At one point, when Tom started rambling about Medusa’s victory on Titan, Medusa asked Tom whether he was stalking her.

“I am,” Tom admitted. He even owned up to watching her battles 394 times.

Strangely enough, his honest admission that he was unhealthily obsessed with her made her like him more, and let her own guard down. She started speaking in her real voice, so he started responding in his real voice.

And Medusa? Yeah. She was definitely a girl.

“What time is it there?” he asked her one Saturday morning, just so he could hear her speak again.

“Five in the morning, obviously.”

Tom knew that was a stupid question. They knew each other’s time zones. He didn’t care. “When do you sleep?”

“When I’m not stomping you and your country.”

Tom laughed. He was suddenly certain she was the most awesome person he’d ever encountered. “I had a six-year winning streak until I met you.” He adjusted the microphone so she could hear him over the background buzz in the public VR parlor. His avatar was a muscular blue ogre with a samurai sword that doubled as a phase gun.

Medusa’s avatar was an Egyptian goddess with retracted, batlike wings and eyes that shot fire. “I had an eight-year winning streak when I met you. And I still have an eight-year winning streak!”

Their characters were idling in the exploratory phase of their RPG. She’d been pestering him to make up a call sign, since his avatar’s name, Murgatroid, wasn’t doing it for her. Neither was the nickname he suggested, “the Troid.”

“I’ve got one,” Tom told her. “Merlin.”

Medusa didn’t like that. Her Egyptian queen turned into a large bat that flapped across the room, like she was going to leave. Tom’s ogre leaped up to block the window and stop her escape. She transmitted a sound wave of loud booing and shot some fire from her eyes.

Tom’s ogre threw up his beefy arms to shield his face. “What’s wrong with Merlin?”

“Too Camelot Company. You said you’re not in Camelot Company.”

“What, you want me to come up with a name that’s anti-Camelot? That’s treasonous, isn’t it? It’s betraying my country to be anti-Camelot.”

The bat fluttered around his head. “Isn’t this treason right now? You’re meeting with the enemy.”

“It’s not like I’m giving you confidential info. And besides, we’re both meeting with the enemy here.”

“Well, look, it’s not that bad. It’s not like we’re going to go fight in real life tomorrow.”

“Why don’t you tell me what my fake call sign should be, then? It’s not like it counts for anything.”

Medusa transmitted the booing again. “You have to come up with your own call sign.”

“I’ve got a great one. Lord JOOSTMEISTER,” Tom joked. “All in caps.”

Fire blasted from Medusa’s eyes. She didn’t like that one.

Tom leaned back in the chair to avoid the flames. “How about Sir Roostag the Mighty and Free?”

She considered that one a second. Then, booing.

“Okay, okay. Serious one. Exabelldon.”

Medusa zinged his ogre with the fire from her eyes. Tom’s ogre bellowed, and Tom laughed.

“Now you’re trying to make up the worst names imaginable,” Medusa said.

“Fine, fine.” Tom had been trying to do just that. “How about … Mordred? He destroyed the real Camelot.”

Applause answered him. Medusa poofed back into an Egyptian queen and stopped trying to fly out the window or zing him with flames.

“Fine,” Tom said. “Mordred it is.”

Her Egyptian queen fluttered her long black eyelashes. “Mordred is a sexy name.”

Tom’s cheeks grew hot, like there really was some girl in the room teasing him. “You think so?”

“I know so.”

Tom was still remembering that exchange, when he headed back to the Spire that night. She’d called him sexy. He felt like an idiot, standing there in the middle of the mess hall, grinning about something said by a girl whose name he didn’t even know. And then he found himself meeting Karl’s gaze across the crowded room, and the massive Genghis nodded his head toward the elevator.

Karl disappeared into it but held out his hand to keep it open. Tom followed without deciding to. A sense of doom crashed over him during those few, agonizing steps to the elevator. Even though he knew something was very wrong here, he couldn’t stop himself from going inside and then walking behind Karl to an empty bunk in Genghis Division.

“We’ve done this before,” Tom realized as the door slid shut behind them.

“We sure have. More than once. And this?” Karl waved a neural chip tauntingly. “Is your last personality update, Benji.”

“And then?”

“Then some of the software that’s already been installed gets triggered, and bam, you’re gone, Lassie. The little punk I know and hate is wiped. The best part is, I get to be the one to do it. I owe Dalton for this big-time.”

Tom stood there in the middle of the bunk, watching Karl set up a video camera, and felt like he was going to be sick. He wished suddenly that Vik or Wyatt or Yuri were nearby—anyone to stop this. He’d even take Blackburn.

Karl flipped the camera on, trained it on Tom, and then settled back in a chair. “Any last words, Fido?”

Tom’s blood pulsed up in his ears. “Drop dead, Karl.”

“That’s not very nice. Kind of hurts my feelings, Raines. How about you make it up to me? I know. You can get on all fours like a good little dog, and bark.”

Tom closed his eyes. Listen to Karl and get your update warred with Disembowel him. Disembowel him now. The vise around his head was back because Karl was telling him something and he was trying his hardest not to listen.

“Drop. Dead. Karl,” Tom choked out, fighting everything inside him trying to force him down.

“No, get on your hands and knees, and bark. Do it, Raines. Do it right now so I can film it.” Karl leered at him over the camera, his jowled face shadowed in lamplight. “You think I don’t get you? You wanna be the big man in charge here. You think you’re the alpha dog. But you’re not. I am. So you’re going to do this right now before I eradicate you.”

“I hate you.” Tom’s limbs trembled with the dual effort of trying to force himself back out the door while something else tried to force him down on all fours.

“I hate you, too,” Karl said. “Now hands. Knees. Bark. Consider it an order.”

Something about that sequence of words did it, and then Tom was on the ground, barking, while Karl’s laughter filled the air around him. By the time the wire clicked into his brain stem, that second voice in his head had already fallen silent from the sheer horror of it all.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“WHAT IS WITH you?”

“What do you mean?” Tom said to Vik. He was gazing into his new mirror in his bunk, very intent on gelling his hair before morning meal formation. It was long enough now that he could do something with it. Mr. Prestwick had given him a credit card and instructions to go clean up, starting with a two-hundred-dollar bottle of hair styling cream so he wouldn’t look like a street rat anymore.