“IT WASN’T ACTUALLY a bomb threat,” Tom was still arguing to his friends later as the Interstice swept them toward Sacramento, California. He rubbed at his wrists, sore from the handcuffs he’d been stuck wearing for the interrogation by Epicenter security. He was so sick of wearing handcuffs. “I said that it would be nice if someone who wasn’t me blew them up, but that’s all. No one would’ve thought twice about it if I weren’t technically a known terrorist.”

His friends gaped at him. They’d done it most of the ride.

“I should’ve agreed to be Walton’s twin brother,” Tom lamented, slouching back in his seat.

Vik sighed. “Tom, this is painful, physically and psychologically painful for me to say, but I think Wyatt was right.”

“Really?” Wyatt said, surprised.

“Just say nothing at Matchett-Reddy,” Vik urged him. “Not a word. And Evil Wench, no gloating. In fact, not a word from you.”

Wyatt smiled wickedly. “I was right, Vik was wrong. Ha-ha!”

Yuri kissed the top of her head.

Vik groaned. “That qualifies as gloating and saying a word.”

“Actually, it was gloating and saying six words,” Wyatt corrected him.

“And two ‘ha’s,’” Yuri agreed, gazing at her adoringly. Then he turned to Tom. “I am in agreement with them. You must endeavor not to speak this time, Thomas. Nod in greeting, but that is all. Then perhaps, you should conceal yourself somewhere where no one will be finding you. I will come and retrieve you from this hiding place before we are due to depart.”

“Got it,” Tom groused, slumping back in his seat. He couldn’t believe this had happened. In the course of mere hours, any shot he had at a future in the Intrasolar Forces had been whittled to the caprice of some executives at Matchett-Reddy.

This one was do or die.

The Interstice took them as far as the capitol building in Sacramento, California, and they were shuffled into helicopters and flown over a vast, sprawling wilderness. They landed on a rocky cliffside, and Tom stepped out with the others to behold a greeting party of high-level Matchett-Reddy executives and their sponsored Combatants, Lea Styron and Mason Meekins, both Hannibals.

Tom made sure to seal his lips and nod in a manly way as he shook hands. Then he clasped the hand of the last executive in the greeting line.

Tom’s heart stopped for a moment, he swore it.

Oh. Oh . . .

He realized it. Matchett-Reddy was doomed. It had been doomed since he’d stuck the police on a naked leecher in Las Vegas.

He met the familiar gaze of Hank Bloombury, and recognition sparked in the bald man’s face. “You!”

“Me,” Tom said.

“It’s you!” Bloombury said again.

“It’s him,” Vik said, unasked, from where he was standing at Tom’s side. Then, confused, “What’s happening?”

“Huh?” said Wyatt, on Vik’s other side.

“I know you,” Bloombury insisted. “You were the one who called the police on me last week! My lawyer subpoenaed a surveillance feed of it! You knew who I was”—his finger jabbed Tom’s chest—“but you told them I was a crazy, perverted, drug-dealing terrorist!”

Tom grew aware of Wyatt clapping her hand over her mouth, Vik’s incredulous face like he didn’t know whether to laugh or be horrified, and Yuri, gazing grimly. His mind raced over his options. He could play dumb, or he could apologize.

But all Tom could think about was that cop clubbing his father, about the way Hank almost got away with it, about the way he must’ve gotten away with stuff like that so many times before.

Tom wasn’t sorry. He wasn’t. And he wasn’t delusional, either—he knew he was done for. There was no coming back from this, so he decided to embrace the moment. He flashed a broad, apologetic grin.

“Good to see you again,” Tom said to him. “I didn’t recognize you at first, but then again, you’re not naked and shrieking like a frightened little girl today. So, make any new friends in jail?”

TOM DIDN’T BOTHER going into the mansion for the party. While the others shook hands and schmoozed, he trudged out through the trees and bypassed the stately house of the CEO of Matchett-Reddy, Sigurdur Vitol. Then he crested a ridge and gazed upon the view seen every day by those inside the mansion.

Tom’s breath caught. A massive valley stretched out below him. He stared and stared, gazing over the rolling green fields ringed by trees, cut through by sparkling rivers. The jagged, rocky mountains had silvery waterfalls streaking down them. The immensity of the place made Tom feel strange, like he’d slipped into a VR sim and hadn’t realized it. He gazed at one of the mountains that resembled a vertical wall and another that resembled a flattened half circle.

He kept staring and staring at the waterfalls, the trees, the mountains. He’d never seen something so magnificent, so beautiful. Surely a place like this couldn’t actually exist.

There was a rock jutting out like a platform. When Tom got his head on straight, he headed out onto it and stood there, feeling like he was astride the entire world, a breathtaking drop below. The sun was beginning to dip over the horizon, casting a golden haze over all the cliffs, when footsteps crunched up behind him, and Elliot’s voice drifted to his ears. “Yosemite Valley’s really something, isn’t it?”

Tom glanced back at him. So he’d fixed the mess at Nobridis and caught up with them. “I can’t believe this is what Sigurdur Vitol wakes up to every single morning.” He couldn’t get his head around that.

He remembered the only time he’d seen something near as amazing as this. He’d been little, and he and Neil were having trouble getting a ride; the only person they ran into worked as a miner for Nobridis. Neil made a rash decision to take advantage of their in and get free admission to the Grand Canyon.

Hours passed as the sun crept across the jagged rocks, the rivers so far below they were stringy blue lines. Even with all the Nobridis uranium mines and drilling platforms, Tom had never seen anywhere like it. Neil had been ranting about what he called “piratization,” but Tom remembered how even he fell silent when the sun began to set, setting the canyon awash with brilliant orange and red light.

But this place . . .

Tom tried to imagine what Neil would do if he could ever see this. His dad would . . . He’d . . .

And then with a flash of bitterness, Tom realized there was no point wondering. Neil would never get to see this. Some guy owned it and used it as his backyard. This was one more wonder of the planet shut off to people like his dad.

“Sigurdur doesn’t live up here.” Elliot was pointing below them. “See that mansion right there over Vernal Falls? It’s the lower waterfall of the paired ones.”

Tom saw the silvery waterfalls streaming down the cliff, one atop the other, a mansion straddling the second one.

“That’s actually Sigurdur Vitol’s house. Milton Manor. He has an entire floor of clear glass and you can see the waterfall rushing beneath it. Come here early in the year, and it’s mind-blowing. No one actually lives full-time up here on Glacier Point. This place is for corporate receptions.”

“This is wrong,” Tom said, half to himself. The wind whipped through his hair, a ferocious anger boiling up inside him. His dad would die and never even get a chance to see something Sigurdur Vitol probably took for granted. “This shouldn’t be some guy’s property. Everyone should be allowed to come see this.”