Tom laughed. He couldn’t help it, because no guy would pick these two characters. “I knew you were a girl in real life. I knew it.”

She didn’t take the bait. “How did you slip a message into my neural processor?” she demanded, prowling toward him.

“Net-send function. Your neural processor’s got it, too, or you wouldn’t have received it. It’s kind of cool. You can type something out or even think it out and it’ll get sent along. Typing’s way easier, though.” He’d tried the thought interface to send a message to Vik, but a bunch of stray, unrelated things that passed through his mind completely garbled the message. He dared not risk that with Medusa.

She considered that. “So you directly accessed that program in my neural processor. That doesn’t answer my other question. How did you get past our firewall?”

“Maybe I’m just that awesome,” Tom suggested.

“That’s no answer.”

“I’d die before telling you.” He hoped the words would get her in a fighting mood.

They did. “Oh, you’ll die,” Medusa agreed. “Again.”

Tom gave an exultant laugh, bared his character’s pikestaff, and charged. Siegfried was powerful enough to leap clear over the flames in the fire pit. He hurtled down toward the blond woman. As soon as his pikestaff met her sword, both weapons blazed into twin columns of flame.

Tom reared back a step and lifted his pike to admire it. “Fire weapons. Awesome.”

“I use this site a lot. I programmed the add-on.”

“It’s great.”

“Thanks.” Medusa slashed at his throat.

It was the reverse of their other fight: he was stronger, she was more agile. He managed to swat her sword right out of her hand, but the power behind his blow unbalanced him—and she hiked herself up on his shoulder and used him to vault clear across the fire pit.

“Nice, Medusa.” Then Tom kicked the basin toward her, upending the burning sparks.

To his delight, the flames caught on a tapestry, and Medusa seized it and hurled it at him as he closed in again. The pain stole his breath, and it was followed by a dagger thrust to the ribs. He caught her before she could escape and twisted at her neck, trying to snap it. He saw her hands scrabbling on the castle’s table, beneath the burning wall, and then close upon a candleholder. Tom tried to wrench her neck again, and she slammed the candlestick between his legs.

The pain was terrible. Tom doubled over, gagging. He felt it like it was really happening. He suddenly wondered if hooking in to face her was a mistake.

Medusa danced out of arm’s reach as he collapsed to his knees.

His voice came out choked. “You … are … a girl.”

Her sword flashed in the firelight. He could hear her cackling laughter.

“You have to be. No guy would resort to that!” Tom added.

“Never denied it.” Medusa was haloed by flames climbing up the wall behind her. They were beginning to sting his throat. He heaved in frantic breaths and tried to reach for his pikestaff—but she kicked it out of reach, and her sword pressed against his throat.

“Why did you really message me?” Medusa asked him, eyeing him over the blade.

“For this.”

“Just so I could kill you again?”

Tom gave her a slow smile. “No, so I could kill you.” He kicked her legs out from under her, pinned down her sword arm, and was halted by a dagger to his throat.

“The next time you have a death wish, don’t hack my processor,” Medusa told him. “Someone might track you.”

“I’d risk it,” he pledged.

“I wouldn’t. I’ll send you a URL for a gaming message board. It’s safer that way. I’ll keep an eye on it, so if you post something there, I’ll be happy to come kill you.”

Tom imagined the post. “Deranged one seeks fearsome warrior?”

“Try, ‘Hideous beast,’” she finished for him.

Tom regarded her over the point of her dagger, wishing he could see her real face, wishing he could tell if she was really going to follow through on this. “You sure you’ll check?”

“I’ll check,” she assured him. Then she slashed his throat.

TOM OPENED HIS eyes in Blackburn’s office, blown away. She’d agreed to meet him again. She’d actually agreed. He rubbed at his throat, where the skin stung with the memory of that sword slash.

He became aware of a blinking in his neural processor, and his blood froze.

He’d set the alarm to track Blackburn’s GPS signal in the Spire, and to go off if Blackburn returned to the eleventh floor. He’d been too immersed in the fight to notice it. His heart jolted in his throat, because Blackburn was stepping out of the elevator now, and Tom didn’t have time to flee down the hallway.

He hurled himself under the desk just as the door slid open.

“… and you’ll want to try any new programs on a simulated neural processor first.” Blackburn’s heavy footsteps moved into the room, followed by Wyatt’s lighter ones, and the doors slid shut behind them. Tom felt sweat break out on his forehead. He pressed back as far as he could under the desk, his heart hammering. This was not good. Not good at all.

Blackburn circled around so Tom could see his boots less than two feet away. The desk rumbled as a drawer was yanked open. If Blackburn stepped back just a bit, or leaned over to root through another drawer, he’d see Tom.

He heard Blackburn shuffling through the drawer. And then he must’ve found what he was looking for, because the desk rumbled as the drawer slid shut again.

“Here, work with this one, Enslow. Initiate a program just like you would normally. It’ll give you all the information you need about how the person’s processor and physiology would be reacting to your coding. It’s a safe way to experiment so you don’t have to use other trainees as guinea pigs. Oh, and here’s something else that might help.”

There was a loud smack on the desk that made Tom jump. He looked upward, wondering what it was.

“A cognitive science textbook?” Wyatt’s voice rang out.

“Yes, yes, I know it’s a bother having to read the pages one by one—”

“I don’t mind that.”

“No, you don’t, do you?” There was an appreciative note in his voice. “Well, the military sees no need to offer this in your upload feed, however much I’ve tried to convince them people with computers in their brains should learn something about those brains, not just the computers. Some of the research in here is outdated, so I crossed those sections out. But read it. This book got me started. It’s a clear, understandable primer. If you want to learn to program the way I do, you have to start by learning the human brain.”

Blackburn settled into his chair, his knees at level with Tom’s head. Tom flattened himself against the back of the desk and scrunched his legs up to his chest to avoid Blackburn’s boots kicking him. The air was split by the crackling sound of old textbook pages being turned.

“‘The dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia,’” Wyatt read. She was quiet a second, then said defensively, “It flipped right to this page. I didn’t mean to open it to that.”