Vortex

  “Do they do this in Washington, DC?” Yuri said. “I see no advertisements in the sky there.”

  “They don’t put skyboards above Washington, DC. All our leaders live in its suburbs,” Wyatt pointed out. “They don’t want them.”

  Tom only half paid attention to them. His eyes were on the smaller buildings of Manhattan shrinking below them. He found himself gazing inward, arrested by the memory of coming here when he was younger. He’d hitchhiked and hopped freight trains all the way from Arizona to New York City, so excited to see his mom that he only slept a few hours the whole way.

  Before that visit, he’d really believed she hadn’t meant to leave him. He’d imagined so many things. Then he saw her and they all disappeared. A dark, hollow pit opened in his gut, remembering her expression when she’d seen him at her door. He’d never imagined his mom would look at him like that, like he was nothing.

  Vik’s hand jostled his shoulder. “Earth to Raines.”

  Tom blinked, realizing that the door was open and they were at the eighty-third floor.

  The hallway they entered was an ominous gauntlet of military-grade Praetorians, mechanized security guards manufactured by Obsidian Corp., sold to those with enough money to need them. Tom’s neural processor displayed a map leading him straight ahead. He found himself darting leery glances to either side of them as they passed the machines.

  Praetorians at rest resembled nothing more than metallic coat racks, but Tom had seen movies, played VR games. He knew what these slim machines were capable of: The lighter models could shrink themselves to the size of a coffee mug to reduce an enemy’s ability to target them, and conduct electrical charges to act like long-range Tasers. They could shoot electromagnetic beams that dispersed crowds by giving people the sensation they were burning alive, and splice lasers through hundreds of soldiers with one flick of a button from a distant operator. Add a sturdy, centrifugal base on them, and they’d climb vertical walls and deliver payloads of explosives or poisonous gas.

  Obsidian Corp. designed them to be released like cockroaches on an enemy stronghold, killing everything in their path. Wyndham Harks used them as watchmen.

  And coat racks, apparently.

  The Praetorians not covered by coats followed their progress down the corridor with single, pinpoint camera eyes.

  They waited with the other Middles in a large briefing room. Apparently, the CEOs usually saw the trainees themselves—preferring to personally inspect the assets they might invest in. Tom saw trainees smoothing their suits, adjusting ties. Walton Covner ended up side by side with him, and Tom realized that they’d both selected the first option for every piece of clothing and consequently dressed exactly the same.

  “We can say we’re twin brothers,” Walton suggested, flipping up the cuff of his trousers so they could see if the socks were the same, too. “Twins who dress alike.”

  Tom flipped his trousers back down. The socks were. “But there’s over a year’s age difference, you’re six inches taller than me, we’re different ethnicities, and we’ve got two different last names. I don’t think anyone’s gonna buy that we’re twins, man.”

  “My plan does have flaws,” Walton acknowledged. “We should try it.”

  Tom shook his head. “No, Walton. No.”

  “No?”

  “No!”

  Walton sent him a mildly reproving look, like he was certain Tom was making a dreadful mistake, but too polite to tell him so, then he glided away, leaving Tom bewildered—as usual.

  Then Reuben Lloyd himself strolled in. The CEO of Wyndham Harks was a weedy little man who gave a smile that flashed large teeth; and between those, his beady eyes, and his gigantic ears under his bald dome, Tom was struck by how much the guy resembled a rodent.

  “How good to see you here.” His nasal, weasely voice did nothing to diminish his unfortunate rodent resemblance. “I don’t have time to go around, shaking all your little hands. We sponsor Heather, Snowden, and Yosef, so if you want to brownnose, do it with them. I’ll give you a quick intro to our company, then I have to be on my way.”

  He led them through the corridors of Wyndham Harks, talking rapidly, obviously trying to impress them. He told them the dollar value of every fancy chair, every piece of artwork, and threw around numbers like they said everything. He didn’t really send any of the art more than a passing glance.

  He never mentioned what Wyndham Harks actually did as a company. Tom wasn’t clear on that. The other companies in the Coalition had survived the end of the middle class and the Great Global Collapse that followed because they controlled key resources. That, or they were like Obsidian Corp. and LM Lymer Fleet—companies that protected companies controlling key resources.

  Wyndham Harks wasn’t like the others. It didn’t have a lock on anything of real value as far as Tom knew. It had always been powerful, though, and it owned a lot of other companies, and a lot of US assets. Even before the rise of the Coalition of Multinationals, people apparently said that governments didn’t rule the world, Wyndham Harks did. Yet even knowing that, few could say exactly why Wyndham Harks—a company that served as a middleman to transactions—was so very essential to the world economy that taxpayers had to bail it out every few years whenever it made too many bad investments. The company had never created a product, never invented anything, never done anything of substance, yet the political class touted it as the essential foundation of a functional society.

  “Why do they keep going broke?” Tom asked Wyatt, hoping she’d know.

  Wyatt made a strange noise. She was making an odd face, her lips compressed into a tight pucker, her eyes very wide. She resembled some sort of fish.

  Yuri answered in her stead. “They purchased many rugs.” Then he pointed at the floor, as if Tom hadn’t seen them.

  “Yeah, I got that.” Tom rolled his eyes. “I don’t get why they weren’t forced to sell them all off. You know, if my dad bought a car he couldn’t pay for, he’d have to give it back. He wouldn’t get to keep the car and get someone else to pay his debt for him.”

  “Your dad is not Reuben Lloyd,” Yuri said.

  The next corridor resolved the paradox. Reuben Lloyd led them before a vast collection of portraits spread across the wall. “Here are Wyndham Harks’s most valuable assets.”

  Tom read the placards beneath the photos of the executives, then gave a start as his neural processor began identifying them as powerful government officials. There was Sheldon Laffner, the head of the Department of Homeland Security; Kristyl Chertowitz, the chief of staff to the president; and Aubrey Bremmer, the chief justice of the Supreme Court. There was Barclay J. P. Goldman, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve; Vice President Julian Richter; and President Donald Milgram himself. All of them were former Wyndham Harks executives or current shareholders.

  Tom stared at the photos, and it clicked into place.

  This was the key resource Wyndham Harks controlled: the government. Of course the politicians always said Wyndham Harks was essential to the world economy. They were Wyndham Harks men and they were the ones saying it. It was like some big, global scam, and Tom shook his head, amazed at how these guys had played everyone else in the world for suckers for so long.

  Reuben Lloyd wasn’t in on his own joke, though, because he ended the tour by turning on them, chest puffed with pride, and announcing, “I hope you understand now how fortunate you’d be to align with our company. We at Wyndham Harks do God’s work.”

  Silence dropped over the room.

  Except Tom. He started laughing.

  Reuben Lloyd’s shocked gaze swung to him.

  Tom snapped his mouth shut since, after all, he had to make a good impression here. He knew that laughing wasn’t the response Reuben Lloyd wanted. He wanted awed respect, silence.

  But then Tom heard Wyatt make that strange noise in the back of her throat again, and when his gaze shot to her face, he saw that she was doing the bizarre fish-expression thing again, her eyes huge and
her lips pursed.

  He couldn’t help it. He exploded in laughter again. It was such an awful time to laugh that Tom laughed more, and his dawning horror at his uncontrollable laughter made him laugh harder still. He recognized this. This had happened to him before, more than once. It was the same impulse that made him bust up laughing when Blackburn came into his bunk to accuse him of treason, the same thing that had made hundreds of tense situations in his life much, much worse. But he couldn’t help it. Everyone was staring at him, and now he couldn’t stop.

  He dropped to his knees, giggling helplessly, smothering his mouth in his arms. Even then, he might’ve regained control of himself if he’d had a few moments more, but then Wyatt tried to be helpful. She gave Tom a discreet thumbs-up and unveiled her hidden forearm keyboard. Tom tried to shake his head at her, and he saw Vik and Yuri also shaking their heads, trying to catch her attention. It was too late. She unleashed a computer virus that hit the surrounding trainees, triggering hysterical laughter in them, too—trying to mitigate Reuben Lloyd’s wrath toward Tom by diluting it among everyone.

  Soon the entire room was filled with hysterical laughter, all directed at Reuben Lloyd, the powerful CEO in charge of Wyndham Harks. Everyone else laughing made Tom laugh harder, so he collapsed onto his back on one of Reuben Lloyd’s prized carpets, his ribs hurting.

  All in all, this wasn’t the impression he had come here to make.

  On the disgraced elevator ride down, Vik thrust his fingers into his hair, exasperated. “Why did you do that, Wyatt? You made it a hundred times worse. Not only did Tom laugh at him, but Tom’s now the one who got a whole bunch of other people laughing at him, too.”

  The buildings outside grew taller and taller as their elevator plunged down. “Hey, it’s fine, guys.” Tom stuffed his hands into his pockets, seeing the shadow of his smirk in the glass before him. “Wyndham Harks didn’t go so well, but so what? We’ve got a bunch of companies still to go. We’ll be A-OK.”

  TOM WASN’T PLEASED to learn their next destination was the City of London, the financial district containing Dominion Agra’s headquarters. As soon as they left the Interstice, the other trainees were led to the meeting place with Dominion’s new CEO, Diamond MacThane, and Dominion’s chief shareholders, the Roache brothers. Tom did not go with them.

  He had expected trouble, maybe to be banned, maybe to be expelled from the facility. He hadn’t expected to be set upon by a bunch of the private contractors who formed the larger part of the British police force. They slapped on handcuffs and hauled him into a secluded interrogation room. Then they cuffed him to a chair and interrogated him about his plans while in their country.

  Apparently, Tom was on some watch list and classified as a low-level terrorist. All thanks to the Dominion executives he’d swamped with sewage.

  One hour dragged by as constables wandered in and out of the police station, each with a barrage of new questions. Just as Tom was about to lose his mind with boredom and frustrated anger, Dalton Prestwick himself showed up to enjoy the sight of Tom in handcuffs.

  “Well, well. Quite a predicament you’re in there, sport.”

  Tom felt a surge of dislike at the sight of his mom’s smarmy boyfriend with his gelled brown hair and expensive suit. “What are you doing here, Dalton? Did you run out of people to suck up to on the other side of the Atlantic?”

  Dalton’s eyes narrowed. “You’re in Dominion Agra territory now. My territory. I’d show some respect.”

  “Why should I?” Tom leaned toward him as far as the chair allowed, eyes on his. “After all, the last time I saw you, we both agreed that I could destroy you whenever I chose. That kind of gives me an upper hand here.”

  Dalton paled a bit at the reminder that Nigel Harrison had told Tom of Dalton’s role in leaking the CamCo names—in committing treason. Tom had some potent blackmail he could use against him and they both knew it.

  “I haven’t forgotten our previous conversation, Tom. It’s the only reason you’re sitting there in that chair, unharmed.”

  Tom slouched back, unimpressed by the implied threat. “I can’t believe you got me declared a terrorist over the Beringer Club.”

  Dalton gave a snakelike smile. “What makes you think it was me? You terrorized quite a few very powerful people that day.”

  “So ‘terrorism’ doesn’t mean ‘killing innocent civilians to cause fear and advance a political cause.’ It now means ‘disrespecting the rich and powerful.’ Is that it?”

  “My,” Dalton said, “you just figured that out, did you?”

  Tom fell silent. The sentiment was so cynical, Neil could’ve spouted it—but it was different coming from Dalton. He said it with a gloating air like he was exulting in it.

  “In fact, I really only dropped by to give you some friendly advice, sport.”

  “Save your breath. There is nothing you could say to me that I care about.”

  “Oh, I think you should hear this.” Dalton circled around behind him, so Tom would’ve had to twist and look like an idiot to keep him in sight. Instead, he glared straight ahead at the one-way mirror as Dalton planted his hands on his shoulders.

  “You see, you are Delilah’s son, and I know that old man of yours isn’t going to point your compass in the right direction—”

  “Oh please. You’re not pointing any compass for me. And we agreed that you never talk about my dad again.”

  “I feel a sense of obligation. After all, you didn’t just cross Dominion Agra executives, you crossed a group of very powerful people with the ears of very powerful friends. People talk, people spread information about various trainees, people give each other a heads-up about whether or not some kid is an insolent little punk who needs to learn some manners.”

  A sour smile curled Tom’s lips. “Yeah, an insolent little punk who was the only person, ever, to beat the greatest fighter on the Russo-Chinese side at Capitol Summit. I really appreciate your concern for my reputation, Dalton, but I think I’ll get by somehow.”

  Dalton’s eyes met his in the mirror. “Have you heard what happens to trainees who don’t qualify for Combatant status?”

  Tom blinked, thrown by the reminder. The Intrasolar forces were young, but he knew there were trainees who couldn’t get sponsors. Some stuck around and kept trying; others gave up and went elsewhere—other government agencies, other types of positions at Coalition companies. Nigel Harrison tried to blow up the Pentagonal Spire and kill everyone, but he was the exception.

  “What about them?” Tom said reluctantly.

  Dalton straightened up, tugging the cuffs of his shirt. “The neural processor makes them valuable, so they get jobs pretty easily. But the catch is, most of those positions require a certain, shall we say, reliability. Anything with a Coalition company requires an unsullied reputation. You don’t have that. As for a government position, well . . . you’ll need to obtain a security clearance. Known terrorists”—he said the word almost playfully—“don’t tend to qualify.”

  Tom understood it. “So that’s why I’m on the terror watch list. Someone thinks they’re gonna sabotage me down the road, huh? Well, joke’s on them, because if I don’t make Combatant, I’ll strike out on my own, no problem. I can get by.”

  Dalton made a show of wincing on his behalf. “Actually, champ, that’s not an option for you. Once you have the processor”—he tapped his temple beneath his gelled hair—“you have to stay in the fold. If the Coalition doesn’t want you, and the government can’t clear you, you still do have two options. There are many agencies that would love to research you, so you could always be a glorified lab rat. . . .”

  Tom’s mouth went dry.

  “And then there’s that other agency, the one that always presses for trainees. The National Security Agency. Who do you think scooped up that Nigel Harrison boy?”

  Tom felt a jerk in his gut. “He’s with the NSA? But he’s not even American.”

  Dalton gave an oily chuckle. “No one who matters in t
his world cares about countries or nationalities.”

  “Nigel tried to blow up the Spire!”

  “Oh, never fear, Tom: he’s probably nowhere near the same person you remember. That’s why I think the National Security Agency would even have you. The agency’s renowned for their ability to manipulate and control computers.”

  Anger scorched Tom’s chest. “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe there’s an entire agency of people who’d reprogram a human being like you and Joseph Vengerov would.”

  “There may come a day when you start to believe that, and you realize I really was acting in your best interests, and you feel terrible about your rank ingratitude toward me.” Dalton rocked back on his heels, taking visible pleasure in his words. “When that day comes, I want you to know, you can call my assistant and ask for an appointment. If you visit, and you show proper respect and call me Mr. Prestwick, and maybe . . . hmm, I don’t know, get on your knees and beg me very nicely to give you another chance, I might consider it.” He winked. “Might. No guarantees anymore, champ.”

  “Yeah,” Tom agreed sarcastically, “maybe I’ll do that, but before that day comes, there’ll be a day when I tear my own eyes out and eat them. See, I’d do that before I would ever get on my knees and beg you for anything. Or get on my knees for anyone—you know, the way you did me, Dalton. At the Beringer Club.”

  Dalton turned so red at the reminder that Tom cheered up. Dalton’s distress almost made this whole visit worth it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  TIME CRAWLED BY as Tom sat there, and finally he decided he wasn’t going to let himself be tied to a chair while Dalton went somewhere and drank a martini. They wanted him tied up, then let them find him and drag him back; no more sitting and waiting. A sense of daring swept over Tom, and his heart picked up a beat as he contemplated the glorious feat ahead.

  It could work. It could totally work.