Catalyst

by S. J. Kincaid

  Tom couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t stand Blackburn’s scrutiny, the way he seemed to be peeling his skin away with that questioning look. And he couldn’t think.

  The hot silence of the desert pressed in on him, choking him, heating his thoughts to a million, a billion things flashing in his brain all at once, all in warning, and he pressed his palms over his ears hoping to shut out the way they were buzzing louder and louder until they were deafening inside him, and there was only one thing to worry about all of a sudden.

  “You’re lying!” Tom realized. “You’re lying. My dad’s not safe. I don’t care what you think, he’s not safe! “

  “He’s safe. Vengerov won’t use the leverage of your father until he knows for certain I’m out of the picture.”

  “No! No, I can’t take the chance.” The words tumbled out of Tom. “I have to go to him. I have to get him.”

  “You’re not in shape to travel anywhere, and frankly, neither am I.”

  “If you won’t help me find him, then I’ll find him without you. I’ll go without you. I’ll find him. I have to find him. I need to see him!” All Tom could think of was Neil, Neil hurt, Neil in danger, Neil with another gun to his head . . .

  Blackburn’s expression shifted incredulously. “If one person sees you, Obsidian Corp. knows where you are, and you’ll get captured again. I assume you wouldn’t have blown yourself into space if you wanted that. I certainly didn’t rescue you only to hand you back over to him. I’m willing to bet that’s the last thing your father would ever want.”

  Tom felt walls closing in on him again even though they were out in the desert because he had no options and nowhere to go. The sunlight seemed to slice brighter and sharper into his skin, the glare blinding into his eyes still aching from the void of space.

  His mind flooded with images of those campers turning to him, his friends disgusted with him, Vengerov smiling at Vanya, the weapons firing at Dominion Agra’s executive board, and a million other things from the past year that began to drown him all at once in the boiling heat of the daylight, and he’d grown so used to the same temperature all the time in Vengerov’s capsule that it seemed to strangle him.

  We have two weapons he doesn’t: you and Medusa.

  Tom began to laugh hysterically, until his stomach ached because it was suddenly the funniest joke ever. Blackburn’s brow furrowed, and Tom was only half aware of him standing there, asking him something he didn’t understand.

  The truth was, Tom couldn’t even begin to conceive of fixing the mess he’d made. He couldn’t even see a hint of a path out of this jungle. It was all too big, too much, and the sky over him seemed to be crushing.

  “Tom . . .”

  But Tom backed away from him, and shut himself in the cabin. It still wasn’t right there, though, he still felt like he was going to explode, go insane, go out of his mind. He wasn’t laughing now. He couldn’t breathe.

  He stumbled into the bathroom, a small room with one light. He yanked that door shut, too. In the darkness of the enclosed room, it was better, just a bit better, but not quite right. He sat down in the bathtub and felt the porcelain pressing in on all sides, and that was better, still. He yanked the curtain shut around it, blocking the last hint of light, and finally with the walls pressing in on him and the total blackness about him, oxygen seemed to pour back into his lungs. His mind stilled.

  For the first time since waking up, he felt normal again.

  A few times, the door creaked open, and Tom held his breath, hoping Blackburn would go away. He heard him breathing in the darkness.

  Go away, go away, go away, Tom thought desperately.

  Footsteps creaked over floorboards, the light stealing away.

  Blackburn had gone.

  TOM WASN’T SURE how much time passed. It spiraled away from him the way it always did. Sometimes he heard a clink, and he’d find a pitcher of water on the floor by the tub. Sometimes a sandwich. Tom woke up once to discover a pillow had been wedged under his head, a thin blanket thrown over him. His thoughts couldn’t seem to form the words to make sense of any of it. His mind tumbled in and out of a stupor.

  And then at some point, the light flipped on, flooding the room.

  “I know this is some sort of post-traumatic stress reaction,” Blackburn announced to the air. “You obviously need extensive psychological counseling, Tom, but we’re not in a situation where I can do that. We don’t have time. We have to snap you out of this.”

  Something bad was going to happen. Tom grew sure of it. Just like whenever the hospital efficiency unit powered up, and he heard it hum, and always, always something undignified and humiliating followed, so he threw his arm over his eyes wanting it to end quickly.

  He jumped as he heard the shower curtain yanked aside, and then cringed away from the firm clasp on his chin, twisting his head around.

  “Look at me.”

  Tom froze. That wasn’t Blackburn’s voice.

  His eyes shot up. In the flood of blinding light, it wasn’t Lieutenant Blackburn kneeling down next to the tub.

  It was Neil.

  Neil!

  Some distant part of Tom figured it out. Blackburn had access to his vision center. He was manipulating it. Showing him his father to . . . to get a reaction or trick him or something, and Tom felt outrage rear up within him because he wanted to punch him for doing this, for walking in like this. He wanted . . . he wanted . . .

  He wanted his father.

  Like a dam breaking open, the longing swept over Tom, displacing everything—his reason, his common sense, his awareness of where he was, what this was. All he could do was whisper, “Dad?”

  Neil’s grip slackened a moment, his hand dropping from his chin. He looked surprised, but he recovered quickly. “Yes. Yes, it’s me.”

  “Dad!” Tom threw himself forward, and Neil hoisted him over the edge of the tub and then drew him into his arms.

  Suddenly it was just like it always had been when Tom was a kid and things were too awful. The one person who’d always been there for him was here, telling him it was all going to be okay, and nothing else mattered because Tom suddenly believed it would be.

  “Tell me what happened to you,” Neil whispered.

  Tom did. He told him everything. The restraining node, the enclosure, Vanya. What he’d done to the world.

  “Listen to me,” Neil said, right in his ear. “None of this is your fault.”

  “Yes, it is. You know it is.”

  “No, Tom, listen.” Neil pulled back from him, holding his shoulders, eyes intent. “You’re a human being. You’re the product of millions of years of evolution. Every single cell in your body, every organ, is fashioned in a way that will keep you alive. You were in an intolerable situation, and your brain did its job: it devised a way to make the situation bearable. That’s all Vanya was. He was a product of a very ancient and very intelligent part of your brain that knew you needed to be totally detached from the situation if you were going to survive it with your mind intact. You are not the first person this has ever happened to, and you won’t be the last.”

  “I almost killed Wyatt.”

  “No, Joseph Vengerov almost killed her, but you didn’t let him. When it mattered, you overcame Vanya. You stopped it. And then you did something absolutely incredible and managed to escape. Vanya isn’t your enemy. Vanya was there to protect you when you needed it. I just wish to God we’d found you sooner.”

  Tom closed his eyes miserably. “Vengerov was locked out of my processor. I was so glad at first. I thought I’d hold out.”

  Neil’s arms tensed around him. “And that’s the reason he did this to you, isn’t it?”

  Tom didn’t answer.

  Neil’s voice grew hoarse. “I never would have let this happen to you if . . .” He fell silent. Then, “Tom, I’m sorry. I am so sorry.”

  It didn’t sound like Neil, and so Tom said quickly, “It’s okay, Dad. It’s not your fault.”

  “I know
this isn’t the first time I’ve hurt you, but whatever I’ve done, whatever I’ve said to you . . .” Neil’s voice broke, his hand stroking Tom’s hair, and Tom found himself unwillingly remembering Antarctica. “You know what I did to my own children. I lost everything that day. There’s no meaning to life once you’re a monster. I didn’t care about my own death. For years there’s only been one shred of meaning, one single goal: to use this powerful weapon in my skull and drag Joseph Vengerov down to hell with me. I didn’t consider the consequences to other people. To you. I’m sorry.”

  Tom was suddenly starkly aware of where he was, who he was talking to.

  “I couldn’t kill him,” Blackburn said, “so I set out to eradicate all meaning to his existence. I studied him for years. He loved nothing. The only thing he valued was his vision for the world. That’s why I set out to get a position at the Pentagonal Spire. It was the ideal server to use to infect his drones, as many as I could. I intended to hijack his own machines and burn down his utopia in its birth pangs.”

  Blackburn would have succeeded in destroying Vengerov’s dreams, Tom knew. He’d killed enough executives to destroy the confidence the rest of them had in Vengerov’s technology. The Austere-grade processors would’ve never been deployed if it hadn’t been for Cruithne. Maybe the combined pressure from the other Coalition CEOs would’ve brought down Vengerov, too.

  “For years, the endgame was all I thought about,” Blackburn said. “Everyone else . . . There was nothing else that mattered to me. And it was better that way. It’s easier when nothing else means a thing.”

  Wyatt flickered through Tom’s mind. Whatever Blackburn said, she’d mattered to him. But he’d always taken the first opportunity to push her away. Maybe she meant something despite himself.

  “So if you wonder why I’ve treated you the way I have,” Blackburn said, “just know that it wasn’t you, Tom. I barely saw you, early on. First you were just a new plebe who didn’t understand he was supposed to follow orders and avoid conflicts. I cracked down on you like I would any trainee who liked to mouth off. I thought I was just teaching you your place in the chain of command. I assumed your actions all stemmed from insolence. . . .”

  “They probably did,” Tom muttered. Everyone thought he was insolent.

  “No, I don’t think so. Not now. I understood that after you hit your head when Nigel Harrison used a virus on you, and you just tried to walk away. You’d never had a guiding authority figure. That’s clear to me. This idea of structure and a chain of command was totally new to you. I might’ve taken a new approach with you after I understood you better, but you know what happened next.”

  Tom knew. The Census Chamber. The fatal moment when he showed Blackburn his memory of what he could do with machines. When Blackburn saw the snippet of memory Tom had of Vengerov and drew conclusions from that.

  In that instant, he’d gone from just another plebe in the Spire to a factor in Blackburn’s dark vendetta.

  But it hadn’t been all awful. Blackburn saved him in Antarctica. He’d tried to warn him when he thought he was doing something stupid, something reckless. He could have solved the danger that was Tom’s ability in an instant by shoving him into the vactube and sending him the way of Heather; he could have left him to die in space. But he hadn’t. He wasn’t so monstrous as he believed.

  He didn’t even notice the moment Blackburn reached down and finally took off his restraining node, the one Tom hadn’t even dared to touch out of some paralyzing fear he wouldn’t be able to get it out.

  “You see?” Blackburn said, showing it to him. “It’s just a piece of metal now.”

  Tom stared at the hateful thing. Vengerov had it custom-made, and he’d spared no expense. It was inlaid with gold, an elegant design with the Obsidian Corp. logo—a sinister eye. He thought of the sense of pride and ownership Vengerov must’ve felt every time he saw it.

  “Want to hit it with a sledgehammer?” Blackburn asked him.

  “I want to burn it.”

  “We can arrange that.”

  THE THERMITE RENDERED the restraining node a melted puddle in the middle of the desert, and Tom watched it burn until it seemed to scorch a hole in his retinas. Then he looked up at Blackburn, standing beneath the vast desert sky with him, and said, “Now what?”

  “It depends on you,” Blackburn rumbled. “We have somewhere to go. Only when you’re ready. The world can wait.”

  “But Vengerov—”

  “He can wait.”

  For a man who’d single-mindedly pursued the same agenda for eighteen years, it was a real sacrifice. Tom knew it couldn’t wait, not for very long, but Blackburn was giving him breathing room if he needed it—and maybe because of that, Tom knew he didn’t. He straightened up, turning away from the molten puddle, convincing himself his neck wouldn’t feel strange without the restraining node for very long.

  “You know,” he told Blackburn, “if you hadn’t locked Vengerov out of my processor that first day . . .”

  Blackburn’s large shoulders tensed.

  “If you hadn’t,” Tom forged on, cutting his eyes up to his, “he would’ve reprogrammed me. It would’ve been a lot easier on me if he’d just controlled my mind from the start. I couldn’t have fought back. It would’ve been the path of least resistance. But I would have given Medusa away. I never would have escaped. I would have killed a lot more people and this would all be a lot worse. It hurt more this way, but you’re the only reason I have anything to come back to now.”

  Surprise flickered over Blackburn’s face.

  “I know you’re the reason I’m alive,” Tom said, “and it’s not the first time, either. You’ve been kind of . . . I dunno, reliable, I guess. And that sounds like it’s not a big deal, but it is to me because I can’t think of many people I can say that about. So the rest of the stuff you said is just . . . let’s call it the past.”

  “The past,” Blackburn agreed softly.

  “And thanks. For everything.” Tom offered his hand.

  Blackburn shook it as the desert light faded about them, an understanding between them at last.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “THIS IS IT?” Tom said in utter disbelief.

  Blackburn nodded. “This is it.”

  “This is the very safest place in the world to mount a resistance from? Are you kidding me?”

  “Nope.”

  They stood in the middle of the Pentagonal Spire’s mess hall, oblivious cadets, soldiers, and the occasional civilian wandering past them, unable to see them while they were in stealth mode.

  “Think about it,” Blackburn said, stepping away from Tom as the flood of people walked past him, unseeing. “I know this server better than any other in the world. Every single machine in this building—and every Vigilant- and Austere-grade processor inside—gets its programming directly from this server. We can wander this entire installation in stealth mode. Now that everyone has a neural processor, we can truly be invisible. Not even those surveillance cameras can pick us up.”

  “Didn’t you make this place fill up with laughing skulls?”

  “Not a full system meltdown,” Blackburn said. “I only needed enough time to get clear of here. To regroup. You escaping the exact same day, that was just . . . well, it was very good timing.”

  Tom stared at a soldier walking past them, eyes blank as a zombie’s.

  “If you think about it,” Blackburn noted, “Joseph Vengerov’s done us a favor, not sparing a single person from his neural machines. In stealth mode, one pair of eyes not clouded by the processors would spot us.”

  Tom caught sight of Vik, Wyatt, and Yuri walking into the mess hall together, and his heart gave a jerk. His friends.

  Blackburn studied him. “Are you going to be okay here while I take a look at the system?”

 
Tom shoved his hands into his pockets. “Why wouldn’t I be? Sir?”

  “Thatta boy, Raines,” he said, clapping Tom’s shoulder. For a moment, Tom’s mind flashed to Neil holding him close in the bathroom and he had to look away.

  “I’m going to go check out the servers and make sure we stay hidden,” Blackburn said. “Your friends know you’ve escaped, and they know you’re coming here. It’s up to you when they see you. You can authorize them to do it anytime, but make sure to use your judgment. You don’t want them reacting suspiciously to something no one else can see.”

  Tom nodded.

  And then Blackburn was off, leaving Tom in the middle of the mess hall like some ghost who’d returned to haunt his friends. Tom made his way across the mess hall on unsteady legs and reached up to tap his forearm keyboard—but then a great, sick feeling swept over him. He felt like a stranger in his own life.

  He followed Vik mindlessly to the table in the mess hall he was sharing with Wyatt and Yuri, and their words were like white noise in his ears as he stepped back in time a year and a half, but he didn’t feel the way he had before Vengerov grabbed him. His brain tried to pick through the tangle of recollections, the true, the false.

  Tom found his eyes riveted to Vik’s collar, where the Intrasolar Forces eagle insignia was, a pair of crossed slashes beneath it. Plebes had one line, Middles two, Uppers three. CamCos had the crossed lines. He saw it on Wyatt’s collar, too. Yuri was an Upper now, obviously.

  He’d missed so much.

  He wasn’t ready for this.

  Tom had to get away from this. He had to escape.

  It wasn’t until he’d stepped into the corridor beyond the mess hall that he heard the whispered “Hey!”

  Tom tensed up, his muscles locking in place.

  “Um, Gormless Cretin?” The words sounded awkward coming from Wyatt’s lips, and Tom drew a deep breath, then forced himself to turn around. Her entire body vibrated like she was in contact with some electric current, her cheeks flushed, eyes wide. “Sorry, I can’t say your name or I’ll trigger some security algorithms. I’m sure you’re being searched for all over the networks now.”