Vortex

  Elliot half turned.

  Tom shrugged. “For what it’s worth, people like you way more than they like me. There are tons of people who’d love to beat me up. I mean, tons. And, yeah, people who don’t know you want to beat you up because you’re a celebrity and all the little twelve-year-old girls love you, but, uh, not people who have actually met you. They like you. You’re not weak. I guess you’re smarter than me.”

  Elliot gazed back at him, his mouth quirking. “Of course you have more enemies than me, Tom. People who need to control others are threatened by strength and you’re indomitable. And that’s why they don’t mind me: I’m not.” He considered that. “I wonder sometimes if that’s not such a good thing, after all.”

  Tom didn’t have an answer for that. As Elliot’s footsteps crunched away, Tom settled back by Wyatt’s knee in the middle of the unnatural serenity of the arboretum. He looked down to see her nudging tentatively at the apple he’d impaled with his knife.

  After a little while of that, she grew still, and she spoke her first words to him in months. “You should never be a surgeon, Tom.” She pronounced this with great solemnity.

  Tom froze, so surprised he didn’t know what to say for a while. Then he sorted out his thoughts and opted for the best route to handle this—as casually as possible.

  “Yeah,” he agreed, picking up the knife by the handle and holding the apple up. It was sort of like a head on a pike, so he smeared some mud on it to form eyes and a mouth. “I find it easier taking heads off than putting them back on.”

  She ducked her head again as she resumed working on the processor, but Tom saw that smile again, and he realized things might eventually turn out okay after all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CAPITOL SUMMIT WAS broadcast from inside the US Capitol, where the dueling combatants would face off in the Rotunda, steering their remotely controlled vessels. The server they used was inside the Capitol, but the Chinese always circumvented the connection between Svetlana and her vessel, and gave control to Medusa. The Americans likewise replaced Elliot with his proxy—this year, Heather. She would spend the fight in the hidden room looking upon the Rotunda, remotely navigating Elliot’s ship.

  Before she left the Spire, Heather gave Tom one half of a pair of thought-interface nodes. Beneath her sweep of dark hair, she’d be wearing the other. They were short-range devices, so Tom had to go to the Capitol to get close enough to interface with Heather, and through her, with her ship—and Medusa’s.

  The drones were based in Texas, and they were going to engage each other in a free-for-all, live-fire exercise across the rocky landscape. Jagged mountains served as obstacles and as cover, and all the Combatants had to do was remain within a designated zone of combat so the public could appreciate, to full effect, all the skyboards that had been strategically placed for the event so as the cameras filmed the fighting ships, they’d also film the ads in the sky above them.

  The key to evading DHS biometric databases was asymmetry, so Tom had stuck a smiley-face sticker on his face to make sure no one was able to identify him in the crowd at the event . . . just in case. He squeezed through the mass of people gathered outside the Capitol until he was in sight of the large viewing screens mounted before the gathered masses. The glowing image showed the Texas landscape and panned upward, showing the logos of the various Coalition Companies who’d bought skyboard space over the site of the conflict. All the Indo-American and Russo-Chinese affiliated corporations had a visual presence there. Then the images on the screen shifted to inside the Rotunda, where the most powerful men and women in the world were gathered for their own viewing.

  Elliot sat behind one set of controllers, opposite Svetlana Moriakova, of the Russo-Chinese side. They were both getting ready to pretend to steer the drones in combat.

  As soon as he was in the crowd, Tom popped his thought-interface node into the port in the back of his neck, and sent to Heather, I’m here.

  Her thoughts registered in his brain. Excellent. We’re due to start soon. Ready to win this?

  Tom gave a twisted smile. You never asked for a win. You asked for a malfunction.

  But what good is it to me if I lose?

  Not my problem, he thought back.

  Oh, yes, it is. If I lose, it very much becomes your problem.

  He felt a surge of irritation. He couldn’t guarantee a win. Not against Medusa. Not against the single person who could battle him on a level playing field. You can’t keep demanding more and more at the last minute.

  I can because, in case you haven’t noticed, I have the upper hand here. I have you by the throat, and if you’re wise, you won’t forget it.

  His teeth began grinding together. For a moment, he fought the urge to rip off the interface node, consequences be damned. He found himself looking at the screen again, panning over all those skyboards glowing with logos he heartily despised, gazing at the sinister eye logo of Obsidian Corp.

  Rage rocked through him at the very thought of Vengerov. Tom tore his gaze from the screen and found himself looking at more of Vengerov’s work: the surveillance cameras, all directed at the crowd. His gaze drifted upward toward the drones hovering over them in the sky, scanning in images of the people in the crowd for future databases. He saw the massive wall of bulletproof, missileproof glass surrounding the steps up to the Capitol, all to protect those legislators put in office by voting machines and the caprice of the men behind those logos. Vengerov protected all those companies, maintained the security and the surveillance state that let them loom so large over the crowd.

  When Heather signaled and hooked a neural wire between her interface node and the Capitol’s server, Tom’s consciousness filled with the buzzing of his neural processor and he jolted out of himself into the liberating formlessness of swapping signals, strings of zeros and ones, glowing electronic systems. . . .

  Then with a rush, Tom soared into the ship Heather was steering. Her electronic sensors were focused on Medusa’s ship.

  Go on, Heather thought at him. Go into her ship and damage it.

  Tom found himself gazing at Medusa’s ship, soaring beneath the glowing neon array of skyboards, and a great certainty swelled in his chest that this time he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t hurt her again.

  Tom, Heather urged him, why are you are sitting in my systems? Go after her.

  Tom flashed for a moment to his distant body, ringed by the crowd. For a fleeting moment, he was behind Heather’s eyes, interfacing with her processor, seeing her legs crossed carelessly in front of her in the empty room near the Rotunda, the massive screen on the wall in front of her showing the expectant, proud faces of the most powerful men and women in the world, encircling their pretty little performers, Elliot and Svetlana. Tom saw Reuben Lloyd and Sigurdur Vitol, Joseph Vengerov and Pandita Rumpfa, Prince Abhalleman and the Roache brothers from Dominion Agra. . . .

  His heart began to scorch his chest, seeing the masters of the world all in one place, and the full apparatus of the police state ready to protect them. They’d taken everything. Everything, and people simply had let them. People had meekly surrendered the world to them in hopes those CEOs would finally have enough, finally have reason to leave them be. But Tom knew better. Even if a Reuben Lloyd or a Joseph Vengerov possessed the entire rest of the Earth, and the solar system besides, they’d still begrudge Tom the ground directly under his feet, simply because it was his and not theirs. That’s the sort of people they were. There was never enough for them.

  And Heather was the same way. A malfunction wasn’t enough, she needed a win. Fame wasn’t enough, she needed to be the most famous. That’s why she’d smeared the other CamCos to the media; she hadn’t wanted success, she wanted the other CamCos to fail. If he won Capitol Summit for her, she’d return with another demand down the line, and another. That’s the sort of person she was. And surrendering was never going to appease her. There would always be something more she wanted to force out of him.

  T
om made his decision then.

  Heather, he sent to her.

  What, Tom?

  Here it comes.

  Then he seized control of Heather’s weapons, aimed them at the nearest Dominion Agra skyboard, and blasted it to pieces. There was no reaction from Heather for a long moment. Tom maneuvered the ship in a graceful arc to its next target. Obsidian Corp.’s board. Yes. He launched missiles and took that one down in a liberating hail of flames. Burning fragments of skyboard rained down about the ship as Heather screamed at him in his head. He flashed to her neural processor and grew aware of the way she was reaching up to tear out the thought-interface node.

  He acted quickly, activating the heat receptors in her processor, reveling in her shock when merely touching the interface node seared her fingers.

  Nope. I’m not done yet, Tom thought to her. Touch that and you’ll have as many fingers as me.

  If she’d had a moment to reason it out, she might’ve realized it was an illusion, not a real burn, but Heather was upset and furious and confused, seeing all her plans spiral hopelessly out of her control. Tom, are you crazy? Are you INSANE? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

  Tom aimed his weapons at a massive image of Sigurdur Vitol’s face, then blasted one Wyndham Harks board after another. He carried on like that, dodging through the rain of debris, curving around one board, soaring straight through the narrow gap between two of them, the landscape below him growing and receding, skyboards raining debris from all directions.

  And then words appeared in his brain. And they weren’t from Heather.

  I like this game. But are you only going to target your own multinationals?

  Medusa!

  Fair enough, Tom messaged back, whipping Heather’s vessel in a joyful loop before blasting some Russo-Chinese boards. He popped out of the ship only a moment to dissuade Heather, yet again, from pulling the interface node out of her neck. He saw briefly through Heather’s vision center, the view of the most powerful men and women in the world gathered in the Rotunda, goggling up at the destruction.

  Elliot and Svetlana stood frozen in the center of the room, no longer pretending to steer the ships. No one was looking at them right now anyway. Then Tom soared back into the vessel and messaged Medusa as he blew up a Harbinger, then a Nobridis board. Be honest. Are you impressed?

  I’m awestruck, Mordred.

  She knew it was him. The realization made his head spin. He took out two more skyboards with one shot.

  Awestruck, huh? Then you know how I always feel around you, he thought back.

  Cheesy?

  Tom’s distant lips smiled. Extremely.

  His distant ears picked up on the confused voices all murmuring around him as people in the crowd outside the Capitol tried to figure out what the Indo-American Combatant was doing this year.

  For what it’s worth, he messaged back to her, I could kick myself for the way I acted the last time you dropped by.

  Medusa began playing a game of sorts with him. She’d dodge behind one skyboard, and the next. Tom enjoyed this one, too. He took potshots not meant to hit her, and saw them ricochet off the orbiting advertisements. Through Heather’s ears, he heard someone in the Rotunda say, “That girl is a terrible shot,” which about killed Tom as he blew up a Stronghold Energy board Medusa had dodged behind and then one belonging to Matchett-Reddy.

  And soon the atmosphere above the Texas battle site was a glittering ring of debris, burning away in the atmosphere as it plunged downward. Tom and Medusa’s ships circled each other through the endless blue sky.

  Want this one . . . Chun Li? Tom thought at her.

  He almost felt her laughter. Beat me in an honest fight, and I’ll tell you my real name.

  Tom felt a surge of excitement, both at the offer and at the reconciliation it implied. He soared toward her ship, needing to win. But this wasn’t the satellite competition; it wasn’t a game. This was combat, and Medusa wasn’t just a fully trained Combatant, she was the Intrasolar Combatant, the one who could sway an entire war single-handedly. She banked downward to dodge the heat-seeking missiles, swept around in a graceful arc, and flew straight toward him, leading his own missiles back his way.

  Diabolical, Tom messaged her.

  I thought so, Medusa sent back.

  He swerved, but in avoiding his own errant missile, he gave her a chance to launch her own, which narrowly missed blasting in his side.

  Tom couldn’t handle her in the open air. He needed obstacles. Those mountains. He aimed toward the stretch of Texas, and found himself temporarily disoriented without the skyboards there to illustrate the zone of combat. Heather may have been given the coordinates for the fight and the lay of the landscape, but he hadn’t.

  So be honest, Medusa messaged him. Would you prefer your end to be swift and terrible or slow and terrible?

  Do your worst, Tom messaged back.

  He led Medusa in a spirited pursuit through jagged columns of mountains, twisting through the sky, her vessel always flashing up in the sunlight behind his, utterly relentless. Tom kept awaiting some nasty surprise, but she maintained that steady pursuit. He fired back at her, and she swerved gracefully to avoid each missile. She returned fire at him, and he swerved rather more clumsily, but he was scraping by pretty well, he thought. A few times, he flew low to the ground, blasting up masses of dirt to send billowing clouds in the air, hoping to blot out her view of his ship and rises in the mountains long enough for her to collide with one—but Medusa anticipated this and always soared high into the air to avoid the traps.

  And then it was her turn to surprise him. As he rounded a peak, he discovered that she’d passed straight over the mountain this time, and there were three missiles already fired off, more soaring his way, all homing in on his ship. Tom’s mind flashed over her strategy, and he realized she’d deliberately lulled him, set up an expectation in his mind about where she’d be, so she could shock him when she deviated from that.

  You’re amazing, he sent her, dodging the first three missiles.

  I know, she sent back, as the fourth one destroyed his ship.

  Tom snapped back into himself, and was amazed to hear the roar of approval swelling from the crowd outside the Capitol all around him even though the Russo-Chinese had officially won Capitol Summit. He blinked to clear his vision, the resounding cheers vibrating his eardrums.

  The screen flashed to an image of the Rotunda, where Elliot and Svetlana still looked to be in shock, and the voices mounted to a thunder in Tom’s ears. People began chanting a name, and it grew louder and louder, for the hero of Capitol Summit.

  “Ramirez! Ramirez! Ra-mir-ez!”

  As the image flipped from the Rotunda to the combat site in Texas, then zoomed in one last time on the smoldering remains of Elliot’s ship—and above it, the skyboard debris. The voices in the crowd grew deafening, vibrating Tom’s chest. Tom was utterly confused, because he’d lost the battle. As far as the crowd knew, Elliot had failed to beat Svetlana this year.

  Then he saw the exultant, wild faces on all sides of him and he understood that the battle had lost its meaning as a showcase skirmish between countries. People were exulting in a victory of a different sort.

  They’d seen Elliot Ramirez destroying all the Coalition skyboards.

  TOM THREADED HIS way through the crowd. Usually, there’d be a speech going on about now. The winning side always marched out Elliot Ramirez and Svetlana Moriakova right away to say something about patriotism and fighting the good fight, always with a phalanx of the major executives and world power players about them behind that protective glass.

  This year, there was a delay. Tom wondered how Elliot would be instructed to explain “his” actions. The Coalition would definitely have to take advantage of his popularity to defuse the explosive crowd somehow.

  And then Heather burst out of the crowd. Tom let her catch up to him, rather amused as she descended on him and slapped him. Hard.

  “Nice to see you, too,” Tom said, tasti
ng blood.

  “Do you realize what you’ve done?” she cried.

  “Yeah.” His voice dropped so only she could hear him. “I did nothing, Heather. You blasted all the skyboards, at least as far as the Coalition is concerned. What a gesture. I’d almost call it revolutionary. They are not gonna like that.”

  “You think this is a joke? I’ll destroy you for this!”

  Tom had no illusions. He knew she’d follow through on her threat, but he’d chosen to walk into this with both eyes wide open. “Fine.” He flashed her a savage grin. “Give it a shot. Hey, it’s worked out for you so well this far, messing with me, why not go for the kicker? I’ll tell you, whatever happens from here, I’m always going to look back on the way you were so proud about having me by the throat, and then I’ll remember how I decimated your career. I’ll be honest, Heather. The memory’s gonna make me laugh.”

  And with that, Tom left her tearful and shaking with rage in the middle of the crowd. Then a voice boomed over the distant loudspeaker, announcing that Elliot was ready to speak, and Tom slowed. He whirled around and peered at the massive screen, where Elliot had assumed the podium, his expression grave.

  Tom knew why: the end of Heather’s career meant the end of Elliot’s hopes she’d take his place on that stage.

  “My fellow Americans.” At the sound of Elliot’s voice, loud and echoing from various speakers, the crowd fell silent. “You may have noticed the mishap that occured with the skyboards during the fight.”

  He cast a glance back at the men and women sheltered behind the missileproof glass with him on the steps of the Capitol—CEOs, their pet government officials, their security guards. . . .

  Something flickered across Elliot’s face as he turned back to the crowd. “I’m supposed to come up here and blame a group of hackers for tampering with my ship, but that’s not the truth.”

  Tom gave a startled jerk. He peered at Elliot intently.

  “The truth is, the destruction of those skyboards was completely intentional. In fact—” he drew a deep breath “—it was me. I did it. I destroyed them all.” Elliot let the words sit there, a smile playing across his lips as murmuring filled the air.