Insignia (19 page)

And then Karl released him, staggered back, and knelt on the floor.

“Bock,” Karl said.

Tom stumbled away from him, swiping his sleeve at his stinging nose. “What?”

“Bock, bock,” Karl replied, and began pressing at the carpet with his nose. “Bock, bock, bock.”

Tom clutched his sleeve to his face, utterly bewildered. He looked at the other Genghises, saw them all kneeling, pressing their noses rhythmically into the carpet, all bocking.

“Well, I’d say that worked.”

Wyatt Enslow’s voice startled him. He whirled around to see her emerging from the open doors of the elevator, her forearm keyboard bared.

“What’s going on?” Tom asked her, baffled. “What are they doing?”

“They’re chickens,” Wyatt answered.

And sure enough, when Tom watched them, he realized they were all pecking at the carpet just like chickens.

“I based it on Blackburn’s dog program,” Wyatt remarked. “I saw you were in trouble, so I figured now was a good time to try it.”

Tom turned to her, regarding her with new eyes. “Wyatt, you seriously helped me out there. Thanks, I owe you big-time.”

“I just wanted to try the program. It’s not like I went out of my way to save you.”

Tom laughed and pressed his sleeve against his face a bit harder. “This is where you say, ‘You’re welcome.’ It’s okay to take credit.”

Her cheeks flushed. “Oh. Right.”

“And you pump your fists in the air and say something about how awesome you are. That’s how it works.”

“Isn’t that gloating?”

“Of course it’s gloating. When you do something awesome, you get to gloat—” Tom fell silent, because the door to Machiavelli slid open, and Heather strode out.

She halted, looked over the situation, then giggled. “Oh, good. I guess I don’t need to call your friends to come rescue you.”

Tom stared at her, completely aware of the blood drying on his face. She didn’t look the least bit guilty, or even aware that she’d done something wrong just now.

“You’re telling me you were planning to call them?” he said cynically. “Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of selling me out?”

She flipped her hair back over her shoulder. “It’s not like that, Tom. Did you really think I was going to let Karl beat you up? Karl and I had a deal: I’d let him take you out of Machiavelli, and in return, he agreed to help us get Nigel into Camelot Company.” Her eyes glinted with a wicked light. “I only agreed to let him haul you out of Machiavelli. I never said a word about not calling someone here to help you. And I was just checking to see what was happening, to see if you really needed it.”

Tom wanted to believe her. He took another step back, considering it. “You could’ve let me in on it beforehand.”

She bit her lip. “Aw, but you had to look all hurt and betrayed for Karl to trust me. I didn’t know how good of an actor you are.”

When her eyes were wide and imploring, like she wanted nothing more than for him to believe her, Tom found it so hard to remember there was any reason to be angry. She hadn’t meant for him to get punched.

And then Wyatt cut in, “That’s so easy to say now that it’s all over. But if you were going to call one of Tom’s friends to tell them he needed help, why didn’t you do it at the same time you called Karl so they’d be ready to come help him? For all you knew, they weren’t even in the Spire today.”

Heather blinked at Wyatt like she’d just noticed she was there. “I’m sorry, but I don’t really know you.... Wyatt, isn’t it?”

“That’s weird. You knew my name a few months ago when I helped with your profile,” Wyatt said flatly.

Tom’s gaze shot to Heather’s.
That was her?

Heather opened and closed her mouth, caught off guard. She recovered quickly. “Well, Wyatt, it’s still a little presumptuous for you to say what I should’ve done when you don’t understand the whole situation.”

Wyatt crossed her arms. “I thought I was just pointing out the obvious.”

“Tom is fine, so this argument is pointless.” Heather wasn’t so gorgeous with that gray color in her cheeks, and there was something very narrow and calculating in her expression, like she was sizing Wyatt up as an enemy.

“I thought I brought up a good point, and you haven’t even addressed it—”

“Wyatt, it’s okay,” Tom broke in, stepping between them.

Wyatt scowled at him now, and then muttered, “Fine. It doesn’t make a difference to
me
.” She took a few jerky steps toward the door to Hannibal Division, then spun around, and awkwardly raised her arms up in the air.

Tom gazed at her, perplexed, wondering why she was making claws like she was pretending to be a monster.

“I am awesome,” she said.

And he laughed, realizing she was gloating just like he’d told her to. Wyatt nodded, then abruptly whirled around and scrambled from the room.

Heather was gaping after her, like she’d just encountered an alien. “It’s true what everyone says. She has, like, no social skills.”

“She’s blunt,” Tom agreed.

If Heather caught that he was telling her Wyatt was painfully honest, unlike some other girl he knew, then she didn’t show it.

“You remember, don’t you, that I made Karl promise not to hit you in Machiavelli?”

Tom hit the button to the elevator several times. “Sure, I remember you saying that. Look, I’ve gotta go to the infirmary.”

He began remembering the way Heather and Nigel looked at each other in Machiavelli Division when he told them he was being chased by Karl, and the way Heather sent him off so they could talk alone, but really so she could call Karl to offer him up.

Heather’s hand slid up the back of his arm and rested there near his shoulder. Goose bumps prickled up his skin. She whispered in his ear, “I’ll come see you later, just to be sure you’re okay.”

She usually made his brain feel like it was dissolving, but he felt now like they were surrounded by a fog of sorts, muting whatever it was she did to him. Maybe his face was just throbbing too much from being punched for her to have the usual effect.

He shifted so her hand dropped from him, and stepped into the elevator. “You don’t need to,” he said. “I’m doing great.” And then before she could say another word, the doors slid shut between them.

T
OM FINALLY MADE
it to the infirmary a full half hour after leaving Alexander Division. After Nurse Chang packed his bleeding nose with gauze, Tom told him about the CA thing, which sent a flicker of alarm across the man’s face.

“What?” Tom said, aghast. “What is it?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Nurse Chang said hastily, paging Dr. Gonzales. “Let’s look at those shoulders.”

Tom’s joints had been hurting even before Karl kindly twisted his arms nearly out of their sockets. By the time Chang tested Tom’s range of motion, he couldn’t even raise his arms past his shoulders. Chang gave him some Percocet, which took care of the pain. Tom was almost able to forget why he’d come a few minutes later as he lay in a conical machine that was testing his bone density. He’d just yanked the bloody gauze out of his nose when Olivia Ossare’s voice startled him.

“Tom, how are you?”

He peered over at her, surprised. He hadn’t realized she worked weekends. His neural processor flashed:

He hadn’t spoken to Olivia since his first day at the Spire, but he’d heard about her from the other trainees. She’d told him she was there for the kids, there to be their moral support and stuff, but Tom had learned enough to realize no one actually went to her. Or if anyone did, they definitely didn’t talk about it.

It was more of a joke to the trainees, a way to ridicule people who seemed like wimps:
oh, if you don’t like it here, why don’t you go cry to the social worker, Plebe?

It embarrassed him, seeing Olivia there, concern on her face. He balled up the gauze in his hand and glanced toward the door, hoping no one passed by and thought she was there because he needed to talk to her.

“Fine. I’m having some bone density issues or something, but it’s no big deal.”

Her black eyebrows drew together. “The nurse told me you tore some ligaments. What happened?”

“Oh. Yeah. I tripped. This is nothing, really.”

“That neural processor’s supposed to help your balance.”

“It didn’t this time.”

He hoped the words would end the questions, but she pressed on. “Has everything been okay so far?”

“Everything’s fine,” Tom said.

“No, it’s not,” a voice broke in. Dr. Gonzales walked over, studying his lab reports.

Tom blinked away the text as the doctor informed him, “You’re showing signs of strain upon your joints and low density in your bones. There’s a low serum calcium level, too—you must feel some tingling in your extremities. This growth spurt’s overtaxing your body.”

Tom went cold. “I told you, I fell. That’s why I got hurt.”

Dr. Gonzales shook his head. “Your injury’s secondary to the overall strain on your body. It’s a result, not a cause. Your system doesn’t have the resources to support this bone expansion. I’m going to have to access your neural processor and shut off the hGH spike.”

“But you can turn it back on later, right? When I have more, uh, resources?”

“There’d be no point.”

“What do you mean, no point?”

But Dr. Gonzales strode from the room without answering him. Tom sat up, gritting his teeth at the grinding sensation in his joints. “What does he mean, there’d be no point?” he asked Nurse Chang, who was typing something into a computer.

Chang came over and joined Olivia at his bedside. “Tom, the neural processor takes over some of the natural functions of the human brain. The brain’s a use-it-or-lose-it organ. The areas of the brain that become unnecessary begin to atrophy. Some areas that regulate growth are among them. That’s why we have the processors spike your hGH when you first get here. We want to make sure you don’t miss out on those growth spurts you’d normally have over the next five years.”

“So if I don’t get taller now, it’ll be too late,” Tom concluded. “Fine, I get that you have to turn it off—but can’t you wait just a few days? Until I’m six feet, or maybe six two?”

Dr. Gonzales reentered the room and moved to the computer, not even looking at him. “No. I can’t wait an hour. You should’ve come to me the moment the pain flared up. Your body has a finite number of resources to support bone growth. We try to aid the process with nutritional supplementation, but nothing can make up for fourteen years of poor eating habits. For instance, I can tell from the plaque buildup in your arteries that you were raised on a steady diet of junk food and have never seen a vegetable in your life.”

“That’s not true.” He ate French fries all the time.

“Plug this in for me.” Dr. Gonzales offered him a neural wire.

Tom didn’t take it. “I want to wait.”

“Sure, you can wait, Mr. Raines,” Dr. Gonzales said drily. “And after you’ve decalcified your bones and contracted osteoporosis in your mid-thirties, you can sue me for malpractice.”

Mid-thirties? That was
years
away. “I won’t sue. I swear it.”

Dr. Gonzales scoffed. “The decision’s not yours to make. Lieutenant Chang, plug it in.”

Nurse Chang plugged in the wire. Tom slumped down to the bed, feeling the numbness of a neural connection seeping through his muscles. “I don’t see why it’s your decision, though. It’s my body. My osteoporosis. The military doesn’t own me.”

“No, but it owns the neural processor in your head regulating your pituitary gland.”

Tom felt Olivia’s hand on his wrist. “You’ll thank him for this one day.”

Resentment boiled through Tom as he listened to Dr. Gonzales’s keyboard tapping, tapping away, switching off the growth hormone. He wouldn’t be grateful for this. Not ever. He’d have to go through his life as a short guy.

Well, not so short anymore. But not the guy he’d wanted to be. A big guy. A huge guy Karl Marsters would never mess with. He didn’t understand why someone else was allowed to make this choice for him. Yes, it was their processor, but it was
his brain
.

He closed his eyes and tried to shut out the phantom echo of his father’s words:
You’re just a piece of equipment to them …

L
IFE AT THE
Pentagonal Spire brought something new into Tom’s life. He’d never quite experienced it before.

Routine.

There was a code of conduct in his neural processor, there to inform him of what he could and could not do. He knew he had to be in the Spire by 2000 every weeknight, 2300 on weekends. He knew a GPS signal tracked his movements to ensure he stayed within the Designated Zone twenty miles around the Spire. Even the design of the Spire was careful and predictable. Each fifth of the Spire was divided by the letters A, B, C, D, E, and each room numbered from lowest to highest the farther outward he wandered from the elevators in the center.