Vortex

  “I’m not full-blown meeting with her again. I’ve only talked to her a couple times,” Tom said. “Vengerov asked me about her, and I can’t really tell you more than that, but he wants me to do something to her that I can’t do. So as far as he’s concerned, as far as anyone is concerned, I haven’t spoken to her since I got charged with treason. Okay?” He raised his eyebrows significantly. I am going to officially inform him that she refuses to see me again.”

  Yuri’s eyes dropped, and all the sharpness disappeared from his face, replaced by a mild sort of confusion.

  “Yuri, you can’t tell,” Tom said, disturbed by the way he hadn’t responded.

  Yuri blinked. “On my life, Thomas,” he said, “I will never tell anyone.” He frowned. “I hope you are being wise.”

  “Come on. It’s me, man.”

  “I know this,” Yuri said dubiously, sprawling back on the bench again to resume his bench presses. “And this is what concerns me.”

  THE DARKENED VACTUBE was slightly ominous when Tom was alone, especially the long ride to Antarctica. Tom was glad to enter the elevator and rise into Obsidian Corp. There, he met the other exhausted Middles who’d been doing meet and greets all day.

  It came as a profound shock to Tom when he found Lieutenant Blackburn there, radiating tension.

  “All of you will remain in my sight at all times, am I understood?” Blackburn said. His gray eyes roved over them, bitter lines etched on his face in the facility’s artificial lights. “Your wireless functions should be nonoperational while you’re here. I’m wearing a jamming device.” He pulled back his sleeve to expose something that resembled a wristwatch. “If for some reason your wireless comes back online, you’re to assume someone is hacking you, and you’ll notify me immediately. Now let’s go.”

  He snapped around and led them forward through an automated turnstile that scanned their retinas. Praetorians flanked them as they walked, their metal camera eyes fixed on the passing trainees.

  As Tom walked, the undeniable sensation of being watched tickled up his spine. He threw a careless glance over his shoulder.

  All the Praetorians had their camera eyes fixed straight on him.

  Tom was so jolted by the sight, he almost sprang a foot in the air. The crowd jostled around him, mounting a set of stairs. Weird. Creepy. Tom moved on, darting his own eyes around warily.

  There was something distinctly unsettling about Obsidian Corp. All the corridors were dimly lit and very chilly. They passed massive, warehouse-sized rooms with elaborate supercomputers. Those rooms were devoid of people. In fact, there were almost no humans around, not even custodial personnel or mechanics. Just Praetorians and mechanized surveillance cameras. It took Tom a few minutes to pinpoint what was so wrong about the complex, but then he figured it out: the building seemed to have been created for the machines inside it. It was like human beings were unwelcome intruders.

  Even the low-level Obsidian Corp. techs who led them on a tour of the facilities seemed nervous and out of place. They joked uneasily about the way Antarctica saved the company billions in air-conditioning. When trainees laughed, the techs blinked.

  “That’s the truth. It really does save the company billions in air-conditioning. Quantum supercomputers get very hot,” one tech said. “We actually have to wear parkas to move through most of the facility.”

  Then they led the trainees past expansive windows overlooking the icy tundra. The sky was a dull gray. It was the time of year in this part of Antarctica where night never descended, but there was no brightness this day.

  In each room, Tom couldn’t help darting his eyes to the surveillance cameras and the stationary Praetorians. Tom kept waiting for Vengerov or someone else to approach him about using the virus on Medusa—Vengerov had said he wanted Tom to answer him during this visit. But no one came. He was never summoned or signaled. And the mechanized eyes followed him, always long enough for him to detect their scrutiny, never long enough for anyone else to notice—not even Vik, a foot ahead of him. Tom’s skin was crawling.

  Vengerov knows somehow, Tom thought. He knows I’m going to say no.

  Tom pictured Joseph Vengerov’s sharp, angular features and pale eyes and those silvery eyebrows that blended into his forehead—lurking on the other side of that surveillance system, just watching him. But how could Vengerov already know his answer? How could he be sure?

  Tom hadn’t talked to anyone about it except Yuri, but he wasn’t even here.

  Just to be absolutely certain he wasn’t being paranoid, Tom intentionally dropped back to the very edge of the group, so the surveillance devices would have to be very obvious about tracking him.

  As their group trickled into the next room, from the corner of his eye, Tom saw a Praetorian moving toward him. He whirled around, startled. The machine was still again.

  But then he heard a hiss behind him. Tom whipped around to find the door between him and the rest of the group closing with a decisive clang.

  “Hey!” Tom rushed toward it, his hands meeting cold metal. There was no handle, no doorknob. He tried pushing, he tried pounding his fist on it. There wasn’t a single peep from the other side.

  Soundproof. Great.

  Tom drew a bracing breath and turned. The Praetorians were openly fixing their single, pinpoint camera eyes on him. His skin crawled. The hum of machinery was the only sound in the room, and it was mounting louder and louder on the air. Tom’s reflection moved across the polished black floor with him, swam against the massive window revealing the gray sky over the glacial landscape. He finally turned to see the nearest overhead surveillance camera.

  “I’m locked out,” Tom told whoever was on the other side. “Open the door.”

  His voice rang out in the empty air and he wondered if anyone even heard him. He willed on his net-send and tried to use a thought interface to alert Vik, but words flashed across his vision center: Error: Frequency unavailable. Message not sent.

  Blackburn’s stupid jammer. Of course.

  Then Tom felt a strange prickling sensation move all over his feet. The prickle turned to tiny jabs, which became stabbing needles, an electrical current carrying across the floor. Tom leaped a few steps away from the Praetorians, and got some momentary relief, but the prickle mounted into a stronger electric charge, until his legs were viciously buzzing and Tom was forced to bolt through the other door, away from the very floor that seemed to be trying to electrocute him.

  He leaped right into the next open chamber, but the Praetorians in that room also homed in on him, blocking his path.

  They drew so close, he had to squeeze to the side to avoid being crushed; but when he brushed one of the metal Praetorians in passing, a sharp bolt of electricity seared him, and Tom couldn’t help the shout that ripped from his lips as he stumbled away from it. He backed up, step by step, and they advanced on him, relentless. For a moment, Tom’s thoughts flickered to people in the places used as testing grounds for military tech, where small-scale insurgents were swarmed with these machines. He’d never realized how frightening such unrelenting inhumanity could be.

  But there was a human being behind this. There had to be a man behind the curtain controlling the actions of these machines. Tom turned to the nearest surveillance camera, hoping his watcher knew he was talking directly to him when he said, “I am not afraid of you.”

  In response, a Praetorian whirled toward him. Tom kicked at it, trying to knock it back, but it swung around pendulously, its base still advancing toward him, and a shock jolted up his leg and locked his muscles as he clumsily stumbled back again. He backed away from the others, trying to avoid more shocks, and in that manner, they herded him down a hallway until his back thumped against an icy wall.

  Tom pressed against it, nowhere else to go, Praetorians advancing on him. Joseph Vengerov couldn’t kill him. He couldn’t. Even if he did know somehow that Tom was refusing his demand to use a virus on Medusa, he couldn’t simply murder him. He was trying to scare him. To
m was sure of it. Vengerov’s last words to him rang in his ears: The real question here is, will you fulfill this reasonable request, or will I have to resort to unpleasant means of persuasion?

  Two metal devices shifted, curving their single, pinpoint camera eyes toward him, aligning them so for a disconcerting moment, Tom felt like he was gazing at some sort of machine man, assessing him through empty metallic eyes.

  “Okay,” Tom said, “obviously you’re not pleased about something.”

  The camera eyes bobbed up and down, a cold, fatal nod of a head.

  And then the wall Tom was leaning back against abruptly swung open, and he realized it wasn’t a wall but a door, and it led straight to the outside. He realized this the same instant he crashed onto his back into a bank of icy snow. The door swung closed with a resounding clang, stranding Tom outside, without a coat, on the frozen Antarctica tundra.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  FOR A FLEETING moment, Tom lay there, absolute cold soaking into the back of his flimsy suit, and then a gust of tormenting wind battered him and his brain cleared enough to register that he was outside. In a thin suit. And it wasn’t freezing cold—it was painfully, agonizingly cold.

  Tom bolted to his feet and charged toward the door. His hands slipped over an icy, stinging metal surface with no handles. He had never in his life imagined it was possible to feel this cold. His ears were searing hot pokers stabbing his head, his eardrums throbbed, and the wind felt like thousands of tiny prongs jabbing viciously at him. His skull began spiking with terrible pain. Tom pounded his fist on the door.

  “HEY! HEY! YOU CAN’T DO THIS! OPEN UP! OPEN THE DOOR!”

  He stumbled back several steps, shaking violently, his teeth chattering, the chill so much more dreadful where his suit had picked up some icy dampness from the ground, and he became aware of a surveillance camera mounted over the door, fixed on him—like Vengerov was waiting for him to get scared enough to beg or plead, to swear to do what he wanted.

  No. No way. Not now. He would never do anything Vengerov wanted.

  A rush of hot determination flooded Tom, and he very deliberately flipped the camera the bird even as wind stabbed its way into his lungs and tore at his gums. His nose stung, his fingers were pulsing with pain, and his mind raced frantically, looking for something to do to help himself.

  Suddenly, he remembered back when he was little with his dad, when they couldn’t catch a ride one night in Nevada. The desert, so hot in the day when they were trying to thumb a ride, grew so terribly cold that night and the day’s sweat became like ice. Neil had told him to keep moving, because standing still was what killed you.

  So Tom jammed his aching hands beneath his armpits and began hopping. He swept his gaze over the blank face of the massive complex that stretched off into the distance. His stinging lids scraped his eyes with every blink, and the wind bit his pupils until tears began flowing to his cheeks, only to freeze on his face like insects nipping him. But there was a window, a low one, and not too far away.

  He launched himself into a run, his lungs gashed by the frantic breaths he gasped, and he felt a strange sense like he was in some distorted maze, because the window didn’t seem to be closer—it was so much farther than it had looked. He’d slipped on the ice repeatedly before he reached it. He tried shoving up the pane with his rubbery hands, but it wouldn’t give, so Tom hurled himself at it, and then kicked viciously over and over, perfectly willing to scrape his leg to break the glass, but it still wouldn’t break. His gums were aching, his teeth chattering. He willed on net-send, but the frequency was still jammed, and he grew aware of another camera boring right into him from over the window. He wished he had something to hurl at it. His gaze roved over the ground, and he spotted a rock, half-buried in snow. Tom realized with a spring of glee that he could use this to break the camera—no, the window! He knelt to dig it up.

  A message blinked across his vision center: Warning: Low body temperature detected. 95.2º F. Trainee is advised to seek shelter.

  Tom began laughing. He couldn’t help it. “I a-am T-T-TRYING!” he shouted at the message, clumsy fingers scraping over the rock’s jagged edges. He couldn’t feel the stinging cuts.

  Then light flooded the corner of Tom’s vision. Tom gaped for a moment, unable to believe it: Vengerov had relented. He’d opened the door again!

  Of course. Of course, he couldn’t strand Tom out here and let him freeze. It was a game of chicken and Tom had won. Tom sprinted back toward it, but it took even longer now, getting back to where he’d come from. His legs were so clumsy, he tumbled again and again, numbed hands and knees scraping the snow. His limbs were unfeeling blocks by the time he reached the door, and he felt the tantalizing blast of warmth from inside the building—and then the door swung closed again.

  “NO!” Tom screamed, hurling himself at it, but it was too late. “N-NO!” He punched it with his unfeeling fists. For a moment, he felt like his chest was going to split open. His throat seemed to be jammed. Then he reeled back with an insane laugh spilling from his lips. The camera was still fixed on him.

  “OPEN UP! OPEN THE D-D-DOOR! OPEN IT! I’LL K-KILL Y-YOU F-F-FOR THIS!”

  Some part of his brain warned him that death threats weren’t very enticing reasons for anyone to open a door for him, but Tom didn’t muse on it for long.

  An emergency alarm blared in his vision center. Warning: Low body temperature detected. 93.3º F. Transmitting emergency beacon.

  Tom’s heart soared. Would this work? Would someone get it? And then he screamed in frustration as he read the words: Frequency unavailable. Emergency beacon not sent. Automatic retry in twenty seconds. Nineteen seconds. Eighteen seconds. . . .

  He stopped clawing his way forward, his eyes stinging as they focused on the distant window. Too distant.

  He could die here.

  The thought spliced through his head, sharp like a razor. A vivid image of his own body frosted over with snow filled his brain and Tom couldn’t banish it from his mind.

  Vengerov wasn’t messing around. This wasn’t a game of chicken. He could really die out here. He grew wild with rage and fear, and whirled back toward the window, knowing it was his best chance. His throat felt numb. When he fell, he clawed his way forward, the wet snow plastering his clothes to his limbs. He sprinted ahead, but before he knew it, he’d plunged back into the snow. Panic tore at him. He wasn’t sure what to do. He couldn’t focus on anything other than the cold.

  So cold, so cold . . . He couldn’t fight it now. His body contracted into a shivering ball, but nothing warded off the terrible ice. He felt like he was being erased, everything human and deliberate vanishing from his mind, replaced by some nameless, tormented creature that knew only frost and could understand nothing else, and he became numbed all over, all sense of where he was, what this was, receding from him.

  Warning: Critically low body temperature detected. 92.0º F. Transmitting emergency beacon. Frequency unavailable. Emergency beacon not sent. Automatic retry in twenty seconds.

  He had to get up. He had to. With strength he didn’t feel like he had, he uncurled slowly, even though his legs were so numb, they felt like they weren’t even there. Standing took so much effort it was like heaving up a ton of granite. He forced the legs he couldn’t feel to move, to jog in place, but it was like moving through a swamp. Everything was dragging, and even his brain was sluggish. He couldn’t feel his face.

  The window.

  The window. That rock could break the window. He had to get there. It was his only chance.

  He lifted his legs and set them down, drawing step by step toward the window. Each minute felt like a year. Several times, he found himself on the ground, fighting for air. He saw that the door had popped open again to spill light onto the snow. Just to taunt him. Just to offer safety and slam shut again. He kept going. He wasn’t going to fall for it.

  Then he reached the window and lowered himself clumsily, pawing at the snow, trying to extract that rock
from the frost. But it was too late. His fingers weren’t closing. His hands couldn’t grip, they couldn’t hold. He only knew where they were by looking at them. Horrible fear stabbed him, sharp and acrid, as he realized his body wasn’t working anymore.

  Tom turned that thought around in his mind, his pulse thready in his ears, because even during the simulated deaths in the training room, it had never sunk in that he could really die. That someone like Joseph Vengerov could come along and simply end him. That he could get so cold, his body would actually stop moving for him. That every shred of will he had couldn’t force his fists to clench. That his life or death could hinge on something so small as his fingers.

  He lurched to the window. His blood beat in his head. A strange, unnatural heat began to well up within him as he planned a kick. One good, hard kick. He could do this. He had to do this. It didn’t matter now if he broke every bone in his leg. He’d die if he didn’t get through that window.

  He squinted at the window and swung his foot forward. His other leg buckled, the world flipped before his eyes, and he landed on the ground, hard. Icy snow shot up his nose, and he coughed weakly, his brain blurring. The snow was warm. Hot. Tom realized he was sweltering all over, like someone had lit him up from the inside. He wanted to tear off his tie, shove off his coat, relieve himself of the unbearable heat, but he gave up on it quickly. He tried heaving himself up again, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. And then he began to grow comfortable, like he was sinking into the depths of some exquisite bed.

  Some nameless time later, he was on his side. He stayed there, his face nestled in the crook of his arm, still roasting in the Antarctic tundra, his body so unfeeling, it was like he’d become detached from it. Now even his brain was slipping, slipping out of reach, and Tom realized in a detached sort of way that this was the way it would end. A stupid, pointless death at fifteen, out here all alone. But it wasn’t so bad. The pain was gone.