Insignia (8 page)

Tom’s brain called it up. “Yes.” There was a file manager in his brain. In it were three files:
Civilian Classes, Calisthenics, Trainee Specific Programs
. And he knew he could just open and peruse the files with a thought. He just knew it.

“And where are you supposed to go right now?” Chang asked him.

“To meet Vikram Ashwan. My new roommate.” Tom paused. Again, something he just
knew
. “This is so weird.”

The nurse nodded. “You’ll get used to it, I’m told. You’re dismissed, Plebe.”

Tom opened his mouth to tell him he didn’t know where to go, but the Pentagonal Spire answered him this time, a mainframe with a careful tracking module following every recruit within its walls, feeding data into Tom’s neural processor.

Tom hopped down from the bed. His legs held, and he wasn’t even dizzy after lying in bed for three weeks. He started for the door.

“Mr. Raines, don’t forget this,” Lieutenant Chang called, holding something out in his hand. “It belongs to you now.”

Tom reached out and took the metal object. He held it up and realized it was a Challenge Coin just like the one General Marsh owned. The coin was stamped
US INTRASOLAR FORCES
. It flashed green when he held it, just like the general’s coin had.

A strange but awesome feeling shivered through him as he gazed at the bald eagle and realized this was now
his
.

He felt Chang’s dark eyes on him. “Welcome to the Pentagonal Spire, Mr. Raines.”

C
HALLENGE
C
OIN IN
pocket, Tom followed the map that loomed in his awareness like some nagging worry. The Spire said Vikram was 8.6 meters northwest of him. He stepped through the door into the first floor hallway, and indeed, Vikram was 8.6 meters away from where he’d been. Tom’s neural processor even ticked down the distance as he closed it.

When he clapped eyes on the Indian boy waiting for him, more text planted itself in his vision:

Tom must’ve looked shell-shocked, because the kid with dark skin, bushy eyebrows, and a high hairline of bristly hair flashed him a grin. “Weird, right?”

“Weird,” Tom agreed.

“Great thing is, you and I don’t need introductions, Thomas.”

“I guess not, Vikram.”

“Call me Vik. Not Vikram.”

“Tom. Not Thomas.”

Vik studied him as they headed toward the elevators. “That’s strange. You have N/A listed under Achievements. Not available?”

Tom realized Vik must be seeing his profile, the way he’d seen Vik’s. “More like not applicable,” he said honestly.

Vik raised his eyebrows. “Brace yourself. Everyone here has achievements. You’re going to get asked that a few million more times.”

“Right. Guess I can’t change it.”

Vik thought about that. “Actually, you could if you wanted to. There’s a girl who can stick something in there. I heard she tweaked some profiles for people before the last round of promotions. We’ll see her at morning meal formation.”

The time for the Spire’s formal breakfast popped instantly into Tom’s brain. “At oh seven thirty.”

“Right, at oh seven thirty, so you’ve got just enough time to get into your uniform.”

Then, information hit:
Uniforms. Dark tunics with an Intrasolar Forces insignia on the collar, division-specific insignia on the sleeve, camouflage fatigues, combat boots, gloves, portable keyboard
…

Tom must’ve stared a bit too long at the sudden images dancing before his eyes, because Vik waved in his face, then jabbed his thumb toward the elevator doors as they slid open. Tom headed inside, and Vik punched the button for floor six.

“That data flow’s a pain, right?” Vik eyed him knowingly. “See, neural processors are useful because there’s no fixed time of year for new plebes to join the Spire, but then latecomers have to download a lot more material just to catch up with the trainees who have been around longer. It makes a rough transition even worse.”

“When did you join?”

Vik shrugged. “Couple months ago. But I remember it like it just happened. I kept noticing all the stupid details about stuff and couldn’t tune them out, and the processor kept defining every new term. It took me maybe three hours to start getting my head straight.”

Tom touched the scar on his head. “I don’t think this is so bad now.”

“Really?” Vik wagged his thick eyebrows. “So you’re saying you’re better at handling a neural processor than I am?”

There was a note of challenge in his voice that made Tom’s mouth quirk. “Yeah, sure sounds like it.”

Vik had this crazy gleam in his eyes. “So you don’t need some more
sy-nap-tic pru-ning
?”

The term slammed Tom—
Synaptic pruning: During the development of infant brains, excess neural connections are culled and destroyed in order for the world to take on a logical representation within the human mind....

It took Tom several moments to remember himself, to remember how to will off the datastream.

“Maybe you have fantastic
neu-ral e-las-ti-ci-ty
?” Vik added.

That term hit, too:
Neural elasticity: Elasticity refers to the ability of the brain to adapt as a result of new experiences by adding or removing neural connections. The brain is most elastic during periods of youth before …

“Or maybe you’ve got—”

Tom shoved at Vik’s shoulder before he could throw out another term. “Okay, stop!” He laughed. “You got me, okay?”

Vik gave a laugh that sounded like a giggle.

“Funny guy,” Tom said.

“I have a great sense of humor,” Vik agreed. “It’s been called sparkling.”

The elevator doors slid open on floor six to reveal the plebe common room that Marsh had shown him on his tour.

Vik waved around them. “On your tour, they probably told you this is the plebe common room? It is. Technically, it is, but we plebes never use it. It’s the largest and best equipped, so the upper-level trainees like to spend their free time here and kick out any plebes who try to linger.”

“And you guys let them?”

“Sure,” Vik said gamely. “We all aspire to one day be upper-level trainees who kick plebes out of their own common room. I know I do.”

They stepped through the door marked Alexander Division into an empty corridor with three hallways branching from it.

“Here’s Alexander Division, your home while you’re here. I’d call it a dorm, but I think the cruddiest dorms are actually nicer than this. Not much to look at, huh? Come on, we’re down here.”

In the third hallway, toward the far end of the division, they stepped into a small room with two low beds, stark gray carpets, and off-white walls. There was a small window about the size of Tom’s head that gazed right onto the roof of the Old Pentagon, one story below.

“Here we are,” Vik said. “Bare walls, and forget about posters or photos or anything. You earn more privileges with personalizing your bunk as you move up the ranks.”

“It’s perfect,” Tom said, meaning it, turning in a slow circle to see the room.
His
room. He’d never had a room that belonged to him before, even partially.

“Low standards. Good for you. You’ll like it here.”

Tom spotted a leg poking out from beyond one of the beds. He strode forward and saw that the leg belonged to an orange-haired kid in a uniform who was sprawled on the floor.

“Your bed’s that one,” Vik told Tom, indicating the other side of the room.

“There’s a dead guy on our floor,” Tom pointed out.

“Yeah, that’s Beamer, our neighbor.” Vik stepped over to Tom’s bed, and kicked open a drawer beneath the mattress. He swept down and yanked out a bundle of fabric. “Here’s your uniform.”

“There’s a dead Beamer on our floor,” Tom said again.

Vik dumped the uniform on Tom’s bed. “Not dead. He’s just being Beamer.”

The orange-haired kid turned in his sleep, showing that he wasn’t dead but more in a stupor. The round, freckled face triggered an information stream in Tom’s head.

“See,” Vik explained, “Beamer made this mistake a few months ago where he snuck outside the DZ—the designated zone—to meet up with his girlfriend from back home …”

“Marsh said something about that!” Tom exclaimed. “The military went to DEFCON-2, right?”

“Yeah.” Vik laughed. “Then they descended on the girlfriend’s house with helicopters and tanks and a gunship, I think, and gave her dad a heart attack. Literally. So Beamer’s still trying to make it up to his girlfriend. He spends all night talking to her online instead of downloading homework. He’s on restricted libs—you know, restriction of liberties—so I don’t even know where he goes to do that. It defeats the point of the neural processors, though. We have computerized memory. We can put anything we want in our heads, but all that info’s useless if you don’t process it. You have to have time for your brain to make sense of all the data you’ve downloaded.”

Tom stepped over Beamer toward the clothes Vik had slung onto his bed.

Vik nudged Beamer’s inert leg with his boot, testing how awake he was. “Most people plug in the homework download during their sleep. Beamer crams the homework download into a few hours, so he doesn’t understand any of it. Then he comes staggering in here first thing in the morning and passes out on the floor to make sure I either trip on him on the way out, or drag him to morning meal formation.”

The inert, orange-haired boy’s eyes snapped open. Beamer sat up so quickly, Tom shot back a step, startled.

“I object to this discussion,” Beamer informed Tom, his pale face cloudy, making him look for all the world like someone sleep talking. “Vik is casting aspersions on my character. Catabolic processes oxidize carbon-containing nutrients.”

“What?” Tom said, confused.

But Beamer slumped back down to the floor and said nothing more. It took Tom a long moment to realize he was unconscious again.

“Moron,” Vik said fondly, his eyes dancing. “No processing, see? All that info in his brain, none of it in context yet.”

“Guess not,” Tom murmured. He could kind of sympathize with Beamer there. He felt rather information overloaded himself at the moment.

“Now hurry up with that uniform before the Android swings by to get us for morning meal formation.”

“An actual android?” Tom asked. He couldn’t tell what was real and what was science fiction anymore.

“Nah. That’s what we call Beamer’s roommate, Yuri. He goes jogging every morning even though we have Calisthenics three times a week, and he’s always in a fantastic mood. He’ll help you with homework or move heavy things for you, and he’s always trying to make friends with this weird girl Wyatt Enslow, because he feels sorry for her. Nicest guy you’ll ever meet. Beamer and I have decided he must be an android. An android slash spy.”

“Spy?” Tom yanked the dark tunic, with an Alexander Division sword on the arm, the Intrasolar Forces eagle insignia on the collar, and a single triangular point beneath it. He wriggled on the biker-guy type gloves, and then spotted the last item: a flat keypad.

His neural processor told him to clamp the metal prongs on the bottom of the keyboard onto the slots of the glove on his nondominant hand.

“Shove your sleeve over it,” Vik instructed him. “You won’t need the keyboard until later.”

Tom pressed the keyboard against his forearm, and found it was made of a flexible polymer that bent with his arm. He hooked the ends into the slots on the glove of his left hand, then pulled down his sleeve to keep it in place.

Vik went on, “So anyway, Beamer’s roommate, Yuri, is Russian, right? He also comes from a connected family. His dad knows this guy who practically founded the Intrasolar Forces. He got Yuri into the Spire, whether the US military wanted him or not. Since Yuri was born and raised in Russia, a lot of people think he’s a spy. The military must think he is, too, since Yuri became a plebe three years ago and he’s still never been promoted. Most plebes are promoted after a year or so. All the others who began the program when he did have advanced to Upper Company or gone off to work for another government agency by now.”

Tom tugged on the combat boots, did up the laces, and shoved the ends of his camouflage fatigues in them the way he saw Vik wearing his. “Do you think he’s a spy?”