Elliot tapped his temple. “Photographic recollection. I can reason the rest out.”

“He tried to beat me up a few days later, so he got his own back,” Tom groused.

“I’m sure he tried, but I’m also sure he didn’t pull it off,” Elliot said. “I am very certain Karl’s never come out the winner with you, because if Karl had ever, even once, come away from a skirmish as the victor over you, he would’ve patched that gaping hole you’ve torn into his pride and left you alone a long time ago.”

Tom drew a sharp breath to rip out the automatic reply that Karl had won here and there . . . like when he’d helped Dalton brainwash Tom, he’d definitely been the winner those times. Then something occurred to Tom: no, Karl hadn’t come out better in the balance of things. After the sewage bath in the Beringer Club, and the humiliation in front of those executives, Karl was definitely the loser.

“Your life would be considerably easier if, instead of aggravating your enemies intentionally to make very sure they know you don’t care what they think—if instead, you let them have the meaningless, easy victories here and there. That’s compromise.”

Tom gave up on trying to tread lightly. “You know, Elliot, it’s hilarious hearing about compromise from a guy who gave up some person he felt strongly about because the Coalition said no. A guy who wanted to quit but again got told no. Now you’ve wasted a year putting all this effort into helping Heather Akron so she can take your place in that comfy little cage, when you know she’d stab you in the back if it would get her there, too, and it’s all because you won’t cross these people who think they have a right to be your overlords. I’ve gotta tell you, man, your definition of compromise seems a lot more like ‘outright surrender’ to me.”

“You think I surrender too much? Well, I say you can’t give a single inch of ground to anyone. Even when they’re right.”

“You’re right,” Tom said. “I can’t.”

They sat there a moment.

Elliot’s mouth lifted. “Now you’re being contrary, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not.”

“No, no. That’s exactly what you’re doing. I had a beautifully articulated point now about you being absurdly stubborn, and you had to go right away and undermine my point by agreeing with me. You did that on purpose.”

“That’s how I operate. Sorry, man. It’s not personal.”

Elliot’s smile faded. “I must seem very weak to you.”

Tom shifted his weight uneasily, thrown by the turn in the conversation. “I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.” Elliot rose to leave him.

Tom almost let him leave on that note. Almost. But he couldn’t help thinking of Elliot coming in to rescue him at Dominion Agra; telling him he was recommending him for promotion to Middle Company. Tom didn’t want Elliot to walk away feeling like he saw him as a pansy. He didn’t.

“Hey, Elliot . . . Wait.”

Elliot half turned.

Tom shrugged. “For what it’s worth, people like you way more than they like me. There are tons of people who’d love to beat me up. I mean, tons. And, yeah, people who don’t know you want to beat you up because you’re a celebrity and all the little twelve-year-old girls love you, but, uh, not people who have actually met you. They like you. You’re not weak. I guess you’re smarter than me.”

Elliot gazed back at him, his mouth quirking. “Of course you have more enemies than me, Tom. People who need to control others are threatened by strength and you’re indomitable. And that’s why they don’t mind me: I’m not.” He considered that. “I wonder sometimes if that’s not such a good thing, after all.”

Tom didn’t have an answer for that. As Elliot’s footsteps crunched away, Tom settled back by Wyatt’s knee in the middle of the unnatural serenity of the arboretum. He looked down to see her nudging tentatively at the apple he’d impaled with his knife.

After a little while of that, she grew still, and she spoke her first words to him in months. “You should never be a surgeon, Tom.” She pronounced this with great solemnity.

Tom froze, so surprised he didn’t know what to say for a while. Then he sorted out his thoughts and opted for the best route to handle this—as casually as possible.

“Yeah,” he agreed, picking up the knife by the handle and holding the apple up. It was sort of like a head on a pike, so he smeared some mud on it to form eyes and a mouth. “I find it easier taking heads off than putting them back on.”

She ducked her head again as she resumed working on the processor, but Tom saw that smile again, and he realized things might eventually turn out okay after all.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CAPITOL SUMMIT WAS broadcast from inside the US Capitol, where the dueling combatants would face off in the Rotunda, steering their remotely controlled vessels. The server they used was inside the Capitol, but the Chinese always circumvented the connection between Svetlana and her vessel, and gave control to Medusa. The Americans likewise replaced Elliot with his proxy—this year, Heather. She would spend the fight in the hidden room looking upon the Rotunda, remotely navigating Elliot’s ship.

Before she left the Spire, Heather gave Tom one half of a pair of thought-interface nodes. Beneath her sweep of dark hair, she’d be wearing the other. They were short-range devices, so Tom had to go to the Capitol to get close enough to interface with Heather, and through her, with her ship—and Medusa’s.

The drones were based in Texas, and they were going to engage each other in a free-for-all, live-fire exercise across the rocky landscape. Jagged mountains served as obstacles and as cover, and all the Combatants had to do was remain within a designated zone of combat so the public could appreciate, to full effect, all the skyboards that had been strategically placed for the event so as the cameras filmed the fighting ships, they’d also film the ads in the sky above them.

The key to evading DHS biometric databases was asymmetry, so Tom had stuck a smiley-face sticker on his face to make sure no one was able to identify him in the crowd at the event . . . just in case. He squeezed through the mass of people gathered outside the Capitol until he was in sight of the large viewing screens mounted before the gathered masses. The glowing image showed the Texas landscape and panned upward, showing the logos of the various Coalition Companies who’d bought skyboard space over the site of the conflict. All the Indo-American and Russo-Chinese affiliated corporations had a visual presence there. Then the images on the screen shifted to inside the Rotunda, where the most powerful men and women in the world were gathered for their own viewing.

Elliot sat behind one set of controllers, opposite Svetlana Moriakova, of the Russo-Chinese side. They were both getting ready to pretend to steer the drones in combat.

As soon as he was in the crowd, Tom popped his thought-interface node into the port in the back of his neck, and sent to Heather, I’m here.

Her thoughts registered in his brain. Excellent. We’re due to start soon. Ready to win this?

Tom gave a twisted smile. You never asked for a win. You asked for a malfunction.

But what good is it to me if I lose?

Not my problem, he thought back.