Vortex

  She stared at him.

  “And I’d be worried,” Tom added quickly, seeing her confusion. “See, it’s a horse. See? I mean, I’d really be, like, ‘uh-oh’ and ‘this sucks,’ if it looked like you because I’d be into that horse. Which is messed up, due to the horse thing. But it would solely be because it resembled you. You know what I mean?”

  She backed away from him slowly. “I think I really need to leave now.”

  “No, wait.” He let out a breath. “This is all coming out wrong.”

  “Was there some way that could possibly have come out right?”

  Yeah, she had a point. “What I’m trying to say is, I’m sorry I hurt you and I think there’s so much about you that’s amazing and I really need you to know I feel that way.”

  She was silent a moment. Then, “Where did the horse come from?”

  “Forget the horse,” Tom said vehemently. An explosion rumbled in the distance, so he took the opportunity to shoot the trainee, too close for comfort. Then he turned back to her. “This is the main reason I contacted you: Joseph Vengerov of Obsidian Corp. approached me. He leaked to your military that we were meeting. He also wants me to do some clandestine work against you. He wrote a computer virus designed to incapacitate you. My friend made sure that’s what it’s for, just in case. I’m supposed to use it on you.”

  She jolted away from him. Tom realized she thought he was going to deploy it. He risked raising his hands, even though he was aware the other group might see the gesture.

  “Don’t go! Listen, Medusa, I’m not doing it. I thought I should warn you. Actually, this is good news.”

  “Good news?”

  “Yeah! LM Lymer Fleet is not monitoring you because they know anything about what you and I can do—it’s because you’re winning too much. Vengerov doesn’t like it, and he controls LM Lymer Fleet as well as Obsidian Corp. He doesn’t want you finishing the war so soon. I got it right out of the horse’s mouth.”

  Then he winced. Why had he brought up the horse again?

  “LM Lymer Fleet surveilling you has nothing to do with what we are, Medusa. Just lose here and there, and stop posing such a threat to their war racket, and they’ll back off. They’ll leave you be.”

  Medusa hugged her arms across her body, and he was struck by how alone she looked in the clouds of fluorine gas billowing around her. “You don’t plan to use the virus on me, then?”

  “Are you serious?” Tom blurted.

  “What,” she said, “you would never do something underhanded and vicious for the sake of winning? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Tom laughed softly. He had to give her that. “Fine, so I’ve got a bad track record there, but you know, I took it on myself to warn you. If I was planning to use it, would I really stand here and tell you all about it beforehand?”

  Apparently, the enemy group had figured out there was a sniper hidden nearby. They were scouring the area, searching for their mysterious assailant. Tom kept an eye out. He was ready for them.

  “Actually,” he told Medusa, trying to set her at ease, “I’m a bit insulted here. You really think I’d be the sort of supervillain who tells all his plans before he does them. I mean, come on. That burns.”

  Her voice was teasing. “I know for a fact you’re the gloating type. I could see you explaining all your diabolical plans to me before you pull them off.”

  Tom made a show of doubling over in terrible pain, like her words were hurting him. Her laughter rewarded him. When he peeked up at her again, he saw her roll her eyes. “Fine, Mordred. I suppose you wouldn’t do the supervillain lecture. I guess no one does it in real life.”

  “Actually, I knew a kid,” he admitted. “His name was Nigel, and he was planning something pretty diabolical. Just before he did it, he gave me the whole lecture. Like, an explanation about how he did it, his motives, all that, and even his evil plans for after he pulled it off. I’m not even lying here.”

  Makis Katehi spotted Tom. Tom hurled himself up before Makis could shout an alarm, tackled him to the ground under the cover of the poisonous gas, and slit his throat. Then he dove back for cover in his makeshift hiding place and thrust a mound of dirt back over his body.

  “So I really don’t have a reason to be worried,” Medusa said.

  “No. No reason apart from the obvious winning-too-much-so-must-be-stopped thing.”

  “And you really wanted to warn me.” Her voice was wondering. “That’s all?”

  “That’s all. That and the . . .” He fumbled a moment, feeling stupid. “And the horse thing.”

  He shot the next trainee who ventured too near him, and looked up in time to spot the fleeting smile on her lips. It made him bold. “Tell me one thing. Just one. Is your name . . . Mulan?”

  “Not even close. Good-bye, Mordred.”

  “Visit me again,” Tom said on impulse.

  She was silent. Then, “Maybe.”

  She fizzled away, leaving Tom in the mud, bodies sprawled all around him, swirling clouds of poisonous gas in the air. She hadn’t said no.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  TOM AND MEDUSA didn’t fall into their old habit of meeting for fights in VR games, but she did take to inserting herself in his audiovisual feed during Applied Scrimmages. It was early morning in China whenever she came, and since the Chinese trainees only slept every other day. She was able to find time to visit him more often than he’d even hoped. So Tom went rogue from his group every simulation in hopes she’d show up. Since Yosef Saide cared only about kill ratios, and Tom liked to show off to Medusa by really piling up the bodies when she was there, the arrangement actually impressed his simulation group instructor, who told him to keep at it.

  Medusa couldn’t participate in the sim or even kill people on the other side when she was entering Tom’s visual feed, but she took on something of an advisory capacity, which almost gave Tom the sense they were teaming up for rampages together. One extended simulation between the Mongols and the Russians, she caught up to Tom where he wandered alone in a Siberian forest, and found him hovering over a makeshift fire.

  “You should put out that fire.” It was a chilly day dipping into evening in an extended sim. Tom was a rogue Mongol, prowling across Siberia. “I could climb a tree and look for their smoke, then you go kill them.”

  “Maybe later,” Tom told her.

  “You should at least put out this fire, Tom.”

  “I don’t like being cold.”

  “Do you like being dead? Because that’s what you’ll be when someone notices it, and hunts you down.”

  Cold and dead were about the same thing in his mind now. But he held firm, and Medusa gave a wicked grin, then began to kick dirt over his fire. Tom couldn’t allow her to put it out, so he charged her unexpectedly and hoisted her over his shoulder.

  “What is this supposed to accomplish?”

  “I’m throwing you over my shoulder in a manly way,” Tom informed her. “I’m thinking of covering you in snow so you learn to appreciate my fire, too.”

  “I could fight my way down anytime,” Medusa declared.

  Tom laughed. “Not before you get snowed!”

  She twisted in his arms, and Tom ducked his head to avoid the hands she swiped at his face, trying to gouge his eyes. Medusa kicked at his torso and unbalanced him, sending Tom tumbling back, but he made sure they both plunged into a bank of slushy snow. He didn’t even feel the chill with her searing up against him, and she punched his face, knocking him to his elbows and knees.

  Medusa maneuvered herself firmly on top of him and stuffed a fistful of icy snow down the back of his tunic. Tom shook her off and tried to recapture her before she flitted away from him, but she was too swift and darted out of his reach.

  He heaved himself to his feet and shook out his tunic, laughing. She grinned at him savagely from across the leaping flames.

  “My ploy worked,” Tom told her. “You like that fire now.”

  She cocked her head. “Your fire
’s at my mercy. I could put it out and ditch the sim.”

  Tom sobered up. “I don’t care about the fire. Don’t go.”

  Medusa said nothing. The flames glittered in her black eyes. Their skirmish had tousled her hair, and he could see the scarring she tended to hide under locks of dark hair from the side of her head where she had most of it. His gaze traced over it, and Medusa seemed to realize what he was looking at. She turned her head away.

  “No, wait,” Tom said, circling to her side of the fire. “You don’t have to . . . I mean, I thought you don’t care if . . .”

  “I don’t.”

  He stood there a moment, dismayed, uncertain what to do. Then he reached out for her, and she flinched back.

  “What, you said you don’t care,” Tom pointed out. “Either you care or you don’t care what I’m seeing.”

  “I’ve had this since I was very young, Tom.” Her voice was acidic. “I am used to it. So, no, I don’t care anymore.”

  “So why are you upset when I—”

  “It’s different with you.”

  The implication slammed him: he’d done this. He had to fix it.

  This time, he took her gently by the shoulder before she could pull back. When he lifted his palm to brush the dark strands of her hair aside, her hand flew to the sword in his scabbard. Tom let her draw it if she wanted to. Soon, he could see her face, that mass of burn scar tissue twisting its way from her scalp, down her features.

  She stood there, utterly rigid, and he was vaguely aware of the sword wavering indecisively between them, like she couldn’t decide whether to sink it into him or toss it aside. Tom’s hand hovered over her cheek. He wasn’t sure whether this was okay, so he stayed that way, feeling the warmth radiating from her skin.

  “Does it hurt?” he asked her.

  Her black eyes flashed up to his. The point of the sword bit into his abdomen. “The nerves are dead. What do you think?”

  Tom opened and closed his mouth a few times before getting the words out. “I lost all my fingers. They froze.” He felt embarrassed admitting this, but he held his hands up, the only offering he had. “And I know the nerves are dead and they’re not even there anymore, so I’m imagining it, but sometimes they hurt. It’s weird. It’s stupid.”

  Medusa considered him, and he was aware of the sword sliding back down. She planted it in the ground by her feet. “I shouldn’t have tried to kick out your fire.”

  “You were right. It would’ve gotten me killed.”

  She lowered herself next to the crackling flames and tugged on his trouser leg, so he sank down next to her. They faced each other in the wavering golden light, and Medusa took his hand, then raised it so it hovered near her jaw again.

  “I don’t feel anything,” she told him.

  This time, Tom brushed his palm over the scar tissue. Strange. He’d expected something hard or rough. But it was cool, even soft in places. There was something about seeing the burn so close, feeling it, that diminished it in his mind. It shrank away as that shocking thing seen only in fleeting, stolen glimpses, and soon all he could see was the girl across from him, with this one more aspect rendering her . . . well, far from ordinary.

  “You haven’t tried to guess my name today,” Medusa pointed out.

  “Oh, yeah. Forgot.” Then he threw one out. “Wu Tang.”

  She rolled her eyes. “That’s your most pitiful guess yet.”

  Tom leaned in and whispered, “Tell me your real name and I’ll stop coming up with bad guesses.”

  She shoved him lightly. “You can’t coerce me with bad guesses.”

  “I can try, Murgatroid.”

  “Murgatroid?” She started laughing. “Is that even a name? It’s not Cantonese.”

  Tom watched her and his brain seemed to short out. He wasn’t sure what to blame for it later. Maybe he temporarily lost his mind because Medusa was so close to him. Maybe his mind blurred at the sight of fire dancing in her black irises.

  Maybe there simply was nothing sensible in his head in that moment, nothing to stop him. He reached over and drew her into his arms, feeling her fragile shoulders tense against his palms, then he dipped his head to hers and claimed her lips in his own.

  The last time they had kissed, Tom had been in VR; he hadn’t felt a thing. His mind had buzzed with the realization he was kissing her, and maybe that’s why some part of him hadn’t been fully present.

  Not this time.

  Her body softened against his, and to the tips of his toes Tom experienced this liquid elation, this utter rightness like he’d never felt before. His palm stroked up her back, cupped the hot skin of her neck, fingers twining into her silken black hair. The world seemed to go still and there was nothing under the crisp, starry sky of Siberia but Medusa, the feel of her, the taste of her, and need roared up within him as he tightened his grip and deepened the kiss.

  Trainee voices rang through the air. “It looks like the fire’s coming from over there!”

  Tom’s eyes snapped open.

  For a moment, he gazed right into her black eyes, inches from his, and he felt the moment he lost her, when every muscle in her body tensed and drew rigid. Then she planted her palms against his chest and shoved him back. He didn’t move as she bounded to her feet.

  Tom still couldn’t move, couldn’t budge, perched there by the fire like someone had paralyzed him. He felt like someone had sliced down his torso and exposed his guts to the air, his skeleton. Medusa stared at him like she couldn’t wrap her head around what he’d done, then she waved her hand and vanished from his sight.

  The Russians swarmed over the ridge and the arrows began thunking into the ground around Tom, but he still sat there, a great hollow in his chest.

  THE DAY CAME when Tom grew certain he could distinguish between the very basic sensory perceptions of his new fingers. Because his brain could associate different types of prickling with softness, sharpness, and that sort of thing, he was now ready for a program to fool his brain into perceiving at least an approximation of the old sensations.

  Unfortunately, this involved going to Blackburn.

  Tom knocked on his door one evening and stepped into his quarters on the officers’ floor with trepidation. It wasn’t that he felt hostile or distrustful toward Blackburn right now. That would’ve been okay. Easy. The problem was, he knew Blackburn had saved his life, and he remembered Blackburn getting him warm and . . . well, making him feel safe. Less afraid.

  It was too messed up, what with the census device still vivid in his brain, far too recent. Tom preferred not to feel profoundly indebted to him. It was easier to avoid him altogether.

  Now he stood there awkwardly as Blackburn plopped a case of supplies out on his table and beckoned Tom over. Tom had never seen inside Blackburn’s quarters before and it wasn’t what he would’ve expected at all. The man had been at the Pentagonal Spire almost four years now, but the walls and shelves were bare, the only real furniture a table, some chairs, and a TV. There was a scraggly, undecorated Christmas tree Blackburn obviously hadn’t gotten around to taking down yet.

  “Your fake tree looks to be on its deathbed,” Tom told Blackburn.

  “It’s older than you are, Raines. Show some respect.”

  Older than he was . . .

  Tom realized it then—Blackburn must’ve had it before. Before he went crazy, before he blew up his kids, before his wife clawed his face and left him. Tom tore his gaze away and saw something that made him feel even worse.

  He and Vik had been at the Pentagon City Mall with Wyatt and Yuri while she looked for Blackburn’s Christmas present. Wyatt was a terrible gift giver, since she never guessed even remotely correctly what people wanted, and Tom and Vik didn’t help matters because it amused them to steer her clear of the nice pen Yuri suggested and toward a brilliant purple, lavender-scented candle that had little stars all over the base.

  “Are you sure it’s not too girly?” Wyatt had asked them worriedly.

  Tom
and Vik had both kept straight faces as they nodded. Vik said, “Wyatt, all men like scented candles.”

  “Yes. Scented candles are as manly as it gets,” Tom confirmed. “It’s the classic American Sunday: beer in hand, football on TV, and a scented candle burning nearby.”

  “Not just in America. When I left my primary school, my father said, ‘Son, you are now a man,’ then he gave me a scented candle and told me how babies are made.” Vik fought to keep his lips from twitching. His voice was a bit strained as he pointed at the glass base. “Plus, the tiny stars will remind Blackburn of outer space. I think he’ll like that.”

  That was good enough for Wyatt. She bought it for him. Unfortunately, this got them all scented candles for Christmas, but it had been worth it.

  At the time.

  Now Tom watched Blackburn rifle through a case in his bare apartment—that single, pathetic candle the only decoration in sight—and he felt like a scumbag. He still hadn’t even thanked him for Antarctica.

  “Hey,” Tom tried. “Thanks for saving my life. And stuff.”

  It wasn’t the best expression of gratitude ever. Blackburn didn’t seem to care. “I wasn’t going to let you die, you little fool. Now sit down. Let’s see if we can give you a sense of touch. This won’t be specific, Raines. You won’t distinguish between lukewarm and warm, but you’ll be able to feel a cold sensation and a heat sensation.”

  Tom lowered himself into the seat, and Blackburn beckoned for him to prop his hands up on the table.

  “This all depends on whether you’ve learned to distinguish between hot and cold, soft and sharp on your own. I need the neural associations firmly in place if I’m going to manipulate them.”

  Tom nodded impatiently. “Yeah, cold is kind of this slow, vibrating feeling, and hot is this fast one. Sharp is this tiny bunch of pinpricks, soft is a spread-out bunch. I can tell.”