Allies: An Insignia Novella

  THERE WERE A few things around the Pentagonal Spire that everyone did once, and Wyatt suspected she may have missed out on something critical, not doing any of them. That’s what brought her up to the planetarium on the fifteenth floor for the Open Evening, when the roof would retract to reveal the stars.

  She marched in and seated herself there as the roof cranked open and icy air rushed in, then just stared up at the distant, glittering stars, wondering what people saw in this. The view was terrible here. They were in Arlington, Virginia, and the light pollution drowned out most of the sky. She could barely even see anything.

  Why were things so obvious to other people and utterly perplexing to her?

  Because you don’t belong here, she answered herself.

  She realized it now. With a burst of stark clarity, she understood that her original instincts had been right all along. She should never have come here. She threw a look around, and answered that question of why people liked Open Evenings.

  The other people in the planetarium were couples.

  Open Evenings were all about some sort of dating ritual.

  Tonight had nothing to do with the stars for anyone. They were a mere pretense.

  Wyatt rose, shoved her way clumsily past the people crowding the seats, ignoring their irate looks as she interrupted the make-out sessions. Just as she maneuvered blindly into the aisle, she collided with the large boy carrying a case. A solid shoulder sent her tumbling back, but powerful arms whipped out and caught her—though he lost his grip on his case. It clattered violently down the stairs. For a moment as she regained her balance, Wyatt found herself staring right into a pair of smoky-lashed eyes, a startling shade of blue. She’d seen this boy around, and called up his profile from memory:

  NAME: Yuri Sysevich

  RANK: USIF, Grade III Plebe, Alexander Division

  ORIGIN: St. Petersburg, Russia

  ACHIEVEMENTS: Chris Canning Award for Academic Excellence, Elsevier Wood Award for Young Humanitarian

  IP: 2053:db7:lj71::236:113:638

  SECURITY STATUS: Confidential LANDLOCK-1

  “Are you all right?” His voice was low and soft, smooth like a river. She became aware of his broad shoulders, his towering height, the chiseled panes of his face, and just the lightest dusting of freckles over his nose.

  “I’m fine,” she breathed, and looked back down at the stairs, where his case had tumbled and popped open. She’d heard something crunch. She imagined herself falling down the stairs between the aisle, and realized he’d caught her—at the expense of his case. She wrenched back. “I wasn’t looking where I was going. This was my fault.”

  “It is fine.”

  “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  His full, expressive mouth quirked, gaze searching her face. “There is no need to be.”

  “But your thing broke.” She didn’t know what his thing was, but when Yuri moved past her, she followed to survey the damage for herself, full of dread, wondering how else she could screw things up tonight.

  She crouched there and watched from the stairs as he gently lifted the lid. He had massive hands, as large as the rest of his tall, muscular body, but they handled the case with surprising delicacy. He pulled out a metallic cylinder inside, and she realized it was a telescope.

  “I believe it was cushioned from the impact,” Yuri told her. His rich-brown bangs fluttered down over an eye as he leaned in to inspect the telescope carefully. “No harm has been done.”

  “You came here to actually look at the stars?” Wyatt said wonderingly.

  “Yes,” Yuri acknowledged with a ghost of a smile. She found it hard to meet his gaze suddenly, because he was intimidatingly good-looking. “I lived in Antarctica for several years as a child. The view here does not quite compare, but it makes me feel like I’m at home. . . . I suppose this seems strange to you.”

  His earnest admission made something inside her crack, just a bit. She didn’t feel like an idiot now, coming here alone. Uncertainty still clutched her, because she hadn’t spoken to many boys other than Vikram and the ones who teased her. She certainly hadn’t figured out any ground rules for how she was supposed to act around them.

  “You probably can’t see anything through that, anyway,” she told him. “The light pollution is awful.”

  His eyebrows raised. “Would you like to test this out with me?”

  Her breath caught.

  Say no. Leave. This is a trap. Something bad will come of this.

  She couldn’t help feeling a dreadful suspicion when anyone was nice to her. She’d already been fooled by Heather. She still hadn’t answered when Yuri began setting up the telescope. Wyatt noticed people looking their way, noticed the trainees who’d come there just to make out getting annoyed by the distraction of Yuri actually stargazing, the way they were supposed to. Suddenly protective, Wyatt drew closer to him.

  “Yes,” she said firmly, “I suppose I will.”

  AND IN THAT way, Wyatt managed to make a real friend. One that didn’t run away, one that didn’t have some motive. She never dared spill her loneliness, her feelings to him—she’d learned better after Heather had used those like a knife against her. But slowly she began to feel maybe Yuri would never do something like that anyway.

  He was kind, and friendly, and always glad to see her, and in some ways, he was more of an exile than she was.

  It was her inability to talk to people without offending them that isolated her, but Yuri had a much more crippling ailment.

  She realized it the first time he called her “Wanda.” At first, she thought it was some sort of mistake, but then Yuri’s irritating friend, Vikram, sidled up to her and explained the popular theory.

  “He calls me ‘Viktor’; he calls Beamer ‘Stefan.’ It’s too consistent.”

  The Indian boy stretched out his legs as Wyatt sat awkwardly in Yuri’s bunk in Alexander Division. Yuri had invited her over, and she’d assumed he wanted help with Programming, or something similar. Instead, they’d just been sitting in his bunk together for twenty minutes.

  Wyatt had spent the time racking her brain desperately for subjects people tended to discuss in casual conversation, wondering if Yuri noticed how awkward and unnatural she was at this. She’d already brought up the weather and baseball. Neither of them followed baseball, so that was a dead end, and the sky was a clear, crisp blue outside, so no luck there, either.

  Much as she disliked Vik, as soon as he sauntered into the bunk, the talking thing became easier, because even though Vik mocked her, he mocked Yuri and sometimes himself, too.

  Then Yuri ordered him, “Stop teasing Wanda, Viktor.”

  Hence, Vik launching into his explanation. Right in front of Yuri.

  “We think it’s malware,” Vik went on.

  “Malware?” Wyatt said. She stared at Yuri, who was looking at them in a foggy manner like he couldn’t even hear them. It was creepy.

  “Yeah, but official malware. Yuri’s Russian, okay? And we know how he got in here: his dad works for Joseph Vengerov, and Vengerov pulled strings for him.”

  Wyatt nodded, recognizing the name of the CEO of Obsidian Corp. That was the company that designed all the neural processors, and most of the equipment used in the war effort.

  “So the military had to take him or cross Vengerov, but they don’t trust a Russkie. That’s why Yuri is scrambled. He doesn’t hear things, or understand them. We can even talk about it right in front of him, like we’re doing now”—Vik nodded courteously to Yuri, who still gazed their way cluelessly—“and he doesn’t understand. You just get used to it.”

  Wyatt peered at Vik suspiciously, alarmed by the fogginess on Yuri’s face. “So how much does he really see or hear?”

  Vik grinned. “Sit with us in Programming class next time. You’ll see.”

  Wyatt looked at Yuri uncertainly. “So when will he tune back in again?”

  “Just move on to another subject,” Vik told her. He focused on Yuri and sai
d, “Enslow has Man Hands.”

  Wyatt glared at Vik, but that roused Yuri right away. “Her hands are excellently proportioned. Do not listen to him, Wanda.”

  BEING INVITED TO sit with people in Programming rubbed a sore point, especially because she was terrified every time she walked into the class now that Blackburn was actively hunting for the Spire’s rogue hacker. It was a misery knowing she was better at programming than anyone in the room, but she couldn’t show it—she had to mess up her own code to draw suspicion off herself.

  As Blackburn strode onto the stage, Vik caught her eye and mouthed, “Three, two, one . . .”

  With that, Yuri abruptly slumped over. Wyatt’s heart jerked, but Vik and Beamer were both laughing, each catching a shoulder to reposition Yuri into a more comfortable spot.

  “He’s okay,” Vik assured her. “Programming is confidential. On the dot, every day, he zones out. He’ll wake up after class with no idea what happened.”

  Wyatt stared at Yuri. He couldn’t be a spy. It was cruel, almost, not even giving him a chance to prove himself.

  Class ended early, but Yuri’s program only released its grip on him at the standard time. She stayed seated next to him on the bench after everyone filed out to lunch. She was there when he roused abruptly, and blinked about them groggily.

  His eyes lit upon hers, and a sleepy smile crossed his lips. “Wanda.”

  “Hello.”

  “That was quite a class,” Yuri murmured. “Everyone left so quickly.”

  She stared at him. He really had no idea he’d been unconscious through the whole thing. How much was the computer twisting his perception?

  What if it wasn’t just names? Did he even look at her and see her? Or was it some other girl he saw?

  Maybe he was so impervious to the things she did, the insults she accidentally said, the social blunders she made, because he didn’t perceive them.

  With a pang, she found herself remembering the night in the Planetarium, when they’d taken turns looking in the telescope. She’d been telling him about one of the stellar phenomena that most fascinated her, the way the Wolf-Rayet star was primed to go supernova—and possibly emit a gamma ray along the line of its axis that could sterilize all life on Earth. She realized suddenly that her voice was the only one ringing out in the dim room, far too loud, and she was doing that thing she did when she got so interested in something: she rambled about it until other people grew upset with her. Mortification burned through her. But when her gaze shot to his, just for a moment, she realized Yuri was actually still listening to her, watching her face as though fascinated, his gaze like a caress on her skin. That made her stutter into silence, and hastily dodge his eyes, but she thought about it sometimes afterward. It always made her stomach flutter strangely.

  Now she didn’t even know if he had really been there with her as she spoke of the Wolf-Rayet star, or if he was ever there. She didn’t even know if he was here with her now. That was the worst part. He was the only person she’d truly connected with here, and it could be that he just appreciated her because he couldn’t really perceive her.

  Sitting next to Yuri now, a terrible emptiness flooded her, plunging her back into the bleak depths she’d felt after Heather turned on her. She felt more lonely than ever.

  “I’m thinking about leaving,” she told him abruptly. “Quitting. They can do a phased removal of the neural processor, I heard.”

  He straightened up. “Don’t.”

  “We go on break in a week. I think I’ll quit before then. I heard Heather Akron is getting promoted. Wyndham Harks is sponsoring her now. I don’t want to sit through her promotion ceremony.”

  He exhaled slowly, rubbing his wavy hair. “You should do what will make you happy, Wanda. But . . .”

  She gazed at the bench in front of her, where the wood was splintering.

  “I will be sorry to see you go,” Yuri noted. “I do not wish to lose a friend.”

  He’d said “friend.” Her breath caught. She looked at him. “Do you mean that? Am I really . . . are we friends?”

  “Of course we are,” Yuri said, and she wasn’t sure, but he seemed to be truthful. “We always will be friends.”

  She felt it like a sharp stab, because they wouldn’t be. If she lost the neural processor, she’d go back to that place she’d been before. The isolated realm where people were strange, irrational puzzles she didn’t care to piece together, and she never mourned the empty hours.

  It was a comfortable place, but Yuri could never share it.

  THERE WAS A limited window for having a neural processor removed. The brain steadily grew more reliant on it, and there was no leaving the Intrasolar Forces once it was fully dependent. Wyatt knew she was getting to the point where she needed to decide once and for all what her path would be.

  She waited until she visited home for winter break.

  She expected to see her home through new eyes now that she’d been away for three months and her brain had undergone profound changes. Indeed, there was a certain musty smell to the place she’d never noticed before, and the shadows seemed darker at night. There always seemed to be something casting light in the Pentagonal Spire, but not here in Connecticut.

  The starkest change was at the large dining table, where her father sat at one end, her mother at the other, and she right in the middle. Wyatt sat there as their maid served their dishes, and cast her gaze to the right, across the gulf of table to her mother, sipping at her wine. To the left, her father was already shoveling food into his mouth, crumbs sticking to his beard.

  She’d never noticed the silence before. It was quiet as a tomb, with only the clink of silverware, and her father’s vigorous chewing. They’d only asked a few cursory questions when she first arrived, some about classified things Wyatt couldn’t divulge. They stopped asking.

  Later that night, Wyatt was seated before the antique dresser, gazing at her own face. She’d never noticed it much, either, in the past. Somehow her mother’s dramatic Hispanic beauty and her father’s swarthy English features contrived to render her utterly unremarkable. Her nose was long and arrogant looking, her complexion sallow, eyebrows straight lines. Her hair hung flatly past her dimpled chin. The only thing she liked was the color of her eyes, a rich brown framed by a sweep of long, dark lashes.

  Her mother surprised her by coming in and brushing her hair. Wyatt felt a flicker of . . . something, remembering this. From when she was little.

  “Do you love me?”

  Esperanza’s dark eyes met hers in the mirror, just briefly. “What a silly question.”

  But she hadn’t answered, and Wyatt just wanted her to answer. She needed that answer if she was going to withdraw, to commit to leaving the Pentagonal Spire, leaving this person she was now.

  The bristles crackled through her hair.

  “Of course I love you. Your father and I both do.”

  But her mother said it briskly, it a way that didn’t warm that part of Wyatt’s chest that needed it.

  Wyatt didn’t know how to be what her mother wanted. She knew in her heart that however much she’d accomplished, even when she’d gotten a gold medal in the Mathematics Olympiad, when she blew people away in the area of her strength, she’d never been the daughter her mother had hoped for.

  Maybe it was too late to change that.

  SHE RETURNED FROM break reluctantly, knowing the clock was ticking down before she had to make her decision. The bleak visit home was a point for the Spire, but everyday existence at the Spire was a point for home. Was she doomed to be unhappy everywhere she went?

  She’d been leery of Yuri ever since seeing him zone out in programming. There was something painful about being around him when she wasn’t sure how real his friendship was, or how much of it just stemmed from his inability to actually perceive her. Without him around, though, she was lonelier than ever.

  She was afraid of staying in her bunk with her new roommate, for fear of alienating someone else, and spe
nt the first couple days back wandering restlessly through the areas she was permitted in the Pentagonal Spire. She’d spend hours by herself tucked away in any corner she could, reading. Her favorite place to read was the arboretum, but there were people hanging out there today. That’s why she crunched into the vast, empty Calisthenics Arena the first Thursday night.

  But it wasn’t so empty, after all. She’d been sitting on a low wall for a few minutes when someone emerged from the weight room.

  “Ms. Enslow.”

  Wyatt tensed up, recognizing the voice, low and rough, and glanced behind her. Even out of uniform, Lieutenant Blackburn was intimidatingly large, with wide shoulders, and fine lines feathering the skin by his eyes that lent him a certain appearance like he was squinting, or just focused very intently on whatever he was looking at. Frown lines carved deep grooves in his face, framing the hard slash of his lips, and she felt a terrible dread as his gaze rested heavily on her, certain everything she’d done was exposed on her face.

  His next words made it worse. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”

  “Why?” Wyatt choked out, horrified.

  His expression altered, becoming searching. “It’s been a few months. How are you holding up?”

  She stayed rooted in place, wondering what he could possibly be talking about. Holding up . . . under his relentless scrutiny, as he searched for signs of who the hacker was? Under the pressure of total social isolation in a high-stress environment? What?

  “How are you holding up?” he repeated, tapping his forehead.

  She realized it. “Oh. Oh! You mean the neural processor. Great. I’m fine.”

  She knew his neural processor had driven him insane. He’d made no secret about that fact to the students. Every adult brain was damaged by the computers; that’s why only teenagers could receive them. He’d returned to sanity by reprogramming his own processor—a slow and difficult task. If he didn’t frighten her, she’d want to ask him several dozen questions about that. She had a mental list of questions she knew she’d never get to ask.