No. No. He couldn’t go back to that. Loser Tom moving casino to casino with nothing ahead of him, nothing behind him, nothing, nothing …

But if he stayed, and Blackburn kept culling his brain …

He’d go insane. He couldn’t take more of this. He’d go insane and he’d give away Yuri and Wyatt.

Hot frustration roared up inside him. Tom curled a hand into a fist and slammed it into the floor. The world sharpened into focus around him. He slammed it again and again. Then Olivia caught his wrist.

“Tom, stop that. You’ll hurt yourself.”

He didn’t care. The pain was distant in his awareness, fury swamping everything. Short of punching Blackburn’s face over and over, it was the only thing that made him feel better. He tried twisting out of her grip, but he was too worn out to keep it up for long.

“I am not contacting my father,” Tom said. “I need an option C.”

“There is no option C, Tom. I need your father on our side if I’m going to get you out of this.”

Tom’s gaze drifted up to the census device, burned out, looming in calm menace over the chair and arm straps. “It’s option C or nothing.”

THE NEXT MORNING, Blackburn sent soldiers in to strap Tom into the chair, a fully repaired census device looming overhead. Tom tugged at the arm straps, surveying the metal claw morosely. His head remained foggy from his fitful sleep. He watched Blackburn glide into the room, a bandaged arm clutched to his side. The sight flooded him with venomous glee.

“Does your arm hurt?” he asked Blackburn as he prepared the device.

“Not a bit,” Blackburn answered.

As Blackburn shifted, Tom swung his boot toward the bandaged arm. Blackburn hissed and flinched back just in time.

Tom smiled at him maliciously, taking a horrible, dark pleasure from it. “It hurts.”

“Not like this will.” Blackburn flipped on the census device, the most stinging retort of all. The bright beams of light bore into Tom’s temples, digging, digging into his brain, his memories, flipping open one, discarding, flipping open another, discarding all like pieces of trash, searching for Vengerov.

Neil … his mother … Karl … his mother … Dalton … his mother … He was a few minutes into it this time before a loud clang shut the machine off.

It took Tom’s fuzzy brain a moment to focus on General Marsh’s voice.

“What exactly do you think you’re doing, Lieutenant?”

Tom jerked in his seat, elation sending his brain soaring. He saw Marsh and Blackburn facing off, the screen between them. “I’m investigating the leak, General. As you ordered.”

“I didn’t say you could strap Raines into the census device. Get him out of that chair. Now!”

Blackburn didn’t move. “No, sir.”

“Excuse me?”

“He stays.”

“This is an order!”

“And I’m disregarding it, sir.”

Marsh swore, and charged over toward Tom. His leathery face was twisted in fury, and Tom sagged back, so relieved he felt like he could hug the old general.

Blackburn trailed behind him with a slow, deliberate stride. “Before you release him, there’s one thing I’d like to make clear, sir.”

“What?” Marsh whirled on him, his knobby fists clenched at his sides.

“If you take him out of that chair,” Blackburn said, “I leave. I walk away.”

Marsh was silent a long moment. “Are you threatening me?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing, sir. I won’t just walk out, though. I will rig up this entire place with a good-bye present that all of Obsidian Corp. won’t be able to fix.”

Tom couldn’t believe Blackburn, a lieutenant, was just standing there threatening a general. That wasn’t how it worked. Hatred and anticipation surged through him. Marsh was going to make him so sorry for it!

“James, you wouldn’t do that,” Marsh said, a note of pleading in his voice. “I know this leak has to hurt your pride, but this is taking it too far.”

“Try me,” Blackburn replied simply.

Tom stared disbelievingly at Marsh’s back. Why wasn’t he ordering some soldiers in to arrest Blackburn? Or doing something even remotely general-like to a lieutenant who dared to talk to him like that?

And then Blackburn actually stepped out of the room and left them alone, like he was so confident in his threat he didn’t have to bother staying to enforce it.

“General!” Tom said, desperate. “Please, General, come on …”

Marsh heaved a great sigh and turned around. “I’m afraid what you just saw, Tom, was my hands being tied.”

Tom stared at him in naked disbelief. Marsh walked out of the room, leaving Tom there, strapped to the chair. Minutes dragged by as Tom stared into the emptiness of the room, feeling numb and alone.

He heard Blackburn’s slow, deliberate footsteps and closed his eyes, because he couldn’t stand to see him. Blackburn didn’t flip the census device back on right away. First he unstrapped one of Tom’s arms and gave him water, but Tom’s arm shook too hard to hold it. So Blackburn strapped it down and held the glass for him.

A wild thought occurred to Tom. The longer he was drinking water, the longer he’d have before the culling started again. So he asked for more, and then more. Even when his stomach felt like it was going to burst, he pleaded for more.

“Enough. You’ll make yourself sick,” Blackburn said finally, refusing to give him another glass.

That did it. Make yourself sick … It was suddenly the most hilarious thing he’d ever heard. Tom started laughing. The wild, hysterical laughter rocked his whole body. He laughed until his stomach hurt, until tears streamed from his eyes, until he actually was sick, and even after that he couldn’t stop laughing until the beams were back on and boring into his head.

Blackburn stood there watching him, rubbing his palm over his mouth over and over, and ripping Tom’s mind apart.

TOM FOUND HIMSELF locked in a small cell that looked onto the census device. He stood in the middle of the room, overstimulated by the humming electric light overhead, by the bright bite of its rays, by the pounding in his head, images swimming like ghosts in his vision. He resorted to the only thing that seemed to unify his brain again—his fist crashing against the wall over and over again, until the pain exploding in his knuckles mounted in his awareness and the blood smeared on the walls connected him with his vision center again.

Then someone slipped through the door, and a gentle but firm hand clasped his wrist. Olivia Ossare gripped his arm and urged him to sit down on the bed, offering him a glass of water. Tom gulped it greedily, only half aware of Olivia inspecting the damage to his bloody knuckles. He felt so strange, so strange, like he was about to explode out of his skin.

He wasn’t aware of slumping back against the granite wall, but he drifted to himself when he felt her fingers threading in his hair again. Tom pressed his eyes closed even tighter, because even if he didn’t quite understand why her touch was so soothing, he had this strong suspicion opening his eyes would make it stop.

“I think,” Tom confessed when he could finally speak, feeling flat and empty, “I’m up for option B.” He couldn’t take much more of this. “Please find my father. Please get me out of here.”