Vortex (9 page)

“You asked for this,” Tom said grimly, then grasped Vik’s simulated head by the hair and wielded it like a mallet, beating Vik over the virtual shoulders with it as Vik cackled away. Then Vik reared up, hands aloft, and surrendered. He deleted the audio feature from the template later that night. The gormless cretin statue became a mercifully silent one.

Tom never admitted something to him, though: he was extremely pleased with the new bunk template. All the emptiness he’d felt without Vik in there had been chased away by the decorations, the visible warning that his best friend would be tormenting him for years to come, whether they were roommates or not.

CHAPTER SIX

F
RIDAY MORNING
, T
OM
woke up to a ping:
Consciousness initiated. The time is 0520.
He hadn’t even sat up before another ping demanded that he select his attire for his visit to the Coalition companies, and a third ping requested he select a departure time between 0600 and 0700. Tom found Vik’s name already in a slot and selected that one.

Tom turned his attention to the clothing prompt, and scrolled through question after question. He chose the first option for color of tie, the first style of suit, the first style of loafer, and kept going through the text that way until it stopped annoying him. After his shower, he followed the directions in his neural processor to the twelfth-floor depository. There, he found himself in a large room filled with rounded, plastic drawers. One of the drawers in the wall slid open, revealing a suit and shirt hanging on a rack. Tom snatched them, shrugged off his uniform, and pulled them on.

Next, a smaller drawer popped open, spitting out shoes, socks, and a tie. Tom donned them, too, hesitating only when the tie was in hand; he couldn’t help remembering Dalton Prestwick showing him how to tie one. He gritted his teeth and put it on anyway. Then he hurled his uniform down a waiting laundry chute and set off downstairs.

Vik met him within minutes, the mess hall still dim with early morning. They were both startled when Yuri arrived in a suit of his own.

“What are you doing, man?” Vik exclaimed. “Get your beauty sleep, Yuri. We’re the ones stuck doing some boring meetings.”

“I have been invited to accompany you.”

“Really? That’s awesome!” Tom exclaimed. Maybe it was a good sign if Yuri was allowed to attend an event just for Middles.

But there was something slightly sad in Yuri’s blue eyes, even though he smiled. “Yes. It is.”

W
HEN
W
YATT JOINED
them, they headed to the Mezzanine. It wasn’t listed as an official floor in the Spire, but the instructions in their neural processors told them to press and hold floors 1, 4, and 9 to get down there. Yuri had received a special exemption to unlock the Mezzanine in his processor, so he spent the whole ride pressing them for information about what else he wasn’t seeing. Tom and Vik had fun making things up.

“You are not being honest,” Yuri said.

“We totally are,” Tom replied.

“I do not believe there is a coed naked romping court. You are inventing this.”

“Frankly, I’m offended by your accusation,” Vik said indignantly. “Because of this, we’re not bringing you to the CNRC next time we go, are we, Tom?”

Tom shook his head. “No way. If you don’t believe us, you don’t romp in our court. You can romp in someone else’s court.”

Yuri scowled at them.

“Don’t worry, they’re making it all up,” Wyatt assured Yuri, as though anyone doubted it.

They emerged into a marble-floored corridor with a bubbling fountain in the center and crisp signs indicating various sectors of the Mezzanine. One was an administrative wing, another led straight to the hybrid fission-fusion nuclear reactor, another led to something called the Vault that was so restricted, looking in that direction plastered warnings in their vision centers:
Intruders shot on sight,
which made them all walk a bit faster past it. The fourth sector led to the Pentagon, and the fifth to a room empty but for two rows of fake trees and at the far wall a massive set of glass double doors that gazed into pure darkness. Tom’s neural processor told him this was the entrance to the Interstice and that he should walk inside.

“What is an ‘Interstice’?” Vik said.

“Obviously some mode of transportation,” Wyatt said.

“That’s helpful, Evil Wench.”

They ventured through the fake trees, and something triggered. Green lines slashed from the plastic trunks, honing in on their eyes. One by one, their retinas were scanned, and after the green lights bit into Tom’s eyes, he saw words before his vision center:
Identity verified. Trainee Raines, Thomas. Proceed to the doors.

They’d all received the same notice, so they found themselves standing there, shoulder to shoulder before the glass doors that led to the black chamber beyond.

And then a mechanized voice boomed in the air: “Decompression sequence initiated.”

Vik whirled around, genuinely alarmed. “Decompression in here?”

“Out there,” Wyatt said, poking her finger to indicate the room beyond the glass before them. “It can’t be in here because our lungs would’ve already ruptured.”

“I would have noticed that,” Tom said.

Yuri nodded. “And then our blood would boil.”

“I’d notice that, too,” Tom said.

He spotted something large and metallic rising into view in the chamber beyond the doors. It clanged to the ground loudly enough to make them all jump. It looked like a miniature metallic train car, sitting there in the darkness, the passenger cabin the only source of light in the decompressed room.

No wonder everyone’s departures had been spread out. The metal train car had a scattering of seats, but it obviously wasn’t meant for a heavy passenger load. Information soared through Tom’s brain:
The Interstice is a series of magnetized vacuum tubes designed for traversion by magnetized vactrains propelled by magnetic fields. Given the absence of friction and minimal curvatures in the tubes, maximum speeds can reach 5,000 miles per hour. The vactrain is shielded to protect equipment inside from magnetic forces.

They all jumped when a mechanized voice boomed from overhead: “Recompression sequence initiated.”
A chugging sound pervaded the air. The glass doors slid open to admit them into the room with the train car.

They all headed over and took seats inside the tiny metallic car. The doors slid shut behind them.

“Do we . . . press something?” Wyatt asked tentatively.

And then the mechanized voice boomed from overhead:
“
Decompression sequence initiated. Prepare for departure to Wyndham Harks Headquarters, New York City.”

The dark chamber depressurized around them, and the floor slid open. Tom caught a last glimpse of the room on the other side of the glass doors with its fake trees, and they were blown with stomach-swooping abruptness into the vacuum tube.

They all flinched, but they never hit the tracks. The car remained suspended magnetically within the tube, in midair. Pitch-blackness stretched on all sides beyond the lonely confines of their metal car. Then their velocity ticked up, and up, until they were moving several thousand miles per hour. Tom’s stomach danced with mounting speed.

“So tell us something,” Vik said, folding his arms and leaning back in his seat, eyes on Yuri. “Why are you really going with us?”

Yuri sighed and draped his arm around Wyatt, sitting rigidly in her seat next to his. “I am being sent because Olivia Ossare believes it would be beneficial for me to see professionals with jobs that are not in the Intrasolar Forces.”

Olivia was the Spire’s resident social worker. Tom knew that in the past, she’d encouraged Yuri to give up on the Intrasolar Forces, to surrender to the fact that he wasn’t getting promoted.

“Maybe it’s a good idea,” Vik said.

Wyatt glared at him. “No, it’s not.” Her scowl warned them to change the subject.

Vik opened his mouth, then closed it. Tom said nothing. They never talked to Yuri about this. It wasn’t something they did. So they moved on to something else.

They reached New York in no time. The vactrain admitted them to another dark room that swiftly repressurized, then they clambered out of the vehicle, and headed over to an elevator. It rose to take them to the eighty-third floor of the Wyndham Harks building. The elevator was clear glass, and as soon as they ascended from underground, Tom glimpsed the streets of Manhattan.

“Curious. I do not see skyboards,” Yuri noted, leaning over to peer up into the sky as they ascended. “This surprises me in a metropolis so large.”

“They’re up there,” Wyatt noted, her nose pressing to the glass as she leaned forward to see. “People who live in Manhattan pay for optical camouflaging boards in a slightly lower orbit than the skyboards. That way, they angle the images away from this area of the city. In Connecticut where I live, people pay for it, too.”

“Do they do this in Washington, DC?” Yuri said. “I see no advertisements in the sky there.”

“They don’t put skyboards above Washington, DC. All our leaders live in its suburbs,” Wyatt pointed out. “They don’t want them.”

Tom only half paid attention to them. His eyes were on the smaller buildings of Manhattan shrinking below them. He found himself gazing inward, arrested by the memory of coming here when he was younger. He’d hitchhiked and hopped freight trains all the way from Arizona to New York City, so excited to see his mom that he only slept a few hours the whole way.

Before that visit, he’d really believed she hadn’t meant to leave him. He’d imagined so many things. Then he saw her and they all disappeared. A dark, hollow pit opened in his gut, remembering her expression when she’d seen him at her door. He’d never imagined his mom would look at him like that, like he was nothing.

Vik’s hand jostled his shoulder. “Earth to Raines.”

Tom blinked, realizing that the door was open and they were at the eighty-third floor.

The hallway they entered was an ominous gauntlet of military-grade Praetorians, mechanized security guards manufactured by Obsidian Corp., sold to those with enough money to need them. Tom’s neural processor displayed a map leading him straight ahead. He found himself darting leery glances to either side of them as they passed the machines.

Praetorians at rest resembled nothing more than metallic coat racks, but Tom had seen movies, played VR games. He knew what these slim machines were capable of: The lighter models could shrink themselves to the size of a coffee mug to reduce an enemy’s ability to target them, and conduct electrical charges to act like long-range Tasers. They could shoot electromagnetic beams that dispersed crowds by giving people the sensation they were burning alive, and splice lasers through hundreds of soldiers with one flick of a button from a distant operator. Add a sturdy, centrifugal base on them, and they’d climb vertical walls and deliver payloads of explosives or poisonous gas.

Obsidian Corp. designed them to be released like cockroaches on an enemy stronghold, killing everything in their path. Wyndham Harks used them as watchmen.

And coat racks, apparently.

The Praetorians not covered by coats followed their progress down the corridor with single, pinpoint camera eyes.

They waited with the other Middles in a large briefing room. Apparently, the CEOs usually saw the trainees themselves—preferring to personally inspect the assets they might invest in. Tom saw trainees smoothing their suits, adjusting ties. Walton Covner ended up side by side with him, and Tom realized that they’d both selected the first option for every piece of clothing and consequently dressed exactly the same.

“We can say we’re twin brothers,” Walton suggested, flipping up the cuff of his trousers so they could see if the socks were the same, too. “Twins who dress alike.”

Tom flipped his trousers back down. The socks were. “But there’s over a year’s age difference, you’re six inches taller than me, we’re different ethnicities, and we’ve got two different last names. I don’t think anyone’s gonna buy that we’re twins, man.”

“My plan does have flaws,” Walton acknowledged. “We should try it.”

Tom shook his head. “No, Walton. No.”

“No?”

“No!”

Walton sent him a mildly reproving look, like he was certain Tom was making a dreadful mistake, but too polite to tell him so, then he glided away, leaving Tom bewildered—as usual.

Then Reuben Lloyd himself strolled in. The CEO of Wyndham Harks was a weedy little man who gave a smile that flashed large teeth; and between those, his beady eyes, and his gigantic ears under his bald dome, Tom was struck by how much the guy resembled a rodent.

“How good to see you here.” His nasal, weasely voice did nothing to diminish his unfortunate rodent resemblance. “I don’t have time to go around, shaking all your little hands. We sponsor Heather, Snowden, and Yosef, so if you want to brownnose, do it with them. I’ll give you a quick intro to our company, then I have to be on my way.”

He led them through the corridors of Wyndham Harks, talking rapidly, obviously trying to impress them. He told them the dollar value of every fancy chair, every piece of artwork, and threw around numbers like they said everything. He didn’t really send any of the art more than a passing glance.

He never mentioned what Wyndham Harks actually
did
as a company. Tom wasn’t clear on that. The other companies in the Coalition had survived the end of the middle class and the Great Global Collapse that followed because they controlled key resources. That, or they were like Obsidian Corp. and LM Lymer Fleet—companies that protected companies controlling key resources.

Wyndham Harks wasn’t like the others. It didn’t have a lock on anything of real value as far as Tom knew. It had always been powerful, though, and it owned a lot of other companies, and a lot of US assets. Even before the rise of the Coalition of Multinationals, people apparently said that governments didn’t rule the world, Wyndham Harks did. Yet even knowing that, few could say exactly why Wyndham Harks—a company that served as a middleman to transactions—was so
very essential
to the world economy that taxpayers had to bail it out every few years whenever it made too many bad investments. The company had never created a product, never invented anything, never done anything of substance, yet the political class touted it as the essential foundation of a functional society.

“Why do they keep going broke?” Tom asked Wyatt, hoping she’d know.

Wyatt made a strange noise. She was making an odd face, her lips compressed into a tight pucker, her eyes very wide. She resembled some sort of fish.

Yuri answered in her stead. “They purchased many rugs.” Then he pointed at the floor, as if Tom hadn’t seen them.