“Medusa, I need to ask you something.” He steered through the chaos, only a sliver of his attention on the conflict. “It’s important.”

“I need to ask you things, too. About, well, when you kissed me—”

“Not now,” Tom said. “I can’t right now. This is a bad time. Look, have you ever been bounced out of a system while interfacing with it? I need to know.”

There was a thick silence. Her voice grew icy. “What do you mean?”

Tom missed it. “If you try to interface the way we do, and you enter a system, but then get bounced out again, what does that mean—”

Her fingers dug into his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“I have to get into Obsidian Corp.’s system. It’s important,” Tom insisted.

“Obsidian Corp.? Obsidian Corp., Tom?” Her fingers dug harder. “Are you trying to get caught? You’re going to give us both away.”

“I have to do this!” Tom turned on her, and the plane began to descend wildly, g-forces pressing in on them. “Medusa, I have to get something out of their systems. Can you tell me how to do it or not?”

“Not,” she snapped back.

“Fine, I’ll keep trying. I can’t do it without your help.”

She was silent a long moment as the plane shook around them. Then, so softly he almost didn’t hear her, “I shouldn’t have come back.”

“Wait—” Tom said, but not in time.

This time when she disappeared, Tom realized he’d ruined it. His plane continued downward in a fatal death plunge, and the world erupted in flames.

BUT TOM TRIED one more thing. He went to Blackburn. He stepped into his office and dropped into the seat across from his, ignoring the bewilderment on Blackburn’s face. “Sir, I can’t get through Obsidian Corp.’s firewall. Can you help me?”

“What are you doing?”

“You know what I’m doing,” Tom said fiercely. “I’m going to neutralize the security threat. I’m going to destroy the transmitter in Obsidian Corp.”

Blackburn rubbed his palm over his mouth. “I can’t allow this.”

“I’m not sitting by and letting Yuri die!”

“Did you do something to alert Joseph Vengerov to what you can do, Raines?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Then how was he able to block you out?” Blackburn said dangerously. “I can’t even figure out how to block you yet—and I know about Yuri. Does Joseph Vengerov know about you?”

“No! I don’t know how he’s done it, I just know I can’t get through his firewall, even when I interface.” Tom planted his hands on the desk. “Sir, if you help me get through somehow, I can fix all this. You saw what I did to the census device that one time, I fried it.”

“I remember you doing that by accident, not deliberately.”

“But I can do it! I can. So I can do that to the transmitter, too. I can free Yuri from it and you can talk someone into giving him another neural processor. I need to be able to get into Obsidian Corp.’s systems. You can get me in for a few minutes!”

“I can’t get myself in for a few minutes, Raines!” Blackburn roared back at him. “Why do you think I physically accompanied the trainees to Antarctica? I would have gladly plundered some blackmail material from the comfort of my own apartment, but I couldn’t. Do you know why? Because you can’t hack Obsidian Corp. with their own hardware, their own software. That facility’s a virtual Fort Knox. You can’t loot it from the outside. You can plunder only from inside if you have privileged access to their intranet—why do you think I went there in person?”

Tom blinked. It only occurred to him now that Blackburn had been taking a huge risk. Vengerov could’ve done anything to his processor while he was on Vengerov’s turf.

“If you can’t interface your way in,” Blackburn told him, “then I’m glad. It’s better for all of us. You destroy that transmitter, and then not only will Joseph Vengerov discover a ghost in his system, he’ll also know that ghost is someone who wanted that transmitter destroyed. He’ll narrow down the suspects for that ghost to a list of three—you, Enslow, and Ashwan. Haven’t you hurt your friends enough already?”

Tom clenched his jaw. “I’ll destroy the whole supercomputer it’s attached to. Then he won’t know I was going after the transmitter.”

“The answer’s no. I wouldn’t help you do something this stupid and risky even if I could.”

“I’d be the one at risk, not you!”

Blackburn gave an unpleasant laugh. “You still aren’t capable of making that connection between actions and long-term, unintended consequences, are you, Raines? If Joseph Vengerov ever gets you, it’s not your risk anymore, it becomes mine, because he will wipe you from your own brain, maybe pull you open to see how you work, and he’ll figure out how to turn your ability into a weapon. He’ll use everything you can do against the Spire. I hold on to this installation by clinging with my fingertips to a tiny bit of ledge as it is. You’re not chipping it away, not if I can stop you.”

“But Yuri will die! You can’t let that happen. You wouldn’t do that.”

Blackburn sat back. “When I told Joseph Vengerov I was going to use Sysevich’s processor against him, what did you think would happen?”

Tom couldn’t speak; he couldn’t.

“I can tell you what I thought would happen. One possibility was that Joseph Vengerov would simply let his asset go. Surrender him for good. I didn’t consider that one likely.”

Tom gaped at him. “You knew he might . . .”

“Choose to eradicate a potential threat once he knew I was going to use it against him? Yeah, I knew. It was the likeliest scenario. I still threatened him.”

Tom couldn’t speak.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Blackburn said darkly. “You did this, not me. Sysevich was dead the minute you took it upon yourselves to remove my software, and if I didn’t know you’d be more of a danger to me out there in the world than you are in here, I would make consequences rain down on all your heads for killing your friend.”

Tom flinched.

Through the haze over his vision, he grew aware of Blackburn rubbing his palm over his mouth. “Go to bed, Tom. It’s late.”

But Tom wasn’t done. “So what about Wyatt?”

An edge crept into his voice. “Get out of my sight, Raines.”

“She’s really messed up.”

A vein flickered in Blackburn’s forehead. He said nothing.

“She won’t talk to me. To anyone. She looks up to you. If you said something to her—”

He shook his head. “You’re asking the wrong person. Send her to Ossare.”

“Wyatt made a mistake. That’s all. You don’t get to act betrayed here—she unscrambled Yuri when you weren’t even talking to her because you blamed her for something she didn’t even do. But she got over that. Are you just gonna turn your back on her now? I thought you were looking out for her.”

It took Blackburn so long to speak, Tom almost thought he wasn’t going to bother. But then he said softly, “She’s very gifted, and she has no armor against this world. She doesn’t have anyone in her corner, not in her home, so I’ll admit, sometimes I feel . . . protective. And it fools me sometimes into remembering what it was like once.” He stopped.