“I remember Wyatt wanted to erase my memory when I found out,” Vik whispered, since other trainees were rounding the corridor near them. “You should have let her.”

“You wanted her to erase your memory of that?”

“It would’ve been better not knowing, yeah.”

Tom shook it off. “Fine. Let’s do it. Let’s get Wyatt to erase it right now.”

Vik let out a breath. “It doesn’t work that way. You can only remove a memory if you know the exact time segment. If she’d done it then, it would’ve been gone and I never would’ve been the wiser. Since she didn’t, I’ve had months to think about it over and over, and I’ve thought about stuff related to it. We’d have to spend a few days with the census device to hunt down everything that would need to be cleared out, and I bet I’d notice the blanks. It’s too late. My whole point is, I think we need to take things more seriously. You need to take things more seriously.”

Tom made sure the other trainees had disappeared into the elevator, then he suggested, “We can rescramble Yuri.”

That stopped Vik short. “What?”

“We can do it,” Tom said. “I bet he’d even let us. We’ll talk to him. He’ll talk to Wyatt.”

Vik blinked. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Just like that.”

“Just like that.” Tom hit the button for the elevator, avoiding Vik’s gaze. “I know this might seem a bit insane, or wrong, or whatever, but I’ll throw something out there. And don’t get paranoid or nervous or read too much into this, but, well, I’ll say it. What if I’m no longer completely sure he’s not a spy? Not for the Russians, of course, but, uh, maybe for a Russian. A. Singular.”

He glanced at Vik and knew from the way Vik was gaping at him that he was, indeed, going to be paranoid and nervous and read too much into it.

Tom’s head throbbed. Great.

“WHAT’S GOING ON?” Wyatt demanded when she met them in the Census Chamber.

“Tom has a secret life,” Vik said, from where he was sprawled with his back against the chair beneath the census device.

Tom chose not to comment. Vik really had no idea.

“I thought he didn’t know about all that memory stuff,” Wyatt said to Tom. “You told me not to say anything.”

Tom flushed, realizing she’d misunderstood. Wyatt was thinking about the census device footage.

Vik was perturbed. “What, more stuff I don’t know about?”

“No, no, no,” Tom said. “Vik, she means something entirely unrelated. Something not important.” He turned to her. “And you, he means something I’m going to tell you right now. About Yuri.”

“What about Yuri?” Wyatt said.

“What’s the memory stuff?” Vik persisted. “Tell me, and I can tell you if it’s unrelated. I don’t like being let in on stuff after it’s already blown up into a huge problem.”

“What’s blowing up into a huge problem?” Wyatt cried, anxious.

Tom groaned and clutched his temples, where a headache was spiking through his skull. “Look,” he ground out, his eyes closed. “Vik, Wyatt is talking about some memories of mine she saw thanks to Blackburn that don’t really matter at all. Wyatt, Vik is talking about the reason I asked you here, and this is about some memories that do matter. I took them out so you could see them and decide for yourself instead of taking my word. I’ve shown them to Vik, so we’re going to show them to you.”

And with that, Tom nodded, and Vik jabbed at the controls of the census device and replayed the memories they’d extracted. The first clip featured Tom by the road, trying to hitch a ride in New Mexico.

“Tom,” she said sadly, “you shouldn’t hitchhike.”

“That’s not the point of showing you this,” Tom told her.

“You could get killed. Or robbed. Or raped. Or all three. What if a serial killer picked you up? You’d wouldn’t like it if someone ate you, Tom.”

Then Joseph Vengerov appeared on the screen, and she fell silent.

“You really were a bit rude to him,” she told him.

“Again, missing the point.”

She lapsed into silence, seeing Vengerov’s demand about Medusa. She turned to Tom in the projected light of the census device, eyes wide. “You’re not in contact with Medusa again, are you?”

“He is,” Vik said mock cheerfully. “Another aspect of Tom’s secret life.”

“It’s complicated,” Tom said.

“Oh no,” Wyatt whispered. “That’s a bad idea. It’s a bad, bad idea. And—” she cast her gaze up toward Vengerov on the screen “—you can’t do that to her. Don’t use a virus. She likes you. That would be so mean!”

“Medusa is on the other side of the war,” Vik remarked. They looked at him. “What? Someone should point this out.”

“But . . .” Wyatt’s voice faltered as the next memory began, and she saw the Praetorians in Antarctica closing in, then the door snapping open to deposit Tom outside. That’s all he’d given them. She mumbled, “That’s how it happened? He deliberately drove you outside?”

“Yeah,” Tom said. He glanced at Vik, saw that he was sitting there rigidly in his seat.

“You must’ve been so scared,” Wyatt said.

“No,” Tom protested indignantly. “I wasn’t scared.”

Vik said, “The point is that Vengerov already knew, Enslow. He knew Tom wasn’t going to agree to do it. Someone told him.”

“Or he could have guessed,” Wyatt said uncertainly. “It’s a yes/no question. Fifty-fifty probability.”

Tom shook his head grimly. “No, he knew.” And then he nodded for Vik to play the next memory.

It was Tom telling Yuri about Medusa in the weight room. The screen snapped off, and they stood there in utter silence for a long moment.

“And that’s it right there,” Tom said. “He’s the only person who knew. He’s the only one who could’ve told Vengerov about my refusal. He is the only possible person, Wyatt.”

“But, no. No, Tom. That can’t be right. There are other possibilities. Someone could’ve overheard.”

“We were alone,” Tom said.

“Someone could have bugged the weight room.”

“Who would bug the weight room?” Vik wondered.

“Joseph Vengerov could have bugged the weight room to spy on Tom.”

“Then he’d be an idiot. Does Tom look like he spends a lot of time in the weight room?”

“Hey!” Tom objected. Yeah, he wasn’t going to win any power-lifting contests, but he’d filled out a lot since coming to the Spire.

“What about the surveillance cameras?” Wyatt tried.

“I checked,” Vik said. “No one was actively monitoring that feed and no one’s accessed it. Evil Wench, this was the Android’s doing.”

“But it’s Yuri,” Wyatt protested.

“I know,” Tom burst out. “I don’t like this either. It’s not like I want it to be true.” He scraped his hands through his hair. “I’ve had this feeling, okay? And I couldn’t figure out what it was until I realized. . . . I’ll tell you something, too. Yuri knows Vengerov. Yuri’s dad works for Vengerov. Yuri was considered a security threat, and we never thought to wonder if there was a reason. Maybe we screwed up, Wyatt. What if Vengerov used him somehow to breach the system? Maybe we messed up when we unscrambled him.”