“I almost won the scenario,” Tom protested, thinking of the message Vik had net-sent him a few minutes ago when Yosef finally won the sim. “Yosef only managed to rip open the life raft and kill Vik and Lyla because Snowden yanked me out.”

“You weren’t about to win, Tom. Do you know what it’s called when soldiers kill their leader? It’s called ‘mutiny.’”

“But Snowden was a burden on us. He was the most expendable.”

Elliot shrugged. “You’re in a hierarchical, top-down organization right now. Do you really think the people at the top will approve a victory you won by killing someone who outranks you?”

Tom remembered something Lyla had said, about how he should’ve thrown himself in instead. “So what if Snowden had beaten me to death to use as chum?”

“That’s a different matter.” He must’ve picked up on Tom’s irritation, because he went on, “That’s simply the way it works around here.”

“But we’re not training to run into the line of fire at someone’s command,” Tom argued. “We’re training for Intrasolar Combat. We don’t risk our lives, and we don’t get orders to direct us while we fight—we have to plan for ourselves. I thought initiative was a good thing.”

“Mutiny is never considered a good thing, Tom. It’s considered too much initiative. A threatening degree of initiative. You have to respect authority.”

“I respect authority,” Tom insisted, and he did.

General Marsh, for example. Yeah, he knew General Marsh would leave him in the dust in a second if he decided Tom wasn’t useful to him, but Tom owed him a lot for giving him a chance in the program and at Capitol Summit, so he respected the guy. . . . Also, there was his father. Neil wasn’t all that authoritative, but he was sort of looking out for him. He respected that, even if he didn’t trust his dad to make the right decisions or use good judgment ever—his dad at least loved him and wanted the best for him. Oh, and there was Olivia Ossare, who would definitely have his back, but he also didn’t fool himself. She was doing her job. Still, she’d saved him from the census device, so he owed her a huge debt, and he wouldn’t forget that.

Those were three authority figures he basically respected right there. More or less.

Even Elliot, he could kind of respect sometimes. He knew now that Elliot was an okay guy who meant well, at least. So he tried to listen as Elliot urged, “You need to change your approach and learn to show respect, whether or not you feel it. Every aspect of your life from here on out will work this way. People in charge want the sense that other people are subordinate to them. Let’s take your Coalition meet and greets Friday. You’re going to be interacting with potential sponsors, men and women who are above you in a hierarchy. You’re going to have to show respect, whether or not you really feel it; and if you can’t, you’ll be in trouble. If you can’t even manage to show respect for Snowden, how are you going to handle Friday?”

“I’ll handle Friday,” Tom assured him.

And he would. Somehow. He was sure of it.

After all, he had to. Those executives were his only shot at being a Combatant, his only shot at sponsorship for CamCo. He couldn’t screw it up—he couldn’t afford to.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE NEXT MORNING meal formation, Tom was far too pleased to learn that Vik and his new roommate, Giuseppe, weren’t getting along.

“There is something seriously wrong with that kid. All he talks about are the hotels he’s stayed in,” Vik whispered hastily to Tom as they stood by their chairs at the Alexander male Middle table, waiting for their cue to snap to attention. “Plus, he collects antique boot buckles. He showed me a bunch of them. He made me look at them, and he talked about each one at length. . . . Do you know what’s so great about antique boot buckles?”

“What?” Tom said as they all snapped to attention.

“Nothing, Tom.” Vik shook his head vigorously. “Nothing is great about them.”

Tom’s laugh split the dead hush as trainees marched in with the flag, so he muffled it quickly with a fake cough, then tried to appear neutral and stoic again as everyone darted glances his way, wondering who had penetrated the solemnity of morning meal formation.

Evidently, Vik’s dislike of his new roommate was a mutual thing, because as Tom was stashing his tray on the conveyer belt, he overhead Giuseppe Nichols ranting to Jennifer Nguyen, “. . . and he actually programmed a giant statue of himself into our bunk template. Who does that?”

Consequently, Giuseppe didn’t sit with them in Programming. The trainees from all levels gathered twice a week in the Lafayette Room so Lieutenant Blackburn could teach them how to write code for their own processors; the reason the class was so tedious was they had to use their human brains for it. The neural processor couldn’t do the work for them. There was a law against self-programming computers.

Because human brains were needed, Tom knew he was hopeless at programming and didn’t really bother much with the class. He’d never been that great in school. So instead of concentrating, Tom kept searching for excuses not to focus on his work. He found his attention on Yuri, slumped over the bench in front of them, pretending to zone out like he was still scrambled. Wyatt had removed the program that used to hide classified information from Yuri, including all the names of his friends, but Yuri had to pretend to zone out whenever certain things were mentioned or whenever he was in Programming.

While fake zoning out, Yuri still heard Blackburn’s lectures. Apparently he’d been learning from them, too, since he startled Tom by nudging him and net-sending: You made an error in your code. One of his blue eyes peeked at Tom.

“How do you know?” Tom whispered, careful to turn his head toward Vik so no one would realize he was addressing Yuri. “You don’t even see what I’m writing.”

Yuri typed again: I can discern what you are writing from the movement of your fingers. Look at line ten.

Tom indulged him and scrolled back up the program.

Oh. Oh, okay. Yeah. He’d mistyped a segment of the code.

I will show you the correct code, Yuri wrote, then crooked a finger at him. Tom sneaked a glance up toward Blackburn at the front of the room, and casually flopped his arm over his thigh to hang in Yuri’s direction, giving Yuri access to the keyboard. Yuri leaned toward him and his fingers began dancing over the keyboard now between their bodies and the back of the bench in front of theirs. He typed from memory, modifying Tom’s code.

Sure enough, when Tom tried compiling it, it worked perfectly.

Tom was tempted to be frustrated that Yuri was already way better than him at the Zorten II programming language and that was from being able to hear, not see, Blackburn’s lectures for a couple months . . . but he was too intrigued by the possibilities. Yuri could potentially be an awesome cheat.

Tom was careful not to look at him. “Thanks, man,” he said softly. “Can you tell me what to write next?”

Yuri wrote, Thomas, I will not do all your programming for you, or you will not learn.

“What are you talking about, ‘or I will not learn’?” Tom murmured, head turned in the other direction like he was talking to Vik. “I won’t learn anyway. I suck at this stuff. And, hey, this way, you can actually get your work critiqued. You and me, Yuri, we can have a mutually beneficial arrangement. How about it, buddy?”