3:6e8

  SECURITY STATUS: Top Secret LANDLOCK-3

  “You still helping out with profiles?” Vik asked her.

  Wyatt’s lips compressed. “Feel free to shout louder, Vik. I don’t think Lieutenant Blackburn heard you on the officer’s floor. And no, I’m not doing that anymore. I almost got caught last time.”

  “Come on, Enslow,” Vik urged. “Help Tom out. Yuri wants you to.”

  “So why isn’t Yuri asking me himself?”

  “He’s busy ambulating Beamer.”

  “What do you guys want changed?” Her gaze settled on Tom. “Oh, that.”

  “Yeah, that,” Vik said. “Someone forgot to program in Tom’s vast number of achievements.”

  Tom glanced at him, fighting back a snigger. Yeah, his many great achievements. He beat lots of video games and even ate two pizzas in the space of five hours once.

  “Tom here’s kind of embarrassed about looking so unaccomplished,” Vik said, jabbing his thumb at Tom.

  “That would be embarrassing,” Wyatt said solemnly. “People might assume you’ve done nothing to earn your place here. Well, I’ll change that if Yuri wants me to—but you have to cover for me if Blackburn notices. You have to swear it!”

  “I swear, I’ll cover for you,” Tom assured her.

  She bit her lip, then yanked back her sleeve to expose the portable keyboard strapped around her right forearm. “What do you need me to put in, then?”

  Vik raised an eyebrow at Tom. “Well?”

  Tom wasn’t sure what accomplishment he should make up about himself. “Champion lawn bowler?” he tried.

  Wyatt scowled at him. “Lawn bowling?”

  “Oh yeah,” Vik agreed. “If there was a lawn bowling Olympics, Tom would’ve gotten a gold medal. He’s also a national spelling bee champion.”

  Wyatt nodded crisply, obviously considering that a respectable accomplishment. “Many people can’t spell. It’s rather sad.”

  Hoping to shock her, Tom added, “I’m also a founding contributor to the world’s largest ball of . . .”

  “Twine?” Vik suggested.

  “Why, no, Vikram,” Tom said. “Earwax.”

  Wyatt lowered her keyboard an inch. “Are you making these up?”

  “Of course he isn’t,” Vik said.

  “I’ll put in the spelling bee stuff, but I am not sticking an earwax ball in your profile. Or lawn bowling. I don’t even know what that is.”

  “Not everyone can be a math genius. Don’t mock Tom’s grand achievements,” Vik said.

  “Yeah, it’s not nice,” Tom said.

  “Fine, I’ll put in the lawn bowling, okay?” Wyatt typed briskly on her keyboard.

  Tom found himself staring at her left hand as her fingers danced over the keys. She had broad palms and long fingers. They looked too large for the rest of her.

  “There,” Wyatt announced.

  “It’s done?” Tom said, surprised.

  “Yes, it’s done.” She stared at him flatly like he’d just missed something very obvious. “And tell Yuri t
his is the last time I’m doing this. Lieutenant Blackburn is still looking for the person who hacked the personnel database last promotion round. He’ll murder me.”

  “Enslow, he won’t murder you,” Vik said. “He’ll just report you to General Marsh.”

  Wyatt’s eyes widened.

  “Thanks,” Tom said hastily.

  “Don’t thank me,” Wyatt said earnestly, hugging her arm to her chest. “Just go away and don’t talk to me again. Both of you.”

  The strange thing was, she didn’t say it viciously. It was more like she had no idea how rude it was. Tom and Vik went away and didn’t talk to her again.

  “She’s friendly,” he said to Vik as they threaded through the crowd.

  “That’s just Enslow. Man name, man-sized hands, but no real sense of humor. Also, she’s got this complete inability to relate to other people on a normal human level. There’s a reason Yuri’s the only one in the Spire who actively tries to spend free time with her—I guess he feels sorry for her. But that hacking she just did? It takes her thirty seconds to do something anyone else would need hours to do. She’s that good.”

  They reached the Alexander male plebe table, where Beamer was holding himself up on a chair, and Yuri loomed over his own spot. He greeted Tom with a friendly wave, his teeth so perfectly straight and white, his brown hair in such neat waves over his handsome, symmetrical features, that he really did resemble some android for a moment.

  “Yuri, we took advantage of Wyatt Enslow and said you sent us,” Vik informed Yuri. “I think she’s annoyed at you now. You should go apologize.”

  Yuri closed his eyes and sighed. “You are not very nice to Wanda, Viktor.”

  “I’m fine with Man Hands,” Vik protested. “She just wouldn’t do it if I asked her. And do you really want poor Tom here to feel all embarrassed and unaccomplished?” He gestured to Tom.

  “I wasn’t embarrassed,” Tom protested. He was just unaccomplished.

  But Yuri was busy viewing Tom’s profile again. “Ah, a spelling bee champion. This is impressive.”

  “Yeah, I spell things while lawn bowling,” Tom said. “You know. Words like ‘lawn.’ And ‘bowling.’”

  He started to dip into a seat, but Vik waved him back up. “Don’t sit yet. We have to stand at attention until Major Cromwell puts us at ease. It’s a pain, but it’s only at breakfast and at formal dinners.”

  There was a ping in Tom’s brain: Morning meal formation has now commenced.

  Silence descended upon the room, and every trainee in the room straightened and snapped to attention. A group of trainees marched inside the room, unfolded a US flag, and hoisted it up a pole for the day. Then they formed two lines by the door.

  Tom glanced around, trying to see if he was standing the right way. The computer in his brain was instructing him to relax his shoulders, puff out his chest, pull in his abdomen, keep his hands to his sides, and ensure his body was in perfect alignment.

  A whippet-thin, tired-looking woman in an overlarge set of fatigues headed through the door. The woman halted there, looking around at them, her face set with heavy lines and her faded auburn hair streaked with gray, a hard, downward twist to her lips. Tom’s neural processor spun out her information:

  NAME: Isabel Cromwell

  RANK: Major

  GRADE: USMC 0-4, active duty

  SECURITY STATUS: Top Secret LANDLOCK-8

  “At ease,” she said gruffly.

  The bodies on all sides of Tom relaxed, and after Major Cromwell assumed her lone seat at the officer’s table in the corner, the trainees sank down in a massive black wave to their tables.

  Tom dipped into his own seat. Around him, people lifted the metal lids from the food trays to reveal a standard breakfast of eggs, toast, bacon, and orange juice. Tom followed suit, but he only found two Snickers bars resting on his plate.

  Vik, munching on his toast, noticed his puzzled expression. “Oh, yeah. You’ve gotta eat those.”

  “Snickers? For breakfast?”

  “Actually, Tom, that’s a meal bar. You’ve gotta eat about ten of those a day for a while. When you first get the neural processor implanted, your hormones go crazy. You get a spike in hGH.”

  Tom’s neural processor identified that at once. “Human growth hormone?”

  “Yeah. Major growth spurt comes next. It’ll go away on its own once you’ve finished your natural growth cycle. They give you the nutrient bars to help with the process.”

  “But this is a candy bar. How does this help?”

  “That’s what you see.” Vik took a hearty gulp of his orange juice. “Your neural processor’s configured to feed you sensory info for foods that you like. It looks like a candy bar, but it’s really a high-energy-density nutrient bar. When you look at the nutrient bars and see them the way they appear in real life, that’s when you know your hGH is done spiking.”

  “What do these really look like, then?”

  “They look like high-energy-density nutrient bars. You don’t want any more details than that. Trust me.”

  Tom unwrapped the first Snickers and devoured it. It tasted like a normal candy bar. How odd to think his brain was fooling him. His eyes fell on the real food the others were eating. The sausages looked so delicious he could almost taste them. When he reached for the second Snickers, he saw with a start that the nutrient bar now resembled a greasy sausage link. Tom bit, and sausage exploded on his tongue. Intrigued, he turned the picture in his brain to a banana, even though he didn’t like bananas, and when he looked down—the nutrient bar was a banana.

  “This is so cool,” Tom murmured.

  He saved a bite of his banana/meal bar/Snickers thing to marvel at on the way to Calisthenics. He turned it into a dumpling, into spaghetti, into that French snail dish, escargot. He couldn’t believe his brain could be manipulated this easily—that he could look at something and see something else just because the computer in his head told him it looked that way.

  Vik filled him in on the way there. “Calisthenics is pretty straightforward. You work out. You get in shape. The first few times are pretty intense, but you’ll get used to it.”

  “Oh. Great,” Tom said, pretending he meant it. He stuffed the last of the nutrient bar in his mouth—and instantly regretted not turning it back from escargot into something else. He choked it down, then managed, “I’ve gotta admit, I’m not a big exercise person, okay? And I just spent a few weeks in bed while my brain was getting rewired. What happens if I fall behind?”

  “Adrenaline will get you through it. Believe me.”

  Tom followed him into a vast room, where the other plebes from various divisions waited. When he glanced at the sign overhead proclaiming it the Stonewall Calisthenics Arena, a blueprint unfolded in his vision, telling him the vast arena encircled the interiors of the second, third, and fourth floors. His eyes lit upon the various obstacles they’d have to overcome—ditches to leap across; sets of ladders and rocky walls to climb over; sand pits; water pits; long stretches of plain old running track with fake grass that twisted around and vanished from his sight with the curve in the Spire; stairs to looping, open platforms that featured more obstacles.

  And then the landscape transformed around him. They weren’t in the arena anymore. They were in a vast, rolling green field.

  Tom blinked, and blinked again. The field was still there, stark and clear as day. “What just happened?”

  “You’ve got a neural processor now,” Vik answered. “Get it? The computer has direct control of the signals from your optic nerve.”

  And Tom understood it: his brain was being fed a false image like with the nutrient bars at breakfast.

  “So . . . none of this is here,” Tom said, scuffing the heel of his boot experimentally on the grass. It was unbelievable—he even smelled the grass!

  “The arena you saw? That’s real. This field is just the processor fooling your eyes. The sounds you hear, the wind you feel? All fake,” Vik said. “Basically, this
is an attempt to make exercise more of an educational activity. Most of the exercise scenarios are based on real battles. You learn some things about military history without them needing to actually teach you.”

  A chill breeze cut across Tom’s skin, rippled through his hair—and it felt so real. The grass squished beneath his boots, and the milky morning sun seared into his eyes. Tom began to smell the acrid smoke that was floating in dark wisps from over the distant horizon. He could even hear the murmurs of voices from somewhere across the field and feel the ground vibrating with the thumping of thousands of footsteps.

  He strained his eyes, trying to see the real arena through the illusion, but he couldn’t. “If we can’t see the real world, how do we avoid bumping into stuff?”

  “The illusion adapts to the actual arena,” Vik said. “A river in place of the pool. Boulders in place of low walls, cliffs in place of the climbing walls, that sort of thing. By the way, you’ll want to stretch and then start jogging while you can. Calisthenics always starts with the cardiovascular component for phase one.”

  Tom glanced around at the rest of the plebes, dispersing from the main body, spreading out across the battlefield. They were all stretching and darting anxious looks over their shoulders. Tom glanced back toward the rolling hillside, wondering what they were waiting for.

  “What happens next?” he asked Vik.

  “Incentive to start sprinting.”

  Tom stretched, wind ripping against his cheeks, his heart picking up several beats. The distant welter of voices rose. He saw the plebes quit stretching abruptly and break into a flat run.

  Screams filled the air. Tom looked back toward the hillside, and his breath caught as he saw the “incentive to start sprinting.” Thousands of men in tartans were spilling over the hillside, shouting a ferocious battle cry, swords flashing in fists.

  This is so cool, Tom thought for one dazzled moment.

  A spear whizzed by his face, and his survival instincts kicked in and reminded him he was unarmed in front of a raging hoard of medieval Scotsmen. He broke into a run, the screams behind him splintering his ears. Another spear whizzed past him and careened with a solid thunk in the grass. Tom swerved around it, his heart pounding, and he reminded himself that this wasn’t real. He wasn’t in danger. This was an illusion.