Insignia (34 page)

“I like my friends.”

“We’ll see if you feel that way in a download or two.”

“I don’t want to lose them.”

Mr. Prestwick strolled over to him. “Now, Tom, everything we’re doing is for your own good.”

“I know.” Tom didn’t know why he knew that, but he was sure of it. A strange giddiness washed through him with that certainty.

“Then you know better than to question me. Try this on.”

Tom took the tie. He looked it over. He could call up references to sixty different types of knots, but there was nothing in his neural processor about tying a tie.

“Ah, of course. Never bought a suit with your old man, I wager. Here we go.” Mr. Prestwick looped it around his neck, then tied it into place, standing in a way so Tom could follow his movements in the mirror. He stepped back and surveyed it. “There. I think that’s a good choice for you. Makes you look like you’re worth something. Put it on your credit card.”

They don’t sound like the type of people we want around you....

The words echoed in his head later, when Mr. Prestwick sent him a leather case with his next software update. He sat with the closed case in the mess hall, baffled by the strange urge not to hook it into his brain. He’d been updating himself for a couple weeks now. The new updates were small: manners, etiquette, suggestions for self-improvement. He knew it was a privilege that Mr. Prestwick allowed him to participate in his reeducation. He’d be abusing Mr. Prestwick’s trust if he didn’t download this.

Still.

He watched Vik and Yuri, in animated conversation with Wyatt near the entrance to the mess hall. He trusted Mr. Prestwick. Mr. Prestwick was always right. But his stomach churned at the very possibility he’d plug this in and eradicate everything that mattered so much to him a month ago. His first real friends. He felt sick at the very thought of losing them, but Mr. Prestwick had as good as told him that was about to happen.

A heavy footstep behind him. A hand clasped the back of his neck, and someone leaned down and whispered in his ear: “Go upstairs and use that, Old Yeller.”

Tom sighed. “Yes, sir.”

Karl strode off. Tom closed the case with infinite care, then rose to obey the command. Two pairs of hands on his shoulders shoved him back into his seat. Yuri and Vik slid dropped down onto the bench on either side of him, and Wyatt took the seat across from him.

“What was that?” Vik cried.

Tom frowned. “What was what?”

“You called Karl sir!”

“So?”

“Thomas Raines,” Wyatt said, folding her hands on the table, very formal. “We feel it is imperative we discuss your recent conduct with you.”

“Come on, Evil Wench,” Vik snapped, “this is an intervention, not an excuse to start talking like a robot.”

“Well, it’s not an excuse for you to have such delicate, tiny hands, either,” Wyatt retorted, glaring at Vik.

“What?” Vik said, confused. “What about my—” Then he shook it off. “Look, Tom, we’ve discussed this at length and concluded that in recent weeks, you’ve become an embarrassment to manhood.”

“Not just to manhood,” Wyatt said. “I’m embarrassed for you, too, Tom.”

“All right, I’m not—” Tom said, shrugging off Vik’s grip. He tried to rise, but Yuri shoved him back down.

“Sorry, Tim,” Yuri said, regret in his voice. “Normally I would not push you around, but I must because you have become such a pansy.”

“A pansy?” Tom cried.

“The Tom Raines I know,” Vik said, “is not supposed to spend a half hour primping his hair. You’re not supposed to call Karl Marsters ‘sir.’ And you haven’t even been giving Elliot Ramirez crap in Applied Sims. He actually came up to me today and asked me whether you’re depressed and need the social worker. Come on, Tom.
Elliot
of all people has remarked on the conspicuous absence of your spine!”

“Elliot’s misreading the situation, and so are you—HEY!” He saw Yuri examining the leather case that held the neural chip, and snatched it from his grasp. “That’s mine. You should respect other people’s property! And as for Karl”—he turned on Vik—“it may have escaped your notice, Vik, but he’s a member of CamCo. He outranks us. He deserves our respect. That’s why I call him ‘sir.’ If I remember correctly, you talked to me about this exact same thing the last day of the war games.”

“I was talking about Lieutenant Blackburn, not Karl!”

“Do you even hear yourself, Tom?” Wyatt said. “You’re being weird and very creepy.”

“I am not being weird or creepy. And you are
no one
to lecture me about being weird and creepy!”

Yuri gripped the back of Tom’s neck so suddenly, Tom gasped.

“You do not talk to her like that,” Yuri warned him, and Tom was suddenly aware of how much larger the Russian guy was than him.

“Yuri, it’s okay,” Wyatt said.

Yuri released Tom.

Tom rubbed the back of his neck, trying to gauge his chances of escape.

“I think Lieutenant Blackburn should give you a system scan,” Wyatt said. “There might be some worm in your processor, messing up your personality.”

Tom clutched the case closer. “Ludicrous. Absolutely ludicrous.”

“Ludicrous” wasn’t a word he’d ever used in his life, but it was among an array of eleven possible responses that jumped into his brain as responses to any accusation regarding neural tampering. The next action his processor suggested was flight, removing himself from the situation.

Tom rose to do just that. “I think I’ve heard more than enough,” he began, but Yuri shoved him back down with a murmured apology about the “pansy” thing. “What is wrong with you people? You can’t keep me here against my will. This is assault! Consult the regulations in your neural processors if you don’t believe me.”

“That’s it,” Vik announced. “New approach.”

He whapped Tom across the back of the head hard enough to jolt his vision.

“Hey!” Tom cried, rubbing his head. “What are you doing?”

Vik nodded. “You need another.” He raised his arm to hit him again.

Yuri grabbed Vik’s wrist. “I do not like this approach.”

“He needs a clobbering!” Vik ripped his arm from Yuri’s grip. “Maybe it’ll jar him out of this!”

“Maybe you—” Tom stopped before he could threaten, “need a clobbering.” Because public displays of temper did not become him.

“Maybe I what? Maybe I what?” Vik spread his arms, the crazy-eyed look back, his grin gigantic, challenging.

Tom glanced around at the other trainees in the mess hall. “Maybe you should calm down. You’re drawing a lot of attention to us.”

Vik groaned. “Ugh. That’s pathetic, Tom.”

Tom looked between the two guys flanking him, at the girl perched across from him, and saw exactly why Mr. Prestwick thought they were a bad influence. They were all wrong. Dead wrong. They didn’t understand that nothing was the matter with him. He was learning, that was all. He was
improving
.

And if they didn’t understand that, then Mr. Prestwick was definitely right about them. He needed to be done with them forever.

T
OM REMAINED JUMPY
long after his intervention. He kept opening and closing the case with the neural chip, knowing this was the one thing that could fix him, that could prevent him from caring what they thought of him ever again. But whenever he looked at it, a feeling settled inside him—a low, churning sickness. The case burned in his grip and he wanted nothing more than to smash it for an absurd instant.

He was contemplating it again when someone overrode the lock on his bunk.

Vik!
Tom stashed the neural chip under his pillow, and tore to his feet, ready for a confrontation. The door slid open.

It was Wyatt.

“How did you get in here?” Tom said, wondering how she’d busted through his lock. His voice died in his throat, because Lieutenant Blackburn filled the doorway, right behind her.

“Mr. Raines,” he announced, pulling a neural wire from his pocket. “You’re in luck. Ms. Enslow here wants to learn how to perform a system scan, and she volunteered you to be her guinea pig.”

Tom’s eyes flew to Wyatt’s. She bit her lip, obviously a bit guilty about siccing Blackburn on him. He knew what this was about. She was using Blackburn to try to search his processor for that worm she’d accused him of having.

“Sit down, Raines. This won’t take long. To start a scan, Enslow, you first open the—”

Tom interrupted him, “Sir, I don’t want to be the guinea pig. I’d rather you chose someone else.”

Blackburn gave a short laugh. “It’s strange you think you have a choice here. Now be a good guinea pig and stop talking.” He stuck the neural wire into the access port on the wall, the same one that always gave Tom his homework downloads, then gestured Wyatt closer to see what he was typing into his keyboard. “Start with the program I sent you …”

A warning beacon flashed in Tom’s vision over and over again as they talked. This was an emergency. This was a disaster. He was supposed to avoid Blackburn’s notice first and foremost. He had to stop this somehow.

“… and you need to select the directories to include …”

“Wait!” Tom protested, interrupting Blackburn again. “You have to use someone else as a test subject. I’ve got somewhere to be.”

“Where, exactly?” Blackburn said.

Tom tried to think of a place he might urgently need to be, but couldn’t seem to come up with one.

“Oh, that must be urgent,” Blackburn said sarcastically when he remained silent. “Well, you can afford to wait for twenty minutes more. The more you fight me, the longer this will take.”

“I am not fighting you, sir.”

“That’s exactly what you’re doing. Stop. Now.”

Tom knew it suddenly: he couldn’t win this. There was no avoiding the scan.

And maybe that realization was what triggered it, what activated something in the recesses of his brain. A backup algorithm written just for this situation.

He closed his eyes and found that there weren’t eleven possible responses this time, not like there’d been at lunch. Only one word popped into his brain. Just one, but Tom knew—he just knew, somehow—that this was the only weapon he needed.

He opened his eyes again, armed and ready.

“I am not battling you, sir,” Tom said to Blackburn’s back, watching the lieutenant turn back toward him, irritated. “You see, if I was trying to fight you, you’d know it. I’d probably throw something out there about, I don’t know,
Roanoke
?”

And there it was. The word sat on the air between them, and it had a strange effect on Blackburn. His face grew completely still and blank like he’d been carved into granite.

Tom waited, his heart pounding, uncertain what he’d done. He could see Wyatt’s brow furrow, too.

And then Blackburn closed the distance between them so suddenly, Tom knew he was going to hit him. He threw his hands up over his face and backed up until he hit the wall. He opened his eyes to find Blackburn just inches away, gray eyes burning—his face inhuman with rage. He planted large, shaking fists against the wall over Tom’s head.

“Digging in my personnel files, were you, Raines?
Were you, Raines?
”

Tom stared back at that twisted face so transformed by fury, it was unrecognizable. He managed, “No, not me.”

Blackburn caught the implication right away. His eyes widened, and the realization seemed to wash all color from his face. Tom stayed there, plastered back against the wall, as Blackburn retreated one step, then another. He turned to Wyatt.

“
You
,” Blackburn breathed. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

Wyatt put the pieces together right away. “What? No! I never looked in your personnel files.”

“You broke into that exact database,” Blackburn said quietly. “Twice.”

“But—”

“Tell me, was it a fun read? It must have been, if you spread it around to the other trainees.”

“I wouldn’t do that!”

“Then how does he know about Roanoke? I suppose he hacked the file himself”—fury filled his voice—“
with his astounding hacking skills
?”

“Please, I don’t know how he got it,” Wyatt insisted. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“I’ve told you, Enslow, trust is everything. The day you start lying to me is the day I wash my hands of you.”

“I am not lying! Please, sir, I’m not.”

Blackburn stared at her for a long moment. The rage disappeared from his face, replaced with a strange, resigned look like he was closing some door on her. He left them without another word.

Wyatt stared after him, shell-shocked. Her arms were hugged around her body, and Tom could see from across the room that she was shaking. A wave of crazed relief flooded him. He’d come so close to disaster, thanks to her.

He turned to his mirror and smoothed his uniform back down, absolutely certain he’d averted something terrible, even if he didn’t understand what it was.

“Why did he react like that, Tom?” Wyatt asked shakily. “What’s Roanoke?”

Tom didn’t have an answer for that. It didn’t really matter, either. “I’d say it’s the reason you never should have messed with me,” he said coldly, looking at her in the mirror. “Now get out of my room.”