Catalyst

by S. J. Kincaid

  “They’re my only true enemies now,” he told Vanya. “I haven’t forgotten their treachery. The ghost in the machine is anonymous, and this could simply be a resumption of the hostilities from before Cruithne . . . the ghost come back to finish the job. Now that my nanomachines are in their food, there’s very little they’ll be able to do about it soon.”

  Vanya heard it all even as he tried not to hear any of it. Sometimes, Vengerov would say something that struck a painful chord within him, and remind Vanya of when his world was something other than Ushanka and his enclosure and Joseph, and he’d get sick and his stomach would hurt.

  He didn’t want to think of any of that. He dared not. All that mattered was Ushanka.

  In one of those long periods in his enclosure with his pet, he reread the care manual, and for some reason he couldn’t stop rereading a sentence on the page:

  . . . average lifespan of seven to ten years . . .

  Vanya tried to stop looking at it, tried to stop that part of him that insisted on fixing his eyes right there, that part of his brain that dredged up his first memories of Ushanka, from when he’d been a little kid.

  His brain ran over the math. He was much older now than he’d been that Christmas day.

  His heart began to thump like a drum roll and he tried to shut the thought out, but it kept inserting itself into his brain, a knife stabbing into a tender spot.

  Seven to ten years.

  If he’d been six, or . . . or maybe seven at the oldest when Joseph first gave him his rabbit, before he got sick and couldn’t take care of her, then that meant Ushanka should be old. Or dead. But Ushanka had still been growing when Joseph brought her to Vanya, she was still young. . . . Too young.

  Vanya began fighting for air, the enclosure spinning around him, and he buried his face in the mattress in front of him, but he couldn’t get the thought to go away. That rabbit would be dead by now and Ushanka was young. That meant Vengerov had lied to him because this wasn’t really the bunny rabbit he’d been given that Christmas because he’d never been given a rabbit. He wasn’t really Vanya or Ivan or anything other than a prisoner who’d been trapped here to drive him insane and he was Tom Raines. Tom Raines. TOM RAINES.

  “Stop!” he told himself, clutching his head.

  But it kept insisting on thundering through his brain. He was Tom Raines. He wasn’t Vanya. He wasn’t supposed to be here. Vengerov was his enemy. Vengerov had taken everything from him and here he was being so weak and pathetic and he hated himself, he hated himself so much, here he was doing everything he was told and obsessing like a pitiful, pathetic joke over a stupid rabbit for months on end while Joseph Vengerov used him to take over the world. . . .

  “Stop. Stop, stop, stop. Go away. Please go away,” Vanya said over and over because he couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand to think about that. Tom had to stay away. Tom didn’t belong here. Tom had to go away.

  But Tom was there and Tom was furious and outraged and humiliated and horrified.

  An onrush of light as the door to his enclosure popped open, and then Vengerov’s hand descended around the back of his neck, squeezing once, driving that thing back, that terrible thing that been swelling up in Vanya like a mushroom cloud.

  “Ivan, what’s the matter?”

  Vanya felt the restraining node digging into the back of his neck and shrank down, a sense like a blanket was descending over his mind again. The universe returned to a tiny space with defined walls and comfortable limits and he felt safe.

  Joseph rubbed his neck some more as Vanya felt foggier and foggier, then unhooked the neural wire that always locked him into place. “Come outside. I have much that needs to be done today.”

  Vengerov connected with his mind and Vanya disappeared into the back of his own brain, his only thoughts about Ushanka and the way he hadn’t cleaned the cage yesterday because he didn’t have his fingers but he was afraid to ask for them and he hoped Joseph would let him use them once. In the distance, his mind moved along with Vengerov’s through the internet, into surveillance cameras. The surge of anticipation that bubbled up around him and inside him wasn’t his, but this happened a lot and it wasn’t Vanya’s business to wonder what it was about even though some distant part of him felt a pang of familiarity at the sight filling his vision center.

  The feeling in the pit of his stomach grew until it was like someone drilling a hole there because it was the Pentagonal Spire’s mess hall, and Irene Frayne accompanied two columns of Navy SEALs, moving together through the crowd, guns at ready, the cadets scurrying out the way, staring with wide eyes.

  Vengerov’s mind, connected with his, began to flicker through the digital trail he’d planted after killing off the last his rivals in the Coalition . . . the last of his enemies who had the power to oppose him.

  Now for this one.

  The SEAL team moved forward, surrounding James Blackburn where he sat sipping coffee, watching them from his table in the corner. Irene Frayne marched out before them, a small, determined figure, her eyes granite hard in her face.

  Blackburn sipped idly at his coffee, only the slightest hint of tension in the way he was sitting, shoulders stretching the fabric of his uniform. “What can I do for you?”

  “You know why I’m here,” Frayne said, voice blisteringly cold. “You’re under arrest for mass murder.”

  “Mass murder, hmm?”

  “I know you’re the ghost in the machine, James. You grew careless.”

  “Right . . . and wrong.” Blackburn eyes found the nearest camera, and his lips quirked like they were in on a joke together. “Very clever, Joseph. I’ve been wondering why you’ve been taking so long.”

  “You’re insane,” Frayne said, gesturing for the SEALs to seize him.

  With a twist of Vengerov’s thoughts, Vanya felt them both plunging into another viewpoint, through the Austere-grade processor of a soldier, his gun leveled at Blackburn’s head as he drew closer. Vengerov debated whether to use this one to simply kill him. Whether it would be preferable to destroy Blackburn now, or merely neutralize him long enough for the world to transform. Even now, the Austere-grade processors were completing their spread across the continents. There were very few without his processors.

  A true waste, but Vengerov did not care to take chances. He ordered the soldier to fire.

  Tom woke up.

  No, he thought clearly, distinctly, and the soldier’s finger slipped.

  Vengerov’s eyes turned inward, looking at him with cold outrage, and Vanya immediately slipped back over Tom’s mind, terrified at the wrath stirring about him, the force so much greater than him that would easily crush him, but the distraction cost Joseph a few precious moments.

  One moment Blackburn was sitting there, about to be shot, about to be seized—the next the Pentagonal Spire plunged into utter darkness.

  The Navy SEALs snapped on night vision goggles, and Frayne shouted for them to stop Blackburn from fleeing, but Blackburn had launched a virus, sending the Intrasolar cadets into a sort of frenzy all about them. Suddenly they were rushing in every direction, swarming the SEALs, and in the distance the few unaffected shouted to each other.

  “I just got booted off the Spire’s network—”

  “Me, too! I can’t access it.”

  All the emergency screens lit along the walls, and the SEALs whipped off their night vision goggles, eyes dazzled by the walls of laughing skulls.

  Vengerov looked around until he located Blackburn, making for the doors. He ordered the soldier he controlled to raise his gun—and then metal clamped around him from behind and swept him up into the air. The soldier screamed, realizing he was in the grip of a headless metal skeleton. More metal exosuits flashed by, charging through the crowd in the blinding white light of the laughing skulls.

  Exosuits, running on a preprogrammed vector. Frayne was ducking, covering her head, frantically scanning the crowd for Blackburn, the cadets still providing an unwitting swarm of chaos about
them.

  Vengerov leaped out of the soldier into a surveillance camera, frustration soaring through him as he spotted James Blackburn hooking into one of the exosuits.

  No, he wasn’t going to escape so easily!

  Vengerov ripped straight into the Austere-grade processor of another SEAL, and at his mental command, the soldier began to fire, heedless of the crowd, and even in an exosuit Blackburn couldn’t outrun a bullet. One shot sent blood exploding out of his leg, but Blackburn hurled a chair with an exosuited arm. It hit like a truck crashing into the soldier’s head, and their view went dark.

  Vengerov forced them through the network again, into the stairwell. The virus Blackburn had unleashed on the Spire was crawling into the surveillance network now, and it took Joseph time to locate a functioning surveillance camera. Finally he found Blackburn leaping up the stairs.

  At the sixth floor, the door burst open, and Tom felt it like a knife to his heart.

  Wyatt! his brain screamed.

  “What can I do?” she called.

  “Don’t talk to me, don’t get involved,” Blackburn bellowed at her, pointing at the surveillance camera. “You know how he’s doing this.”

  “I can help. Let me help!”

  Soldiers in Vengerov’s control flooded the lower stairwell as Blackburn wasted a precious moment jerking to a sudden stop. He peered down the stairwell at his pursuers, then his gaze found the surveillance camera Vengerov had trained on him.

  The metal of his fist flashed toward it.

  The view went black.

  Satisfaction flooded Vengerov, because there was no way Blackburn could know of his hidden surveillance equipment, seeded throughout the place months ago. Within moments, he found one untouched by Blackburn’s virus, the image focused on Blackburn and Wyatt. In the meanwhile, mindful of the exosuit, Blackburn was reaching out to take Wyatt by the shoulders with infinite care. “We don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll be quick. You’ve come so far in just a few years—”

  “Don’t talk like you’re about to die!” she shouted at him.

  “When it seemed Cruithne was going to hit, I tried to think of something, anything unquestionably good I’ve done with these surplus years, and teaching you was the only thing that came to mind. Watching you progress leaps and bounds beyond what I can do myself, seeing you grow into such a strong and capable young woman . . . It’s given me the only measure of peace I’ve felt in years. I can’t thank you enough for that.”

  He kissed her on the forehead. And then he was gone—bounding up the stairwell.

  Wyatt’s hand flew over her mouth, her shoulders shuddering. She threw a frightened look downward, hearing shouts ringing up the stairs, and moved toward the nearest door out of the stairwell. Vengerov didn’t intended to let her flee. He tore into the next machine, a drone, the walls of the Spire rising past them. One shot fired into the wall, ripping it down near the stairwell, exposing a jagged hole straight into the guts of the building. It would be a potent lure, drawing James Blackburn back down the stairs using the girl’s screams. . . .

  No! Tom thought, and managed to swerve the drone before its wing would have sliced Wyatt in two. Vengerov felt a wave of annoyance with him, but he had priorities, and their drone twisted its way relentlessly up the stairwell, pursuing that exosuited man, and up they emerged, slamming through the door into the fourteenth floor, the giant room with windowed walls where the CamCos lived.

  Blackburn stood by the window, and he whirled around, his eyes wide at the sight of the drone in Vengerov’s control. He held up his exosuited hand. “Back, Ashwan,” he ordered Vik, who was staring in shock at the drone drawing forward, weapons charged.

  Vik! Tom thought.

  And suddenly none of the twisted memories meant a thing, because they were buried under Tom’s feelings—Tom’s actual feelings for his friends. He struggled for his mind, struggled not to let it bend to Vengerov’s will as Vengerov tried to fire and . . .

  Two Centurions rose up outside the window, those massive war machines shaped like scythes, and shock pervaded Vengerov as these two new drones unleashed their weapons. Vengerov’s drone pinwheeled to the side as the walls of glass splintered, lasers flashing. And then Blackburn hurled himself out the shattered window, and one of the Centurions dipped down to break his fall.

  Vengerov righted their drone just as Irene Frayne and her team burst out of the elevators, weapons in hand. Her eyes flew between Vengerov’s drone and the shattered window, the Centurion’s outside, and her voice rang, “What is—”

  Vengerov’s drone soared forward, heedless of the NSA agent—and instantly decapitated Frayne.

  Tom felt a jerk of shock, but Vengerov felt nothing.

  Vengerov honed in on the fleeting glimpse his drone caught of Blackburn, clinging to the Centurion in his exosuit as it swept away from them. He tried to fire, but Tom reared up and fought back again, the way he hadn’t for Frayne, throwing off their targeting scanners. Vexation flooded Vengerov’s mind. It was as close as he ever got to anger, since trying to draw true emotion from him was like piercing a stone and hoping for blood. Tom had still become deeply sensitized to the subtle shifts in his moods. Today he breathed it all in, feeling it, refusing this time to let that part of him that was Vanya arise like a shield to hide him from it. Then the other Centurion whirled on them and blasted them to pieces.

  Tom couldn’t help the malicious pleasure that poured through him as Vengerov moved their minds from one drone near the Spire to another, then another, sweeping the area, searching desperately for that one that had saved Blackburn, trying to find where it had taken his enemy, knowing if he disappeared, he’d lost this opportunity to kill him.

  How did this happen? Vengerov thought. He couldn’t have called those Centurions himself. There must be someone else. . . .

  And that’s when Yaolan struck again, her consciousness like an electric current surging straight into their drone, into them, shorting out the restraining node and sending Vengerov reeling back as it surged into him. But even she couldn’t kill him, she could only shock him, and Vengerov tore out the connection keeping him hooked to Tom and collapsed raggedly to the floor, and then Medusa’s mind touched Tom’s.

  Tom, do you see this text? It was in his net-send.

  It took Tom a moment to remember how to reply. Medusa. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, he thought, horrified with it all. I can’t stop this.

  Tom. She felt like a warming balm pouring over him, and Tom felt he was far removed from everything but her. I know what’s happened. We’re looking for you. Where are you?

  He thought of that glimpse beyond the curtains and that arrangement of stars he didn’t know, and Yaolan pressed him until they were both in the system of the ship he was on, its schematics feeding into his processor.

  I’m sorry, it doesn’t have any positioning tracker. I’ll give you the ship’s schematics. Maybe we can do something—

  And then Tom felt hands on his shoulders, his real shoulders, felt himself being forced down, cheek scraping the carpet, Vengerov’s hand fumbling to tear out the neural wire giving Tom this fleeting lifeline. Medusa promised him fiercely, We will find you, I swear it!

  Like that, it was over. Her words disappeared from his processor.

  Vengerov loomed above him like a stone effigy sitting in judgment, and Tom felt so full of hatred it seemed to be burning him up from the inside.

  “A slight omission, was it not, Vanya? Hiding the existence of the other ghost from me . . .”

  Tom spat in his face. “Don’t call me Vanya. I’m Tom! TOM!”

  Vengerov calmly pressed the back of his hand to his cheek, wiping the spittle away, his eyes like glaciers. Then he seized the back of Tom’s neck, trying to force that same mental retreat the way he always did. “Vanya . . .”

  Tom fought the fog that tried to descend, the sense of helplessness to the marrow of his bones that his brain associated with Vengerov’s hand on him like this. He made himself laugh wil
dly, just to show him, just to make it clear to him he wasn’t winning this time. “I AM NOT VANYA! You LOST! You didn’t win. You lost.”

  Vengerov shoved him away. Tom collapsed to the carpet, laughing with a deep, malicious pleasure that felt like a cleansing balm for his soul. Vengerov stalked over to the enclosure and shoved open the door. There was a rattling inside. Tom’s laughter froze on his lips, his heart going very cold.

  Vengerov pulled out Ushanka, holding the rabbit by the scruff of her neck as her legs kicked in the air. Tom’s breath caught like a band was constricting his chest.

  “Vanya is going to tell me everything about the other ghost in the machine.”

  “D-don’t. D-don’t d-do . . .” Vanya stuttered, his heart wringing with anguish, but Tom realized what was happening and couldn’t let him say another word. He couldn’t let Vanya grovel, plead, beg for Vengerov to let Ushanka go the way he wanted to, the way he was desperate to. The restraining node was hot on his neck, shorted out, fried, and this was the one moment of freedom he’d had over himself since this ordeal began. It wasn’t a moment to be lost to Vanya.

  There was so much more pain when he was Tom, and tears blurred his eyes as he looked at those kicking legs, because she was the only thing that meant anything about his entire wretched existence here and he loved her as ferociously as he’d ever loved anything.

  Except for Medusa.

  Tom realized it in that moment. He hadn’t known until this very second how he felt, but it blazed over him like a supernova that he was in love with her, a girl who’d become a lodestone in his mind. She was his anchor, the defining point where Tom began and ended, because she was the only aspect of his old self he hadn’t yet betrayed, the only piece of his old self that hadn’t been tainted. If he gave her up, if he surrendered her, he would never be anything other than Vanya again.

  He loved her.

  The realization was stunning, wondrous, because it made all the strength flow back into him and he felt again like the person who’d stood on top of the Pentagonal Spire and blared the message across the skyboards, who’d defied the world for her sake.