Catalyst

by Kincaid,S. J.

  Did she really ask that? thought Tom, Vik, and Yuri all at the same time.

  It’s just that you seem very fixated on them and you’re also fixated on Medusa. I realize correlation doesn’t equal causation, but usually it implies some relationship between the two data sets, Wyatt thought.

  Only Wyatt could think so analytically about breasts. Tom’s brain felt blown out. He had to fight the sudden urge to laugh, which he was sure was going to get him more penalty hours.

  I like legs, Yuri thought. Then he grew crimson.

  Is that an impure thought from the Android? Vik flashed him a quick grin, unseen by Cadence.

  I know I’m scandalized, Tom thought.

  So about legs . . . Vik thought, trying to get Yuri to think more impure thoughts.

  It is strange they are thinking of Medusa as though she and Thomas have recently been in contact, Yuri thought suddenly, not falling for Vik’s bait.

  Abruptly, Yuri’s thoughts disappeared from Tom’s vision center as Wyatt cut him out of the link with a flexure of her thoughts.

  I cut him out because I think this conversation is about to go rapidly downhill. . . . Thanks for that, Vik. Wyatt cut her eyes toward Vik briefly.

  Hey, Tom started the impure thoughts thing, Vik protested.

  Tom couldn’t help it. It’s Tom.

  Hey, Tom thought indignantly, because they made him sound like some slow-witted imbecile.

  Besides, Wyatt thought, we can’t think about Medusa and other stuff around Yuri. I’m going to net-send privately with him for a while so he doesn’t suspect anything.

  Yuri knew nothing about what had happened after Vengerov zapped him. Yuri hadn’t been there for Tom’s confession that he was still in contact with Medusa. He didn’t know they’d gone to Antarctica, much less that Medusa had been the one to rescue them when Vengerov trapped them.

  Sometimes, it was better not to know.

  Before I go, she added, Vik, maybe you should talk, well, think to Tom about—

  Not now, Vik thought.

  Think to Tom about what? Tom thought.

  But they didn’t answer. Tom flicked his eyes to the side to catch the quick look Vik and Wyatt darted to each other. He was missing something here.

  Yuri reached the wall first and did an about-face, then began marching back toward Tom. Suddenly Tom regretted his hastily agreement with Vik and Wyatt that it was better Yuri not know some things. They’d obviously twisted that around and applied it to him . . . and the last thing Tom ever wanted was to be kept in the dark.

  AT 2100, TOM wearily returned to his new bunk in Alexander Division, painfully ticking off two hours in his mental tally, dread welling in him as he realized he had at least another thirty days of Accountability Formation if he wanted to get rid of his other fifty-eight hours.

  And that was only if he didn’t accumulate more.

  Which was astoundingly unlikely.

  His new roommate wasn’t in the bunk, so Tom changed into a T-shirt, and headed to the bathroom to wash up, his brain whirling. He was due to get the new rule book for the Pentagonal Spire sometime tonight; it would be in his homework download. Much as it galled him to fall into line with Mezilo’s insane regime, he couldn’t stand the sheer boredom of Accountability Formation—and his friends would finish their penalty hours way before he did.

  Another thought struck him as he brushed his teeth, and his eyes shot wide open in the mirror. Plebes. He was going to have to take responsibility for some plebes.

  When was he going to have time to deal with plebes?

  Their new curfew was 2145, and an officer would actually come by to check off on a list on a clipboard that they were in their bunks, in bed, neural wires hooking their brain stem ports into the neural access ports on the wall. Tom knew the strict curfew would drive him nuts, but tonight, he headed back to his bunk, ready to drop . . .

  Only to walk through the door and find Clint kneeling by his bed, peering angrily at Tom’s drawer. “This is not gonna do, partner.”

  Tom halted. Then he started laughing. His roommate. Of course.

  “You can’t stuff your drawer full of your gear so haphazardly it won’t even close.” Clint glared at him through his one normal, one bruised eye. “I’m not getting hours for you. Fold ’em up.”

  “Let’s get something clear.” Tom prowled across the bunk slowly. “You may technically, at this moment, have some claim to rank over me out there, but in here, you’re not giving any orders.”

  Clint straightened to his full height. He was a burly kid, a few inches taller than Tom and probably a good deal more muscular. He looked over Tom like he was thinking about that, himself. A bit of a smirk came over his face. “You sucker punched me before. That’s the only reason you got me.”

  “Yeah,” Tom agreed cheerfully. “I hit you out of nowhere. It wasn’t fair to you. And now that we’re sleeping in the same space, imagine what other unfair ways I can come at you without warning. And I know what you’re thinking—you could do it, too. Here’s your dilemma, Grover: you’re a squad leader with an impeccable reputation who impressed all the Coalition CEOs on the meet and greets. If anyone’s a shoo-in for CamCo down the road, it’s probably you. I, on the other hand, have been charged with treason once, I’m perpetually getting in trouble for other reasons, and most of those Coalition CEOs hate my guts.”

  “What’s your point?”

  Tom shrugged. “The way I see it, I can be as vicious as I want, and people won’t give it another thought. They don’t expect any better of me. It would be hard for me to shock them if I did something incredibly cruel and underhanded to a roommate. You on the other hand . . . you’ve got a lot more to lose than I do. You have a good reputation to protect. Think long and hard about that before you mess with me.”

  Clint couldn’t hold Tom’s eyes. He looked away.

  Tom decided there were some good sides to notoriety. He flopped onto his bed, because there was something he had to do, and he hadn’t wanted to hook into his neural access port and risk the ensuing paralysis of muscles, fading of senses, until he was sure Clint would stay in line. Now, it was time. Tom hooked his neural wire into the access port on the wall, presumably to sleep.

  But that wasn’t his plan.

  As soon as the system connected with his processor, and before the sleep sequence could engage, Tom soared out of himself into the Spire’s processor. He always followed the same route from the Pentagonal Spire’s server to the Sun Tzu Citadel’s: from the Spire’s processor to the satellites to the Russo-Chinese satellites around the Mercury palladium mines and back in to the Citadel’s systems in China.

  Ever since using the computer virus on Medusa—on Yaolan—Tom had been checking on her. She spent the first week after the virus in the equivalent of their infirmary, unmoving in a hospital bed. Then Tom found her moving again, but isolated in a private room, no connection between her neural processor and the Citadel’s server.

  Whenever he peered through the cameras in the corner of the room, he found her alone. Sometimes she was doing push-ups, sometimes she was just sitting at the edge of her bed, staring at the wall, or lying on her back, staring at the ceiling.

  It had been several weeks since he’d been able to check on her, thanks to his unexpected security incident over vacation. When he peered into the isolation room this time, it was empty, the bed made. Tom felt a twinge of anxiety and shot from one surveillance camera to another, hoping to find her . . .

  And then he did. She was brushing her black hair up into a high ponytail, wearing her uniform. Her bed was one of six in the room, other girls swarming around her, and Tom realized she was back on duty. She was better. She was okay.

  He withdrew from the cameras, peace in his heart.

  If he’d truly hurt her, he never would have forgiven himself.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ...............................................................
...

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “WHAT ARE THESE tiny, scared-looking creatures?” Vik wondered.

  “Their eyes are so big.” Wyatt sounded creeped out. “But they’re so very small.”

  “They are quite young,” Yuri agreed, puzzled. “Surely none were so young before my coma.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Perhaps I am still in a coma and haven’t realized it.”

  They were standing in front of Tom’s three plebes. They all had close-cropped hair, and they looked downright frightened by the strange, older cadets commenting on them like they weren’t there.

  “Guys, stop messing with my plebes,” Tom ordered them. “They just haven’t had their hGH kick in yet, that’s all. Now go!” He jabbed his thumb toward the elevator.

  Wyatt nodded crisply, and Vik grumbled about gormless cretins, then followed. Yuri shot the plebes a simultaneously sympathetic and reassuring look, his smile seeming to say “I believe in you” before he followed. Tom thought suddenly that Yuri should’ve been the one chosen for this. He’d be better at mentoring scared little thirteen-year-olds.

  He tried to imitate Yuri’s reassuring look, flashing his plebes what he hoped was an I-believe-in-you grin, even though until now, he’d never tried to do one before.

  “Sorry about that. My friends find it kind of hilarious that I’m the one supposed to be guiding you. My buddy Vik said he wanted to meet you before and after I was done training you so he could assess the damage.” Then, seeing their grim faces, he added hastily, “He was joking.”

  The three plebes did not smile. They sat huddled together on the couch in the plebe common room, staring up at him. Two of them, the girl Lanny and the boy Reed, were fourteen. The smallest boy, Zane, was thirteen. All three of them wore a glazed, shell-shocked look. Tom felt deeply sorry for them. The Pentagonal Spire they’d seen a month before on their tours must’ve seemed a radically different place than the one they’d woken up to after their brains adjusted to the neural processors.

  General Marsh used to space out the admission of new plebes, in part because the neural processors were in short supply—there was a fixed number left over from the soldiers who’d died in the first testing group—but also because the screening process to become an Intrasolar trainee was so rigorous. It seemed strange to Tom that he had three newbies on his hands all at once.

  Mezilo had ordered Tom to whip them into shape, get them adjusted to the scheme of things. Tom wasn’t even adjusted to the scheme of things himself. He wasn’t sure how to do this, so he settled for trying to trick the plebes into thinking he was more confident than he felt.

  “So,” he said, rubbing his palms together. “Uh, you’re Reed Geithman, huh?”

  The fourteen-year-old boy with a receding chin and large nose frowned at him. “Obviously. You have a neural processor. You know my name.”

  “Yeah, I’m being polite. Give me a break here, Reed.” He looked at the girl, Lanny O’Dell, a fourteen-year-old with short red hair and freckles scattered over her pale skin. “Hi to you, too, Lanny. And you, Zane.”

  Zane Blunt was thirteen, with protuberant green eyes and a stubby nose. He was the only one who didn’t meet Tom’s smile with a grim, frightened look.

  “Any questions?” Tom tried.

  “How long before my hair grows out?” Lanny asked suddenly. “None of the soldiers would tell me when I asked.”

  “Yeah, they wouldn’t know. It’s fast,” Tom assured her. “The processor controls the growth rate now, so you can tweak it. You won’t look like some bald monk for very long.”

  Lanny’s face crumpled.

  “I didn’t mean you in particular, Lanny. I just mean . . .” Tom faltered.

  “All of us?” Zane said sadly. “We all look like bald monks?”

  Now Reed looked crestfallen, too, mournfully touching his stubby hair.

  Tom sensed suddenly he wasn’t inspiring confidence in his leadership. “Hey,” he tried, “I’ve got fake fingers. My real ones froze off in Antarctica. Wanna see?”

  The plebes perked up. Tom held out his hands so they could look.

  “Can I touch them?” spoke up Lanny.

  Tom still felt bad he’d called her a bald monk, so he nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

  Lanny and Zane began poking at his mechanized fingers. Reed watched them and sulked. He didn’t poke at all.

  “They feel like rubber, only more silky,” Lanny remarked.

  “Huh, really?” Tom rubbed one of his fingers against his wrist, wondering about that. He hadn’t thought to contemplate their texture, mostly because he no longer had fingers with which to feel it. “Did you know they’re detachable? Once I stuck a finger in my buddy Vik’s toothbrush case. You could hear his shriek down the hall.” He grinned at the memory and unscrewed a finger, then showed them the way it bent back and forth midair, just with a flexure of his thoughts. “See, they don’t even have to be attached for me to move them. The range is about a hundred feet.”

  Even Reed straightened up and stared in fascination. Tom felt a surge of gratification, realizing he’d impressed them immensely. This new leadership thing was going great.

  TOM, VIK, WYATT, and Yuri hadn’t been the perfect, most rule-abiding trainees even under Marsh. Every day but Sunday they were forbidden to hang out and talk in the mess hall like they used to, so they devised new ways around that. Since Tom and Wyatt had to distribute freshly washed laundry to various bunks, and Vik had to vacuum floors and Yuri to scrub the walls, they all contrived to meet in the same general vicinity each night.

  When Mezilo caught on to cadets organizing via net-send, he ordered his techs to monitor net-send—so Tom and his friends blinked Morse code to each other in the mess hall. They did it for a few days before they decided not to bother.

  The techs, after all, were still having trouble readying cadet downloads for civilian classes and keeping the processors running. They still couldn’t figure out the simulation system, much less take the time to scrutinize the idle cadet chatter—especially after all the cadets responded to the surveillance by increasing idle chatter exponentially, lacing it liberally with keywords designed to draw scrutiny so they could overwhelm the techs with questionable net-sends.

  I’m so bored right now I’d rather have a bomb explode in here than sit through this, Vik thought to them during civilian classes.

  Tom replied: Yeah, I’d give anything for something interesting to happen. I’d even prefer a rebellion or a revolution or a riot or civil disorder or just a protest.

  Anthrax, Wyatt thought. Sarin gas.

  I want to assassinate this astrophysics test, Vik thought.

  I’m waging a jihad against the third problem now, Tom said.

  Ricin, Wyatt thought. Weaponized smallpox. She hadn’t yet mastered working her inflammatory keywords into faux conversation yet.

  In another room with the Middles—where they’d forgotten to inform Yuri of the keyword thing or cut him out of the neural link after Accountability Formation—Yuri thought, This conversation is deeply confusing.

  As a consequence, the cadets overwhelmed the techs with net-sends in urgent need of examination and the techs missed all the genuine cross talk. It was a law of unintended consequences. As was a new outgrowth of one of Mezilo’s other policies: Sunday-only socialization.

  Because cadets could only hang around one another and speak freely that day, fraternization increased exponentially that single day of the week, as though everything repressed the other six days had to be frantically expressed during the free hours. The second and then the third Sunday, people were all over each other in the common rooms, in the corridors, in the mess hall, to the point that Wyatt didn’t even like venturing out of her bunk on Sundays, and Tom liked it way better than ever before. The military regulars even retreated from their constant supervision on Sundays, maybe to protect their eyes.

  Another effect of the totally rigid routine’s slackening for a single day of the week was that Sunday felt almost diz
zying in its freedom, even though they still weren’t allowed to leave the Spire or go on the internet. Tom slept in for no particular reason, just because he could. Then he ambled down to the mess hall with his hair a mess, a ratty old shirt on—also because he could.

  “Doctor, what are you doing?” Vik demanded when Tom plopped down at a table with him.

  “What?”

  “You look like you’re homeless.”

  “I am homeless.”

  “Living it up in casinos does not count as homeless.”

  Tom shrugged. “So what if I look like a bum? Not getting penalty hours on Sunday.” He idly watched couple of Middles at the next table getting handsy.

  Vik snapped his fingers to draw his attention back. “I have made a decision. It’s time you had a girlfriend.”

  “You’ve made this decision for me?”

  “I have, indeed. I want you to look around at all the cadets enjoying Fraternization Sunday, and then get inspired to participate in it yourself. Ask someone out.”

  Tom raised his eyebrows. He looked around the room, thinking of Medusa. Yaolan. Medusa . . . He still wasn’t sure how he should think of her. He drew a quarter out of his pocket and began flipping it from one mechanized finger to another. “Yeah, it’ll be fun getting rejected.”

  “Take it from me, charisma and self-confidence are all that matter, not looks. I am lucky enough to have all three of those qualities, of course, but even without one or two of them, I still would’ve won Lyla over. You know why? It’s a secret, but I’ll tell you.”

  Despite himself, Tom was curious. “How?”

  Vik dropped his voice to a whisper. “I asked her out.”

  Tom socked his arm, because he’d been expecting some real awesome secret. He threw a quick glance around to make sure no one could hear them, then spoke in a low voice so Vik would know his other objection. “You remember who saved our lives when we were in a very cold place, don’t you?” He gazed at Vik meaningfully, since Vik would know he was referring to Medusa. “We haven’t actually broken up. It wouldn’t be right.”