“Yes, what were you doing?” Wyatt demanded. “I was so sure you and Vik had some stupid bet over who could last outside longer, and it would be so like you to almost die trying to win, but Vik is denying it.”

“Yes, I’m denying it,” Vik erupted. “Because betting over that would be stupid and Tom and I are not that stupid. Well, I’m not.” When Tom didn’t laugh, Vik nudged him. “Joke.”

It took Tom a moment to reply. “I know.”

“Ah, I do not believe we should question him regarding this right now,” Yuri cut in.

For some reason, his voice set Tom on edge. His stomach ached. He didn’t want his friends here. He wanted them to leave.

“Tom, stop flipping Yuri off,” Vik said, holding Tom’s middle finger up at Yuri.

Tom’s gaze riveted to the finger Vik was holding, the prickling sensation registering in his mind like the finger was actually attached to him. He couldn’t breathe. They were all staring at the detached finger, and it gave him a sense like his skin was crawling.

“Give it back,” Tom said to Vik.

He felt like something was sparking inside him, fizzling, ready to explode. It wasn’t the detachable-finger thing bothering him, it was something else. Something he couldn’t pinpoint. Everything felt wrong here. He really, really wanted them to leave.

“So these are exactly like the old ones?” Wyatt asked him.

“No,” Tom said. “These are cybernetic, Wyatt. That’s fake skin. They detach and they’re okay. The old ones, well, they froze into blackened stumps, and when they detached, they didn’t work anymore. If you really wanna compare side by side, ask Dr. Gonzales for my real fingers.” He started laughing, then laughing harder and harder. It was hard to choke out the words, “I bet he’s got ’em in medical waste somewhere.”

He heard Vik mumble something about being loopy on pain medication programs. That confused Tom. Was he acting weird? Tom wasn’t sure. He figured the anesthesia program had worn off. He didn’t feel doped up anymore.

“Doctor,” Vik said, shaking the finger at him, “I see many, many glorious pranks in our near future. Think of all the ways we could pretend your fingers have come off, and—”

“Okay. Yeah.” Tom tried to muster a grin, but couldn’t. “Now seriously, give it back.”

“You sound puzzled.” Vik scratched Tom’s head with the detached finger.

Tom practically screamed it at him: “Give it back!”

There was silence for a moment, and Vik handed it over. Tom shoved the finger into the attachment point at his knuckle, feeling stupid.

Vik nodded at the other two, and Wyatt and Yuri withdrew from the room.

Then Vik drew closer. “Tom, I know you’re—”

“Yeah, I’m being a pansy. I know. It’s the med programs. They’re messing with my head.” It wasn’t the meds or exhaustion making him feel like this, like some giant, exposed nerve, but Tom couldn’t seem to control what he was feeling and it was embarrassing.

“Come on, Tom. I’m not . . .” Vik stopped and let out a breath. “Do you need the social worker?”

“She came by before you did.” Olivia had been sitting by his bed as he recovered from the anesthesia. She’d pressed him to talk. He pretended to sleep.

Vik rubbed his palm over his face. “I’ve got to tell you something. When you left the group at Obsidian Corp., I—”

But Tom’s attention riveted to a faint shuffling sound, somewhere in the distance, and he sat bolt upright. “Is Yuri still here?” he demanded, on edge. “What’s he up to?”

“Yuri?” Vik blinked a few times. “No, he and Wyatt went . . .” He stepped back to check and peered out the doorway, then said, “Hey, Yuri, man, I said I’d meet you in the mess hall.”

Yuri’s voice was gentle, mild. “Of course, Vikram.” He peeped in. “Good-bye, Thomas.”

Eavesdropping. Tom wasn’t sure why the word popped into his head, but he tried to force it away.

FOR THE NEXT few weeks after he was discharged from the infirmary, Tom felt like a walking black hole. Everything seemed to have changed, and he couldn’t place why. The worst was his friends. He felt this wave of sickness whenever the four of them were together, something like dread. It was like he was poised for something awful to happen, and he didn’t know what.

The other people at the Pentagonal Spire weren’t much better right now. They’d all heard what happened. A few sniggered at how stupid he’d been, blundering outside in Antarctica, but others were weird with him about it.

Like Walton Covner, who’d been promoted to Upper Company. Instead of messing with Tom’s head, or otherwise acting like the strangest person Tom had ever met, as they stood in the elevator together one day, Walton said, “I’m sorry about what happened in Antarctica. Are you all right?”

“I’m great,” Tom said vehemently.

Walton looked so awkward that Tom felt an evil little thrill. It occurred to him that this was a prime opportunity to mess with Walton’s head for once.

He leaned in close, dropping his voice. “Hey, Walt, thank them for me.”

“Thank who?”

“You know. Them.” Tom raised his eyebrows significantly. “Your gnome minions, man! They saved me. I was dying in the cold, and they came walking out on those tiny little feet and carried me with their tiny little hands all the way back into this tiny little cave they had. I thought you were messing with me before. I realize now—you truly do have gnome minions. Glorious, brave, miniony gnomes.” Tom was very careful to keep that fake innocent expression on his face, the one that used to serve him so well in VR parlors.

He must’ve pulled it off, because Walton settled with, “I think you might’ve hallucinated that.”

“Right.” Tom gave him a thumbs-up. “I know the official story. I ‘hallucinated.’” He made air quotes.

“No, Tom, I mean it. You really did hallucinate.”

“Yeah, yeah. I get it. Look: give this to them.” He unscrewed a finger. “Take it.”

Walton winced at the sight. “Ugh, Raines. I didn’t need to see you do that.”

“Take it.” Tom thrust the finger right in his face. “Give it to them. As payment.”

“I don’t think they’d want your finger.”

“But it’s a token of my esteem!”

“And you need to put that token of esteem back on your hand.”

Walton spent the rest of the elevator ride backing away from him while Tom persistently tried to shove the finger at him. Then he scuttled out quickly when the door slid open and Tom cackled gleefully for the first time in days. He looked down so he could screw the finger back on . . . and went very still, arrested by the sight of his hand, the way his finger ended in a stub where the joint had been.

His skin crawled.

Back in his bunk, Tom dropped onto his bed, and unscrewed cybernetic finger after finger until he was left with a stubby mess of a right hand. His hand. It looked so strange.

Freakish.

Tom stared at it with morbid fascination. Then he replaced the fingers and did the same thing with the other hand. It was even more disgusting, some of the fingers ending above the knuckle. By the time Tom shoved them back on, his whole body was shaking. He felt like he was going to throw up, a terrible sense of wrongness spreading through him, like he’d made some awful mistake he could never rectify.