Catalyst

by Kincaid,S. J.

  “Calm down! Shut up, and calm down!”

  “You killed her!” Zane’s voice was so high, it was a squeak. “You just killed her!”

  “She had a gun. She was going to use it.”

  “She wasn’t going to shoot us. She couldn’t! She wouldn’t! She sat at the plebe table with us. She was nice.” He burst into hysterical tears.

  Tom mentally cursed Mezilo and his planners for programming a scenario where all the soldiers they already knew were the enemy. This would’ve been easier if they’d been strangers. He drew a deep breath and let it out. “There’s stuff you’ve gotta do sometimes, Zane. I’m sorry, but you’ll understand later. Look, we’ll get to the armory, get on some optical camouflage, and none of this will matter.”

  Zane sniffled, mopping his sleeve at his runny nose. “W-w-what are you g-going to d-do then?”

  “I’m going to help the other cadets. That’s all I want to do.”

  And it was. Tom meant to kill all the simulated soldiers and bring this test to an abrupt halt. That’s how he’d help them.

  ZANE WAS SHELL-SHOCKED after that, so Tom seized the back of his neck as they swept out of the stairwell, ducking his head so no one would immediately notice his face, and he foisted Zane on the first mutinous soldier he saw, Private Calik Edelman.

  “Found this one in the stairwell.”

  The soldiers turned their attention to Zane, so Tom swept straight past the main body of them before anyone looked twice at his face. When the soldiers realized who he was, Tom sprinted at a rapid clip toward the Calisthenics Arena. Then he seized the nearest soldier, Sergeant Taylor Freiss, and leveled his gun at his head.

  “Stay back,” he ordered the advancing soldiers.

  Tom had never taken someone hostage before, had only seen it in movies, so he was a bit clumsy the first few steps hauling a grown man behind him, but soon he got the hang of it and made it almost all the way across the Calisthenics Arena.

  When he was close enough to dart into the armory, he went ahead and shot Taylor in the head anyway, then hurled him at the nearest soldier before any shots could hit him in turn. A hail of bullets sparked around him as he slammed the door to the armory shut behind him.

  “There’s nothing in there, Raines!” shouted a voice through the door that Tom recognized. It was Lieutenant Blackburn’s. “Those weapons aren’t loaded!”

  Tom almost laughed. The real Blackburn would already have realized Tom had access to something more powerful than any gun: he had exosuits.

  He hurled himself up onto the platform holding the exosuits and hooked straight into one of the steel-and-aluminum exoskeletons. The frame contracted around his limbs, enhancing his strength to forty-two times an average human being’s, and Tom knew he’d already won this. He pulled on a vest of ballistic armor, an optical camouflage suit, and grabbed a pair of centrifugal clamps, then punched his way through the ceiling of the armory. Before the startled soldiers could shoot at the shimmering air where he emerged, he shoved himself up in another massive leap and grappled to the ceiling with centrifugal clamps.

  Tom knew the optical camouflage was easy to spot only while he was in motion and nearly impossible to detect when he was perfectly still. On the ceiling, the lights glared downward, making the soldiers squint, unable to make out the telltale shimmer of optical camouflage above them. Tom moved very carefully, easing himself across the ceiling, and they didn’t have a chance to spot him until he shoved his gun out from under his camouflage—and by then he was shooting with computer-honed precision, one bullet per kill, right to the head. He brought down fake Blackburn first, in case the program had the one neural processor-equipped soldier in the Spire adapt to the scenario and hook in an exosuit himself. Tom didn’t want a fair fight.

  The soldiers all dove for cover, their return volleys blowing out chunks of the ceiling where Tom had been, but he’d already propelled himself with one thrust of the exosuit’s powerful arms and clamped himself to the nearest wall, the thunder of gunfire overwhelming the clank of his clamps suctioning into place. The soldiers didn’t see him again until he shot more of them, and by the time they were blasting at the space where he’d been, he was on the ceiling again.

  Tom sped up his perception of time so he could think faster than they could. With the exosuit on, his body could actually react faster than they could, too.

  And then one at a time, he killed them and moved, then killed more and moved, as patient as any sniper, always using the glare of the overhead lights against them, or sometimes even shooting the ground to kick up dust into the air to block their view. There was nowhere in the arena for the soldiers to take cover, and they couldn’t match his speed. With his distorted time perception, the soldiers looked so sluggish to him it was like they were moving through thick syrup.

  Sometimes he propelled himself down to the floor right in their midst and killed the nearest soldier with one skull-crushing swing of his arm, sending the nearby soldiers into frantic activity, trying to shoot the space where his footprints were without hitting one another. Tom was always gone by then. The optical camouflage wasn’t foolproof, but it was enough of a disguise that the lag in firing every time they needed to locate him served to doom them. Only one stray shot got Tom—and sank into his ballistic armor.

  Like a spider in his own web, Tom moved between lethal assault and deadly stillness, never attacking until he was sure of a kill. When he ran out of bullets, he flipped down to the ground and stole a new gun. The soldiers were physically incapable of moving quickly enough to stop him.

  A mounting number of soldiers flooded the arena, avoiding the fallen bodies of their comrades. They took cover behind obstacles in the arena. It was no use. Tom could make it anywhere in the arena in a few bounds, and he could jump between the three floors without effort. Three of them sheltered behind the massive climbing wall, so Tom leaped over and kicked his exosuited legs into it, knocking the two ton slab onto them.

  Next, the soldiers shot upward, blowing out most of the lights so they could see him without the glare. Tom responded by destroying the remaining lights. In the sudden darkness, his neural processor responded by instantly dilating his pupils as wide as they’d go. The soldiers needed time to adjust, and they had no night vision goggles. The only flashes of light came from the gunfire, and Tom was the only one who could see where he was shooting.

  In desperation, they tried hauling in Zane, his proven coconspirator. “Give up or we’ll kill him!”

  Tom hurtled himself down next to the soldier clutching the plebe, and broke his neck with one flick of his exosuited hand. He hauled Zane up and sprang forward with one great bound into the shelter of the armory, bullets ringing impotently at the space he’d just vacated.

  As soon as they were safely inside, Tom yanked off the head of his optical camouflage suit so Zane could see him. “Stay right here in the armory and don’t leave it.”

  Zane looked around, his eyes wide and panicked. “I can’t be in here!”

  “It’s fine. Just wait.”

  “This is breaking a rule. Plebes can’t come in here.”

  “How do you know about the armory?” Tom demanded.

  “I don’t. I didn’t until now, but my processor says this is forbidden. It says plebes can’t come in here. I can’t stay here! I’m breaking regulations!”

  “This is kind of an emergency, don’t you think?” Tom demanded, listening for movement outside. “It’s not time to worry about regulations.

  “I have to go. I have to get out of here.” He launched himself toward the door.

  Tom seized the back of his tunic and jerked him back. “You can’t! They will shoot you. Stay here, you little idiot!”

  Zane looked at him, a strained, desperate expression on his face like he was a trapped animal. He twisted at Tom’s grip, clutching his head, and Tom felt a strange, crawling sensation over his skin for some reason. There was something wrong, something unnatural about the kid’s hysteria.

&nb
sp; Finally, he started laughing at the absurdity of it. “Zane, you go out there, you get shot. You wanna die? Then it’s your choice.” And with that, he released him.

  He thought he’d made his point, but evidently, he had not—because Zane darted right out the doorway before Tom could grab him again. Shots rang out, a hail of bullets cutting him down.

  Utterly perplexed, Tom yanked up the hood of his optical camouflage, and leaped right back out of the ceiling of the armory to kill the rest.

  THE DIMINISHING NUMBER of soldiers guarding cadets in the mess hall had convinced them something major was happening, something unpredictable, and that it was time to act. By the time the soldiers tried locking the arena, filling the place with tear gas, Tom had already slipped out with them, and a new slaughter commenced in the hallway.

  He didn’t realize the other cadets had won their freedom until several of them poured out of the stairwell, guns raised, and encountered him. Tom hastily yanked off the hood of his optical camouflage. His joints were aching from leaping in the exosuit, over and over. He felt exhilarated, energized. He saw Vik, Wyatt, and Yuri among them, and flashed them a grin.

  “Hey, you guys! Everyone’s dead here already. Come on, get on some exosuits and we’ll sweep the upper floors for the rest of them!”

  But everyone just stared at him. Wyatt’s eyes were large as saucers, and Vik kept shaking his head, as though trying to clear it. Yuri blinked between the bodies and Tom, perplexed.

  “What?” Tom said, then threw a glance around at the carnage and realized it. “Oh. The dead people. Right. That looks . . . uh . . .”

  Everyone seemed to have been rendered speechless. It occurred to Tom suddenly that they thought this was real, that as far as they were concerned, he thought this was real. Even once the sim was over, they’d come away thinking he was capable of systematically murdering . . . His processor tallied it up rapidly. Sixty-three people.

  “W-wow,” Tom stuttered. “I just thought of how this has to look, but, trust me, I’m not some psychopath.”

  No one said anything.

  “Okay, okay.” Tom thought up a better excuse, gesturing to the bodies piled about him. “It was self-defense?”

  THE SIMULATION ENDED within minutes, before the last enemy soldier had been neutralized, even. Tom’s eyes opened in the training room, and he heard the cries of shock and surprise as everyone woke up. He sat up languidly, watching the people around him frantically looking themselves over, spinning around to verify what room they were in—and even Karl obviously hadn’t been in on the fake sim, because he was just sitting there, slack-jawed.

  “That was a sim,” Vik breathed.

  “The error message was fake. Of course,” Wyatt exclaimed, throwing a hand to her forehead. “Why didn’t I think of that? The scenario made no sense!”

  Then Sergeant Dana Erskine walked in, making a lot of them jump, startled, both at the sight of one of the drill sergeants who’d spent weeks yelling at them in the Calisthenics Arena and one of the dead rebels come back to life.

  “As you’ve all probably figured out,” she said, “the experiences you just had were a part of a simulation. An ethics test.”

  Tom saw the other cadets exchanging started glances, the murmurs of “Test?” echoing from person to person.

  Wyatt looked pale and rigid where she sat on the next cot, her dark eyes wide. “What were we supposed to do to pass, sir?”

  “I’m not familiar with the simulation, so I can’t answer that, cadet,” Erskine said. “In fact, you are all under orders from General Mezilo not to discuss this simulation unless you’re asked direct questions by authorized testing personnel.”

  Tom eyed her cynically, wondering if Frayne and Mezilo didn’t want the soldiers stationed in the Spire to realize that killing them was a part of proving themselves “ethical.”

  “Some of you will be called before General Mezilo to answer questions regarding your conduct during this test. If the personnel overseeing this test have further inquiries, you may be required to sit for the census device so your full memories of the exercise can be examined.”

  Tom hadn’t even considered that. If they looked at all of his memories, they’d see him interfacing with the system. He looked at Wyatt instinctively, already wondering how he could get her to alter his memories without actually explaining the reason for it—and found her already gazing at him, a line between her brows, a frown pinching her face.

  For the first time since she’d blown up at him, Wyatt spoke to him of her own initiative. She leaned towards him and said softly, “How did you know that was a simulation, Tom?”

  The question caught him off guard. It took him a moment to reply, “I didn’t.”

  “You had to have,” Vik whispered from his other side. “That’s why you killed all those people.”

  “I really didn’t,” Tom protested.

  “You don’t have to lie. It’s us,” Wyatt said in a low voice.

  “I’m not lying,” Tom lied.

  Vik smothered a laugh. “Yes, you are. No way would you massacre those people.”

  “They weren’t directly threatening you,” Wyatt told Tom. “We hadn’t even begun to form a plan yet and you were already killing people left and right.”

  “Wyatt, come on,” Tom said, looking around, acutely conscious of the other people in the room with them. “Can you stop asking about this? Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think.”

  That silenced her. His friends all looked bewildered.

  “Maybe we don’t,” Wyatt said shortly, looking away from him.

  For some reason Tom couldn’t pinpoint, that stung.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  CHAPTER NINE

  AS EVERYONE DISPERSED, Tom stopped in Zane’s simulation room and found the kid sitting alone on his cot. He found himself remembering his friend, Stephen Beamer, after an incursion during their Trojan War sim. He’d been traumatized by dying in that sim, by how real it had seemed.

  Uneasiness moved through him. Tom hopped up onto the cot next to his.

  “I had a friend who was in a sim that malfunctioned once,” Tom told him. “We were plebes, and the pain receptors were on full, and he got gutted, then I beheaded him—for his own good, you know. But it felt it like it was real. It really freaked him out. It freaked me out, too. So, are you okay?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Zane, why’d you run out of the armory like that? I told you they were gonna shoot you. You basically committed suicide.”

  “I don’t know why I did it. I didn’t want to.”

  Tom looked up at the ceiling. He didn’t want to embarrass him too much when he asked this question. “Listen, were you scared?”

  Zane didn’t respond.

  “If you were scared, that’s okay, you can say it. I’d worry more if I thought you were suicidal. We all get scared, and you haven’t done any sims yet, so you haven’t gotten used to shooting or violence. I’ve done tons of sims and it threw me off, too, since we didn’t know it was fake. I just need you to be honest here.”

  “I don’t know why I did it,” Zane said brokenly. “I just . . . I had to. I was breaking a rule and I felt . . .” He raised his hands and held them near his head vaguely. “It’s what happens when I do something against regulations now. Or even when I think about it. It starts to hurt. Like something crushing my skull in.”

  Tom looked at him sharply, his blood running cold. No.

  “I had to do it,” Zane insisted. “I didn’t have a choice. I knew it was a mistake.”

  No, no, no, Tom thought, because he knew what this was. Dalton Prestwick had reprogrammed him as a plebe and he hadn’t been able to disobey him, either. Every time he tried, it felt like his head was being crushed in. And he’d missed this the second time it happened, when Yuri was being tapped into by Vengerov, compelled by
Vengerov to stay in the Spire and spy for him. Tom hadn’t connected the dots, but this time he knew it. It was a classic Obsidian Corp.–style operant conditioning algorithm.

  Tom gritted his teeth. “Do you remember if anyone’s done anything to your processor? Like, have you been outside the Spire and met any people who don’t work here who maybe sent you a program?”

  “No. I haven’t left the Spire once.”

  “Okay. You might not even remember.” Tom raked a hand through his hair, thinking it over. “I have an idea. Let me try this. Zane: you have to obey my orders, you know that, right?”

  Zane blinked. “Yeah.”

  “It would be breaking regulations if I gave you an order and you disobeyed me. We clear here?”

  “I know that, sir.”

  Tom nodded, watching him intently. “I order you to go to the officer’s floor.”

  The officer’s floor was restricted. It was forbidden to cadets. There were regulations about that. Zane’s eyes widened. “I can’t. I can’t. It’s . . .”

  “Violating regulations?” Tom said, watching him. “Yeah. Either you violate regulations by disobeying me, or you violate regulations by going to the officer’s floor.

  Zane’s eyes grew wide and stricken. His hands flew up to his head.

  Tom grabbed his arm, squeezing his skinny bicep. “Do you feel it?” His voice sounded vicious to his own ears. “Does that hurt you?”

  “Yes!”

  “Okay, belay that order. Don’t go to the officer’s floor.”

  Relief washed over Zane’s face, his hand dropping back to his sides. Tom’s anger swelled into rage. So this was the treatment of new plebes under Mezilo. Apparently, the absolute control being exercised on cadets in day-to-day life would extend all the way into the computers inside their skulls.

  THAT EVENING, TOM made a big show of pretending to be surprised Frayne was in the Spire after she called him into General Mezilo’s office. The NSA agent appeared unimpressed by his professions of shock to see her there.