“It looks more like you’re a bear.” Vik nodded at Tom, hoping he’d back him up.
“You should clench your fists and make sure they’re high over your head next time,” Tom explained. “Then you say the whole I-am-awesome thing. That’s a proper fist pump.”
“How about this instead,” Wyatt said. She put her hands on her waist, cleared her throat, then said, “I have to ask you guys something. Something important.” Her words sounded stilted, like something she’d practiced in front of the mirror several times.
Vik clamped a hand over his eyes. “Must we subject ourselves to this indignity, Doctor?”
“She won, man,” Tom said.
Vik dropped his hand with a sigh, turned to Wyatt, and played along. “What do you want to ask us, Wyatt?”
“How does defeat taste?” Wyatt said, with flourish. “Is it bitter? See, I am curious because I wouldn’t know from personal experience, and you would.”
She let that sink in, and Tom winced. “Yeah, that’s gloating. Face rubbing, actually.”
Vik shook his head regretfully. “The day’s officially yours, Evil Wench.”
And then a voice spoke, “I’m disappointed.”
Tom jumped so high, he nearly careened back into a tomato vine. Vik gave a yelp. Wyatt just froze like an animal caught in the glare of headlights, staring at Lieutenant Blackburn as he emerged into the clearing.
“Here I was,” Blackburn said, rubbing his hands together, “waiting with anticipation for whatever nasty program you were going to unleash on them, but it ended with a whimper, not a bang. Well, there’s one consolation: at least I can now announce the winner of this competition.”
Vik’s shoulders slumped. “Hannibal Division, right?”
“Wrong, Mr. Ashwan.” There was a gleeful smile on his face. He jabbed both his thumbs at his chest. “Me. I won. There is one very simple reason I wanted war games: I wanted my rogue hacker to out herself.”
Wyatt froze.
“And you sure didn’t disappoint, Ms. Enslow. After all that time, playing it so careful, what was it that changed your mind? Caught up in the competitive spirit? Maybe goaded by your peers? I hoped you would be.”
“It’s not her—” Tom tried.
“Tom, it’s okay,” Wyatt said suddenly. She gave a resigned shrug. “I was tired of it, okay? You’re right. It was me all along, sir. So what happens now?”
“Well, let’s see.” He folded his arms and seemed to think about it. “Hacking a classified database, not to mention altering the content … I’m fairly sure one or both of those are illegal. I could report it to General Marsh and have charges drawn up. They’d certainly have to remove your neural processor if you were convicted, since there’s no room in this program for felons. You’ve had the processor long enough, so its removal may damage some of your intellectual faculties, but you’ll recover most of them in time. I’m sure the prison sentence won’t be so severe, given your youth. You were simply messing around, hardly committing treason, so it won’t be a nasty confinement facility either. And your record will be expunged once you turn eighteen.”
Wyatt had grown completely pale, her eyes bugging out. Tom felt like there was a fire in his chest. He fought the urge to charge over and punch Blackburn’s smug face.
“Or alternatively,” Blackburn said, “you could be removed from Programming class, which isn’t moving at the advanced pace you require anyway, and spend that time instead performing some minor software updates around this place as I deem fit.”
Wyatt’s mouth moved without making a sound. She looked like she’d forgotten how to speak.
“Your choice, Ms. Enslow,” Blackburn added.
“Well, the second one,” she cried. “I would’ve done that anyway, even without choice number one.”
“Yes,” he said, “and I would have offered it anyway, even if, say, someone had given me your identity on his very first day here.” His eyes found Tom. “It infuriates me seeing such skill go to waste.”
Tom just stared at him. He couldn’t get his head around to the fact that he’d been protecting Wyatt from Blackburn for no reason.
“Go to my office, Enslow. We’ll draw up a schedule.”
“Sure. Okay. Sure.” Wyatt scurried past him. She broke into a flat run for the door.
Blackburn waited until she was out of the arboretum and then he turned on Tom and Vik. They both remained rooted in place. Vik gazed after Wyatt, like he wanted to flee, too, but couldn’t make himself move.
“Mr. Raines, if I were a lesser man, I’d rub this moment in your face.” He considered that. “Actually, I am a lesser man. This must be a very bitter moment of realization for you. You could’ve avoided that entire ordeal your first day in class. Couldn’t he have, Mr. Ashwan?”
Vik snapped to attention. “Sir, yes, sir!”
Tom gaped at Vik. The traitor.
“Thatta boy, Ashwan.” Blackburn leaned toward Tom and pointed at Vik. “That’s a smart kid who’s going to go somewhere. Learn from him.” With that, Blackburn turned and left them in the arboretum.
As soon as he was gone, Tom shoved his hands into his pockets and turned on Vik. “‘Sir, yes, sir’?” He imitated Vik’s earlier words. “Why didn’t you offer to clean his office while you were at it?”
Vik shrugged, not the least bit embarrassed. “At the end of the day, he’s our superior officer, and I wanna be a Combatant someday. Admit it, Tom, so do you, too.” He reached out and clapped his shoulder. “It’s over. He won. Just think: no more covering for Wyatt. Life’s going to be easier.”
TOM SPENT A few days deeply suspicious that Blackburn was just luring Wyatt into a false sense of safety before springing some nasty surprise on her. But soon it became apparent that all his trouble to protect Wyatt’s secret had truly been for nothing.
Wyatt began working in Blackburn’s office three days a week, reformatting old neural processors, then she began spending dinners telling them every painfully tedious detail about it.
“It’s interesting to actually use Zorten II on a processor,” she told them while they ate. “I can see why it would get overwhelming, reformatting all the neural processors on his own. They design the processors so you have to reformat directory by directory to erase all the info on them—”
“What do you mean, you’re reformatting old neural processors?” Vik cut in, digging into his chicken pot pie.
“They’re from all those adults who died in that first test group. After they died, the processors were cut out of their heads”—Vik began choking on his food—“and then they get reformatted and stuck back in our heads.”
“They use refurbished neural processors on us?” Vik sputtered, when he caught his breath.
“Yes,” she said, blinking at him, as though she couldn’t grasp why he was horrified. She picked up her glass of water and weighed it thoughtfully in her hand. “But it’s really okay. They’ve been completely wiped clean. Can you imagine if they hadn’t been? You’d get a neural processor with someone else’s personality stored there.”