Tom didn’t point out that they had the same physical builds in this sim that they did in real life, so it wasn’t like he had an advantage here. “No, I like sims because I can actually kill you here.”

Karl gave an ugly grin. And then he vanished.

Tom frowned. Wait. He couldn’t possibly be wimping out. . . .

And then his eyes snapped open in the training room as Karl’s fist slammed into his real, nonsimulated stomach, doubling him over on the cot and driving the breath from him, shooting acid up through his torso.

“Let’s see how real life compares,” Karl snarled, his fist slamming Tom’s ribs over and over as Tom struggled to draw breath. Karl seized his collar and hurled him off the cot, tumbling him to the floor, his head slamming the base of a nearby cot, stars dancing before his eyes—along with some text.

Error: Connection lost. Download paused. 98% complete.

Huh? Air burst into his lungs in a great gush, and Tom’s brain was torn between the urgent focus on Karl and the other part of him that registered that text, which was not supposed to be there. What was . . . what the . . .

Karl ducked to get him, and in a split second, Tom’s neural processor presented the best move: drive his palm up into Karl’s nose, knocking the cartilage back into his brain.

No, he couldn’t do that. He’d kill him.

Instead, he slammed his foot into Karl’s face, then lanced up and snared his arms around Karl’s neck, pivoting all his weight to unbalance him, knock him down. Tom drove a knee into his neck, pinning him there, and raised a fist to slam into Karl’s face, but he’d been stupid to count on his weight keeping Karl down—Karl hooked his hands under Tom’s legs, and lifted him straight into the air, then threw him with a frightening strength. Tom landed in a heap at the foot of Emefa’s cot, then yanked himself upright as Karl advanced again. He backed up, trying to think of some advantage here, then dodged Karl’s next swing and shoved him while he was unbalanced, looping his leg around Karl’s, sending Karl stumbling against his empty cot. Unthinkingly, Tom seized his stray neural wire and whipped it around Karl’s throat. He tightened it, pressing his back against Karl’s so his full weight would hang from it as Karl tried to buck him off.

And then he realized he was doing it again: about to kill the guy—here, in real life, where he’d go to prison for it—and why couldn’t he think of anything nonlethal? His suddenly slack grip gave Karl the chance to snatch off the wire and seize him. Tom knew it was about to be over, so desperately he slammed his head forward into Karl’s as hard as he could and—

Ow. Owwwwww. Tom stumbled back, feeling like a mallet had whacked him between the eyes, his vision reeling. Across from him, Karl was stumbling, too, clutching his large, meaty fists over his nose, blood gushing between his fingers.

“You idiot! Why did you do that?” Karl cried.

“It works in video games,” Tom shot back. “Everything else I thought of was gonna kill you.”

Karl waved his arm. “That’s normal. You gotta relearn how to fight in real life after you get all the downloads about killing people. Beat up some kids, and it comes right back.”

Tom started laughing, half hysterical. “Yeah, great idea, except I don’t think it’ll work for me because I’m not a total psychopath who runs around beating up people! Well, other than you!”

For a moment, Tom and Karl glared at each other, cradling head and nose, respectively, and the drive to battle someone receded from Tom. It must’ve disappeared for Karl, too, because he cursed, shoved his sleeve against his nose, and left, muttering about the infirmary. Tom settled back down on his cot to clutch his aching head, and he remembered something. He took a moment to rewind his memory until he saw that message again, the message he’d only seen because Karl had ripped out his neural wire and woken him up early.

Error: Connection lost. Download paused. 98% complete.

What had been downloaded from his processor? He scanned through his logs, but whoever had done it had concealed whatever it was they were plundering from him. If he’d stayed in the simulation a bit longer, he wouldn’t have even realized it had happened.

AT MIDNIGHT, A number of the officers migrated to the fourteenth floor along with the trainees, to gaze through the large, windowed walls at the fireworks that began to splutter through the night to usher in the New Year. Lieutenant Blackburn was among them. Tom rubbed his hand over his sore head, certain he knew who’d been taking stuff from his processor.

Of course it was Blackburn. There was no one else who’d be intensely interested in his neural processor.

Had he done this more than once—plundered Tom’s brain during Applied Scrimmages before without his realizing it? He glared at Blackburn’s large back, but the lieutenant gazed out the window, talking to no one, not even the other soldiers.

Tom became aware of Heather’s fixed gaze. A bit perplexed by the intensity of her eyes, he tipped his can of soda to her.

Heather tipped her glass back to him from where she stood amid the crowd of CamCos, triumph radiating from every plane of her face, flickering with the bright lights.

Tom didn’t even think to wonder about it.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THERE WERE SEVERAL reasons most trainees weren’t enthused about the meet and greet at Obsidian Corp. during their first week back after the holiday. First and foremost, it was a waste of time, since Obsidian didn’t sponsor Combatants. Second, people hated visiting because Blackburn was absolutely paranoid about Joseph Vengerov taking advantage of the visit to mess with their processors. Whenever they returned from Obsidian Corp., they had to be isolated from the Pentagonal Spire’s systems and subjected to a five-hour deep scan to check for malware.

It was a great deal of trouble for everyone, and all for very little payoff, but they had to go. Vengerov’s tech waged the wars in space. His surveillance systems and automated weapons protected the other Coalition executives. The codes on his voting machines determined which politicians oversaw the war effort. Obsidian Corp. was too much of a giant in the world to be ignored, so if Joseph Vengerov wanted a visit, the trainees had to go.

The first week back at the Spire after everyone returned from break, Wyatt and the other new Uppers were hard to find.

Vik thoughtfully took advantage of Wyatt’s absence to invade her new bunk and modify her new bunk template. He copied the old one and expanded upon it, adding more photos. One was an outline of Connecticut with some very sad, black-and-white images of people superimposed over it—depressed adults and crying children who had just realized they lived in Connecticut.

“It’s not officially a Connecticut joke, since it’s a Connecticut poster,” he told Tom uncertainly, when Tom reminded him of Wyatt’s relentless android.

He also added a couple more pictures of himself: another shirtless picture and one black-and-white, artistic photo of himself posing philosophically by a window, cupping his chin, looking broodingly at the sky in a very un-Vik-like manner that amused Tom immensely.

The day of the winter meet and greets, Tom hung out for a bit in the weight room behind the Calisthenics Arena, spotting Yuri while he bench-pressed almost three times his own weight. All the other Middles were visiting companies that Tom had been banned from. His only appointment was late in the afternoon, a direct shot on the Interstice to Vengerov’s facilities in Antarctica. Yuri had not been permitted to attend this round of meetings.