Insignia (29 page)

There was such a look of horror on Vik’s face that Tom started sniggering.

“Wyatt, food,” Vik said, gesturing to the punctured crust in front of him, trying to get her to stop talking about this while he was eating.

“Tummy troubles?” Tom asked.

“Die slowly, Tom.” Vik glared at him as he shoved a forkful of pot pie in his mouth.

Wyatt waited for Vik to start chewing again. “Maybe not a shriveled husk. More like ground-up shiitake mushrooms.”

Vik choked again.

“Actually,” Wyatt added, “I think the brain belonged to the person who used to have
your
processor, Vik.”

Vik spat out his food.

Wyatt smirked. “Just kidding.”

“You’re an Eviler Wench every day,” Vik accused her, tossing his napkin down on his meal, giving up on eating.

Yuri roused from his stupor as Vik said that. “That she is,” he said adoringly.

Ever since he’d admitted to liking Wyatt, Yuri had begun sounding her out, trying to gauge her feelings for him, and repeatedly hinting about his crush. Tom and Vik found the whole thing comically fascinating, seeing Yuri try to yawn and put his arm around her in class, and clueless Wyatt then complaining that he was taking up her space. Yuri tried to ask her to a movie, and Wyatt told him the movie he suggested sounded dreadful.

It took Yuri a whole week to score one victory: he finally managed to convince her to go out with him to a museum. Unfortunately, Wyatt didn’t even seem to get that it was a date, because she asked Tom and Vik if they were going, too.

“Sure, we’re going,” Tom told her, just grinning shamelessly at Vik’s warning look. They’d made a bet about when Yuri would finally manage to get somewhere with Wyatt, and Tom was going to lose if it happened this soon.

So when the following Saturday came, they were tailing a few steps behind Yuri and Wyatt in the Smithsonian.

“It doesn’t count if you sabotage them,” Vik informed Tom as they passed the caveman exhibit.

“Come on. They sabotage themselves.”

“He’s going in,” Vik proclaimed, grabbing Tom’s arm to halt him.

They ducked behind a mock saber-toothed tiger, out of sight of the two. Wyatt was staring fixedly at a woolly mammoth skeleton, and Yuri was staring fixedly at her. Resolve filled Yuri’s face. He leaned down, reaching out to draw her into his arms, and Wyatt turned at the same time and smacked her forehead into his.

Tom burst out laughing. Vik’s hand clamped over his mouth to muffle the sound.

Wyatt’s voice rang in the air. “Ow! Why’d you have to head butt me?”

Tom fell down, laughing so hard he was suffocating. He couldn’t get to his feet. He couldn’t. He was going to die, going to choke to death on smothered laughter. Vik hauled him from the room and let Tom fall down again. Then he staggered away, waving for him to stop laughing. Then he fell down, too.

“That was so”—Vik gasped, when he could manage it—“It was just so
Enslow
.”

Tom clutched his ribs where they were starting to hurt. “Just pay up now, Vik. Save your dignity.”

Museum visitors were starting to stare at them. Vik hoisted himself to his feet. Tom lurched to his feet, too, his sides aching.

“I am not surrendering, Raines. Yuri might go for it again. Double or nothing, the Android gets his hands on Man Hands by tonight.”

“You seriously wanna pay me double? The only base Yuri’s getting to is—” Tom stopped talking.

Wyatt was standing just in the doorway, staring at them, her face deathly pale. The smile dropped from Vik’s face, and Tom suddenly felt like the biggest jerk in the world.

She cast a stiff look back toward where Yuri was and then looked back at them.

“I get it,” she said. “I suspected something when you guys started inviting me places and telling me to sit with you in the mess hall. I get it now. I suppose this is some real funny joke, isn’t it?”

Tom blinked. Wait, she thought they were
all
having her on?

Yuri emerged from the room behind her. “Wyatt? I must explain myself.”

Wyatt spun around and shoved him back. “Go away!”

Yuri’s face filled with hurt.

“Find someone else to make fun of with your friends!” She turned around and stormed from the room.

Tom stood there frozen for a moment, and Yuri rubbed at his bruised forehead, staring helplessly after her. Vik looked at Tom, then mouthed, “You?”

Tom let out a breath. “I’ve got it.” He turned around and headed out after Enslow.

H
E CAUGHT UP
to Wyatt outside the museum, where she stood on the sidewalk, reaching up to scrub her sleeve across her face. Tom would never have imagined her as the crying type, and he really felt like the scum of the earth.

“Hey, come on, Wyatt. Don’t cry.”

She jumped. “I am not crying! I have allergies.” She started for the Metro stop, and Tom tailed after her.

“You can’t just leave, okay?”

“I’m not stupid.” She tore around to glare at him. “I know people don’t like me. I just thought Yuri … I just thought
you
were different.”

“Yuri is different. He’s a good guy. And me, I don’t … I’m not … Come on, okay? Vik and I are just jerks. We didn’t mean anything by the bet thing. We were just messing around. Yuri’s got no idea, okay? It’s not like we were all setting you up. You’ve gotta know he’s into you.”

“Me,” she echoed flatly.

“Yeah. You’ve gotta see it. He wouldn’t even help us go after you in the war games.”

“I don’t believe you. Yuri doesn’t see me that way. Even Vik calls me Man Hands.”

“That’s just a thing we humans call a joke. Vik gives most everyone nicknames. Again: me, Vik—jerks, got it? It doesn’t mean every guy in the world thinks the same thing. You’re supposed to turn it around on us, anyway. Like, maybe tell Vik he only thinks that because his hands are delicate and girly. That’s how it works. Anyway, I’ve never heard Yuri say it. I bet he thinks you have girl hands. I mean, have you seen that guy’s?” He raised his palms. “They could envelop people’s heads.”

She finally stopped walking, seeming to consider it. “So what am I supposed to do now?”

“Just go back and, I dunno. Talk to Yuri. And don’t hit him? Or something?”

“What about your bet?”

Tom rubbed the back of his neck. “Do you like Yuri? If it’s no, you might as well break it to him. If it’s yes, well, I’m out thirty bucks. No big deal.”

She shifted her weight and took a few deep breaths, like she was bracing herself for something. Then her dark eyes moved up to Tom’s. “Do you think I should be with him?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“But you can. Do you think that he’s really the one I should go out with? You bet against it. Was there a reason for that?” She was looking at him with an odd intensity. Tom stared back, bemused, and her cheeks grew pink. “I don’t want to make a mistake, that’s all,” she mumbled, looking at the ground. “I just don’t want to do the wrong thing here.”

“Wyatt,” Tom said with a laugh, and he reached out to poke her shoulder. “It’s not like you’re marrying the guy.”

She turned very red, and jerked back from him. “Fine. Fine, I’ll just go tell him yes, then. Okay?”

Tom watched her hurry away, wondering why she looked so sulky about a guy wanting to ask her out. If he ever found out some girl liked him, he’d be all over her.

T
OM DIDN’T HEAD
back to the museum. He figured it would be better to give Wyatt and Yuri a chance to do whatever they were going to do. If he knew Vik, he would probably stick around just long enough to make sure he’d won, and then head out to find Tom and rub his victory in his face.

So Tom loitered on the curb, chin propped on his hands, elbows on his thighs, waiting for Vik. He was caught off guard when a limo slid to a halt in front of him and a voice called from its plush depths: “Tom! Tom Raines. Hi, there!”

Ugh. He knew that voice.

He raised his head up. “What are you doing here, Dalton?”

“I heard you were in the area. I’ve been waiting for you. Now get in here.” Dalton gestured Tom into the limo.

“I’m busy.”

“No, you’re not. I’ve been waiting for you too long already. Come on.”

“What do you want?”

“Don’t be rude. I went to the trouble of having Karl Marsters check the location of your GPS signal,” Dalton answered. “I really wanted a chance to talk to you. Now get in.”

The driver circled around to open the door. Tom reminded himself that Dalton was with Dominion Agra. He couldn’t blow him off.

He glanced toward the museum—no sign of Vik yet—and then dropped into the backseat and slouched down, hands in his pockets. “I can’t go far.”

“Not a problem.” Dalton nodded to the driver, and soon they were heading off down the busy Washington, DC, streets. He poured himself some brownish liquid, then offered Tom the bottle. “Scotch?”

Tom shook his head. “Not allowed.”

“You think they’d kick you out of the Spire for this? I know they’ve got rules, but one word from me to them, and they’ll look the other way.”

“I don’t like alcohol.” Even the smell of it made him nauseous.

Dalton eyed him knowingly. “Reminds you of that old man of yours?”

Tom’s hands curled into such tight fists his fingers throbbed. He imagined breaking that glass over Dalton’s head.

“Well,” Dalton said, waving as though to move them on from the subject, “we’ve already had a chance to speak once, Tom, about the possibility of Dominion Agra sponsorship down the road.”

“Yeah, and I don’t get it,” Tom cut in. “I’m a plebe. Not even a Middle. I’m nowhere near CamCo level yet.”

“These things start earlier than you think. Dominion has dawdled with courting Combatants in the past, and regretted it when the other companies jumped all over them. We’ve decided to start securing the bonds of loyalty earlier in the process.”

Tom suddenly understood it. He laughed. “So let me get this straight: once someone’s about to be a Combatant, and they have a choice of sponsor, they don’t tend to choose you guys, do they? Huh. What do you think turns them off, Dalton? You as Dominion’s sales guy, or the whole genocide thing?”

Dalton’s hand clenched tightly around his glass. “Believe me, we could have more Combatants tomorrow if we wanted, Tom—but we want the
right
ones. The ones who wow us. If we started working with someone while he was a plebe, for instance”—this was spoken pointedly—“we would have more than enough time to groom him into the refined, polished Combatant we’re looking for.”

“Refined and polished. Like Karl Marsters.”

Dalton actually winced. “Karl is another issue entirely. And as for that other
charge
you made …”

“You mean the genocide thing?”

“What happened in the Middle East was hardly genocide.”

“Last I checked, killing a billion people’s genocide.”

“Genocide is the systematic destruction of another group of people because of their nationality or their race. It’s malicious. What we did was not. The entire region was engaged in the willful and repeated theft of our property—because, like it or not, if you eat it, it’s our property, and the farmers in those countries were never going to agree to pay a licensing fee. If one region of the world gets away with that, then everyone begins to think they can get away with it, and soon we have no company. There was no malice in what we did. It was simply a business decision to keep Dominion Agra viable.”

“I’m sure the dead people are glad they weren’t killed maliciously.”

“And we even acknowledge that it was a terrible tragedy. We regret that they made it necessary even to this day. But think of what came from it: that area of the world was so contentious, there never would have been peace on this planet if it hadn’t been for those bombs. We haven’t lost a single human life in war since we neutralized that region. Those neutron bombs made today’s world possible.”

“Yeah, of course no one goes to war anymore,” Tom exclaimed. “There’s no alternative when the Coalition owns everyone in power. And no one’s going to take you on if they’re just going to be wiped off the planet.”

“That sounds like your father talking.”

“No, it’s me. It’s me saying—” Tom realized it suddenly. “It’s me saying no. No way. I would never, ever help Dominion Agra. Even if it was the only chance I had to be CamCo, I wouldn’t do it.” He looked at the city street sliding past, realizing that some things were just too profoundly wrong. He also realized they were farther from the museum than he’d expected. “Let me out, Dalton. The answer’s no, and it’s final. We’re done here.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Tom. I’m not here to ask you to decide today.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve decided today.”

“Fine.” Dalton raised his drink to him. “You’ve decided today. But this meeting isn’t about what you can do for us. It’s about what we can do for you.”

“There is nothing in the world you can do to change my mind.”

“Of course. Of course. Just take a look at something. That’s all I’m asking.”