Blackburn’s body tensed.

“I know all about Roanoke.” Tom leaned against the wall behind him. He watched Blackburn’s face, cold calculation like ice in his veins. “And don’t get me wrong, it’s not because Wyatt told me. She never looked at your personnel file. Actually, the only mistake she ever made, sir, was having some sort of trust in you. Good thing you took care of that quickly enough.” He let that sink in, eyes on Blackburn’s inscrutable face, then added, “No, I heard about it because of Joseph Vengerov.”

Blackburn glanced sharply behind him, back toward the rotunda where Vengerov had just been, almost as though he expected him to be sneaking up behind him.

Tom smiled. “Yeah, my old pal Joe. I hung out with him once in the Beringer Club. And you know what? That’s it. See, there’s no human experiment going on here, no conspiracy. I was never hiding anything about that from you. I only met Vengerov that once. But you know what? I think I could start a conspiracy with Joe now that you’ve got the idea in my head. Maybe Joe and I would have a lot to say to each other. After all, I figure what you’d hate, more than anything else in the world, would be if Joe got richer and more powerful—and he’d definitely do that if he got his hands on an ‘ability’ like mine. You’ve gotta admit, it would be so easy for me to just walk back into the Rotunda and tell him all about it.”

Blackburn took a menacing step toward him, and Tom just kept leaning on the wall, refusing to be intimidated. “That would be the most profoundly stupid thing you could ever do, Raines. You’d live to regret it.”

“That’s funny,” Tom said in a hard voice, “because I think I’d take my chances with Joe before I’d get my brain ripped apart by you. And knowing just how much you’d hate it? That just makes it all the better.”

“You little fool,” Blackburn hissed. “You think I couldn’t just hack into your brain and stop you?”

Tom shrugged. “But then you’d miss the other secret. The one I was keeping from you. Here it is: I’m not the only one who can do this.”

Blackburn reared back a step like he’d just stumbled upon some venomous snake. “There are others,” he breathed.

“That’s right. The trigger’s there, and I don’t have to be the one to pull it. Any one of us could go to Joe and hand over what we can do to Obsidian and make him CEO of the year. You can stop me, sure, but you can’t stop all of us. You know what I think this means, sir? I think it means you never, ever mess with me again.”

Blackburn considered him for a long, tense moment, obviously trying to gauge whether Tom’d go through with it. He must’ve seen something he didn’t like on Tom’s face, because he lifted his hands and took a step back. “Fine. We’re done. I’ll leave you be.”

Tom felt like he was on fire. That was all he wanted. That, and to rip Blackburn’s head off—but he didn’t think he was going to get that.

“What are you waiting for?” Blackburn snapped. “Shoo, Raines. Get of my sight.”

Tom shook his head. “No, see, that’s not how it works. I won this one. We both know it. That means you get out of my sight. Sir.”

Blackburn raised his eyebrows at that. And then his expression shifted, the faint twist of his lips seeming to say touché. Without another word, he turned and disappeared down the corridor—and the surrender in the sound of his retreating footsteps made dark triumph flood Tom’s chest.

Sometimes things just worked out.

TOM SPOKE WITH Olivia Ossare as soon as he returned to the Spire. She advised him to wait until the next meeting of the Defense Committee to back down on the lawsuit. Finally, the word came: the Defense Committee had seen the evidence from Nigel’s memories, and they officially assigned the blame for the leak to him. Any further investigation of Tom was prohibited.

Olivia squeezed Tom’s hand when she heard. “We won.”

“You saved my life here,” Tom told her.

“Protecting you kids is my job. I’m glad I finally had a chance to do it.”

Clearing his name proved the easy part. Getting his dad to back down was another matter.

Neil didn’t know the specifics, just that Tom faced some threat at the Pentagonal Spire, and that was enough to enrage him. Weeks passed and he wouldn’t abandon the custody suit. Tom had to meet with him in VR just to talk him down, and Neil insisted on seeing “my boy the way he looks,” and not “some fancy avatar.”

Tom had expected his father to choose a casino or maybe the Las Vegas strip as the setting for their conversation, but when he hooked into VR, he found Neil on top of Mount Everest, gazing down at the vast snowy mountaintops around him.

His dad looked older than he remembered, smaller somehow, in the whitewash of the scenery. He turned around when he heard Tom’s footsteps crunch their way over. He gazed at him. “My God, is that what you look like now?”

“Scanned myself in today.” Tom glanced down at himself, self-conscious. “Just a growth spurt.”

“Your face. Look at that.” Neil closed the distance. “Your skin …”

The knots in Tom’s chest loosened, because this was his father. He didn’t need to worry about this. He could reason with him. “Regular showers, Dad. They help. You get the money I put down for you at the Dusty Squanto?”

“Just tell me the person you ripped off deserved it,” Neil said wryly.

“Trust me, he did.”

The eyes of Neil’s avatar narrowed. He studied Tom very closely. “Smile, Tom.”

“Smile?” Tom echoed.

“Yes. Smile.”

Confused, Tom smiled.

“Raise your eyebrows,” Neil said, eyes still narrowed.

And Tom knew exactly why Neil was asking him to do this: just like when he’d seen that interview with Elliot on the TV, he must’ve noticed something wrong about Tom’s face, about the way he was moving, the neural processor regulating his expressions. The last thing his dad needed to know about was the computer in Tom’s brain.

“Dad,” Tom lied, “this is an avatar. If I look different, it’s because this is a projected image. This isn’t what my face actually looks like.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. Megapixels distort things. The science is really technical and I doubt you want me to go into it.” Tom didn’t know the science, but he nodded like he did.

Neil rubbed at his chin.

“You’ve always hated VR stuff, anyway,” Tom said.

“The real world’s an ugly place, Tom. But I’m not gonna hide from it. Your grandfather was that way—paid more attention to some World of Warcraft than he did to us. Now, are you sure, are you absolutely sure …” He made a vague gesture, but Tom knew what he was asking. It was about the lawsuit.

“Yeah, I’m sure you should drop the lawsuit. I had this situation, but it cleared up. I’m staying at the Spire, after all.”

Neil dropped his voice and inched closer, as though that made any difference in VR if someone was eavesdropping on them. “Tom, you’re sure? If the military’s giving you a problem, I’ll figure something out.”