Mr. Prestwick eyed the newcomer with what Tom would swear was distaste. “I was going to show Tom to a few of our people. I think our behavioral modifications have really made a difference.”

“I’ll say!” Karl laughed and snapped his big fingers in Tom’s face. Tom jumped, but nothing leaped to his lips. “Got nothing clever to say right now, do you, White Fang?”

Exasperation stole into Mr. Prestwick’s voice. “Karl, please.”

“Yeah, sorry.” Karl grinned viciously at Mr. Prestwick. “I just wanna say, whatever you’re sticking in him, I like it.”

“We’re trying to cultivate a suitable public persona for the Combatants we sponsor. Dignified, respectful, polite.” Mr. Prestwick spoke this pointedly, but from the oblivious smirk on Karl’s face, the large boy didn’t seem to realize Mr. Prestwick was speaking of him, too. “Tom seems to be responding very well to the reprogramming.”

Reprogramming. They’d been reprogramming him. The vague, murky wrongness of the last several days began to take form in his head, began to make sense. Tom suddenly understood just what was happening, yet he couldn’t seem to translate the thought into action. He found himself staring at the portcullis, the steel bars that could be jammed into the ground like a cage. He could get up and walk out, close that behind him. Then they couldn’t catch him. He needed to use his arms and legs and do it. And his brain needed to agree to let him do it. He could escape, and tell someone....

His brain halted him with a thought, utterly foreign: That wouldn’t be a good idea. Mr. Prestwick’s generously given me his time and attention. Why would I leave?

And Tom couldn’t escape. Couldn’t budge. Mr. Prestwick smiled at him and he smiled back. But the two impulses—escape and compliance—warred in his brain. He still hadn’t managed to tear his thoughts from the conflict by the time the waiter came by, so Mr. Prestwick put in an order for him. Salmon.

Karl jabbed his thumb at Tom. “He’s got a huge problem with authority. That’s why he didn’t order something the way you told him to.”

Mr. Prestwick brushed him off. “It will be fine, Karl. We have this under control.”

After lunch, Mr. Prestwick took Tom around the room and introduced him over and over as “our newest acquisition” to various executives with Dominion Agra and its partner companies. And Tom shook the hands, and spoke when spoken to, because he couldn’t seem to ignore the urge to conduct himself in a way that would do credit to those who had taken the time to invest in him.

One man Tom recognized as Yuri’s visitor in the Spire. Mr. Prestwick halted Tom with a hand to the shoulder and whispered hastily in his ear, “That man is Joseph Vengerov. He’s the founder and majority shareholder of Obsidian Corp. That makes him a very important person. Show him your utmost respect.”

If Tom could’ve, he would’ve done everything he could to disrespect Vengerov, simply to spite Dal—Mr. Prestwick. But instead he stayed silent as the light-haired man with pale eyebrows looked him over, then remarked in an accent that sounded like upper-crust British mixed with something else, “And how is this project coming?”

“Very well,” Mr. Prestwick assured him. “The software’s taking well. It’s everything you said it would be. I think we’ll be sending much more business your way in the near future. I’m sure we’ll find other trainees who’ll suit us.”

“As long as you do your research. What of this one? You’re certain you thoroughly combed his background before the install? I told you, there will be a marked personality change, and I’d rather avoid a public lawsuit.”

Mr. Prestwick shrugged negligently. “Karl assures me that Raines’s contact with most of the officers is so limited, it’s nonexistent. No one will notice. As for that fellow who works on their software there—”

“James Blackburn, yes.”

“Outright adversarial.”

Vengerov shook his head. “Blackburn was never my concern. He’s quite easy to neutralize, if you push the right buttons, and the boy’s programmed to do exactly that, if necessary. What I want to know about is the family situation. I know about the mother, naturally. What about the father? Will he make trouble for us over this?”

Mr. Prestwick laughed. “It’s what, mid-afternoon on the West Coast? His old man’s still lying in a pool of last night’s vomit somewhere. Isn’t that right, son?” He clapped Tom’s back.

Tom looked at him. A mental image of gouging out Mr. Prestwick’s eyes passed through his brain, then the repressive voice in his head: Mr. Prestwick is my friend. Mr. Prestwick is always right. Public displays of temper don’t become me.

Mr. Prestwick’s hand squeezed on his shoulder. “Isn’t it right?”

Agree with Mr. Prestwick.

Tom choked back the words that wanted to come up. Never. He would never say them.

“Well before, he was—” Mr. Prestwick began.

Vengerov held up a finger, eyes like a hawk’s on Tom. “This is a critical test of the software. Make him agree with you.”

Mr. Prestwick turned back to Tom, grabbed his shoulder again. “Isn’t it right, Tom?”

Tom’s teeth ground together so hard his jaw ached. Vengerov and Mr. Prestwick both watched him closely, and that voice in his head commanded, Agree with Mr. Prestwick. He felt like something was squeezing his skull, crushing it.

“Isn’t it right?” Mr. Prestwick said, voice hard.

AGREE WITH MR. PRESTWICK.

“Yes, he probably is,” Tom said. Then he felt a sudden, insane relief like a vise had stopped squeezing his head.

Vengerov nodded crisply, then shook Mr. Prestwick’s hand. “My people will call yours with the bill.”

“Always a pleasure to do business with you.”

Soon after that, Tom was sent back to the private neural interface for his next packet of software. He passed right by the portcullis, mere feet away, and couldn’t seem to tear his gaze from it as he headed to the private neural access room. Then he hooked himself in to receive more and more programming in his brain.

THE NEXT FEW times Tom met Medusa, he did it in free hours using a VR parlor in the Pentagon City Mall. He couldn’t bring himself to sneak into Blackburn’s office or the officers’ lounge again, because for some reason, there was this voice in the back of his head warning him, Don’t draw attention to yourself. Don’t attract Blackburn’s attention. Don’t break rules.

It was foreign, and sometimes made him feel a bit ill whenever he heard it, but he couldn’t seem to ignore it without that feeling like his head was about to be crushed. And as soon as he thought about something else, he couldn’t even remember the voice was there.

So he didn’t hook in. He just logged in from a VR parlor and faced her in regular video games, missing the full fighting experience. But he stopped caring as they fought in one sim after another. She always beat him. It was always close, too—there was one move she made that he didn’t, one moment she was faster than he was.

Medusa wasn’t a big talker, and Tom liked fighting more than talking, so they didn’t get much use out of the computerized voices the first couple of times. But then they began using voice chat, and the taunts started. Tom never won the games, so he started rubbing his small victories in her face. (“Aw, look at that! You thought you were going to shoot me. But hey, at least you killed that frightened villager, instead.”) She started rubbing her large victories in his face. (“Oh no, where did your head go? Maybe it got tired of not being used?”) Sometimes they lingered after the battles, talking about what had happened. (“If I’d just ducked, I’d have had you. I had a dragonslayer ax.” “No, because I was waiting for you to duck, and I had a dagger ready.”) Then sometimes, the talk strayed to the real-life battles Medusa fought.