“I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think it might give him a shot.”

“And even if I tell you this is a bad idea,” Vik added, “you’ll still go—and so will Wyatt, as soon as she figures out what you’re up to. So I lose three friends for the price of one.”

“Vik—”

“I’m in.”

“Really?” Tom said, astounded.

“Really, Doctor. You’ll have better odds if I help you.” A note of ferocity crept into Vik’s voice. “That’s my friend. Let’s save his life.”

REVEALING HIS TRUE intentions to Vik meant revealing his true intentions to Wyatt. Tom had expected her to be horrified by the idea, but she lit up like he hadn’t seen her since Vengerov fried Yuri, eager for a chance to actually do something for Yuri. One glimpse at the mental map he’d put together of Obsidian Corp. using all the collected memories seemed to make up her mind.

“I think we can pull this off,” she told them.

As it turned out, Wyatt knew some secrets of her own, mainly about the contents of Blackburn’s databases. Apparently, he’d been amassing a trove of data about Obsidian Corp. over the years, from notes about the facility’s security systems to a database of hundreds of programming languages for various Obsidian Corp. machines.

“This is not normal,” Vik declared. “Someone doesn’t accumulate this stuff unless they’re planning something. What’s Blackburn up to?”

Tom was daunted by the computer languages. “There is no way I can work with one of these, much less a bunch of them.”

Wyatt nudged him. “Tom, it’s illegal for a computer to self-code. That means our neural processors can’t download and learn for us how to work Zorten II or Klondike, because those are neural processor languages. There’s nothing against downloading computer languages that don’t program processors. That’s not self-programming.”

AN HOUR LATER, Tom had written a complete program in the Bernays-6 language that controlled skyboards. He could program in it as easily as he could do mathematics now or speak a foreign language.

It was incredible.

It really made him understand for the first time what a big constraint it was that people with neural processors couldn’t simply work Zorten II so easily.

The best thing of all they discovered was in storage: a Praetorian left over from Obsidian Corp.’s stint in charge of the Spire. Wyatt tugged out its control chip and set out to practice some programs in the Praetorian-specific programming language, SE Janus.

Vik, meanwhile, set out to write Tom an embarrassing new bunk template. “If we’re going to perish on this venture, I want Tom to die knowing he has a humiliating wallpaper in his room,” he explained to them.

“You’re a good friend,” Tom told him.

“We’re not going to die.” Wyatt gave a big smile. “I really do think this could work. Obsidian Corp.’s completely oriented toward protecting against mechanized intruders. They have to worry about surveillance vehicles or small drones, but no one’s going to go in person to break into a building in the middle of Antarctica. It’s not a hospitable environment for humans to hang around and stroll on in, especially right now when it’s winter. Between that and the whole wing of motion-sensitive, electrified floors, they won’t expect anyone to come in person.”

Vik sat up abruptly, finger raised. “Quick question: How is this inhospitable-for-humans thing not a problem for us? Last I checked, we’re about ninety-nine point nine percent human. Except for Tom, who’s ninety-nine point eight percent . . . We can joke about that now, right?”

Tom flashed him a mechanized thumbs-up. “Joke away.”

As he spoke, he inspected the mental map again, pinpointing every location on the walls where he saw neural access ports. Since Obsidian Corp. had designed the neural processors, he supposed he shouldn’t be surprised they were there. He wondered who used them.

“So how are we getting in?” Vik pressed. “We can’t exactly walk in from the outside. Tom almost froze to death in the summer.”

Confidence surged through Tom. “Simple. We go in the same way Obsidian Corp. staffers do: right through the front door.”

THEY CHOSE SUNDAY, early in the morning, for the operation. Tom tried to sleep in the scant hours before their departure, doing it the normal, human way by lying on the bed instead of hooking a neural wire into the access port on the back of his neck.

In the darkness of his bunk, he was reminded of one aspect of normal sleeping: sometimes it didn’t happen, no matter how much he wanted it.

Tom sat up hazily and became aware of a tapping noise. He rubbed at his eyes, and peered around, searching for it. Then he made out the surveillance camera in the corner, moving back and forth, waving at him.

“Hey, Mai Shiranui,” he called.

Here’s a hint: my name is not the name of a video-game character. Much less a Japanese one, Mordred.

He grinned, reached down into the drawer beneath his bed, and pulled out a T-shirt. “I hoped you’d come.”

And then Medusa’s words appeared in his net-send: I didn’t want to wake you up.

“I wasn’t asleep. Lemme hook into a VR game and meet you. Pick a sim and I’ll see you in a minute.”

Tom hooked his neural wire into his VR gaming system for the first time in a long while. The Pentagonal Spire had a large database of games for the trainees, and Medusa had obviously chosen one set in a vast, rolling desert of sorts. Then her avatar appeared—a big, muscular male character with long, flowing locks, whom the neural processor informed him was the mythological figure Sampson, the strongest man in the world. Tom looked down at himself and realized he was playing his mom’s namesake, the diabolical temptress Delilah.

“I’m the girl?” he said, examining his chest closely.

“Don’t worry. You’re very pretty, Tom.” The teasing note abruptly dropped from her manly voice. “Maybe these avatars will make this easier.”

“Make what easier?”

She folded her arms. “I should stay away.”

“But you’re here. Right now. Not staying away. And I’m okay with this.” He stepped toward her. “Listen, I was a jerk last time you were here. I have a friend in trouble, and there was something I needed to get at Obsidian Corp. to save him, so I was frustrated and thinking about that, not about anything else. After we kissed, I wanted to talk to you. I scared you away. I know it.”

She groaned. “If my character wasn’t about twenty times stronger than yours, I’d punch you right now. You didn’t scare me. You don’t scare me. You caught me off guard, Mordred. This is a terrible idea. We’re on opposite sides of the war. You were charged with treason, and I nearly faced the same thing the last time we did this.”

“But that’s because we weren’t using what we can do,” Tom told her, drawing closer. “Yeah, it was dumb, meeting online when we could be tracked, but interfacing and moving into the systems like you and I can isn’t the same thing. We’ve got this power, and maybe we can’t use it out there, but why not use it like this? For each other? See, I’m not sorry about kissing you. I’m not. I want to do it again. I don’t know anyone else like you, and if you looked slightly less manly right now, I’d be grabbing you.” He reached down to shove his hands into his pockets, but the Delilah character didn’t have any. “So that’s it. Ball’s in your court.”