Vortex (17 page)

It was Wyatt’s turn to stare.

“You know I was teasing you. It’s what CamCos do to Middles. Some friendly
hazing
. I know you were doing your job reporting me, and honestly, it was very dumb of me to get tricked by those reporters into running my mouth about the other CamCos in the first place. I still feel so foolish over it. Good for you, for catching it!”

Wyatt opened and closed her mouth, utterly perplexed.

“I have to go. You’re a rock star, girl!” Heather winked at her, then headed across the room and disappeared into the elevator.

Wyatt burst out, “What happened? I don’t understand! We were having a standoff, then she acted like I was the one who started threatening stuff, like I was the one overreacting.” She turned to Tom urgently, her brows furrowed. “I wasn’t making a big deal out of nothing, was I?”

“That was Heather saving face,” Tom explained. “You won, she lost, and she couldn’t admit it.”

“Really?”

“Really.” He hoisted one of the fallen couch cushions and tossed it back into place, then slung the fallen pillow after it. “You can officially threaten your own enemies. Man, you kind of scare me right now.”

“I do?” she said happily. “Oh, can you tell Vik that? Tell him I was menacing. And that I said I was coming for him next, just so he gets scared.”

“I’ll even say you shook your fist as you said it,” Tom promised, which thrilled Wyatt no end.

Then Vik and Yuri emerged from Alexander Division, both out of breath, Yuri’s wavy hair all askew like a big nest around his head, and Vik soaking wet like he’d been dunked in a pool.

“Don’t ask,” Vik grumbled to Tom, slouching onto the couch, leaving giant, wet splotches on the old green fabric.

Yuri gave a dazed smile as Wyatt walked over of her own initiative and awkwardly put her arms around him, like she wasn’t quite sure how the hugging thing worked. “Thank you for avenging my honor.”

“It was my pleasure.” He kissed the top of her head, then explained, “I chased Vikram for many floors, and he used a computer virus on me, but then I used one on him, so we both agreed to remove the viruses, and I pursued him into the Calisthenics Arena. He activated an exercise simulation. I was forced to battle my way through a hundred Vietcong soldiers, but I imagined coming to you and telling you of my victory, and that inspired me to persevere. At last, I caught up to him hiding near a swamp. The result is before you.”

Vik grumbled something. He’d been dunked in one of the shallow pools in the arena.

“He has promised to never again make a Connecticut joke,” Yuri told her.

Vik gave a weary nod. “I don’t have a relentless Russian android on my side, I’ve just got Tom.”

“No, you don’t have Tom. I’m not taking on Yuri,” Tom protested.

Yuri chuckled, slinging an arm around Wyatt. Vik shook his head, disgruntled.

Tom found himself watching them, his friends, and for some reason the glow of the moment took on a dark tinge. There was no rational reason for it, and maybe it came from his deep suspicion that nothing good could really last—but he had this unsettling sense like this was his last glimpse of something priceless, cupped in his hand, just before it slipped from his grasp.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

W
HEN
B
LACKBURN DEEMED
them all competent with exosuits, he finished their training with the same celebratory climb he always led Middles on—straight up the Pentagonal Spire to the roof over the fifteenth floor.

“No messing around, am I clear?” For some reason, he was staring directly at Tom and Vik, even though there were five other newly certified, exosuit-competent Middles. “You start screwing around up there, and you are walking back down the stairs. One of you goes splat, then someone gets stuck with a whole lot of paperwork. Know who that person will be? Me. That’s why you are going to suit up, pair up, and above all,
be careful
.”

Tom and Vik stayed side by side, and Wyatt kept turning to people, who then paired with other people, and looking increasingly dejected over it. Blackburn produced a bunch of climbing harnesses and tossed one at each pair.

“The idea here is that if one of you loses your grip—which you should not—the other one will still have it.” He tossed another harness, and paused by Tom and Vik. “Oh, no, no. You two are not going together.”

“Huh?” Tom said.

“Huh?” Vik said.

“Ashwan, climb with Enslow.”

Vik turned to Wyatt, eyebrows raised. “What do you know. We’re together. Now my life depends on you, and your life? It depends on me.” He waggled his eyebrows.

Wyatt began to look frightened.

Tom automatically cast his gaze toward Kelcy Demos, hoping Blackburn would break up other pairs so he could claim the curly-haired girl as his partner. Then he felt something hook into the frame of his suit. He glanced back—and his stomach plummeted.

“No way,” he protested. He did
not
want to be harnessed to Lieutenant Blackburn. “No. Sir, come on.”

“This isn’t up for debate,” Blackburn told him, tugging on the harness connecting them to test its strength.

“But I’m the best exosuiter here. I don’t need to get harnessed
to
the instructor
.”

“Your capability,” he said, speaking slowly as though fighting to remain patient, “is not what I question. Your judgment is.”

“I have fantastic judgment.”

“You have horrendous judgment. Of all the trainees here, you’re the likeliest to severely overestimate yourself and do something reckless and phenomenally stupid. That’s why you’re with me. You’ve proven yourself unable to realistically gauge your capabilities, so I have to gauge them for you. It’s that, or you don’t climb.”

Tom bristled.

“Well?”

“
Fine
. Sir.”

Getting harnessed to Blackburn for the climb killed it for him. They all donned optical camouflage, attaching the fiber-optic material to specific hooks in their exosuits, and hid themselves from the view of any civilians gazing toward the Pentagonal Spire. They also used the iron-shaped centrifugal clamps to hoist themselves up the side of the building.

The cold wind couldn’t penetrate the optical camouflage, and the exosuit replaced the need for actual exertion, so Tom found himself bored for most of the climb—especially with his pace hobbled by Blackburn, who insisted on staying below the slowest pair of trainees, Jennifer and Mervyn, to keep an eye on them.

Tom knew the minute Wyatt and Vik reached the top, because they net-sent a triumphant
VICTORY!
to his vision center.

Disgruntled, Tom tore off the climbing harness as soon as he alighted on the top of the Spire with Blackburn. He looked around for the telltale ripple of air that indicated someone in an exosuit was moving in the area, and his eyes even traced the outline of separate forms. He clanged his way toward the forms his neural processor identified as Vik and Wyatt, who were on the other side of the massive transmission pole that jutted up from the roof and pierced the clouds above them. He craned his head, squinting up into the sky to see it. The entire building was a transmitter, and this was the very tip.

“How was the climb?” Vik’s voice drifted to him from the rippling air where their hidden forms lurked. “Enslow and I actually made great time. I think I was being too enticing for her to handle.” He jumped when the shimmering outline of an arm aimed a blow at him. “No good-natured punching with superhuman strength!”

“Oh. Right,” Wyatt remembered.

Tom didn’t share Vik’s good mood. “Blackburn kept jerking me to a stop because I was climbing too fast for him. Like a dog or something. I’m telling you, man, it’s like having a leash.”

Wyatt went to talk to Blackburn, leaving Tom and Vik to gaze upward, the very tip of the transmitter disappearing into the bright sky.

“You know, climbing the building was one thing,” Vik said, “but climbing this? That’s the real climb.”

Tom’s heart picked up a beat as he contemplated it. It would be a marvelous feat. “I bet I could do it.”

Vik laughed. “No way.”

Tom’s neural processor rapidly flitted over the schematics in his head, calculating the point where it was simply too narrow to climb farther. “Fifty bucks says I can get within ten meters of the top.”

“You’re on, Doctor,” Vik said, and they tried to shake hands, but Vik’s exosuited hand just clanged against Tom’s wrist.

This was in the bag. Tom leaped up in one great bound, flipping on the clamps so they instantly sealed to the pole. No problem. He’d be up and back before anyone was the wiser. . . .

But he didn’t get another arm’s length up before a hand closed around the back of his exosuit and tore him down. Tom’s exosuit clanged against another behind him. He looked back, and his stomach sank as his neural processor identified Blackburn’s IP address.

“See, Raines, when I said you’d do something reckless and phenomenally stupid?” Blackburn’s voice said right in his ear. “
This
is the sort of thing I was talking about.”

“I wasn’t climbing it,” Tom lied quickly. “I was smashing this huge spider and the clamp accidentally turned on and stuck me to the pole.”

Blackburn dragged him across the roof and shoved him down, by the door leading to the fifteenth floor. “You stay here. Sit. Don’t move.” There was a sort of dark fury in his voice.

Tom wasn’t pleased about sitting. It wasn’t dignified. He shoved himself up, but Blackburn’s heavy hand anchored on top of his head and manhandled him back down. “I said don’t move!”

Tom clenched his jaw and stayed on the ground.

“Thatta boy,” Blackburn said. “I’m going to talk to Ashwan. You—stay here by yourself, don’t talk to anyone, and ponder how
stupid
that was. Think of it as a time-out.”

“Time-out?” Tom blurted. “What am I, five?”

Blackburn laughed unpleasantly. “Color me astounded that you are even vaguely familiar with that term, Raines. But if I can’t pound some sense through your thick skull by treating you like the other trainees, then maybe I should try treating you like an undisciplined young child, which is exactly the way you’re acting. Would that work?”

“No!” Tom protested. “I’m fifteen.”

“Then prove to me you have the attention span of a fifteen-year-old and sit there.”

Simmering, Tom stayed there, until Blackburn seemed satisfied and his footsteps clanged away. But then Tom got to thinking, and he realized what must be going on: Blackburn was probably coming down hard on Vik. Maybe Vik had thought of some great excuse already? Tom knew he had to corroborate whatever story it was, so he eased himself to his feet and moved as quietly as he could back toward them, determined to hear what Vik said. He settled around the curve of the base of the pole, ears straining to pick out their conversation.

He caught Blackburn’s words. “. . . really think this is a good idea, Ashwan?”

“No, sir.”

“Oh, but it sounded like you did. After all, you were rooting him on, so show me what a brilliant idea this is. Climb the pole.”

Vik was silent a moment. “Sir?”

“I said climb it.”

Tom felt incredulous. That was
not
fair. Vik got to climb it? He leaned forward, and saw the wavering air in Vik’s location.Vik obviously wasn’t climbing.

“Let me guess: it looks awfully high now, doesn’t it, Ashwan? Let’s say you climbed it. This thing”—there was a waver of air, and then a ringing of exosuited knuckles clapping on the pole—“sends transmissions to vessels in the neutral zone around Earth. One communication with a ship while you’re climbing this, and the signal will short out the centrifugal clamps and maybe send a good old shock straight through all this metal into your neural processor. Tell me, still sound like a good idea?”

Vik sounded astonished. “No, sir.”

“No, it isn’t. Odds are, nothing’s going to get sent in the time it would take you to pull it off—and even less likely, in the time it would take Raines . . . but what if something did get transmitted? Then I’ll tell you what would happen: the person up there falls to this roof or maybe to that one down there, and that’s it, Ashwan. They’re a pancake. How much did you bet over this? I didn’t make out the number.”

“Uh, fifty dollars, sir.”

“Your friend’s life for fifty dollars.”

“I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known.”

“Here’s the thing about you, Ashwan.” And Tom could see one shimmering form draw back as the other moved closer. “I’ve got this hunch you have a decent brain. I think there’s a voice of reason somewhere in that skull, and I’d be willing to make a bet of my own: that you suspected there was some sort of risk here. That must’ve made it all the more exciting, getting some vicarious thrill out of a friend doing something phenomenally dangerous that you are too smart to do yourself.”

Tom felt a surge of outrage, and it was all he could do not to tear forward and tell Blackburn he was wrong about Vik. Vik must’ve felt angry, too, because he protested, “It’s not like that at all, sir.”

“Uh-huh. Do you know how many times I’ve seen this same thing with you two? Back in the war games, I remember Raines raring to pounce, ready to give me a problem whether I outranked him or not. Let’s face it, that kid screws up over and over and over again, I’m surprised when he doesn’t at this point. But
you
?
You
don’t. You snapped to attention and said ‘sir, yes, sir’ to me like an obedient little drone, because that’s what you’re supposed to do, and you know it. You don’t step a toe out of line, and I know why: because someone, at some point, taught you better than that.”

“But it’s not like . . . You’re wrong. Sir, you’re wrong. That’s my best friend. I wouldn’t set him up.”

Tom hung back, feeling strange. He had this sense it would embarrass Vik a lot knowing he’d heard all this.

“Then God save Tom Raines from his well-wishers,” Blackburn said. “You have to know you aren’t doing him any favors.”

Tom returned to the spot where Blackburn had left him. He was still sitting there when Blackburn set up a few lines, giving the trainees a chance to rappel down the side of the Spire if they preferred to try that rather than exosuiting. Blackburn belayed Makis, Kelcy, and Vik down, but the rest preferred to climb down the same way they’d climbed up—clamp by clamp. Blackburn gathered up the climbing equipment, shoved it in a bag, then dumped it into Tom’s arms and popped open the door. “Walk down the stairs, and wait for me on the second-story flight of the stairwell. I’ll come as soon as the others are done.”

“I can’t climb down?”

Blackburn tore off the hood of his optical camouflage, giving Tom a glimpse of his face. “Get this through your head, Raines: this activity was a privilege, not a right. Actions have consequences. You messed around, you abused that privilege, so that means you’re out.”

“Fine. Whatever. It’s not like I care.”

Blackburn gave him a knowing look. “Oh yes, you do.”

Tom stepped into the stairwell, and knocked the door closed with his boot. Dimness enveloped him as the door clanged shut. Fine. So he wouldn’t climb down. It didn’t matter; he still had the exosuit, and that was the awesome part. He tore off the last of the optical camouflage, leaned over to peer down the railing, and didn’t see anyone, so with a little thrill of excitement, Tom flipped forward down one flight of stairs, landing at the bottom with a clang. He did the same thing with the next flight, taking a ferocious pleasure at getting away with this.

He would’ve flipped down the next flight of stairs if he hadn’t heard a door swing open below him and footsteps move rapidly up toward him. Tom checked himself and stepped lightly, careful not to let the metal clank against the steps.

That’s how Yuri ran into him on the stairwell. A light sheen of sweat coated the larger boy’s face. The plebes were already at lunch while the Middles finished up Calisthenics, but obviously Yuri was taking advantage of the hour for an extra jog up the stairs.

“Thomas,” Yuri said, surprise in his voice.

For a moment, Tom halted, wondering if Yuri, as a plebe, could even see his exosuit. But Yuri didn’t react at all, so Tom figured it had to be censored from his neural processor.

“Are you not supposed to be in Calisthenics?” Yuri asked him.

Middles weren’t supposed to share particulars about exosuits with plebes. They hadn’t “earned the privilege.” Tom tried to think of a lie.

Yuri guessed what the answer was. “Ah, I understand.” His face seemed to shutter closed. “It is not for my ears. Would you like assistance with the bag?”

“Nah, I can handle it.” Even without the exosuit, this was no problem. He hoisted it up on his shoulder and took care with his steps, trying to stop them from clanging their way down the stairs. As they started talking about lunch, about the upcoming break, Tom couldn’t help the way his thoughts turned back to the conversation he’d overheard between Blackburn and Vik.

God save Tom Raines from his well-wishers. You’re not doing him any favors.

His gut contracted. He honestly hadn’t thought people saw him as a screwup here. Sure, people like Karl and Dalton and Blackburn saw him as some insolent, mouthy little punk who deserved a beat down, but he hadn’t realized everyone expected him to ruin his greatest chance to make something of himself. The worst thing was, he didn’t know how to fix it anymore. His mind turned back to General Marsh, ordering him to fix things with the CEOs. As if he could walk up to them on the street and make amends.