Insignia (46 page)

Roanoke
. The word sent a chill through Tom. “So what happened?”

Marsh tapped his fingers on his desk. “He was armed to the teeth. His wife knew when we came to retrieve the processor, Major Blackburn might turn it into a bloodbath. She was willing to stay near him during the siege to keep us informed of his movements, if we were willing to smuggle out the children before the shooting began. On the day of the operation, she was able to slip the children out back where we had a team waiting to transport them out of harm’s way. And when that team drove from the house, they found out the hard way that Major Blackburn had rigged the surrounding area with land mines.”

Tom was stunned into silence, realizing it. It took him several seconds to speak. “His kids were in the car?”

“Yes.”

“He blew up his own kids.”

“Yes, Tom.”

Tom couldn’t get his head around to that.

“When we did finally move in, Major Blackburn didn’t put up a fight,” Marsh said. “As far gone as he was, even
he
understood what had happened. And even after he’d fixed his own neural processor, it was years before he was able to gain the slightest freedom of movement—he’d proven that dangerous. So you appreciate now, I hope, just how far out I had to stick my neck to get him in here. The army would never have had him back. Their boys drove that car onto that land mine. So James Blackburn’s now with my branch, and he’s my responsibility. He goes down, I go down, and he knows it.”

Tom’s head throbbed. “So I’m done.” The implications of all this sank like a lead weight in his gut. “He has one over you, so if I stay, Blackburn’s going to drive me out of my mind with the census device and you can’t stop him. I have to quit.”

“There’s one other way. It can’t come through me, but if he received an order directly from the senators on the Defense Committee to back down, he would have to leave you be. If you want them to step in for you, Tom, you have to become too valuable to let go. And you have to do it somewhere public enough to make an impression on them.”

Tom sat up, his insides twisted into knots of anxiety, apprehension. Hope clawed its frantic way up from the murky depths where he’d banished it. His palms and forehead pricked with sweat.

“How? General, I’ll do anything.”

“You’re coming with me to the Capitol Summit. You’ll be the one to proxy for Elliot. You’ll be the one to beat Medusa.”

T
OM SPRINTED ACROSS
the Calisthenics Arena and caught up to Vik midway through the Battle of Gettysburg. His roommate lifted his bayonet to impale him, then realized who it was and lowered it again.

“Tom! Hey, man. You done being disappeared now?”

“Not yet. Run faster.”

“Aah,” Vik agreed. The Confederates in Pickett’s Charge were nearly upon them.

They picked up the pace, sprinting through the grass. In front of them, the Union soldiers fired at their position. The two armies pressed in on them like a steel trap springing shut.

“So where have you been?” Vik screamed the words to be heard over the booming cannons. “You should hear the rumors about you, man. I’m talking alien abductions and secret CIA mind-control experiments here.”

“Basement.” Tom couldn’t say much more than that. Not because it was classified, but more because he was out of breath. Two days, no sleep, little food or water, and constant neural culling had left him a wreck.

Olivia had offered to write him an excuse for Calisthenics, but Tom didn’t know how much time he had left at the Spire. He wanted to spend as much of it with his friends as he could.

Now the sky turned black above them, and the dead Confederate and Union soldiers rose and revealed themselves to be zombies, descending upon the trainees for a bloodbath. Tom used his bayonet to behead one, but a pair of Union zombies seized him and tore his throat out.

Session expired. Immobility sequence initiated
. Tom’s body went numb below the chest. He dropped to the grass.

Vik dropped dead on the grass next to him. “So tell me everything,” he shouted over the roar of gunfire.

“You never die in Calisthenics.”

“I pulled a Beamer and suicided.”

Pulled a Beamer
. Tom sighed, a bleak mood sinking over him as the zombies trampled his body to get at the rest of the trainees. He had to beat Medusa or
he’d
be the one pulling a Beamer—booted out of the program, getting the neural processor phased out of his brain.

“Well, Tom?”

“It’s a long story.” And he didn’t want to talk about it. He really didn’t.

But Vik insisted. “This is a long battle. Come on. Talk.”

Worn boots scrunched the grass next to Tom’s head, and a familiar voice rang out: “Timothy.”

Tom opened his mouth to ask why he was going back to the wrong name, then remembered that Vik didn’t know Yuri was unscrambled. So he settled with, “Hey, man.”

“Tom was going to explain who disappeared him,” Vik said. “Drop dead with us.”

“Very well.” Yuri tossed aside his musket so the nearest zombie could come kill him.

But he miscalculated his death. The zombie pounced on his large back, tore out his throat, and his immobility sequence engaged. Yuri dropped like a falling tree, and landed sidelong across Tom and Vik’s stomachs, knocking the breath out of them.

“Oof!” Tom struggled against the weight. “Yuri, did you have to land right on top of us?”

“I am sorry, Tim. I’ll try to drag myself over.” Yuri clawed at the grass, hauling his immobile body inch by painstaking inch, but his progress was sluggish.

“Wyatt, help us!” Vik shouted.

Nearby, Wyatt dodged a zombie—which went on to kill a plebe behind her. She staggered over to them. “Tom, you’re back!” A big grin broke over her face. “We thought you fell down a hole and died somewhere.”

“Close. I was with Blackburn. Hey, can you drag your boyfriend’s body off us before we suffocate?”

Yuri said apologetically, “My very great muscle mass makes me heavy.”

She tugged at Yuri’s arm, dragged him to the side—far enough to relieve them of the worst of the weight. Then a zombie got her from behind, and Wyatt dropped across Yuri, her weight making up for the few inches she’d dragged him. Tom and Vik both groaned.

“Sorry,” Wyatt said. “At least we can hear each other. Where have you been?”

“Census device.” Tom shoved at Yuri’s immobile mass, but it wasn’t going to budge again now that Wyatt was on top of him. “Blackburn thought I was the leak. I have this internet friend in China. It looked bad. Actually, the friend’s Medusa.”

Stunned silence. Tom turned back to see the other three dead trainees gaping at him. That, more than anything, reminded Tom how stupid he’d been to befriend Medusa in the first place.

“Look,” he said, “I was curious about seeing Medusa again after the incursion. We played games and she killed me a lot and stuff. Oh, and Medusa
is
a girl. Yeah, I found that out, too.”

“A girl?” Wyatt said, frowning. “Like a girlfriend girl?”

Tom’s cheeks flushed. “No. I mean …” He still wasn’t sure what to say to that. “No!” He considered that kiss. “Well, maybe. I’m not sure.”

“How long has this been going on?” she mumbled.

“Not so long.”

“You never told us.”

“So? Why’s it such a big deal?”

“It’s not,” Wyatt said. “I don’t care.”

“Good.” Tom was distracted then. A new Machiavelli plebe with stubbled hair ran past with Jenny Nguyen. The new girl, whom his processor identified as Iman Attar, pointed at them. “Why are they all lying on top of each other?”

Jenny glanced their way, then urged her onward. Her voice drifted their way, “Alexander boys are weird. That kid Vikram sat next to me the other day in the planetarium …”

Vik groaned and clamped his hands over his face. Intrigued, Tom raised his head up to see. Wyatt and Yuri did so as well.

“… and Vikram said, ‘Uh-oh, looks like you have spicy Indian on your lips.’”

“That’s your great line?” Tom burst into his first laughter in days.

“Shut up,” Vik muttered.

Jenny’s voice reached them over the screams and the gunfire. “I was like, ‘You’re creepy,’ and got up to leave, and then he head-butted me.”

The girls moved off. Utter silence hung in the air for a taut moment. Tom gaped at Vik. Wyatt’s lips were tightly pressed together like she was straining not to react.

“Well?” Vik said. “Just get it out of the way.”

“We’re not going to laugh at you, Vik,” Tom assured him. “I have bigger things to worry about right now”—his voice started shaking with suppressed laughter—“so it doesn’t matter if you’re a SPICY INDIAN.”

Yuri and Wyatt broke into laughter, and Tom threw his head back, cackling helplessly. And for a few wonderful moments, it felt like the census device never happened and he had no cares in the world.

“Thanks, everyone. You’re good friends,” Vik grumbled.

“And I can’t believe you head-butted her after we saw that happen with Wyatt!”

“It’s surprisingly easy to do, Tom!”

“Yeah, maybe when a girl’s desperate to run away from you.”

“Do not take her rejection personally, Viktor,” Yuri said gently. “Maybe she has a phobia of spicy Indians.”

Vik raised up his arm and thwapped Yuri, then Tom. Tom kept laughing.

“Vik,” Wyatt objected. “Stop thrashing. You’re getting spicy Indian on us.”

Vik made a frustrated noise and waved his hand impatiently in the air, gesturing for them to get all the laughter out and over with. Then, when it died a bit, he finally said, “We done?”

“Spicy Indian will never be done,” Tom vowed.

“Yeah, well, right now, you
do
have bigger things going on.”

Any desire to laugh drained away. Tom’s thoughts spiraled back to the last two days, a dark pit in his stomach.

“Here’s what I want to know,” Vik went on. “Medusa. Tell us. She’s a girl. So, is she hot?”

Tom was relieved, because talking about Medusa wasn’t nearly as awful as discussing Blackburn or his treason charges. “She wouldn’t let me see her,” he admitted.

“Oh no, young Skywalker. The ugly is strong in that one.”

Wyatt glared at him. “Or perhaps she has a classified identity? You know, the same way we do?”

“Nah. Ugly. Face it, Tom,” Vik said, “no girl who fights like that can be hot, too. It would cause a huge imbalance in the cosmos that would unravel the space-time continuum and make the universe implode. And she won’t show you. That’s a red flag. Big, bright, waving red flag.”

Tom shook off the thoughts of Medusa’s hypothetical ugliness, because really, he was an idiot even wondering about this right now when he had much more significant, life-changing issues plaguing him.

“It doesn’t matter, anyway, Vik. I can’t see Medusa again. I got caught, and now Blackburn’s out to fry my brain in the census device.”

Wyatt gasped. “He’s seen your memories?”

Yuri looked over at him, openmouthed.

Tom knew what they were worried about. “He hasn’t seen everything,” he said meaningfully, watching them. “But he knows I’m hiding something from him, and he won’t stop until he gets it.”

“So just show him,” Vik said. “Whatever it is, buddy, it can’t be that bad.”

Wyatt and Yuri were looking at each other, though, realization on their faces.

“You don’t get it, Vik,” Tom said. Vik wasn’t clued in. He didn’t realize two of his friends were facing ten years in prison if Blackburn got that memory. “I have this under control. There’s a way I can get out of this: Marsh is having me face Medusa at the Capitol Summit. He wants me to proxy for Elliot. I beat her, he defends me to the Defense Committee. I lose, and I’m stuck either getting my brain fried or getting my neural processor removed.”

Stunned silence followed this.

“That’s a great deal,” Vik said.

“That’s an awful deal,” Wyatt said, at the same time.

“It’s great. He gets to fly at Capitol Summit! I can’t believe you’re a plebe and Marsh is letting you do that,” Vik said, sounding envious. And out of breath, too, due to the being-crushed-by-a-pile-of-bodies thing.

“It’s not great at all, Vik,” Wyatt said. “Tom can’t possibly beat Medusa. He doesn’t have enough training, and even if he did, no one with enough training has managed to beat her.”

She sounded so dubious about it that Tom’s pride prickled. “Hey, I pick up sims quickly. Everyone says so. And I’ve faced Medusa in other battle sims. I swear, I always come close.”

“Do it, then,” Vik said. “Stomp your online girlfriend. Stomp her good, Tom.”

Tom’s head slumped back. “I’ll need to be lucky. She’s better than me. She’s faster, smarter, all-around deadlier.”

“So cheat,” Vik said.

“Cheat?” Yuri cried. “He does not need to cheat! He can triumph over Medusa as an honorable warrior.”

Vik groaned and turned back to Tom, as though he’d decided Yuri was now an utterly hopeless case. “Doctor, you must cheat until you win. Winning is the noble thing to do.”