“I tried making this pleasant for you, Tom, but you’ve been ignoring my attempts to become better friends with you, so, yes. I am officially blackmailing you. You see, I get to proxy for Elliot at Capitol Summit this year. But it’s very important that I don’t squander this chance. I have to win—and Medusa defeats everyone but you. Now that I know what you can do, I guess I know why.”

Tom leaned his head back, thinking of Medusa. The unexpected remembrance felt like a sharp pain. For a long, aching moment, he felt alone in the world.

And then Heather was pressing forward, her eyes boring into his. “I think if you caused an untimely malfunction or two for her while she’s controlling her ship, it would go a long way toward giving me a shot at beating her.”

“Obviously,” Tom said wearily, and Heather’s eyes glimmered with fury at the casual nonchalance he was showing her. He tuned out Heather as she tried to make it very clear this wasn’t a laughing matter, that she’d give him away if he didn’t do what she asked. All Tom could think was, it always came back to Medusa. To him striking at Medusa. However much he avoided it, however much he didn’t want to, it was like he was meant to be the bane of her existence.

TOM SAT SPRAWLED on the ground by Wyatt’s legs in the arboretum as she ignored him, working as usual on reformatting a processor. Olivia Ossare had given him a couple of dexterity exercises for his fingers. Apparently surgeons used them. It was rather odd, having an adult urging him along, trying to get him to play video games again. She seemed to think it would bolster his spirits or something.

The exercises were actually okay. One involved flipping a quarter from knuckle to knuckle. The other was skinning an apple with a knife, trying to get as little of the yellow insides as possible. Tom inspected his latest attempt, where he’d gouged a small chunk out of the meat.

“See, if I’d been doing surgery on someone now”—he showed Wyatt the apple—“someone would be hemorrhaging.”

She glanced up briefly to see, which surprised Tom a bit. He took a big bite of the apple, considering her. That’s when footsteps crunched toward them, and Tom threw a careless glance through the hedges to see Elliot emerging.

“Tom. Wyatt,” he greeted them. He pointed to the nearby bench. “Do you mind?”

“Hey, man,” Tom said, nodding for him to sit.

Apart from the Wyatt Earp Vendetta Ride simulation, they hadn’t spoken much since Yosemite, when Elliot had washed his hands of him. Elliot settled on the bench, propping his elbows on his knees. He studied the apple debris strewn over the ground. “Playing with your food?”

“Long story,” Tom said. It wasn’t; he didn’t feel like explaining. He plunged his knife into the apple and left it there. “So Heather’s proxying you at Capitol Summit. I guess your diabolical scheme to anoint her queen is working.”

“Hopefully.” Elliot drummed his fingers on his thigh, his dark eyes moving between Tom and Wyatt. “Should we go and speak somewhere private?”

Tom raised his eyebrows. “I don’t think Wyatt’s gonna go talk to everyone after this. She’s not very chatty lately.”

Elliot sighed. “Tom, I have to ask you something. I’ve put it off for so long, but you seem so glum lately, I have to do it now.”

“Glum?” Tom wondered.

Elliot rubbed the back of his neck. “In Antarctica when you walked outside like that . . . you weren’t trying to kill yourself, were you?”

Tom stared at him. “What?”

“I hoped refusing to work with you would teach you something,” Elliot said earnestly, “but I wasn’t giving up on you completely. I didn’t say that to take away all your hope. I think you can have a future here.”

Tom finally made sense of his words. He started sniggering.

“This isn’t funny,” Elliot said sternly.

“Elliot, you think I tried to kill myself over you?”

Elliot smiled a bit. “When you put it that way, it does sound rather silly.”

“Yeah. Just a bit.” He glanced at Wyatt, and swore he saw a tiny smile on her lips, fleetingly. That cheered him up. “Nah, Elliot. I did not try to kill myself. And I’m not glum, okay? But if I am it’s because . . .” He looked at Wyatt, and she was staring intently at the processor she was working on like she was trying hard not to seem like she heard them. “It’s because of other stuff.”

Elliot ruffled a hand through his black hair, then said, “For what it’s worth, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and I have an idea about what you can do.”

“Huh?” Tom said.

Elliot leaned closer to him. “Do you know what people appreciate more than someone who makes a great first impression on them? Someone who has learned the error of his ways.”

“The error of my ways?” Tom repeated.

“Yes. Don’t you see, Tom? What happened at the meet and greets was ages ago. You’ve had a life-changing, near-death experience, and you’ve lost a . . .” He didn’t mention Yuri in front of Wyatt. “You’ve had other things happen. You can legitimately claim to have gained some wisdom, some insight. If you apologize to the CEOs formally, maybe in a handwritten note on some decent stationery, they might be persuaded to give you a second chance.”

Elliot said this so earnestly, but Tom found himself remembering Dalton’s smug smile when he offered him the chance to get on his knees and make up for his wrongdoing.

“Right,” Tom snarled. “Then they can frame my handwritten apology on fancy paper on the wall. Oh, and maybe add me to some other terror watch lists. What stops that, huh?”

“That’s the chance you take,” Elliot informed him. “But your best opportunity lies in penitence. Believe it or not, an apology might—”

“Give them a huge power trip?” Tom exploded, suddenly, unexpectedly furious, like some dam had burst. “Make them feel like they’ve broken me like some sort of animal? I would rather freeze to death than give them the satisfaction!”

“And here you go again,” Elliot marveled. “What does it serve, letting them know at every possible opportunity how much you despise them? That hasn’t gotten you anywhere. Just look closer to home—at Karl Marsters!”

“No way.” Tom slashed his hand through the air. “Karl is not my fault. Karl has been after me since I got here.”

“That’s not how Karl sees it and it’s not how I see it.”

“Fine. Fine, then explain. Tell me why Karl wanting to pulverize me is my fault.”

Elliot leaned toward him. “You really wonder why Karl hates you? The first day you got here, you punched him in front of everyone.”

“I was under the influence of a computer virus,” Tom protested. “Blackburn said so, too!”

“Yes, Lieutenant Blackburn said so. In a way that shamed Karl for getting the slip from a trainee half his size. ‘Twice,’ I believe he said. What do you think Karl felt?”

“Malice and homicidal urges, like Karl always does.”

“Humiliated, Tom. It hurt his pride.”

“What, so Karl went crying to you about this?”