Vortex (7 page)

“It’s bound to hurt less than the sharks,” Lyla muttered.

Tom found his eyes riveted to the bloody spot in the water where Walton had been, the way the sharks were frantically swarming over it. All simulations as animals involved a battle between the powerful instincts of the creature they played and the deliberate human mind. Yosef’s group was staying clear of their raft because their human minds told them they’d get stabbed.

Tom could see how frenzied the blood had made them. What if they did something to create that frenzy on purpose, so those animal instincts would truly take more control over them?

“Guys, I have an idea.” Tom was excited. “What if we wait till Snowden reappears, we kill him, and we use his body as shark chum, and stab Yosef’s group when they get lured in?”

“I’d pay to see Snowden killed,” Vik exulted.

Lyla cackled evilly. “Shark chum made of Snowden. It would be so perfect.”

It sounded like a plan to Tom.

When Snowden reappeared, Tom was ready. He gutted Snowden with one brutal thrust of his spear. Then he seized the thrashing blond kid before he could tumble overboard, and pinned his body to the floor of the boat, rancid water sloshing around them. “Okay, he’s bleeding out fast. We should tilt him over the water or something—”

Tom blinked at her. “Are you crazy?” Lyla shouted at him.

“What? We talked about this.” He looked at Vik. “You said you’d pay to see it!”

Vik’s eyes were wide. He appeared torn between laughter and horror. “I didn’t think you’d actually do it.”

“Oh my God,” Lyla exclaimed. “I thought you were joking, you psycho!”

“What? What’s the big deal?” Maybe dehydration was frying his brain, but Tom was truly bewildered now.

“You’re not supposed to kill our group leader, you moron!” Lyla exclaimed.

“We’re supposed to kill all the sharks, and we need shark chum for that.” Tom scooped up a handful of the bloody water and tossed it overboard. “This is great shark chum.” He could see fins cutting through the water toward them. “See? They’re already going for it.”

“The big deal,” she growled, “is that the shark chum is made of
Snowden
! If you were so eager for shark chum, you should’ve been the chum yourself, or I could’ve thrown you in! You can’t kill our instructor.”

“Why should
I
jump in?” Tom said disbelievingly. “
Snowden
got us into this. He wasn’t helping us, and he drank our water!” That infuriated Tom the most. “He didn’t even need it, and he drank it anyway. He was far and away the most expendable, useless person here, leader or no.”

Lyla groaned. “Karl is right: you are such an idiot. Do you even realize the whole point of these sims is to impress people
in the military
?
”

“I think winning will impress the military more than losing,” Tom retorted.

Vik was shaking with a tired, giddy, delirious sort of laughter. “Tom, I love you.”

Lyla punched Vik’s arm. Hard.

Vik kept laughing. “This is so great. I’d cry with the joy of it if I could.”

Lyla punched him again. This time, it really must’ve hurt, because Vik scuttled away from her to the other side of the raft. “Hey! No being violent to me unless you want me hitting back.”

“Oh, please do. I was going easy on you, but I’d love a chance to let loose. These are registered lethal weapons, you know.” She held her fists up menacingly.

“Uh, you know, I’m over it,” Vik said uneasily. “I’m glad we had this chance to talk out our differences and reconcile.”

She dropped her hands, disappointed.

Tom turned away from them. He didn’t care what Lyla had to say—he thought he’d done the right thing. He hoisted Snowden’s body over the side of the raft to lure the sharks closer. As the first shark fin cut through the water by his raft, Tom whooped in glee and plunged his spear into its rough body, tearing the spear out before the shark could dart away and unbalance him. The next shark got the same treatment, then the next.

It was extremely cathartic, and Lyla snatched the spear from him so she could gore the next one, an animalistic growl coming from her lips that Tom was delirious enough to find painfully alluring. Vik even rallied his strength to kill a shark of his own. The water was saturated with blood, appealing to the shark instinct, overwhelming the trainee human instincts, so one after another, they grew excited and went into a frenzy by the raft, bringing them in reach of the spear.

Soon, they’d slaughtered all Yosef’s trainees. But the lure didn’t work on Yosef Saide himself. He was too self-disciplined. After his trainees were finished, Yosef became crafty. He began circling the raft at a distance, a dark shadow shimmering through the water. He dared not come within reach of their spear, and he didn’t need to: they were going to die in due course without any actions on his part.

“What now?” Lyla said. “We don’t have another instructor to murder. Maybe we should use you this time, Tom.”

The suggestion was snide, but it gave Tom an idea. “Actually, that’s a great idea.”

Vik raised his head blearily. His voice was so hoarse and faint, Tom barely recognized it. “This does not sound like a great idea.”

“No, it is. I’ll jump in the water, swim far enough from the raft that Yosef will know I can’t save myself by swimming back, and he’ll come for me. I’ll kill him.”

“Or he’ll kill you,” Lyla said hopefully.

“That is a possibility,” Tom admitted. “I’m going for it.”

He threw himself into the cold water with a resounding splash and began swimming, spear in hand, the ocean dragging at his legs, Yosef hanging at a distance. A few times the shadow shimmered its way toward him, the lethal fin cutting a path through the water, but Yosef always veered off. He was feinting, testing whether Tom would flee to safety.

And then Yosef must’ve realized Tom had reached the point of no return. This time, he committed. His fin sliced through the water toward Tom. For a moment as that black shadow mounted upon him, a creeping horror grew inside Tom, realizing this was going to hurt, realizing what he’d done, what he’d invited upon himself. . . . Even if he got a spear thrust in, he was probably about to get chomped by a shark.

But then a crazed sort of euphoria swept over him, and Tom whooped in glee and thrust his spear forward as Yosef’s razor-sharp teeth flashed right in his face—

And then his eyes snapped open in the training room. For a moment, Tom felt a profound relief, realizing his death had been painless. Then Snowden leaned over him, and Tom realized he’d been unplugged.

“We need to have a chat.”

Tom sat bolt upright. “You unplugged me.”

“I don’t appreciate being killed by my own troops,” Snowden informed him. “George Washington’s troops didn’t stab him to death. That’s why we’re not speaking British. . . . I mean, we are speaking British,” he amended, “but not with a British accent.”

Tom kept staring at him. Snowden had unplugged him at the most critical moment of the sim. He couldn’t believe it. He’d been seconds from winning!

“Maybe someone should talk to you about the chain of command,” Snowden decided. “Who was your old sim group leader?”

That’s how Tom ended up waiting on his cot for Elliot Ramirez to come. He looked inward at the chronometer, his neural processor swiftly calculating the ratio between simulation time and real time. In the hours from Snowden’s time of death to the time of his confrontation with Yosef, less than thirty seconds had passed, real time.

His head throbbed. It hadn’t felt like thirty seconds at all. He rubbed at his temples. He couldn’t believe all those days at sea had happened in mere hours.

“You get a time dilation hangover the first few extended sims.” Walton’s voice drifted over from a nearby cot. “You’ll get used to it.”

“I can’t believe he pulled me out,” Tom complained. What would happen to Vik and Lyla in the simulation now? He’d had the spear, and he’d been taken out of the sim. They had no weapon.

Walton sidled over to him and turned to keep his side to Tom while he spoke, like he was trying to fool a casual observer into thinking they weren’t talking. “So, Raines, you killed Snowden, I hear?”

Tom eyed him, wondering if he’d react like Lyla. “Yeah, I kind of did.”

Walton nodded crisply. “This pleases me.”

“Sorry you got eaten by sharks, man. If it makes you feel better, I was so dehydrated, I actually thought you had gnome minions.”

Walton stared at him intensely until Tom’s smile faded away. Then the other boy leaned forward and propped his elbows on the cot. “Tom, I don’t really have gnome minions.”

He said it so seriously that Tom grew confused. “Uh, yeah, I figured that.”

Walton eyed him dubiously, like he doubted it. “It would be better if you kept quiet about what I said in the sim while my judgment was impaired. I’d hate for people to get the wrong idea and think I really do have gnome minions.”

Tom grew bewildered. “Gotta tell you, Walt, I really don’t think that’s gonna happen.”

“Yes, but rumors can take on a life of their own, and even a completely false rumor about gnome minions I don’t have might give people the idea there are gnome minions I do have.”

“No one’s ever, ever gonna believe you have gnome minions!” Tom exclaimed.

Walton nodded grimly. “Let’s make sure of it. Discretion”—he held up a single finger and let the word hang there in the air a moment, then finished—“is the better part of valor.” And with that, he left Tom alone on his cot.

Tom grew very certain that Walton was trying to mess with his head—and doing a very good job of it, with that straight face and stoic bearing that gave away nothing. He sat there, perplexed and pondering gnome minions, until Elliot Ramirez appeared in the doorway to the training room and beckoned him over with a crook of his finger.

Tom sighed.

E
LLIOT SIGHED.

Tom sat in the chair in Elliot’s bunk, ready for a dressing-down by the unofficial leader of Camelot Company—and the person Snowden had enlisted to explain to Tom the importance of respecting those of higher rank.

“Snowden’s a little insecure,” Elliot said, surprising Tom. He turned from where he’d been gazing out the window. “He’s not a natural fit for a position of authority, and I think he knows it.”

“Wait. You’re siding with me?” Tom was startled. And pleased.

“I am saying, I don’t blame you, and I’m trying to give you advice about avoiding a repeat of your dispute in the future.” Elliot folded his arms, leaning against the wall. “Can you acknowledge that what you did was unwise?”

“I almost won the scenario,” Tom protested, thinking of the message Vik had net-sent him a few minutes ago when Yosef finally won the sim. “Yosef only managed to rip open the life raft and kill Vik and Lyla because Snowden yanked me out.”

“You weren’t about to win, Tom. Do you know what it’s called when soldiers kill their leader? It’s called ‘mutiny.’”

“But Snowden was a burden on us. He was the most expendable.”

Elliot shrugged. “You’re in a hierarchical, top-down organization right now. Do you really think the people at the top will approve a victory you won by killing someone who outranks you?”

Tom remembered something Lyla had said, about how he should’ve thrown himself in instead. “So what if Snowden had beaten me to death to use as chum?”

“That’s a different matter.” He must’ve picked up on Tom’s irritation, because he went on, “That’s simply the way it works around here.”

“But we’re
not
training to run into the line of fire at someone’s command,” Tom argued. “We’re training for Intrasolar Combat. We don’t risk our lives, and we don’t get orders to direct us while we fight—we have to plan for ourselves. I thought initiative was a good thing.”

“Mutiny is never considered a good thing, Tom. It’s considered
too much
initiative. A threatening degree of initiative. You have to respect authority.”

“I respect authority,” Tom insisted, and he did.

General Marsh, for example. Yeah, he knew General Marsh would leave him in the dust in a second if he decided Tom wasn’t useful to him, but Tom owed him a lot for giving him a chance in the program and at Capitol Summit, so he respected the guy. . . . Also, there was his father. Neil wasn’t all that authoritative, but he was sort of looking out for him. He respected that, even if he didn’t trust his dad to make the right decisions or use good judgment ever—his dad at least loved him and wanted the best for him. Oh, and there was Olivia Ossare, who would definitely have his back, but he also didn’t fool himself. She was doing her job. Still, she’d saved him from the census device, so he owed her a huge debt, and he wouldn’t forget that.

Those were three authority figures he basically respected right there. More or less.

Even Elliot, he could kind of respect sometimes. He knew now that Elliot was an okay guy who meant well, at least. So he tried to listen as Elliot urged, “You need to change your approach and learn to
show
respect, whether or not you feel it. Every aspect of your life from here on out will work this way. People in charge want the sense that other people are subordinate to them. Let’s take your Coalition meet and greets Friday. You’re going to be interacting with potential sponsors, men and women who are above you in a hierarchy. You’re going to have to show respect, whether or not you really feel it; and if you can’t, you’ll be in trouble. If you can’t even manage to show respect for Snowden, how are you going to handle Friday?”

“I’ll handle Friday,” Tom assured him.

And he would. Somehow. He was sure of it.

After all, he had to. Those executives were his only shot at being a Combatant, his only shot at sponsorship for CamCo. He couldn’t screw it up—he couldn’t afford to.

CHAPTER FIVE

T
HE NEXT MORNING
meal formation, Tom was far too pleased to learn that Vik and his new roommate, Giuseppe, weren’t getting along.

“There is something seriously wrong with that kid. All he talks about are the hotels he’s stayed in,” Vik whispered hastily to Tom as they stood by their chairs at the Alexander male Middle table, waiting for their cue to snap to attention. “Plus, he collects antique boot buckles. He showed me a bunch of them. He made me look at them, and he talked about each one at length. . . . Do you know what’s so great about antique boot buckles?”

“What?” Tom said as they all snapped to attention.

“Nothing, Tom.” Vik shook his head vigorously. “Nothing is great about them.”

Tom’s laugh split the dead hush as trainees marched in with the flag, so he muffled it quickly with a fake cough, then tried to appear neutral and stoic again as everyone darted glances his way, wondering who had penetrated the solemnity of morning meal formation.

Evidently, Vik’s dislike of his new roommate was a mutual thing, because as Tom was stashing his tray on the conveyer belt, he overhead Giuseppe Nichols ranting to Jennifer Nguyen, “. . . and he actually programmed a giant statue of himself into our bunk template. Who does that?”

Consequently, Giuseppe didn’t sit with them in Programming. The trainees from all levels gathered twice a week in the Lafayette Room so Lieutenant Blackburn could teach them how to write code for their own processors; the reason the class was so tedious was they had to use their human brains for it. The neural processor couldn’t do the work for them. There was a law against self-programming computers.

Because human brains were needed, Tom knew he was hopeless at programming and didn’t really bother much with the class. He’d never been that great in school. So instead of concentrating, Tom kept searching for excuses not to focus on his work. He found his attention on Yuri, slumped over the bench in front of them, pretending to zone out like he was still scrambled. Wyatt had removed the program that used to hide classified information from Yuri, including all the names of his friends, but Yuri had to pretend to zone out whenever certain things were mentioned or whenever he was in Programming.

While fake zoning out, Yuri still heard Blackburn’s lectures. Apparently he’d been learning from them, too, since he startled Tom by nudging him and net-sending:
You made an error in your code
. One of his blue eyes peeked at Tom.

“How do you know?” Tom whispered, careful to turn his head toward Vik so no one would realize he was addressing Yuri. “You don’t even see what I’m writing.”

Yuri typed again:
I can discern what you are writing from the movement of your fingers. Look at line ten.

Tom indulged him and scrolled back up the program.

Oh. Oh, okay. Yeah. He’d mistyped a segment of the code.

I will show you the correct code,
Yuri wrote, then crooked a finger at him. Tom sneaked a glance up toward Blackburn at the front of the room, and casually flopped his arm over his thigh to hang in Yuri’s direction, giving Yuri access to the keyboard. Yuri leaned toward him and his fingers began dancing over the keyboard now between their bodies and the back of the bench in front of theirs. He typed from memory, modifying Tom’s code.

Sure enough, when Tom tried compiling it, it worked perfectly.

Tom was tempted to be frustrated that Yuri was already way better than him at the Zorten II programming language and that was from being able to hear, not see, Blackburn’s lectures for a couple months . . . but he was too intrigued by the possibilities. Yuri could potentially be an awesome cheat.

Tom was careful not to look at him.
“Thanks, man,”
he said softly.
“Can you tell me what to write next?”

Yuri wrote,
Thomas, I will not do all your programming for you, or you will not learn
.

“What are you talking about, ‘or I will not learn’?” Tom murmured, head turned in the other direction like he was talking to Vik. “I won’t learn anyway. I suck at this stuff. And, hey, this way, you can actually get your work critiqued. You and me, Yuri, we can have a mutually beneficial arrangement. How about it, buddy?”

Yuri seemed pleased with that, and he happily started doing Tom’s programming for him. Tom was extremely satisfied with this for a half hour or so. But then something alarming happened—Blackburn assigned them another algorithm and strolled down the aisle, straight toward them.

“Get up, Raines.” Blackburn gestured for him to move. “I need access to Sysevich’s processor.”

Tom felt a jerk of alarm. Yuri now had his eyes screwed shut. Had they been too obvious?

“Why?”

“What did we talk about yesterday,
trainee
?” Blackburn put emphasis on the last word.

“Sir, why, sir?” Tom said more respectfully. He didn’t like this. At the lethal look Blackburn sent him, Tom realized he’d been given an order. He didn’t move, aghast at the very idea Blackburn was going to do something to Yuri’s processor and perhaps figure out Yuri wasn’t scrambled. He looked at Vik; and Vik’s lips were a thin line, his eyes dark hollows.

Tom sprang to his feet and nearly tripped over Vik, trying to get past him into the aisle. There, he hovered, sweat prickling his palms, as Blackburn settled next to Yuri and seized the back of his neck, then shoved his hand down so he could hook a neural wire into his access port. He stuck the other end of the wire into a small, portable screen.

Vik had stopped typing. His hands were balled into fists.

Tom remembered vividly how unhappy Vik had been when he’d learned Tom and Wyatt had unscrambled Yuri. It was treason. Vik hadn’t even wanted to know about it.

Relax,
Tom net-sent him.
Wyatt had to have thought of this, right?

Vik drew a deep breath that lifted his shoulders, and seemed to hold it.

Tom searched Blackburn’s face for any reactions. “What are you looking at? Sir?”

“Not that it’s your business, Mr. Raines,” Blackburn said, gaze trained on the screen flashing text at a rate too fast for anyone without a neural processor to follow, “but Trainee Sysevich has a particular filtering program installed in his processor. Whenever he leaves the Pentagonal Spire, his processor switches to an alert mode. It logs any attempts that are made to tamper with his software. I would’ve run this scan as soon as he got back”—his eyes flashed to Tom’s—“if some trainee hadn’t been an idiot over break and created a cleanup job for me.”

Tom felt a surge of hope. They’d tampered with Yuri’s software well
before
vacation, while he was
at
the Spire, so Blackburn shouldn’t pick up anything.

And indeed, he didn’t. Blackburn tapped his forearm keyboard to shut off the scanning, then reached out to grab Yuri by the shoulder and pull him upright. “Carry on,” he ordered them, and headed back to the front

Tom slumped into his seat, soaked with sweat. He gave a relieved laugh when he was sure Blackburn was out of earshot and elbowed Vik. “Hey, man, it’s okay. We’re good.”

“Yeah, we’re good.” Vik slouched down in his seat. “
This
time.”

T
OM’S SKULL BEGAN
to throb during lunch, but it had less to do with Blackburn’s scan of Yuri and more to do with Walton Covner’s attempt to mess with his head. Tom was halfway through his cheeseburger when Walton strode past him, trailing a group of tiny gnomes. Tom gaped at him. Walton caught his eye and pressed a finger to his lips.

“No way,” Tom said flatly, shaking his head. “No, no, no. I was dying of dehydration, Walton, and that is the only reason I believed for a second that you had gnome minions. I’m never gonna buy it when I’m feeling fine!”

Walton gave him a decisive nod. “Keep that up, Raines. The more people hear it, the more they’ll believe it.” Then he continued onward.

Tom settled next to Wyatt and put his head on the table. She struck him several times, jolting his vision, and it wasn’t until Tom sat up, rubbing the back of his head, that he realized she’d been trying to pat his head comfortingly.

“Is everything okay?” she asked him.

He explained the gnome minion situation. She tapped a few buttons on his keyboard to give herself remote access to his processor, then she ran a flash scan. The words flickered before his eyes all the rest of lunch, and the results finally came when they were all gathered for Intermediate Tactics in MacArthur Hall, the planetarium on the fifteenth floor. Tom saw the scan complete, and straightened up from where he’d been gazing at the massive screen that curved overhead and the roof that could retract to reveal the sky.

“Yes, you’ve got a virus.” Wyatt tapped on her forearm keyboard as she examined the results. “The program’s called Gnomes. Looks like it tampers with your vision center.”

“Walton Covner,” Tom grumbled.

“He must’ve slipped it into your homework feed.”

“Can you block it out? I don’t wanna see gnomes all day.” He could see them even now, right across the room, hanging out near Walton.

“I’ll patch your firewall tonight. You have to endure the gnomes in the meantime.”

The tiny gnomes were obviously on to the fact that Tom was trying to get rid of them, because they began shaking their fists at him. Tom almost returned the gesture, then he caught himself and shoved his hands in his pockets instead. No. He refused to exchange angry fist shakes with nonexistent gnomes.

Tom surveyed the crowd as Wyatt studied the program’s code again. Middle Company had the most trainees. It was a bottleneck, because it was unlikely to be breezed through in six months, the way many could change through plebe company, but it was also too late for most trainees to get a phased removal of the processor and wash out altogether. That fact was a comfort to Tom. After the initial six months or so, their brains grew more and more dependent on the processor to carry out vital functions. Tom figured that, whatever happened, his brain’s growing dependence at least ensured he’d never get threatened with removal of his processor again . . . well, not unless someone outright planned to kill him.

The chatter died as Major Cromwell strode into the room. She reached the podium and leaned against it. “One of the weaknesses of this training program is the lack of experienced veterans,” she said in her hoarse voice. “You are the first generation with successfully implanted neural processors. The first generation to become Intrasolar Combatants. So we rely upon our current, active Combatants to assist with your training far more than we should. This is simply something we
have
to do because soldiers like me do not have the direct experience you require. One of these training exercises you need the Combatants for is the fly-along experience.”

She typed something out on her podium keyboard, and immediately, an interactive illustration of the solar system popped up. Tom could see that it was split into the same zones Combatants sometimes referenced when they were discussing battles. The zones were partitioned according to their distance from the center of the solar system. The space between the sun and Mercury was labeled the Infernal Zone. The section from Mercury to the outer edge of the asteroid belt was marked the Prime. From Jupiter to Saturn was the Fallow, the closest orbit of Neptune through the Kuiper Belt was the Reaches, and a stray bit of text labeled the entire rest of the universe
BEYOND SECTOR
. The words acknowledged the unlikelihood that human beings would ever move beyond the confines of the solar system, and therefore, the rest of the universe’s utter irrelevance to the war.

Tom felt a twinge, thinking of the constraint everyone had simply accepted, but then the image faded, a list of names appearing over it, some new Middles, some veteran Middles.

“To begin the fly-along experience, you’ll work with the Combatants on some exercises in mental discipline,” Cromwell said. “The names up here will be today’s cohort to report to the Butler Room. The second group will stay for the lecture, and report downstairs on Thursday.”

Tom sat up straighter, seeing his name on there. Wyatt’s was, as well. Vik slumped a bit in his seat, realizing he was stuck hearing the lecture.

“Right now, those of you on this list will report to the Smedley D. Butler Conference Room on the twelfth floor. You’ll come back for the lecture on Thursday. Dismissed.”

T
OM AND THE
rest of his group met the CamCos in the large briefing room. There was a large oil painting of General Butler, who’d foiled a fascist coup against President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, and a long table covered with decagonal devices. The Middles sat down, and Elliot Ramirez strolled in. He grinned broadly, and then Heather Akron trailed in behind him and cleared her throat.

The other CamCos striding inside sent her chilly looks, but Elliot dipped his head and gestured for her to take the lead.

The beautiful brunette perched at the head of the table. “Some of you are new to Middle Company, so I’ll explain the basics of what we’re doing here.” Heather’s amber eyes glittered. There was a certain brittle gaiety to her smile. “These decagons are group internet relay chat nodes. They let you hook in and communicate with each other using a thought interface. That’s what we’re going to practice today.”

Thought interface?
Tom grew alarmed.

“Why is Heather in charge?” Wyatt murmured. “I’m surprised they’re letting her, after . . .” She trailed off.

Tom didn’t press her on the subject. Heather had caught his eye and winked, so Tom nodded back, knowing she’d probably wear that same dazzling, so-happy-to-see-you look on her face while she slipped him poison if she had to. . . . Still, there was something about her that got to him sometimes. He followed the sway of her body as she strolled around the table and picked up a decagon.

“You may or may not know this, but there’s a function in your neural processors called net-send that allows you to send messages to each other, either by typing or using a thought interface. The net-send thought-interface function isn’t suitable for battle, though, because net-send directly captures the stray thoughts in your head. . . .”