Vortex

  Wyatt’s eyes shot wide open.

  Against his volition, Tom’s mind turned back to Yuri on the stairwell that day after everyone climbed the Spire. Yuri had outright told him the thought of leaving was like some terrible weight pressing in on his temples. Now Tom felt so angry at himself, because he hadn’t thought anything of it.

  He knew that sensation, the sense like a vise was squeezing his skull. Dalton’s program used that exact sensation when it was controlling him. Tom knew it, he knew it, but he hadn’t even made the connection.

  “So you see now why I installed that filtering program. It jumbled all Sysevich’s sensory data. He couldn’t transmit anything useful to the other end. By stripping my program away, you gave Obsidian Corp. full access not only to Sysevich but to our entire system and every neural processor within it. We’re lucky this wasn’t worse.”

  Tom had this vague sense he needed to do something, but he couldn’t seem to make himself move.

  “Now I think it’s been long enough,” Blackburn muttered, turning on Yuri. The daemon program snapped to alertness, jerking Yuri’s head up straight, his body shifting into a defensive stance. “I don’t care how sophisticated a computer interface might be, I want to deal with a human being. I’ve given ample time for a remote administrator to assume control over Sysevich’s actions. I assume I’m addressing a person now?”

  Tom’s gaze swung over to Yuri, and he made out Yuri’s tiny nod.

  “Good.” Blackburn folded his arms. “I suppose you’ve anticipated my next action?”

  “You intend to neutralize this asset,” Yuri said tonelessly.

  “No, no.” Blackburn shook his head. “That didn’t quite pan out the last time. Neutralizing him gave someone a chance to reactivate him. I’m taking a different approach. You all have dumped Sysevich in my lap and you’ve fought every effort I’ve made to toss him out of it, so from this day forward, I’m going to use him against Obsidian Corp. I’m thinking of showing his processor off to some of your disgruntled ex-employees, rounding up some expert witnesses. They’ll take one look at the data on his processor and they’ll be able to honestly testify before the Defense Committee that Obsidian Corp. was manipulating Sysevich’s processor right around the time the breaches occurred. Sysevich is going to be my proof Obsidian Corp. backstabbed us.”

  Tom saw Yuri straighten, growing rigid. “That won’t be allowed.”

  Blackburn’s eyes gleamed. “It’s not your choice. There’s enough hard data in his processor to incontrovertibly prove Obsidian Corp.’s involvement.” He let that sit there a long moment, then added, “Unless someone, somehow, removed his processor from the Pentagonal Spire. Unless Sysevich no longer was in my lap, because someone finally decided his time was up and nothing was going to be gained by forcing his presence here.”

  Tom’s mind processed the implications of what Blackburn was saying. He felt a pang of remorse, realizing it: Blackburn was forcing Vengerov to withdraw Yuri from the Spire. Vengerov would probably agree. Tom’s head pulsed, his insides stinging with the unfairness of it. Yuri didn’t deserve any of this.

  For his part, Yuri—or the person controlling him—remained perfectly still and silent, listening to Blackburn set the terms.

  Blackburn seemed to grow impatient with the silence. “Well?” He spread his hands. “The choice is yours. Leave Sysevich here and give me a weapon, or take him out of here and get his processor away from me.”

  Yuri’s empty-eyed gaze slid over them and settled on Blackburn’s. A slow smile curled his lips, and something about it made Tom’s skin crawl.

  “Very well. The issue is conceded. His processor will no longer threaten the integrity of the Pentagonal Spire. This asset will be removed from your custody, Lieutenant Blackburn.”

  And suddenly, Yuri seemed to catch his balance, almost like he’d been nodding off while sitting in class or something. He straightened up, his face cloudy, perplexed, but it was him. It was actually him.

  “How . . . how did I get over here?” Yuri blinked in some confusion. He looked from Wyatt’s downcast eyes to Vik’s stormy face to Tom, then settled on Blackburn’s coldly satisfied expression. “Sir!” He straightened to attention.

  Blackburn let out a slow breath. “I have bad news for you, Sysevich. . . .”

  Tom didn’t want to see Yuri’s face as Blackburn delivered the bad news, so his gaze dropped down to Yuri’s hand, where his fingers were crawling over the computer keyboard controlling the census device. Confusion washed over him, because Yuri was still looking at Blackburn and seemed unaware of what he was doing.

  Then Tom realized Yuri wasn’t the one doing it.

  Someone else was.

  With a hum that still made Tom’s blood turn to ice, the census device powered up. Blackburn’s voice died as all five legs of the metal claw activated, and the bright beams lashed out at Yuri’s head.

  Yuri’s neck jerked back, exposing the long, strained tendons alongside his throat. The first terrible scream ripped out of him as the blue beams enveloped his temples, his arms flying out wide, his entire body convulsing like he was in contact with some live wire.

  Tom started forward, but Vik’s hand closed around his arm, jerking him away. He saw Wyatt hauled back by Blackburn as Yuri convulsed to the ground.

  “Don’t,” Blackburn shouted. “That’s an electrical discharge!”

  The current overloaded the census device, and the unit sparked and fizzled. The beams died away, leaving Yuri limp on the ground, an awful silence descending over the chamber.

  Joseph Vengerov had, indeed, surrendered to Blackburn’s terms. He’d removed Yuri’s processor from Blackburn’s reach, the processor Yuri depended on to live.

  He’d obliterated it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  TOM WAS NEVER sure what to do when he visited Yuri in the infirmary during the months that followed. Mostly, he stood there looking at the slashing green line of Yuri’s EKG, his neural processor automatically assuring him it was a normal sinus rhythm. Today, he found himself listening to Dr. Gonzales and another physician discuss the case on the other side of the room, speculating about how Yuri had made it so long without the processor, even in his medically induced coma.

  “Maybe he was born under a lucky star,” Gonzales said. Then he seemed to realize what he’d said, and began chuckling merrily.

  Tom turned and walked out. He didn’t fool himself anymore. He felt a flicker of surprise each day when he found Yuri still lying there, a machine breathing for him, an implanted pacemaker keeping blood circulating through his veins. One time, he swore, he saw Yuri’s eyelids fluttering a bit like he was dreaming, but when he moved closer, he realized it had been the light playing tricks.

  He grabbed a sandwich in the mess hall. He spotted Wyatt near the door and considered it. Why not? It had been a day or two since she’d had a chance to ignore him.

  He tossed his tray on the table and slouched into the seat across from hers. “What’s up?”

  Wyatt’s dark eyes flickered to his briefly, then she turned her full attention back to the liquid-filled, metallic cylinder containing a neural processor in need of reformatting. Since the spares were all from the old group of soldiers who’d died from them, anything left on the computers had to be erased—one directory at a time. Only then could they go into someone else’s head. Everywhere Wyatt went nowadays, she tended to carry one. She reformatted instead of eating and, Tom suspected, instead of sleeping or doing much else.

  As he ate, Wyatt adjusted the magnifying glass she’d attached to the lid of the metallic storage cylinder. She was always so meticulous about using tweezers to pluck up one stringy thread of the spiderweb-shaped computer at a time.

  It was like Wyatt believed repairing enough spare processors would pave the way for Yuri to get another one. Tom knew it wouldn’t happen, but when he’d pointed that out to her, she’d gotten up and walked away from him. He didn’t mention it again.

  “Ms. Ossare told
me to remind you to see her today,” Tom said, his mouth full.

  Wyatt nodded a bit, acknowledging that she’d heard him.

  Tom didn’t really get why Olivia was still bothering. If Wyatt hadn’t talked to her yet, she wasn’t going to anytime soon. The last time Wyatt talked to anyone was the morning after Yuri’s electrocution. Tom, Vik, and Wyatt were gathered around Yuri’s bed, still in shock from what had happened, together but already so far apart.

  Wyatt had looked at them dry-eyed, and said, “This was all my fault.” And that was it. In the time since, she’d descended into a full-blown obsession with reformatting the old processors, even though it had been made explicitly clear to them that Yuri wasn’t getting another one, even to save his life.

  There was no point, after all. Vengerov’s transmitter survived the destruction of Yuri’s neural processor. The military saw no reason to waste resources on someone who’d be of no use to them. If he received a new neural processor and recovered, Yuri would remain a walking security breach. Neural processors were too valuable to give away just to save a life.

  Tom heard voices swelling across the mess hall, and saw Lyla punching Vik’s arm. Her face was flushed bright red, but Vik was shaking with laughter about something. He and Vik hadn’t talked for a while. Blackburn officially classified Yuri’s incident as a built-in hardware error, but the near miss with treason scared Vik. He obviously didn’t want to risk any more trouble by staying around Tom. It started with Vik not sitting with Tom in the mess hall or in Programming.

  Living down the hall became more like living on another continent. Tom saw Vik hanging around with Giuseppe sometimes, like they were actually becoming friends. Most of the time, Vik was with Lyla, though. They’d gotten back together, for longer than twelve minutes this time. Tom usually saw them arguing, or sometimes being way over-the-top affectionate. She seemed angry a lot, which Vik always appeared to find hilarious.

  Tom wasn’t upset. He was sure he wasn’t hurt. There was this strange sense of crystallization inside him, like something had grown very hard and still in his chest. Things were the way they were. Maybe even a close group like theirs couldn’t survive watching a friend get murdered.

  Tom deleted his bunk template and the Gormless Cretin statue. He got rid of all of it.

  OF COURSE, AT first, Tom was angry. When he learned Yuri wasn’t getting another processor—that his life wouldn’t be saved—determination flooded him. He would do what he could do—enter machines, go right through Obsidian Corp.’s firewall into Vengerov’s systems, and he’d blow out that transmitter on the other side. Failing that, he’d blow up Obsidian Corp. itself if he had to. That was his plan. Then Yuri wouldn’t be a security breach anymore, and he could get a processor.

  But he tried. And failed. Obsidian Corp. had something he’d believed impossible: a firewall he couldn’t penetrate.

  When Medusa showed up in his plane during the Battle of Midway simulation, Tom turned back toward her. “Medusa!” He’d almost forgotten to think of her lately, with everything that had happened. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  “I know I’ve been staying away,” she said. “I wanted to tell you—”

  “Medusa, I need to ask you something.” He steered through the chaos, only a sliver of his attention on the conflict. “It’s important.”

  “I need to ask you things, too. About, well, when you kissed me—”

  “Not now,” Tom said. “I can’t right now. This is a bad time. Look, have you ever been bounced out of a system while interfacing with it? I need to know.”

  There was a thick silence. Her voice grew icy. “What do you mean?”

  Tom missed it. “If you try to interface the way we do, and you enter a system, but then get bounced out again, what does that mean—”

  Her fingers dug into his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

  “I have to get into Obsidian Corp.’s system. It’s important,” Tom insisted.

  “Obsidian Corp.? Obsidian Corp., Tom?” Her fingers dug harder. “Are you trying to get caught? You’re going to give us both away.”

  “I have to do this!” Tom turned on her, and the plane began to descend wildly, g-forces pressing in on them. “Medusa, I have to get something out of their systems. Can you tell me how to do it or not?”

  “Not,” she snapped back.

  “Fine, I’ll keep trying. I can’t do it without your help.”

  She was silent a long moment as the plane shook around them. Then, so softly he almost didn’t hear her, “I shouldn’t have come back.”

  “Wait—” Tom said, but not in time.

  This time when she disappeared, Tom realized he’d ruined it. His plane continued downward in a fatal death plunge, and the world erupted in flames.

  BUT TOM TRIED one more thing. He went to Blackburn. He stepped into his office and dropped into the seat across from his, ignoring the bewilderment on Blackburn’s face. “Sir, I can’t get through Obsidian Corp.’s firewall. Can you help me?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “You know what I’m doing,” Tom said fiercely. “I’m going to neutralize the security threat. I’m going to destroy the transmitter in Obsidian Corp.”

  Blackburn rubbed his palm over his mouth. “I can’t allow this.”

  “I’m not sitting by and letting Yuri die!”

  “Did you do something to alert Joseph Vengerov to what you can do, Raines?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Then how was he able to block you out?” Blackburn said dangerously. “I can’t even figure out how to block you yet—and I know about Yuri. Does Joseph Vengerov know about you?”

  “No! I don’t know how he’s done it, I just know I can’t get through his firewall, even when I interface.” Tom planted his hands on the desk. “Sir, if you help me get through somehow, I can fix all this. You saw what I did to the census device that one time, I fried it.”

  “I remember you doing that by accident, not deliberately.”

  “But I can do it! I can. So I can do that to the transmitter, too. I can free Yuri from it and you can talk someone into giving him another neural processor. I need to be able to get into Obsidian Corp.’s systems. You can get me in for a few minutes!”

  “I can’t get myself in for a few minutes, Raines!” Blackburn roared back at him. “Why do you think I physically accompanied the trainees to Antarctica? I would have gladly plundered some blackmail material from the comfort of my own apartment, but I couldn’t. Do you know why? Because you can’t hack Obsidian Corp. with their own hardware, their own software. That facility’s a virtual Fort Knox. You can’t loot it from the outside. You can plunder only from inside if you have privileged access to their intranet—why do you think I went there in person?”

  Tom blinked. It only occurred to him now that Blackburn had been taking a huge risk. Vengerov could’ve done anything to his processor while he was on Vengerov’s turf.

  “If you can’t interface your way in,” Blackburn told him, “then I’m glad. It’s better for all of us. You destroy that transmitter, and then not only will Joseph Vengerov discover a ghost in his system, he’ll also know that ghost is someone who wanted that transmitter destroyed. He’ll narrow down the suspects for that ghost to a list of three—you, Enslow, and Ashwan. Haven’t you hurt your friends enough already?”

  Tom clenched his jaw. “I’ll destroy the whole supercomputer it’s attached to. Then he won’t know I was going after the transmitter.”

  “The answer’s no. I wouldn’t help you do something this stupid and risky even if I could.”

  “I’d be the one at risk, not you!”

  Blackburn gave an unpleasant laugh. “You still aren’t capable of making that connection between actions and long-term, unintended consequences, are you, Raines? If Joseph Vengerov ever gets you, it’s not your risk anymore, it becomes mine, because he will wipe you from your own brain, maybe pull you open to see how you work, and he’ll figure out how to turn yo
ur ability into a weapon. He’ll use everything you can do against the Spire. I hold on to this installation by clinging with my fingertips to a tiny bit of ledge as it is. You’re not chipping it away, not if I can stop you.”

  “But Yuri will die! You can’t let that happen. You wouldn’t do that.”

  Blackburn sat back. “When I told Joseph Vengerov I was going to use Sysevich’s processor against him, what did you think would happen?”

  Tom couldn’t speak; he couldn’t.

  “I can tell you what I thought would happen. One possibility was that Joseph Vengerov would simply let his asset go. Surrender him for good. I didn’t consider that one likely.”

  Tom gaped at him. “You knew he might . . .”

  “Choose to eradicate a potential threat once he knew I was going to use it against him? Yeah, I knew. It was the likeliest scenario. I still threatened him.”

  Tom couldn’t speak.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Blackburn said darkly. “You did this, not me. Sysevich was dead the minute you took it upon yourselves to remove my software, and if I didn’t know you’d be more of a danger to me out there in the world than you are in here, I would make consequences rain down on all your heads for killing your friend.”

  Tom flinched.

  Through the haze over his vision, he grew aware of Blackburn rubbing his palm over his mouth. “Go to bed, Tom. It’s late.”

  But Tom wasn’t done. “So what about Wyatt?”

  An edge crept into his voice. “Get out of my sight, Raines.”