Insignia

by S. J. Kincaid

  He aimed straight for her heart.

  I see why you’re called Medusa.

  He maneuvered the cameras toward her and let her feel him maneuvering the cameras, and in the Chinese Embassy the disfigured girl returned to her human body just long enough to snap open her eyes and look up toward the cameras. Naked horror blazed over her face.

  And Tom knew he was the bad guy Marsh wanted him to be.

  He could almost feel her scream through that other consciousness touching his, a blinding jolt of pure rage and humiliation tearing at his core. He swore her thoughts were screaming in his head.

  You’ve ruined it! YOU’VE RUINED EVERYTHING!

  Tom knew what she was going to do before her consciousness deserted his. There was no dodging it as she hurtled toward him in her suicidal, kamikaze attack—so he threw it all into fate’s hands and released his docking clamps, the momentum of his flight propelling the satellite forward toward the Smithsonian’s lawn just as Medusa’s vessel crashed into his.

  The sensors fizzled into darkness.

  Tom’s eyes snapped open and he yanked the wire out of his brain stem.

  He was in the hidden room with Nigel’s unconscious body in front of the vast screen overlooking the Rotunda. The crowd was frozen, Elliot no longer fake ice-skating and Svetlana no longer screaming, everyone gaping at the rounded screen overhead—wondering if Tom had destroyed the satellite.

  And then the screen flashed to the lawn of the Smithsonian, where the satellite lay smoking—but intact—near the smoldering remains of the two vessels. An American flag crossed with an Indian flag like two swords flashed across the screen, noting the winner.

  Tom had done it. He’d won.

  The Indo-American contingent roared to its feet, and Elliot gave a theatrical wave and a bow, basking in applause.

  Tom’s head slumped back against the carpet. He lay there alone, thinking of the girl he’d humiliated. The girl whose secret he’d viewed against her will. She’d been the greatest warrior in the world, Achilles, and he’d driven his sword into her heel.

  He couldn’t get Medusa’s dark, horrified eyes out of his mind.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  Chapter Thirty-one

  WITHIN MINUTES GENERAL Marsh and Lieutenant Blackburn snapped the door open.

  “Excellent job, Mr. Raines—” Marsh stopped, shock on his face as his watery eyes took in the scene: Tom lying on the floor near an overturned chair, Nigel crumpled against the wall, a neural wire strewn on the carpet. “What happened in here?”

  “That guy’s your leak, General.” Tom nodded toward Nigel. He looked at the other surprised face, and his gut contracted with sheer hatred for Blackburn. “Maybe you should stick him in your census device and see for yourself! Oh, and he tried to destroy the Spire, too. Just FYI.”

  Blackburn and Marsh exchanged a look.

  “I didn’t get a message,” Blackburn noted, his eyes sliding down to Tom’s. “You were supposed to net-send me if there was trouble, Raines.”

  “I didn’t have a chance,” Tom said defensively.

  Blackburn locked the door, then he and Marsh began working in tandem. Marsh lifted the overturned chair and hoisted Tom up into it, then he pressed a finger to his earpiece and spoke quietly to a team, ordering them to clear the corridor. Blackburn knelt down to check Nigel’s pulse and then turned to Tom. Tom forced himself to hold still as Blackburn deactivated his immobility sequence. He couldn’t bring himself to thank him.

  “The exit route’s clear,” Marsh told Blackburn. “Take Harrison to the holding area, then get back before anyone misses you.”

  “Yes, sir.” Blackburn hoisted Nigel up over his shoulder, and disappeared into the hallway with him.

  Tom watched the door shut, relieved it was Nigel getting hoisted away to the census device rather than him.

  After Tom’s quick explanation, Marsh congratulated him, clapped his shoulder, and instructed him to wait here until the Rotunda cleared out. Marsh dipped back out of the room, and Tom saw him reappear in the Rotunda, embarking on a hearty round of handshakes with various Coalition executives. Tom looked at the floor, not in the mood to watch the schmoozing.

  An insane relief warred with a sinking realization of what he’d done to win. He didn’t even think of celebrating his first victory ever over Medusa. The thought of it made him feel almost sick.

  Maybe that was why it was hard to muster a triumphant smile when the door opened again, and this time Dalton strode inside.

  “Who invited you?” Tom said.

  “General Marsh knows I’m a friend of your family.” Dalton kicked the door closed, hard.

  Rather than challenge that, Tom remarked, “Guess you’ve heard about Nigel.”

  “You surprise me, Tom.” Dalton whirled around and leaned back against the door, arms folded. “You live at the Pentagon, and yet no one’s told you about a doctrine called mutual assured destruction.”

  “Major Cromwell’s talked all about it, actually—but our destruction’s not mutually assured, Dalton. My buddy Nigel”—Tom jabbed his thumb back at the empty chair behind his—“really had some interesting stuff to say before I clocked him.”

  Dalton drew an audible breath.

  Tom smiled at him with bald-faced insolence. “Yeah, he talked all about you getting him to leak CamCo names and IPs. I think there’s a word for that. What is it? Oh. Of course. Treason.”

  “You can’t prove anything.”

  “I disagree. You have one, maybe two hours tops before Lieutenant Blackburn sticks him in the census device and finds out all about you.”

  “Yes, and he’ll pass his findings on to his superiors, who will speak to my superiors. A campaign donation or two later, and we’ll have an order from President Milgram himself sweeping this all under the rug.” Dalton gave a snakelike smile. “That’s the way the world works.”

  “Fine. Then I’ll use the census device, retrieve my own memory of Nigel telling me Dominion’s plan to leak Combatant names—your plan, Dalton—and stick it on the internet.” He saw Dalton flinch like he’d just been slapped. Tom smiled. “That’s also the way the world works.”

  This threat did it. Tom watched Dalton sweat and fumble for a retort. He knew that the internet killed any hopes of burying a secret. As much as the internet had been regulated, as much as it had been censored and filtered over the years, there were too many programmers and too many mobile hubs for the Coalition to subdue it.

  Dalton finally managed, “You’re remarkably ungrateful. I offered you the chance of a lifetime.”

  “Offered? I’ve got a problem with that word, Dalton. It implies you gave me a choice.”

  “I had to force you. You were too stupid to cooperate! You could have been the next Elliot Ramirez if you’d simply worked with me.”

  Tom slid his eyes toward the screen, the view of the Rotunda where Elliot was busy pumping hands, exchanging pleasantries. Showing the same face to everyone, no hint of his real feelings, playing the game. Elliot could do it somehow, could manage to keep that smile on his face without losing his soul.

  But Tom couldn’t.

  He knew what it meant now, throwing away something of himself to win. He saw how meaningless it was. Maybe he’d saved himself, saved Yuri and Wyatt, by tearing out Medusa’s throat—but the taste of victory was bitter on his lips, and the thought of going out into the world now and smiling at people he loathed just made him feel ill. He couldn’t do it. He’d choke on it. It wasn’t worth being somebody if it meant hollowing himself out to win a place with people like Dalton.

  “Elliot’s an okay guy.” That admission still surprised Tom. “But I would never want to be him.”

  “If you really think that, you’re as much of a fool as your father is.”

  “My dad is not a fool.”

  “I know all about him
, Tom. He can’t hold a job, so he deludes himself into thinking it’s rebellion against society. He can’t make it so, he pretends he doesn’t want to. But I know better. This is cold, hard reality: everyone wants to be an Elliot Ramirez.”

  Tom just stared at him, amazed that Dalton couldn’t even imagine someone not caring about the same things he did. But why was it a surprise? A guy like Dalton could never understand a guy like his dad. Neil had faults. Many, many faults. But he saw some things perfectly. He never bought into the image stuff, the power stuff. He never accepted he was prisoner to a society stronger than he was. Even when he was kicked down time and again, he never “stuck his neck in the corporate yoke.” His dad was way too stubborn, too proud.

  And for the first time, Tom realized there was something to admire about that. It took guts to be his dad; it took courage to charge down a path the rest of society dared not follow. Dalton Prestwick played the game exactly the way he was supposed to play it, and he didn’t even see that he was trapped by it. He had to live out the entirety of his life as Dalton Prestwick. It was really a worse fate than anything Tom could inflict on him.

  Tom rose to his feet. He just wanted this man out of his life. Forever.

  “Here’s the deal, Dalton. You stay away from me, got it? You and I never see each other again. I don’t even want to see you in the Spire. Don’t mess with any more of our brains. Not even Karl’s, as much as he deserves it. He starts gelling his hair and wearing cologne, and I’ll tell the Pentagon to look for some Dominion Agra software in his processor. And as for my father—he doesn’t exist to you anymore. Never even say his name again.”

  Dalton’s expression grew narrow and calculating. “Is that all?”

  “You do all that, and I won’t send a copy of my memory to anyone. You don’t do it, and I’ll post it on the internet. I swear I will.”

  “Fine. We have a deal.” He offered his hand. “Shake?”

  Tom turned his back to him. “I’m not shaking your hand, Dalton. Just go away.”

  TOM, LIKE ALL the other non-CamCos in the Spire, was a state secret. So he waited in the private room until the non–Indo-American affiliated crowds departed. Once the only people left in the Capitol were military and the representatives of Indo-American companies, he emerged.

  Tom ventured out into the Rotunda and headed over to Elliot. “How’s it going?”

  Elliot’s collar was stained with sweat. He yanked it open, like it was suffocating him. “Remember what I said about wanting to fight my own battles? Yeah, forget it. I am happy—no, overjoyed—to have a proxy.” His big hand reached up and gripped Tom’s shoulder. “Good job, Tom.”

  “Hey,” Tom said, “I couldn’t have won if you’d been destroyed earlier. You held out against Medusa, man. That’s something.”

  Elliot beamed at him. “Thanks. And, hey, Marsh filled me in about Nigel. You saved the day, didn’t you?” He chuckled. “One of my plebes, saving us all.”

  “I had some help. Wyatt’s virus took Nigel down. I was going to cheat. I didn’t get the chance.”

  Elliot glanced around, then leaned closer to him, his dark eyes probing his. “Something odd happened. I can’t explain it. I swear, I lost control of my neural processor for a while there. I think Svetlana did, too.”

  Tom tried to think quickly of an excuse so Elliot would forget all about that. “Maybe you just—”

  “Raines.”

  The voice from behind him made his heart jump into his throat. Tom’s every muscle tensed. He turned slowly, boiling with hatred, to see Lieutenant Blackburn, just feet away.

  I just won Capitol Summit, Tom reminded himself. He can’t do anything to me.

  And then it hit him: Blackburn really couldn’t do anything to him. And Tom found himself grinning, a sense of power washing through him.

  “Great to see you,” Tom said. “I was hoping for a chance to talk to you, sir.”

  Blackburn blinked, disconcerted, like he didn’t know how to react to this. It gave Tom fierce pleasure.

  “Is there a problem?” Elliot spoke up, looking between them, his brow furrowed.

  “None at all. See you later, Elliot.” Tom drove his hands into his pockets and walked from the Rotunda into the dim, statue-strewn corridor beyond, knowing by instinct that Blackburn was right behind him.

  As soon as they were out of earshot of anyone else, Blackburn demanded, “Did I just interrupt you in the process of telling Elliot Ramirez about your ability?”

  Tom turned around, anger frothing in his veins. He’d never hated someone so much.

  “No, sir. That didn’t work out so well for me the last time, did it?”

  Blackburn’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t even realize how lucky you are that I’m the one who found that first.”

  “Yeah,” Tom agreed sarcastically. “I’m so lucky you tried to rip my brain apart. I can’t imagine what a company like, say, Obsidian would do instead. Gosh, they might actually do something evil.”

  “If you’d just given up that memory—”

  “We’re not having this discussion anymore!” Tom roared at him. “I am not tied down under the census device!” He dropped his voice to a poisonous whisper. “Besides, I know what you want.”

  “Do you?”

  “This is all about Obsidian and Vengerov. He messed up one group of adults in Russia, and then he came over here and messed up you guys, too. That must burn you that he got away scot-free with what he did to you, and all you got was . . . well, Roanoke.”

  Blackburn’s body tensed.

  “I know all about Roanoke.” Tom leaned against the wall behind him. He watched Blackburn’s face, cold calculation like ice in his veins. “And don’t get me wrong, it’s not because Wyatt told me. She never looked at your personnel file. Actually, the only mistake she ever made, sir, was having some sort of trust in you. Good thing you took care of that quickly enough.” He let that sink in, eyes on Blackburn’s inscrutable face, then added, “No, I heard about it because of Joseph Vengerov.”

  Blackburn glanced sharply behind him, back toward the rotunda where Vengerov had just been—almost as though he expected him to be sneaking up behind him.

  Tom smiled. “Yeah, my old pal Joe. I hung out with him once in the Beringer Club. And you know what? That’s it. See, there’s no human experiment going on here, no conspiracy. I was never hiding anything about that from you. I only met Vengerov that once. But you know what? I think I could start a conspiracy with Joe now that you’ve got the idea in my head. Maybe Joe and I would have a lot to say to each other. After all, I figure what you’d hate, more than anything else in the world, would be if Joe got richer and more powerful—and he’d definitely do that if he got his hands on an ‘ability’ like mine. You’ve gotta admit, it would be so easy for me to just walk back into the Rotunda and tell him all about it.”

  Blackburn took a menacing step toward him, and Tom just kept leaning on the wall, refusing to be intimidated. “That would be the most profoundly stupid thing you could ever do, Raines. You’d live to regret it.”

  “That’s funny,” Tom said in a hard voice, “because I think I’d take my chances with Joe before I’d get my brain ripped apart by you. And knowing just how much you’d hate it? That just makes it all the better.”

  “You little fool,” Blackburn hissed. “You think I couldn’t just hack into your brain and stop you?”

  Tom shrugged. “But then you’d miss the other secret. The one I was keeping from you. Here it is: I’m not the only one who can do this.”

  Blackburn reared back a step like he’d just stumbled upon some venomous snake. “There are others,” he breathed.

  “That’s right. The trigger’s there, and I don’t have to be the one to pull it. . . . Any one of us could go to Joe and hand over what we can do to Obsidian and make him CEO of the year. You can stop me, sure, but you can’t stop all of us. You know what I think this means, sir? I think it means you never, ever mess with me again.”

&n
bsp; Blackburn considered him for a long, tense moment—obviously trying to gauge whether Tom’d go through with it. He must’ve seen something he didn’t like on Tom’s face, because he lifted his hands and took a step back. “Fine. We’re done. I’ll leave you be.”

  Tom felt like he was on fire. That was all he wanted. That, and to rip Blackburn’s head off—but he didn’t think he was going to get that.

  “What are you waiting for?” Blackburn snapped. “Shoo, Raines. Get of my sight.”

  Tom shook his head, his gut boiling. “No, see, that’s not how it works. I won this one. We both know it. That means you get out of my sight. Sir.”

  Blackburn raised his eyebrows at that. And then his expression shifted, the faint twist of his lips seeming to say touché. Without another word, he turned and disappeared down the corridor—and the surrender in the sound of his retreating footsteps made dark triumph flood Tom’s chest.

  Sometimes things just worked out.

  TOM SPOKE WITH Olivia Ossare as soon as he returned to the Spire. She advised him to wait until the next meeting of the Defense Committee to back down on the lawsuit thing. Finally, the word came: the Defense Committee had seen the evidence from Nigel’s memories, and they officially assigned the blame for the leak to him. Any further investigation of Tom was prohibited.

  Olivia squeezed Tom’s hand when she heard. “We won.”

  “You saved my life here,” Tom told her.

  “Protecting you kids is my job. I’m glad I finally had a chance to do it.”

  Clearing his name proved the easy part. Getting his dad to back down was another matter.

  Neil didn’t know the specifics, just that Tom faced some threat at the Pentagonal Spire, and that was enough to enrage him. He wouldn’t abandon the custody suit. Tom had to meet with him in VR just to talk him down, and Neil insisted on seeing “my boy the way he looks,” and not “some fancy avatar.”

  Tom had expected his father to choose a casino or maybe the Las Vegas strip as the setting for their conversation, but when he hooked into VR, he found Neil on top of Mount Everest, gazing down at the vast snowy mountaintops around him.