“So just show him,” Vik said. “Whatever it is, buddy, it can’t be that bad.”

Wyatt and Yuri were looking at each other, though, realization on their faces.

“You don’t get it, Vik,” Tom said. Vik wasn’t clued in. He didn’t realize two of his friends were facing ten years in prison if Blackburn got that memory. “I have this under control. There’s a way I can get out of this: Marsh is having me face Medusa at the Capitol Summit. He wants me to proxy for Elliot. I beat her, he defends me to the Defense Committee. I lose, and I’m stuck either getting my brain fried or getting my neural processor removed.”

Stunned silence followed this.

“That’s a great deal,” Vik said.

“That’s an awful deal,” Wyatt said, at the same time.

“It’s great. He gets to fly at Capitol Summit! I can’t believe you’re a plebe and Marsh is letting you do that,” Vik said, sounding envious. And out of breath, too, due to the being-crushed-by-a-pile-of-bodies thing.

“It’s not great at all, Vik,” Wyatt said. “Tom can’t possibly beat Medusa. He doesn’t have enough training, and even if he did, no one with enough training has managed to beat her.”

She sounded so dubious about it that Tom’s pride prickled. “Hey, I pick up sims quickly. Everyone says so. And I’ve faced Medusa in other battle sims. I swear, I always come close.”

“Do it, then,” Vik said. “Stomp your online girlfriend. Stomp her good, Tom.”

Tom’s head slumped back. “I’ll need to be lucky. She’s better than me. She’s faster, smarter, all-around deadlier.”

“So cheat,” Vik said.

“Cheat?” Yuri cried. “He does not need to cheat! He can triumph over Medusa as an honorable warrior.”

Vik groaned and turned back to Tom, as though he’d decided Yuri was now an utterly hopeless case. “Doctor, you must cheat until you win. Winning is the noble thing to do.”

“Vik, if I knew how to cheat, I’d be on it in a second. I don’t even know what military scenario we’re going to be fighting.”

“I can program a virus for you,” Wyatt spoke up, sounding quite eager for the chance. “You can scramble her CPU midfight.”

“The summit’s in two days.”

Wyatt scoffed. “Have you ever met me? That’s more than enough time.”

“To-Timothy, you are ignoring the obvious solution,” Yuri said, his massive weight shifting, crushing Tom farther into the grass. “Why not ask Medusa to lose on purpose?”

Tom stared at him. “What?”

“Ask Medusa to lose on purpose,” Yuri repeated.

Tom stared at him. The concept seemed perfectly rational and yet, it simply made no sense to him. “Why would she ever agree to that?”

“Isn’t this obvious? She cares for you. If she knows you are to face a treason charge, she may consider losing. This is not a real battle. This is a show battle. No countries will be harmed by losing.”

“But I can’t do that,” Tom said, aghast.

“You’d rather scramble her CPU?” Vik pointed out. “Tom, I hate to say it, but you should probably listen to the Android here. Go for emotional blackmail.”

“But my virus!” Wyatt said.

“He can use a virus if it fails, okay?” Vik said. “You’re bloodthirsty with those things, aren’t you, Evil Wench?”

“At least I don’t have tiny, delicate hands.”

“What? What about my hands? Where is this coming from?”

Tom tuned out their argument. Emotional blackmail. On Medusa. He frowned up into the stormy black night.

It wouldn’t work. Medusa was a competitor. It didn’t matter if they’d become friends, or even kissed once. Even the thought of asking her to do it made him feel like a chump. She’d never go for it.

After all, he wouldn’t.

THAT NIGHT, TOM, Vik, and Yuri woke at 0200. They met Wyatt in the shadowed common room. She’d already disabled the Spire’s transmission tracking and surveillance program.

She waved for Tom to hook into one of the neural access ports in the wall. “You have ten minutes, Tom. I don’t think we should risk disabling the Spire’s firewall any longer than that.”

“It’ll be quick,” Tom assured her.

“Good luck, Doctor.” Vik handed Tom a neural wire.

“Thanks, Doctor. See you guys in a few minutes.” Tom hooked himself in.

Numbness and darkness enveloped him as he transitioned from real Tom to an internet avatar. He dropped a message onto the community message board, and the timing was perfect—mere minutes later, he received a private message confirmation from Medusa with a new URL.

Tom resolved into their private, password-protected program. He glanced around the ornate chamber she’d chosen for the simulation. The program informed him this was Hatfield Palace in Renaissance England. Medusa flared to life across from him as a slim redhead with dark eyes and a cool, superior smile, her floor-length dress twirling when she spun in a circle.

“Nice,” Tom said, looking her up and down. “Who are you supposed to be?”

“Princess Elizabeth Tudor.” She moved toward him. “We can joust or plot to overthrow Queen Mary. Or we could switch characters and fight the Irish, Scottish, and French … or fight as the Irish, Scottish, or French against the English. There’s even a battle with the Spanish Armada later. It’s a flexible program. With lots of beheadings.”

“Who am I?” He glanced down at his body. He had tight stockings on. He frowned and stretched his virtual legs experimentally. Stockings didn’t seem manly to him.

The information algorithm from the program informed him he was playing Robert Dudley, the man Queen Elizabeth I of England loved the entirety of her life. It was a good sign, he supposed. He’d noticed Medusa sometimes picked programs and scenarios pointedly.

Still, he felt twitchy and uneasy when Medusa sauntered up to him, dark eyes twinkling into his beneath her lion’s mane of red hair. “I thought the worst when you stopped showing up.”

Tom’s stomach churned. “The worst happened,” he admitted. “One of the officers at the Spire found out about me meeting with you.”

Her face froze. “Oh.”

“They think I’m the leak now.”

She turned away from him. “What’s going to happen to you?”

“Well, I’m either going to end up, um”—he fumbled for a way to explain the census device without revealing the truth, and settled for—“‘questioned’ about you until I lose my mind, or I’m going to be out of the Spire. Forever.”

“Maybe this was a bad idea.”

“Hey, it was my bad idea, okay?” And this was his moment. His moment to reveal that he’d be the one facing her in the Capitol, his moment to tell her she was the one who could save him by taking a fall for him.

So why couldn’t he talk?

All Tom could think about was how humiliating it would be when he begged her to lose for him. And how pathetic it would be when she laughed in his face, because who did that? People didn’t do stuff like that. Not in real life. He didn’t know what world Yuri lived in, but Tom’s insides clenched up at the very idea of begging Medusa to please help him when he knew she’d just think less of him. She’d think he was pathetic for needing help like this. Ask her to lose for him? He might as well ask her to donate some vital organs, too. She wouldn’t do it.