Tom let out a frustrated groan and thumped back against the wall, exasperated. “Yeah, well, it doesn’t matter now. It’s over. It’s the past. Look, forget it all, okay? It’s over and done and let’s say it didn’t happen. So don’t talk about that stuff you saw. Don’t tell anyone.” The words tumbled out of him, so fast they were almost incoherent. “Not any of it. Just keep it to yourself. It’s personal. Not even Vik. Don’t tell Vik. You haven’t told Vik, have you? Wyatt, you can’t tell Vik about that stuff. Don’t tell him—”

“I wouldn’t tell him anything,” she promised him.

Tom’s head throbbed. He rubbed his palm over his face, his feelings all mixed up. He wouldn’t have shared those memories or those scenes from the census device with anyone if he’d had a choice. Not even his friends. Especially not his friends. He liked the way things were. He liked the way they saw him. He didn’t want them to think he was some sort of a wimp or a loser or pathetic. Or stupid. He couldn’t stand that. He wondered what she thought about him now.

Wyatt gazed at him intently, her brow furrowed, biting her lip like she was contemplating some very difficult math problem. But what she did next caught him off guard. She leaned forward and awkwardly put her arms around him.

Tom sat very still, feeling how rigid and uncomfortable her body was against his, since the gesture was entirely out of her element. For several seconds, they sat there like that, and amusement broke through his mortification. He met her solemn gaze. “What’s this for?”

“I don’t know,” she said, keeping her arms around his neck. “It seemed like an appropriate moment. Is it okay?”

“Yeah. It’s good.” Tom sat there a moment, then leaned his head back against the wall, and felt her chin rest on his shoulder. It really was kind of nice. He spread his hands palms up, between them, and dared to ask her the hard question. “Do my hands look really nasty? Be honest.”

She peered at them. “No. They didn’t do a good job with the skin tone on the fingers, though. Those are made for someone who’s very pink. You’re not that pink, Tom. But they’re not hideous.”

“Thanks,” he said with a soft laugh. The one thing Wyatt could always be counted on for was honesty. There were worse things than having unusually pink, fake fingers and a bunch of exposed memories, he supposed. Like if his nose had fallen off. Or if he’d never found friends.

Or if he’d been through something like what happened to Medusa.

His breath caught in his chest, and he understood it. For the first time, really, he comprehended what he’d done to her at Capitol Summit. He felt like a freak because of mangled hands, cybernetic fingers. But every single day, she walked around with her scars all over her face, somewhere they could never be hidden, never concealed.

She was stronger than him. Without question. There was this crushing sensation in his gut. He got it now. And he knew he had to make it right. He knew where to start.

“Wyatt, can you look at something for me? I don’t understand the code, but you would. It’s a computer virus. I can’t tell you where I got it or who gave it to me, but I need to know what it can do.”

Wyatt was intrigued. “Ooh, yes. Send it over.”

“Thank you,” Tom told her, pulling back his sleeve to bare his forearm keyboard.

She caught his wrist, eyes wide. “Make sure it’s zipped and you’re not using it on me by accident.”

“Aw, come on, Wyatt . . .”

“Right. I know you’re not that stupid.”

And yet she cringed as he sent her a copy. When a terrible computer virus failed to unleash on her, she gave him a pat on the head like she was very impressed by him. Despite her lack of confidence in him, Tom felt a warm glow in his chest, and long after she left, he felt like life wasn’t so catastrophic after all.

DEPOSITING A MESSAGE in Medusa’s vision center was a huge risk. Tom knew it wouldn’t please her, and she might retaliate. He did it anyway.

And indeed, when she surprised him by fizzling into the middle of a simulation during Applied Scrimmages, Tom braced himself for terrible revenge.

“Are you insane or just stupid?” she demanded. “We had an agreement.” She stood there with her hands on her hips, right in the middle of the cloud of fluorine gas in the World War I simulation.

“Are you really calling me insane?” Tom’s voice was muffled by his gas mask. “You don’t even have a gas mask. Anyone can see you here.”

She shook her head and picked her way over a tangle of barbed wire, then plopped next to where he was crouched. “No. I didn’t enter your general simulation feed. I’m only in your visual feed, and I’m keeping an eye out in case anyone taps into it to see how you’re performing in the sim. We’re safe. You’ll be the only one who sees me. So I asked again: insane or stupid?”

“Neither. Hear me out. I actually had a legitimate reason to contact you this time. But . . . Wait one sec. Let me kill these guys.”

At the very beginning of the simulation, he’d made his way as close as he could to the enemy lines, and buried himself in the ground. His plan was to shoot the enemy group members one at a time as they moved. Now he readied himself to take down the first two trainees who ventured from their trench.

“I don’t understand why they’re training you to fight with a World War One simulation,” Medusa remarked, surveying their surroundings. “It’s not relevant to space combat.”

When a sufficiently loud explosion rumbled nearby, Tom shot the first of the two trainees. “That’s not why our military has us fight these.” He shot the second trainee as another explosion rumbled. “Only a fraction of us go on to be Intrasolar Combatants, right? They use these to figure out how our minds work. They assess our strengths, see how we handle pressure, how creative we are, how quickly we make decisions, how well we work with a team . . . that sort of thing.”

“How well you work with a team?” she said ironically.

Tom knew she was referring to the way he was out here alone. “Yeah, I’ve got some weak points.”

He waited a moment, gazing toward the trench where the enemy group was peeking up, trying to figure out how their two allies had been taken down so quickly. They hadn’t seen him. Another enemy trainee was creeping out into the open. The distant explosions were dying down, and Tom grew irritated. He wanted to talk to her, but he had to take out this guy, too.

“Why did you contact me?” Medusa asked him.

“A couple reasons,” Tom admitted, eyes on the approaching enemy. “First of all, I’m sorry about what I said before about the avatars. I didn’t get it, I didn’t get how I’d upset you, but I understand now. I was a jerk, okay? And . . . and . . .” In a flash of inspiration, Tom recalled Yuri’s words of wisdom. He caught her eye, and said intently, “And I want you to know something: Medusa, if I met a horse that looked like you, I’d find that horse attractive.”

She stared at him.

“And I’d be worried,” Tom added quickly, seeing her confusion. “See, it’s a horse. See? I mean, I’d really be, like, ‘uh-oh’ and ‘this sucks,’ if it looked like you because I’d be into that horse. Which is messed up, due to the horse thing. But it would solely be because it resembled you. You know what I mean?”