“So? What does that have to do with—”

“It means someone covered his tracks, Raines. He covered them thoroughly, and he did it within minutes of that assault on the system. There are only three people in the world capable of hiding their digital fingerprints so readily. One is my counterpart at the Sun Tzu Citadel—external to the Spire. One is Joseph Vengerov—again, external to the Spire. The third is me.”

“Maybe it was you,” Tom flung at him, keeping a careful eye on Yuri, too. “Maybe you have another personality you don’t know about. I mean, you were schizo—” His voice cut off when Blackburn abruptly seized him and hauled him around.

“Or maybe someone didn’t cover his tracks. Maybe he never left them. Maybe it was even a friend of yours who can move through a firewall undetected, purely by some quirk of his or her neural processor. If that was the case, it could be someone who entered our system and controlled those drones without leaving a shred of evidence. Just as he’s been tampering with my system without leaving evidence.” His eyes gleamed. “Is that who you’ve been contacting, Raines? Is it a ghost in the machine, someone from the Citadel who can penetrate my firewalls at will?”

No. Medusa wouldn’t do something like this. Not the breaches, not the sabotage of the drones. “I don’t think so.”

“I could get fired over this,” Blackburn said softly. “Obsidian Corp. is already leaping on the chance to lobby the Defense Committee for my removal. You’d be glad to see the last of me.”

“Yeah,” Tom said honestly. He really would be. “But that doesn’t mean I’m lying about this. I think you’re looking at the wrong suspect.” Then, giving into a spiteful impulse, he added, “Again.”

Blackburn released him, but flattened a palm against the wall right in Tom’s path when he tried to ease by him. “You tell your friend something for me. Ghost in the machine or no, I can and I will retaliate against the person behind this.” With that ominous statement, he lifted his arm and finally allowed Tom to slip past him down the stairwell.

Tom walked down and kept walking until he heard a door swish open and closed. When he was sure Blackburn was gone, he halted in place, and waited for the telltale thump of boot steps as Yuri made his way down to him.

He’d heard every word. Every single word.

Tom dragged his gaze up to his friend. He didn’t know how to explain this to Yuri. There were so many things he’d kept from his friends. Might as well find out how much damage control he had to do first. “Uh . . . you heard that, man?”

Yuri stopped a flight above him. “Heard what, Thomas?”

“What we were saying. Me. Blackburn. Just now.”

His brow furrowed. “I looked down to see if you were okay, but I was not hearing your words.”

“But you were . . .” Tom faltered.

He’d thought Yuri was listening. Yuri had been keeping pace with them, following them down the stairwell. He seemed like he was listening. He had to have heard—he’d been close enough, hadn’t he?

Tom shoved his hands into his pockets. “Um, good. Because there was nothing worth hearing. Nothing important.” Then he launched into an elaborate story about Blackburn being mad at him for messing around in Calisthenics. Since Vik could corroborate, it seemed the safest bet.

Still.

It was odd Yuri hadn’t heard, but at least it saved Tom the trouble of thinking up an explanation, and at the end of the day, that’s what mattered most.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

AS WINTER BREAK approached, Tom and Vik grew very sad, because it was unlikely they’d end up in the same Applied Scrimmages group in January. They’d had a great time ever since Tom and Snowden achieved a certain peace by keeping their distance from each other. Snowden mostly stayed out of the sims; and when he did make his appearances, it was well away from Tom. In that way, they grew to tolerate each other, and Vik and Tom were free to wreak havoc.

And wreak havoc they had.

They’d served in Attila the Hun’s army and massacred Mason’s group, playing the Romans. They were the Romans and massacred Cadence’s group, playing the Carthaginians. They’d fought Ralph’s group in the Persian Gulf, and they were lions who tore apart Emefa’s hyenas. They’d been space aliens and destroyed Britt Schmeiser’s old Soviet army, and played peasants battling a Mongol invasion led by Karl Marsters. Tom had died because of parachute failure; by drowning; gunfire; and various stabbing, burning, and biting wounds. He’d been ritually sacrificed by Heather and her Incan warriors, and he’d gotten beheaded by Yosef and his fellow samurai. He’d racked up the highest kill-to-death ratio of all the Middles, and he’d even killed Karl three times, which Tom maintained grew more fun each time he did it.

If he hadn’t systematically alienated every single Coalition CEO, he would’ve stood a chance of getting promoted. As it was, Wyatt was the only one of them moving up the ranks, finishing Middle Company in six months.

Their last hurrah under Snowden found them in the old Western Wyatt Earp vendetta ride scenario. Wyatt Enslow herself was in the enemy group, on the opposite side as the historical figure who shared her name, playing an outlaw called a Cowboy. Ironically, Vik was the one playing Wyatt, as in Wyatt Earp, the old Western lawman. Tom was the gunfighter Doc Holliday, and since he and Vik were working together to hunt down Elliot’s cowboys one by one, the inevitable moment came when they faced her at the O.K. Corral.

Wyatt avoided the petty gunfights and headed to a saloon and rigged up a bunch of Molotov cocktails. Her firebombs against members of Tom and Vik’s posse had destroyed the scenario’s promise of so many wonderful gun duels. She’d killed most of their group, too, and shown everyone that she wasn’t getting promoted only because of her programming skills. Her dislike of fighting had paradoxically turned her into a lethal killing machine.

Tom and Vik were wary about an open confrontation. The guns were wildly inaccurate, and the bullets were primitive. They had to strike once, and strike carefully.

Luckily, Wyatt had one weakness: Giuseppe was on her side.

He was lounging right in the open on a chair in front of the saloon, boots idly kicked up on the railing of the porch. Wyatt clutched her pistol and peeped out every few seconds from behind a shattered window, while Giuseppe discussed how much his boots chafed. Tom had tied himself underneath a wagon for the slow, rattling sneak attack, and he could glimpse them from where he was hanging. He tugged out the knot holding him to the bottom of the wagon, trusting his arm strength to keep him up until it was time to drop down and pull off his ambush.

“I’m getting a terrible blister on my heel,” Giuseppe said. “Why did someone have to program real blisters into the simulation? It seems petty to me. I want to write a complaint to someone. I don’t think I should have to put up with—”

Wyatt grew tired of it. She raised her pistol and shot him in the back of the head.

Tom couldn’t help it. He busted up laughing so hard, his grip loosened and he dropped prematurely from under the wagon, his gun knocked out of his holster. He rolled out quickly to dodge the wheels about to run over him and the shots Wyatt fired his way.

“That was AWESOME!” he yelled over his shoulder as he escaped her.