Catalyst

by Kincaid,S. J.

  “There. The virus is gone,” Wyatt said flatly.

  “Thank you so much. Thank you. I owe you for this. I . . .” He stopped at the stony look she sent him.

  “You talked to Medusa today?”

  Tom let out a breath. He’d blurted that out to her, hadn’t he? “Yeah, but—”

  “How could you do that, Tom? What happens if someone finds out you’re still in contact with her?”

  “Vik talked to me about this already. I know you guys had some chat—”

  “Vik talked to you, and what, you forgot about everything he said immediately afterward? Or you just don’t care about what could happen to us?”

  “No,” Tom protested. “Look, I can’t explain, but trust me, I can contact Medusa in a way that can’t get detected. Not by anyone.”

  Wyatt stared at him. “You can’t even debug your own processor. How could you possibly manage to contact her without anyone finding out?”

  “I’ve done it before.”

  “And you’ve been caught before, too!”

  What was going on today? Tom felt like he was getting everyone mad. “I can’t explain this to you, but you have to trust me. I won’t get caught. And . . . and, come on, Medusa saved our lives.”

  “Do you remember where she saved our lives? Do you remember what we were doing? How is any person worth the consequences if you get caught talking to her again? This isn’t just about you.”

  “I know that, but I also know I won’t get caught because . . . Well, Medusa and I, we’re . . .” He couldn’t explain to her that they were two of a kind, in their way. “We’re connected in a way that I can’t really explain to you. I know you don’t understand.”

  Wyatt’s cheeks paled, her face like a thundercloud.

  Tom thought about what he’d said. “Aw. Look, that sounded kind of . . .”

  “Condescending?” Wyatt snapped, crossing her arms over her chest like she was hugging herself. “What, you think because I have trouble making friends and talking to people that I don’t get stuff like . . . like love or affection or people being connected . . .”

  “That’s not what I meant at all. You’re so far off base right now.”

  Wyatt tugged the neural wire in one harsh jerk that snapped it out of his port, then roughly wound it around her hand. “You don’t think much of me. I’m just some weird, strange freak to you.”

  The assertion was so out of the blue to Tom, he stared at her a moment before saying stupidly, “Huh?”

  Her voice wavered. “I’m just someone to help you with programs. I’m only useful to you. You don’t care about my feelings.”

  “I do. I care. Why are you so worked up over this? I’m sorry about talking to her again, but I did it in a way that can’t be traced—otherwise I wouldn’t do it. I would never risk you or Vik. I’d never take that chance because I really do care about you. I just—I had to check on her for . . . for a valid reason I honestly can’t talk about. I had to.”

  “You’re such a. . . .” She was breathing heavily, and seemed to fumble for a word bad enough to describe him. “You’re such a jerk!”

  “Okay, fine,” he said soothingly. “Fine, I’m a jerk. A scumbag. Let me fix this. I don’t know what to say here. I don’t get why you’re so upset. Look, I’m batting zero for two today with girls being mad at me. Just give me a clue about what I can do to fix this.”

  She folded her arms across her chest and looked away from him, her chest heaving.

  “Hey, look, the Medusa stuff isn’t going to happen anymore.” Tom remembered the chill in Medusa’s voice. “I think she wants me to stay away from her from now on. We’re over. For good. So you don’t have to worry about that ever again.”

  And as soon as he said it, he knew it was true. A hollow feeling spread in his chest.

  Her voice was a mumble. “It’s really over with her?”

  “Yeah.” Tom shrugged. “I mean, you saw that virus. Not a friendly message of goodwill.”

  Wyatt studied him intently, like she was searching for something on his face. Her arms were still tightly folded across her body. She was the second girl today he’d hurt, and Tom felt like a terrible person.

  Inspiration hit. He knew how to reassure her. “Actually, it’s kind of funny timing. I asked out Iman Attar. She said she’d go out with me, so there. That’s another girl who’s not Medusa. Good news, huh?”

  The words did not have the effect Tom expected. He thought Wyatt would be pleased to hear it, relieved. But she flashed to her feet and shouted, “Get out of my bunk!”

  “What?” Tom was baffled. Wasn’t this what she wanted to hear? “I’m not making this up. I really asked Iman out.”

  “Just go away! Get out, Tom! Get out!” She ripped her pillow from the bed and hurled it at him. It bounced harmlessly off his arm, but Tom got the message and backed out of her bunk.

  If he stayed and kept arguing with her, he had a feeling he’d get for real what Medusa’s virus had given him virtually.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE NEXT MORNING, as Tom stood alone in the elevator, ready to descend to the mess hall for morning meal formation, Yuri stepped in from the Middles’ floor.

  From the grim set of Yuri’s lips, Tom knew he knew what had happened with Wyatt. “Let’s talk in your bunk,” Tom suggested.

  “A fine idea.”

  Once they were closed inside Yuri’s bunk, Tom turned to face him, braced for it. “Listen, man, I can explain.”

  “Wyatt has told me,” Yuri said, crossing his arms, showing off biceps that had been enlarging since he’d come out of his coma, “and I understand your reasons for what you did. I sympathize to a certain extent, as I am able to imagine the pain of such an affliction . . .”

  Tom nodded. Yuri had to know what that felt like.

  “But nonetheless, what you did is not acceptable. Wyatt is feeling very upset, as am I. You cannot be kissing my girlfriend. I must strike you in the face.”

  Tom sighed. “Yeah, I figured you were gonna punch me.”

  Yuri was a very considerate guy, at least. “What side is your preference?”

  “Surprise me.”

  “My apologies, Thomas.” Then his fist cracked across Tom’s jaw. Not as hard as it could’ve been, but it still reeled Tom back to the ground, vibrating his brain inside his skull. He caught himself against one of the beds, then eased himself up onto his backside, clutching his head.

  Yuri knelt down next to him. “You are well?”

  “Yeah. We good?”

  “You must never be kissing Wyatt again,” Yuri warned him, shaking a finger at him. “Unless she and I are no longer together, in which case, you are allowed to be kissing her, but I am still likely to be feeling quite unhappy about it.”

  “I won’t kiss her, man. I swear.” Tom couldn’t resist adding, “But what if, hypothetically, Wyatt and I are being chased one day by assassins trying to kill us and the only way to hide our faces is to make out . . . then would it be okay?”

  Yuri considered it. “Perhaps then, but only if you cannot evade your pursuers by other means and only if they are very large.” He rose back to his feet, his large hand extended. Tom grasped it and let Yuri yank him up. “We must hurry if we’re going to get to formation in time.”

  “So we are okay?” Tom ventured as they began jogging down the hallway.

  “Wyatt is still feeling very upset with you. I must persist in my disapproval until she is not feeling this way. After that, Thomas, we will be okay.”

  “How do I make things right with her?” Tom got a great idea. “Hey, think she’ll feel better if she hits me, too?”

  Yuri shoved open the door to the stairwell. “I would suggest giving her space.”

  TRAINING SIMULATIONS IN Upper Company involved competing groups facing off in space battle sim
ulations, with each cadet in the group rotating into the leadership role. The simulation system had finally been prepared. Today something unusual was due to take place: all the cadets were ordered to participate in a Spirewide simulation.

  Under Marsh, the different levels of cadets were segregated. Plebes trained with plebes, Middles with Middles, and so on under the guidance of a CamCo. Whatever the reason for today’s exception, Tom was excited. He hoped it was something awesome.

  His plebes had never participated in any immersive training scenarios, so Tom checked on them before the simulation began.

  Reed Geithman told him, “It’ll probably suck.”

  He wasn’t a huge optimist. Zane Blunt, though, was bobbing excitedly on the edge of his cot, and flashed Tom a huge grin of anticipation. Tom noticed, again, how tiny all the new plebes were. Their hGH still hadn’t kicked in. That puzzled him.

  When the plebes were all standing together for any reason, they stood out due to their shortness amid the sea of cadets who mostly towered over them. A lot of the older cadets like Vik and Walton had taken to calling them the Munchkin brigade, which Tom found hilarious until Yuri began sending him reproving looks and reminding him how offensive the term was. Then Tom felt guilty and managed to threaten the other cadets into laying off on the nickname. They’d stopped . . . at least in earshot of him.

  All he could figure was, the new techs must’ve been terrible at their jobs. If those poor kids didn’t get their growth spurts now, they’d never get them—the processor supplanted many of the hormonal functions involved in growth, and those areas of the brain atrophied. They didn’t have four years to grow naturally. He needed to go talk to someone about it for them, and soon.

  Tom found a chamber where Yuri, Vik, Wyatt, and Lyla had all migrated.

  Vik was already immersed in an argument with Lyla. “No, I wasn’t insulting your haircut . . .”

  “You said I look the same as usual, then you said I resemble a Chihuahua.”

  “That’s a good thing,” Vik tried.

  “You said it was same as usual. Do I usually resemble a Chihuahua, then?”

  Vik started laughing. Lyla’s face flushed with mounting anger as Vik kept laughing, even as he protested, “I did not mean to imply that. I’m laughing to commiserate, not to mock . . . Ow!” He rubbed his arm where she’d socked it. “This is domestic violence, you know. Besides, even if your fearsome fists are part of your charm, there’s no wit involved, so hitting me doesn’t constitute a valid comeback.”

  “Shut up, Vik.”

  “Neither does that.”

  “I said shut up, Vik!”

  “And neither does that . . . Ow!”

  Tom tuned out their argument and peered over at Wyatt, where she was seated stiffly on her cot, not looking at him, Yuri on her other side. Yuri had advised him to give her space, but Tom couldn’t just say nothing, even if she was trying to ignore him.

  “Yuri decked me today,” he offered. “Ask him.”

  She made a noncommittal noise. Tom shifted his weight awkwardly, wondering what to say next, watching more cadets wander into the room and take their cots.

  “Hey,” he tried next, “do you wanna hit me, too?”

  Wyatt only looked at him.

  “I’m really okay with it if you want to. I don’t mind.”

  She leaned her chin on her bent knees. “I’m not going to hit you.”

  Tom was disappointed. He really would prefer she take a cue from Lyla and hit him instead of avoiding him.

  The door slid open and Karl Marsters strode in. Karl saw Tom, and hatred flushed over his face.

  Remembering how he’d resolved to approach Karl from now on, Tom waved in a friendly way. “Hiya, Karl. You in charge? That’s fantastic news.”

  “Shut up, Benji!”

  There was a note of hysteria in Karl’s voice. For some reason, Tom being good-natured and friendly toward him seemed to give him the creeps, which amused Tom immensely.

  Karl threw a glare around the room and bellowed, “Listen up. I got orders that all cadets are hooking in for sims today. I don’t know what sort of sim, and I don’t have any details. In fact, I’m stuck hooking in with you to get evaluated like a plebe. So no one ask me any questions, because I don’t know any more than you do.” He hoisted himself up on the spare cot and readied his own neural wire.

  Tom flopped back on his cot, seized the neural wire from underneath, and waited out the time, eyes on the chronometer in his neural processor. Then the moment arrived. He hooked the wire into his access port, and his senses dimmed, all feeling draining from his body.

  Before the sim could resolve into life around him, the connection shorted out. Tom’s eyes snapped back open, a message before his vision center:

  Error: connection to the server was reset. Simulation terminated.

  Tom sat up and tugged out his neural wire, looking around at the other people in the training room, also sitting upright, blinking in confusion.

  Karl sat there uncertainly, shoving his neural wire in and out of his brain stem access port, his heavy brow furrowed like some caveman’s.

  Abruptly, the lights in the room dimmed, and brightened again. Tom found his feet, looking around, because he couldn’t remember the power in the Pentagonal Spire ever flickering. They were right on top of a fission-fusion nuclear reactor, after all.

  Karl stood up, too, looking at the ceiling. “Enslow, net-send tech support. Find out what’s going on.”

  “I’m sure they’ll know,” Wyatt muttered to herself sarcastically, typing on her forearm keyboard. Then she looked up, puzzled. “The connection’s jammed.”

  “Jammed?” Karl said.

  The lights flickered again. Fingers of uneasiness crept down Tom’s spine.

  Karl pointed a meaty finger at them. “All of you, stay here. I’m gonna go downstairs to see what’s happening.”

  As Tom watched him go, he thought he heard something, so soft it was like the usual hum of the air in the Pentagonal Spire had formed a distinct set of words.

  “This is a simulation.”

  Startled, Tom glanced around, but no one was close enough have said this. Had he imagined it? He listened intently but heard nothing else.

  Still . . .

  A sense of unreality crept over him, like all the faces about him were plastic somehow. Unable to shake the feeling, Tom slid down from his cot.

  “Since we’re waiting a bit anyway, I’m going to hit the can,” he said to no one in particular, then he plunged into the brighter lights of the corridor.

  He saw Karl down the hall, and watched the larger boy make a beeline for the stairwell. Most of the training rooms were full, but Tom thought of the neural access ports on the twelfth floor. He’d go right downstairs, and hook in, look through the surveillance cameras and make sure there was no emergency they weren’t being told about.

  Suddenly the door to the stairwell burst open. Shouting soldiers with guns poured out and surrounded Karl.

  In the split second Tom saw them, their familiar faces registered in his brain. Dana Erskine, John Paul Rapert, Wolfgang Ruppersberger, Miles Ellis, and others. The Spire’s soldiers. Their soldiers. Ellis swung the butt of his rifle, slamming Karl’s face, bringing him down.

  Tom acted without thinking, springing through the nearest doorway, a custodial closet with an old-fashioned hinged door. Tom eased it shut, peering through a crack to survey the soldiers, trying to figure out what they were up to. He’d concealed himself just in time. They leveled their guns at the other stray cadets who’d stepped out of their training rooms, and forced them back against the wall, hands on their heads.

  Tom couldn’t believe he was seeing this. The cadets were used to obeying the soldiers. They could have ordered the cadets to go downstairs, and the cadets would’ve done it. There was no need for force.

  Something very messed up was happening here.

  Tom slinked back a step, wired up with adrenaline, as the armed soldiers swa
rmed into each training room one by one, and then herded out groups of cadets, their hands on their heads. His mind raced as he picked out more familiar faces among the gunmen. They were all soldiers stationed in the installation. The attackers were getting perilously close to Tom’s position now, so Tom eased the door closed, shooting a last look toward the training room he’d left, the room in which his friends were still unaware of what was happening. He couldn’t run for it. Even if he managed to warn everyone about what was happening in the hallway, what use was it? Those soldiers would burst in and round them up anyway.

  It was the hardest thing Tom had ever done, but he pulled the door fully shut and ducked back in the closet, concealing himself with everything at hand—rags, curtains, a ripped optical camouflage suit.

  He’d wait here. They weren’t shooting the cadets, just rounding them up for now. So when the coast was clearer, he’d figure out exactly what was going on—and exactly what he should do next.

  He barely dared to breathe where he crouched in the corner. At one point, after several minutes of suspense, the door swung open and a heavy boot thumped nearby, several feet from him. Someone was looking inside. Tom closed his eyes. There was nothing else he could do.

  The inspection must have been very cursory, because the door was quickly slammed shut.

  He waited until a dead hush hung in the air, then he finally dared to ease the door open, peer out. Ensign Rapert was stationed down the hallway, performing another languid sweep of the training rooms, clearly checking for any stragglers they’d missed. Tom held his breath and waited until Rapert disappeared into a room, then sprinted out into the hallway and plunged into a room already inspected, one filled with empty cots and stray neural wires.

  His heart pounding, he pressed himself up against the wall nearest the door, and hooked himself into the nearest access port. He’d access the surveillance system and try to see what was going on, see where they’d taken the other cadets. It was hard focusing on the buzzing of the neural processor in his brain with adrenaline racing through him, with his every sense primed, ready to pick up any sign the soldier was stepping back into this room—but soon Tom tore out of himself through the simulation system, straight into the Pentagonal Spire’s main processor. He jolted into the surveillance system and flipped from camera to camera.