Vortex

  “Close your eyes.”

  Tom closed them. Then Tom felt his fingers placed on something that prickled in a way he’d begun to identify as cold.

  “What is this one?”

  “Cold.”

  “Very good. Now we’ll substitute the electronic signal, fool your brain into thinking you feel cold like you used to. Keep your eyes closed.”

  Code flickered across Tom’s closed eyelids, and his fingertips felt the cold—a terrible cold that throbbed right up his finger into his knuckles. He yelped and withdrew his hand, his eyes snapping open.

  Blackburn raised his eyebrows at his reaction, and held up the thing Tom had been touching. An ice cube.

  “That was too cold,” Tom said.

  “You’re sensitized to it.”

  “No, you set up the finger wrong. It felt way too cold.” He didn’t want to go on, but Blackburn thumped the table with his knuckles, so Tom reluctantly put his hands down again.

  As Blackburn readied the next sensory test, he remarked, “I hope you’ve noticed that I haven’t pressed you about the situation with Joseph Vengerov.”

  Tom tensed. “Yeah, I’ve noticed.”

  “I know he wants something from you.”

  Tom dragged his gaze up to Blackburn’s, uncertain how much he should say. Blackburn grew irritated. “There is no point in testing your senses if you keep opening your eyes. What do you know about my time?”

  Tom closed his eyes. “Infinitely more valuable than mine.”

  “What do you know? You do learn sometimes. Sharp or soft?”

  Tom’s finger brushed something that felt like a tiny bunch of pinpricks. “Sharp.” When he opened his eyes, he confirmed it—it was the edge of a knife. He found himself staring at it. The words spilled out of him in a great rush. “Vengerov really would’ve killed me. Right? He would’ve done it. Just like that.”

  “If he wanted to kill you,” Blackburn said, tapping on his forearm keyboard, “I wouldn’t have gotten to you in time. He was trying to scare you.”

  “But he could have.” Tom grew agitated. “He could’ve done it. And he would’ve gotten away with it.”

  “Of course. Think real hard: Who writes our laws?”

  “Congress.”

  “And who do congressmen obey?”

  “Trillionaires,” Tom said bitterly.

  Blackburn nodded for him to touch the knife. Tom pressed too hard and felt a nip of sharpness. He raised his finger up, but it wasn’t bleeding like a real finger would. The skin was pink and almost plastic.

  “My dad hates them all,” Tom said. “Joseph Vengerov, Reuben Lloyd, Sigurdur Vitol, all of them, but then he saw Vengerov in person over break, and he didn’t say anything to him. He looked scared of him. I didn’t get it then. But I think I do now. Vengerov could’ve done anything to us. If Dad gave him a problem, Vengerov could just knock him off. And he wouldn’t even get punished for it.”

  “That’s the reality of a world ruled by money.” Blackburn pointed two fingers, and Tom remembered to shut his eyes again. “The divine right of kings can’t be used anymore to justify why some people are more equal than others, so now the law does it. The legal system is entirely controlled by money, yet it’s still hailed as a neutral instrument of justice. If you cross the law, you’re the sinner, and you deserve punishment—even if you’re not necessarily violating a universal human standard of right and wrong, you’re acting against the interests of the rich guy who paid a lot of money to make sure what you’re doing is illegal. Soft or sharp?”

  A scattering of prickles played across Tom’s finger. “Soft.” And then code flickered before Tom’s eyes. He opened his eyes to see what he’d touched. A cotton ball.

  “That’s why you have to tread lightly with men like Joseph Vengerov,” Blackburn added. “If you face an enemy vastly more powerful than you, your first task is to downplay yourself as a threat. You don’t show your face and protest him, you don’t talk about him to a friend, or even anonymously on the internet, because there is no anonymity in a surveillance state—just databases and watch lists. A smart person does nothing to reveal what he truly believes, because if he does, he’ll get neutralized before he can act on those beliefs. The deadliest enemy, Raines, is the totally silent one who acts alone and plans alone and wears a great big smile before his enemies. He’s just another face in the crowd until he’s slipped cyanide in a cup or plunged a dagger into a back. By the time anyone knows he’s a threat, it’s too late to stop him.”

  Tom thought of his father suddenly. Neil blustered his opinions to everyone, whether or not they wanted to listen . . . and that never accomplished a thing for him. It was strange how Neil wasn’t really a threat to anyone, but merely because of the way he talked, he was treated like one.

  Blackburn folded his arms. “I may not know what you did to provoke Joseph Vengerov, Raines, but I know one thing: you showed your hand so he struck first.”

  “But I didn’t,” Tom protested. “I didn’t cross Vengerov openly. The thing is, he wanted me to make contact with Medusa again and use a computer virus on her. I never had a chance to say no. As far as he was concerned, I hadn’t made up my mind. I hadn’t told . . .” He fell silent.

  His breath caught. He had told someone.

  He had. Just one person.

  Tom felt sick. He’d felt strange hanging around his friends, because some part of him somehow knew who had passed the information on to Vengerov, who had to have done it.

  Only one person had the faintest clue that Tom had already been meeting Medusa. Only one person could’ve told Joseph Vengerov that Tom was in contact with Medusa but wasn’t deploying a virus on her.

  The same person who’d been scrambled because the military thought he was a Russian spy.

  It was Yuri. Tom’s brain beat with the terrible realization. It was Yuri. . . . It was Yuri. . . .

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  TOM GENUINELY WASN’T sure what to do about Yuri, and he couldn’t seem to get a chance to get Vik’s advice, either. Vik always seemed to be off doing something else. Since Medusa hadn’t visited him since he’d kissed her, and their two simulation groups were due to battle, Tom decided to get to Vik there and tell him the situation. Quite inconveniently, the simulation that day turned them into cavemen.

  All Tom could manage when he spotted Vik was a grunting battle cry. Vik’s prominent forehead furrowed. His grunt in return was unenthusiastic. Tom charged at Vik with a rock in hand. Vik waved his club angrily. Tom hurled the rock and got Vik in the ribs.

  Vik flopped to the ground, his club rolling out of his hand, but when Tom finally jumped on him and began slamming him over and over again, Vik only halfheartedly tried to wrench his grip away, like he wasn’t into the fight.

  It made Tom sad. He couldn’t talk to Vik about Yuri, and now Vik wouldn’t even fight. He hit Vik across the chest. “Why no fight? Fight Tom!”

  Vik grunted unhappily. “No.”

  Tom hit him again. “Fight now!”

  Vik’s lip puffed out. “No!”

  Tom grew very confused and released him. He scratched his head. Even if his brain had been fully functioning, he was sure he wouldn’t be able to understand Vik’s reluctance to brawl. They liked brawling. They did it in VR games all the time.

  “Poor Vik,” Vik grumbled. “Vik sad.”

  He squatted on a boulder and picked an insect out of his tangled mass of hair, then contemplated it solemnly. For a fleeting moment, despite the prominent forehead and primitive facial features, he almost resembled the black-and-white, mock-philosophical Vik picture in Wyatt’s bunk template, since he was obviously contemplating weighty matters in a very un-Vik-like manner. Quickly, the illusion was dispelled when Vik put the bug in his mouth and chewed.

  “Why sad?” Tom demanded. He thumped his fists against his chest. “Vik fight. Happy Vik.”

  Vik groaned and buried his head in his arms. “Vik see Tom go. Vik no say. Tom get cold. Bad Vik.”
br />   Confused, Tom settled back on his haunches. “Vik not bad.” He fumbled for something better to say than that and came up with the perfect words to rouse his friend’s spirits and restore his faith in himself: “Vik . . . good. Vik good!” He hit Vik’s shoulder. Hard. “Good! Vik friend. Fight hard. Strong Vik. Fight Tom?”

  Vik shook his head, his lip puffed out again. “No.”

  Tom knew there was some way to fix this, but it was hard to hold on to any thoughts for very long with his brain this way. Tom ambled away and found a bush of berries. He scarfed down a bunch, then saved others. He took the rest to a new Middle, Iman Attar. She gave him a big, toothy smile of greeting when he offered her the berries. She gobbled them greedily, but when Tom tried to grab her, she grunted angrily and pointed at Britt Schmeiser, who was hurling large rocks very long distances.

  Tom knew a challenge when he saw one. He shuffled forward to grab big rocks of his own, and began hurling them, too. Iman clapped her hands and cried, “Strong Tom! Good Tom.”

  Tom liked that. Britt noticed all the attention he was getting and got mad. His lips rolled back to expose his teeth at Tom. Tom showed his own teeth and roared at him. Britt ran over and hit him about the head with his big arms, but a swipe of Tom’s arm knocked him over. Then he took a rock and hit Britt’s head over and over with it. He roared with victory and turned to enjoy Iman’s admiration, but she was shrieking and kicking and being dragged away by the hair by Yosef Saide. Tom rushed over and killed Yosef, too. By then, Iman was grumpy and tired and wanted nothing to do with any boys in the simulation.

  “Bad Tom!” Iman hit him on the head with a stick. “Ugly!”

  Tom grew sad. Iman hit him one last time and ran away. Tom’s feelings were hurt, and so was his head. He’d nearly forgotten his abbreviated conversation with Vik when the sim finally ended, and Tom woke up in the training room.

  Britt and Yosef were already in grim conversation, haunted looks on their faces.

  “. . . a catastrophe,” Yosef was saying. “What were you thinking? Why would you choose that program?”

  “The title was the First World War. I thought it would be World War One, not literally the first world war.”

  Tom and Iman exchanged a flustered look, then Tom hurried out of the training room, and ran into Vik right in the hallway. He stopped. Vik stopped.

  Vik grinned, a certain lightness to him that seemed forced. They started walking again. “That sim, huh?”

  “Come on. You wouldn’t even fight me, Vik. What’s going on with you?”

  Vik let out an exasperated breath. “Fine. You really want to know, Tom? Here it is. I have a huge problem with what went down in Antarctica.”

  Tom’s steps stuttered to a halt. “Wait. What? Why?”

  Vik straightened his collar. “Do you realize I knew you were missing? I noticed way before anyone else did. Way before Blackburn. I didn’t say anything.” He raked his hand through his hair. “I thought you were gone because you’d sneaked off to do something, to mess around or something—like you always do. Like we always do. I thought I was covering for you.”

  “Nine times out of ten, that would’ve been the right call, man.”

  “I know,” Vik said. “Nine times out of ten, that would’ve been the right call because you would’ve been doing something dumb and I would’ve been helping you. This time, it almost killed you. What about next time it goes wrong?” And then the words all flooded out of him, and he sounded almost angry. “Like with Yuri! You and Wyatt made the decision to unscramble him, but I didn’t get a choice. I would never have done that, but you guys did, and I’m guilty, too, because I’m covering for you.”

  Tom stirred, uneasy. Yuri’s unscrambling was hitting a bit too close to home right now.

  “I remember Wyatt wanted to erase my memory when I found out,” Vik whispered, since other trainees were rounding the corridor near them. “You should have let her.”

  “You wanted her to erase your memory of that?”

  “It would’ve been better not knowing, yeah.”

  Tom shook it off. “Fine. Let’s do it. Let’s get Wyatt to erase it right now.”

  Vik let out a breath. “It doesn’t work that way. You can only remove a memory if you know the exact time segment. If she’d done it then, it would’ve been gone and I never would’ve been the wiser. Since she didn’t, I’ve had months to think about it over and over, and I’ve thought about stuff related to it. We’d have to spend a few days with the census device to hunt down everything that would need to be cleared out, and I bet I’d notice the blanks. It’s too late. My whole point is, I think we need to take things more seriously. You need to take things more seriously.”

  Tom made sure the other trainees had disappeared into the elevator, then he suggested, “We can rescramble Yuri.”

  That stopped Vik short. “What?”

  “We can do it,” Tom said. “I bet he’d even let us. We’ll talk to him. He’ll talk to Wyatt.”

  Vik blinked. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  “Just like that.”

  “Just like that.” Tom hit the button for the elevator, avoiding Vik’s gaze. “I know this might seem a bit insane, or wrong, or whatever, but I’ll throw something out there. And don’t get paranoid or nervous or read too much into this, but, well, I’ll say it. What if I’m no longer completely sure he’s not a spy? Not for the Russians, of course, but, uh, maybe for a Russian. A. Singular.”

  He glanced at Vik and knew from the way Vik was gaping at him that he was, indeed, going to be paranoid and nervous and read too much into it.

  Tom’s head throbbed. Great.

  “WHAT’S GOING ON?” Wyatt demanded when she met them in the Census Chamber.

  “Tom has a secret life,” Vik said, from where he was sprawled with his back against the chair beneath the census device.

  Tom chose not to comment. Vik really had no idea.

  “I thought he didn’t know about all that memory stuff,” Wyatt said to Tom. “You told me not to say anything.”

  Tom flushed, realizing she’d misunderstood. Wyatt was thinking about the census device footage.

  Vik was perturbed. “What, more stuff I don’t know about?”

  “No, no, no,” Tom said. “Vik, she means something entirely unrelated. Something not important.” He turned to her. “And you, he means something I’m going to tell you right now. About Yuri.”

  “What about Yuri?” Wyatt said.

  “What’s the memory stuff?” Vik persisted. “Tell me, and I can tell you if it’s unrelated. I don’t like being let in on stuff after it’s already blown up into a huge problem.”

  “What’s blowing up into a huge problem?” Wyatt cried, anxious.

  Tom groaned and clutched his temples, where a headache was spiking through his skull. “Look,” he ground out, his eyes closed. “Vik, Wyatt is talking about some memories of mine she saw thanks to Blackburn that don’t really matter at all. Wyatt, Vik is talking about the reason I asked you here, and this is about some memories that do matter. I took them out so you could see them and decide for yourself instead of taking my word. I’ve shown them to Vik, so we’re going to show them to you.”

  And with that, Tom nodded, and Vik jabbed at the controls of the census device and replayed the memories they’d extracted. The first clip featured Tom by the road, trying to hitch a ride in New Mexico.

  “Tom,” she said sadly, “you shouldn’t hitchhike.”

  “That’s not the point of showing you this,” Tom told her.

  “You could get killed. Or robbed. Or raped. Or all three. What if a serial killer picked you up? You’d wouldn’t like it if someone ate you, Tom.”

  Then Joseph Vengerov appeared on the screen, and she fell silent.

  “You really were a bit rude to him,” she told him.

  “Again, missing the point.”

  She lapsed into silence, seeing Vengerov’s demand about Medusa. She turned to Tom in t
he projected light of the census device, eyes wide. “You’re not in contact with Medusa again, are you?”

  “He is,” Vik said mock cheerfully. “Another aspect of Tom’s secret life.”

  “It’s complicated,” Tom said.

  “Oh no,” Wyatt whispered. “That’s a bad idea. It’s a bad, bad idea. And—” she cast her gaze up toward Vengerov on the screen “—you can’t do that to her. Don’t use a virus. She likes you. That would be so mean!”

  “Medusa is on the other side of the war,” Vik remarked. They looked at him. “What? Someone should point this out.”

  “But . . .” Wyatt’s voice faltered as the next memory began, and she saw the Praetorians in Antarctica closing in, then the door snapping open to deposit Tom outside. That’s all he’d given them. She mumbled, “That’s how it happened? He deliberately drove you outside?”

  “Yeah,” Tom said. He glanced at Vik, saw that he was sitting there rigidly in his seat.

  “You must’ve been so scared,” Wyatt said.

  “No,” Tom protested indignantly. “I wasn’t scared.”

  Vik said, “The point is that Vengerov already knew, Enslow. He knew Tom wasn’t going to agree to do it. Someone told him.”

  “Or he could have guessed,” Wyatt said uncertainly. “It’s a yes/no question. Fifty-fifty probability.”

  Tom shook his head grimly. “No, he knew.” And then he nodded for Vik to play the next memory.

  It was Tom telling Yuri about Medusa in the weight room. The screen snapped off, and they stood there in utter silence for a long moment.

  “And that’s it right there,” Tom said. “He’s the only person who knew. He’s the only one who could’ve told Vengerov about my refusal. He is the only possible person, Wyatt.”

  “But, no. No, Tom. That can’t be right. There are other possibilities. Someone could’ve overheard.”

  “We were alone,” Tom said.

  “Someone could have bugged the weight room.”