Catalyst

by Kincaid,S. J.

  Eat.

  Tom realized what was happening. So this was how Vengerov was going to approach the giving-orders-Tom-would-follow thing. Blackburn said he’d try to fool his processor, and even minor concessions would start the learning process that would lead to a loss of his neural sovereignty. If Tom hadn’t known what he was trying to do, he’d be in trouble.

  But he knew. He met Vengerov’s eyes and resolutely set the piece of pizza back down.

  “Eat,” Vengerov said. “I know you’re famished. It’s been quite a while.”

  “I’m not giving up my mind for a piece of pizza.”

  Vengerov studied him. “James Blackburn has clearly discussed neural sovereignty with you. He did you a disservice. Fighting me will only make this harder on yourself. He certainly won’t be here to endure with you now that I’ve jammed the connection between your processors.”

  Tom’s jaw throbbed from gritting his teeth. “You’ll never get control over my brain. I know I have to give it to you, so you might as well kill me if that’s what you’re counting on.”

  They’d had a battle of wills once before, when Vengerov locked him outside Obsidian Corp., training those security cameras on Tom, waiting for him to break down, to plead to be let in. Tom hadn’t broken then, and he wasn’t going to now.

  “Do you think he’s done you a favor?” Vengerov said suddenly. “The kindest thing he could have done was allow me to reprogram you. Or to advise you to concede your neural sovereignty as quickly as possible. His actions have limited my options in ways you will come to regret dearly.”

  Tom glared at him. He wouldn’t even think about buckling.

  Vengerov turned away. “You’ll be returned to your room now.”

  He rapped on the door, and said something to the men who appeared to escort Tom back to his room. Tom vaguely recognized the sound of it: Russian.

  But he didn’t understand them.

  Not one word.

  Tom stared between the Russian speakers, perplexed. He’d been fluent in that language since his third week at the Pentagonal Spire. He got it in his homework downloads.

  As Tom sat back confined in his room where the guards had hooked the other end of his neural wire into the wall, code streaming before his eyes, he began to understand what was being done to him. He tried to think of how to fly a helicopter, but he couldn’t quite recall the controls. He tried to think of how a nuclear detonation worked. He couldn’t work it out in his brain. Panic began to beat inside him.

  It was all going away.

  Everything he knew was going away.

  Tom grew frantic and tried tugging out the neural wire connecting him with the wall again, but it wouldn’t give. Frustration made his head pound, fear clawing his insides. Everything he’d learned, everything he’d downloaded, all the knowledge of fighting and weapons and languages that the neural processor had given him over the last several years, was being drained right back out of his mind like he’d never learned it.

  How was he ever going to escape here if he was just Tom the loser flunking out of Rosewood again?

  Blackburn never reappeared, and Tom knew he wouldn’t. He had no sense of time, but he felt like the evening and then the morning hours passed, hooked into that wall, everything flowing out of him.

  And then with an abrupt click, the process halted. The wire sprang out of the wall.

  Tom stared at the end in his hand, and combed urgently through his memories of the Pentagonal Spire. He remembered the lectures, but he didn’t remember the information Cromwell or Blackburn or Marsh had been referring to during those. He couldn’t even remember something so basic like how to load a rifle.

  It was all gone. Everything he’d learned over the years, obliterated. Vengerov had simply erased it.

  He’d turned Tom back into an ordinary sixteen-year-old kid.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THERE WAS A total blank in Tom’s memory. He opened his eyes with a great gap of nothingness between the realization he’d lost all his useful skills and now—when he found himself in total darkness, a mattress beneath him, walls enclosing him. Tom fought a surge of claustrophobia and felt around. He could reach a whole arm’s length up, but when he tried to sit up, a neural wire yanked him back. It was locked into a port behind him.

  A short neural wire. He could only sit up about halfway.

  He reached back to yank at it, then realized he wasn’t wearing his mechanized fingers. All that he had were the stubbed remains of his real ones.

  Anger surged through him. Vengerov had taken his fingers? He couldn’t let him keep his fingers?

  Tom settled back and tried to breathe, to calm himself. He reached about him, felt with his legs, trying to get a sense of the space he was jammed inside. It was so small.

  It occurred to him suddenly that he wasn’t hungry anymore. There was something jammed in his nose, down his throat. He tried to reach up and feel what it was . . .

  Something plastic going straight through his nose. Revolted, he tried pulling it out, but he couldn’t touch it, either, the restraining node stopping him. He couldn’t touch his nose, the back of his neck, or anything. Tom laughed in angry frustration. “Come on,” he groaned.

  “Don’t try to remove your feeding tube. The restraining node won’t allow it.”

  Vengerov’s voice came from a speaker just above him. Tom gave a startled jerk, staring up into the darkness.

  “You refused to eat the pizza I had prepared for you. There are consequences to refusal. You’ve lost that privilege.”

  “What privilege?” Tom ground out. His voice was so hoarse, it croaked, and a strange notion crept through his mind. It was like he hadn’t spoken in a while. “I have privileges here?”

  “All but the ones you forfeit. In this case, you’ve lost the privilege of eating.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  And then abruptly, the slats covering the walls all around him snapped open, and Tom threw up a hand to shield his eyes from the onrush of blinding light. He saw Vengerov’s silhouette gazing in at him.

  “I do hope you feel comfortable. This will be your living space from now on.”

  Tom sat up as far as he could, and found that they were about at eye level.

  “I can see you anytime I choose. I can hear you anytime I choose,” Vengerov informed him, “but you will only see me when I wish you to. Likewise, you’ll only hear me if I decide you’re going to hear me. Of course, I won’t be here very often, but when I am, you’ll have opportunities to prove yourself more amiable than you’ve been thus far.”

  Tom squinted against the light. “You’re just going leave me in this thing?”

  “Never fear. All your physical needs will be attended to in here.” He circled the enclosure, tapping on the wall. “It’s a modified hospital efficiency unit designed to care for comatose patients. It will quite suffice for you until you feel cooperative enough to earn more liberty of movement.”

  Tom found himself searching up in the slots of light, seeing panels above him in the ceiling. He remembered Yuri in his coma, and a contraption around him some days that tube-fed him when he couldn’t eat, catheterized him, washed him, turned him. It wasn’t for someone fully conscious, it was for someone comatose. Tom felt the walls closing in around him, and he wasn’t even claustrophobic.

  “No. No, wait. You can’t keep me in here,” Tom said, knowing he could.

  “Why, Mr. Raines, you’ve been doing quite well in there for the last several weeks.”

  Tom’s gaze swung to his. “Weeks?” He stared at him in flabbergasted silence, then, “I haven’t been asleep for—for weeks. You’re lying.”

  Vengerov seemed puzzled by his shock. “I run the two most powerful companies in the world. I can hardly devote every day to you. I’ll be tending to your behavioral modific
ation when I have time to visit personally, but those times are few and far between. This happens to be my first free day in a while.”

  Tom gaped at him, aghast. Weeks? Weeks? Had he really been out that long?

  “Never fear, I won’t keep you unconscious most intervals when I’m away. This was a unique situation—I felt I should explain this situation to you the first time you woke up. You would have been very afraid not hearing my explanation.”

  Tom’s head reeled. Being awake for weeks in here sounded unimaginably worse than being unconscious. “You can’t . . .” He faltered.

  A swipe of Vengerov’s hand and the slats all snapped closed, darkness descending around him. Furious, Tom aimed a punch at the wall—but the restraining node stopped him.

  “Oh, and be assured,” Vengerov’s voice piped from above again, “the restraining node won’t allow you to harm yourself while I’m away. It would be very unfortunate if you succumbed to the stress of your situation.”

  Despair twisted through Tom. The silence lasted this time. He tried reaching for his neck again, wondering if he could ease his hand over to the restraining node and subtly work it out . . . But his hand wouldn’t get near it. He couldn’t even touch his own neck.

  Left with nothing else to contemplate, Tom’s mind revolted against Vengerov’s words. It couldn’t have been weeks. It couldn’t have been. That meant . . . it meant he hadn’t been rescued in weeks.

  But his throat had croaked when he talked, and his limbs felt stiff, weak and shaky like he hadn’t used them much.

  Tom couldn’t bear to think about it.

  TIME PASSED, THOUGH it seemed empty and utterly endless in the enclosure. When sleep did come, it was never planned and Tom didn’t even realize it had happened until he awoke in the dark.

  He wasn’t sure, but he thought maybe Vengerov had programmed the unit to tend him on an erratic schedule, to send him into sleep mode at odd times. He always felt caught by surprise. Sometimes after sleeping, he felt like he’d been out for weeks. Sometimes it felt like seconds.

  He thought of Blackburn’s warnings over and over.

  “He is trying to wear me down,” Tom said aloud. Sometimes it comforted him to hear his own voice, to hear anything, but today the words seemed to land flat in the darkness and get swallowed up immediately.

  Clearly with the pizza thing, Vengerov had realized Tom knew his game and he couldn’t manipulate him with his “needs and desires.” So he was using psychological stressors. And this total isolation was turning into one long, unending psychological stressor.

  Tom moved as much as he could, trying to keep up his strength, even if he couldn’t lift his legs all the way, arms all the way. He shut out the terrible panic that always wanted to sweep over him when he realized how confined the space was.

  The enclosure was a horrifying experience, not only when nothing was happening at all. He had to get fed. Tom would suddenly feel totally numb, something sent to his processor directly through the neural wire, and then he’d lie there, paralyzed like the coma patient the enclosure had been built for, as the feeding tube descended and connected with the one jammed down his nose. Heat pooled in his stomach, and then it was over, withdrawing up into the ceiling of the unit again . . . for a few hours. Water was administered the same way. The worst was the bathroom, though. Another tube, another terrible moment of paralysis. Then a catheter.

  He wasn’t sure how much he was being fed, but it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. He was always desperately hungry. Ravenous for something to bite, to chew. His mouth felt bone-dry and he fantasized about everything he’d ever eaten. His eyes began playing tricks on him. He’d see what appeared to be a tiny light before him, and then it would bloom into a full screen, into vivid daydreams about being in the mess hall with his friends, so real that when they dissolved, a sense of loss and terrible loneliness saturated him.

  He tried talking to himself. He tried pretending to talk to friends, and imagining what they’d say. He sang to himself. He ranted at Vengerov, even though Vengerov wasn’t there.

  But always, always, Tom was alone.

  He had no way to measure time, none at all, but it felt like an eternity was passing him by. And then a day came when Tom awoke in the ever-present darkness and the cold understanding gripped him that one person was entirely in control of his fate. One person had total power to decide whether Tom would spend the rest of his existence in this enveloping darkness. Joseph Vengerov began to enlarge in Tom’s mind until he filled the entire world, like they were on some isolated planet where no one else existed. The rest of the universe seemed to have vanished. Terror like Tom had never known gripped his heart.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to the darkness. “Is this still about the pizza thing? I’m sorry I didn’t eat it. I am. I’m really sorry. Just, just . . . Come on. This is enough. You’ve made your point. You made it.”

  A deep wave of shame swept over him, that he’d even spoken the words, that he’d surrendered that much. But the next time he awoke, he was rewarded for it. Light flooded the enclosure for the first time in what felt like ages.

  “Why, Tom,” Vengerov said as Tom squinted to see his silhouette on the other side of the slats, “I forgive you.”

  THAT WAS THE first time Vengerov freed him, and the momentary freedom felt glorious, dizzying to Tom, even if they only went as far as the room immediately outside his enclosure—a study of some sort. Tom drank in every detail of the room, the holographic fireplace, complete with a crackling sound; a massive leather couch. There was a window in the distance concealed by thick blue curtains.

  He tried to take a step, but his legs buckled. They were too cramped, muscles too atrophied from too much time lying down, too much time without movement.

  They sank under him. Vengerov caught him when he would have fallen, though, and a traitorous sense of gratitude washed through Tom like insanity itself. Tom immediately grew furious with himself, because Vengerov was the reason his muscles were atrophying in the first place.

  “Do you wish to see out the window?” Vengerov said in his ear.

  Tom swallowed against the knot his chest, because he was desperate to see outside. He was desperate to see the sky. Just to know it was still there.

  But then Vengerov hooked a neural wire into his access port and pressed the other end of the neural wire back into Tom’s. Tom felt a bolt of pain, knowing he wasn’t getting this for free.

  “Look out the window,” Vengerov said, his mind reaching Tom’s, commanding, Look out the window.

  Tom knew he shouldn’t do it. He knew it. Accept this one command and it was the first step to losing neural sovereignty . . .

  But if he didn’t, if he stood here, he’d have to go back into the enclosure and he couldn’t stand it and he just wanted to see it once. If he could see the sky once, the blue sky or the clouds, then he’d be able to live on that for a long while, he was sure of it.

  The temptation burned bright as the sun as Vengerov steered Tom across the room, and soon the fabric was inches away, ready for him to tear it aside for one glimpse.

  Go ahead. Open it, rang Vengerov’s command in his mind.

  “You won’t get this offer again,” Vengerov whispered in his ear.

  Suddenly desperate and heedless of the consequences, Tom ripped aside the curtain, that foreign command still trumpeting in his brain as he opened it, Open it. Open it.

  And then he just stared, uncomprehending. All he saw was space. Darkness pierced by distant stars, rotating in circles. There was a stretch of suborbitals, drones, all deactivated, dead. He didn’t understand it.

  “This entire ship uses centrifugal forces to simulate gravity,” Vengerov told him. “The twin capsules pivot around one another. Innovative, is it not?”

  “We’re in space,” Tom said bleakly.

  “Yes. A small structure orbiting the planet, one just for you.”

  Tom looked at him. “Just for me?”

  Vengerov smiled and
stroked his cheek. “Why, you didn’t realize you’re all alone up here between my visits?”

  Tom felt like he’d been punched. “I’m the only one in here?”

  “Yes. You and a single Praetorian on the oft chance someone stumbles upon you . . . Though that’s unlikely. But never fear.” Vengerov nodded toward the hospital efficiency unit. “If something happens to me and I can’t return, that’s stocked and ready to keep you alive for decades to come.”

  Horror rocked Tom, blanking out his brain. He was entirely alone and one day Vengerov would go and never come back and he’d be here for the rest of his life.

  He felt like gagging, retching. “No one else knows about me?”

  Vengerov rubbed the back of his neck. “I couldn’t expect to keep you a secret if anyone else knew. Even my employees might slip. My information has a way of leaking if it’s in my databases, so I suppose you could say you’ve been totally erased from the world.”

  Erased. Erased.

  “I don’t even have this ship rigged up to a network,” Vengerov added, “just to be very safe. The only network hub comes in with me when I visit. Otherwise, this is merely another inactive piece of equipment amid all the other equipment I decommissioned after the attacks of the ghost. Do you like seeing them again?”

  Tom couldn’t breathe.

  “I thought you’d appreciate seeing all these machines again,” Vengerov said, eyes on the distant suborbitals, “the ones that, thanks to you, are now out of service. I suppose you could say this is a corner of the universe that only you inhabit. I’ll continue visiting every few weeks, though I’d come more often if I felt you were inclined to be cooperative.”

  Every. Few. Weeks.

  Tom stared out at the gaping black tapestry of space, feeling like he was going to burst into tears. They were facing away from the planet. There wasn’t even a view of Earth to ground him. They were spinning end over end, always gazing into the void and never at the planet. His neural processor didn’t kick in to calculate his position using the stars because Vengerov had removed his downloads about stellar cartography and Tom’s organic, human brain didn’t know enough about the constellations to do it. He recognized the Big Dipper, but that was all. He was far away from everything, everyone. Without the internet, Medusa couldn’t find him. If Vengerov was the only one who knew where he was, the only one, then he wasn’t getting found. Not ever.