“Really?”
“Really.” He hoisted one of the fallen couch cushions and tossed it back into place, then slung the fallen pillow after it. “You can officially threaten your own enemies. Man, you kind of scare me right now.”
“I do?” she said happily. “Oh, can you tell Vik that? Tell him I was menacing. And that I said I was coming for him next, just so he gets scared.”
“I’ll even say you shook your fist as you said it,” Tom promised, which thrilled Wyatt no end.
Then Vik and Yuri emerged from Alexander Division, both out of breath, Yuri’s wavy hair all askew like a big nest around his head, and Vik soaking wet like he’d been dunked in a pool.
“Don’t ask,” Vik grumbled to Tom, slouching onto the couch, leaving giant, wet splotches on the old green fabric.
Yuri gave a dazed smile as Wyatt walked over of her own initiative and awkwardly put her arms around him, like she wasn’t quite sure how the hugging thing worked. “Thank you for avenging my honor.”
“It was my pleasure.” He kissed the top of her head, then explained, “I chased Vikram for many floors, and he used a computer virus on me, but then I used one on him, so we both agreed to remove the viruses, and I pursued him into the Calisthenics Arena. He activated an exercise simulation. I was forced to battle my way through a hundred Vietcong soldiers, but I imagined coming to you and telling you of my victory, and that inspired me to persevere. At last, I caught up to him hiding near a swamp. The result is before you.”
Vik grumbled something. He’d been dunked in one of the shallow pools in the arena.
“He has promised to never again make a Connecticut joke,” Yuri told her.
Vik gave a weary nod. “I don’t have a relentless Russian android on my side, I’ve just got Tom.”
“No, you don’t have Tom. I’m not taking on Yuri,” Tom protested.
Yuri chuckled, slinging an arm around Wyatt. Vik shook his head, disgruntled.
Tom found himself watching them, his friends, and for some reason the glow of the moment took on a dark tinge. There was no rational reason for it, and maybe it came from his deep suspicion that nothing good could really last—but he had this unsettling sense like this was his last glimpse of something priceless, cupped in his hand, just before it slipped from his grasp.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
WHEN BLACKBURN DEEMED them all competent with exosuits, he finished their training with the same celebratory climb he always led Middles on—straight up the Pentagonal Spire to the roof over the fifteenth floor.
“No messing around, am I clear?” For some reason, he was staring directly at Tom and Vik, even though there were five other newly certified, exosuit-competent Middles. “You start screwing around up there, and you are walking back down the stairs. One of you goes splat, then someone gets stuck with a whole lot of paperwork. Know who that person will be? Me. That’s why you are going to suit up, pair up, and above all, be careful.”
Tom and Vik stayed side by side, and Wyatt kept turning to people, who then paired with other people, and looking increasingly dejected over it. Blackburn produced a bunch of climbing harnesses and tossed one at each pair.
“The idea here is that if one of you loses your grip—which you should not—the other one will still have it.” He tossed another harness, and paused by Tom and Vik. “Oh, no, no. You two are not going together.”
“Huh?” Tom said.
“Huh?” Vik said.
“Ashwan, climb with Enslow.”
Vik turned to Wyatt, eyebrows raised. “What do you know. We’re together. Now my life depends on you, and your life? It depends on me.” He waggled his eyebrows.
Wyatt began to look frightened.
Tom automatically cast his gaze toward Kelcy Demos, hoping Blackburn would break up other pairs so he could claim the curly-haired girl as his partner. Then he felt something hook into the frame of his suit. He glanced back—and his stomach plummeted.
“No way,” he protested. He did not want to be harnessed to Lieutenant Blackburn. “No. Sir, come on.”
“This isn’t up for debate,” Blackburn told him, tugging on the harness connecting them to test its strength.
“But I’m the best exosuiter here. I don’t need to get harnessed to the instructor.”
“Your capability,” he said, speaking slowly as though fighting to remain patient, “is not what I question. Your judgment is.”
“I have fantastic judgment.”
“You have horrendous judgment. Of all the trainees here, you’re the likeliest to severely overestimate yourself and do something reckless and phenomenally stupid. That’s why you’re with me. You’ve proven yourself unable to realistically gauge your capabilities, so I have to gauge them for you. It’s that, or you don’t climb.”
Tom bristled.
“Well?”
“Fine. Sir.”
Getting harnessed to Blackburn for the climb killed it for him. They all donned optical camouflage, attaching the fiber-optic material to specific hooks in their exosuits, and hid themselves from the view of any civilians gazing toward the Pentagonal Spire. They also used the iron-shaped centrifugal clamps to hoist themselves up the side of the building.
The cold wind couldn’t penetrate the optical camouflage, and the exosuit replaced the need for actual exertion, so Tom found himself bored for most of the climb—especially with his pace hobbled by Blackburn, who insisted on staying below the slowest pair of trainees, Jennifer and Mervyn, to keep an eye on them.
Tom knew the minute Wyatt and Vik reached the top, because they net-sent a triumphant VICTORY! to his vision center.
Disgruntled, Tom tore off the climbing harness as soon as he alighted on the top of the Spire with Blackburn. He looked around for the telltale ripple of air that indicated someone in an exosuit was moving in the area, and his eyes even traced the outline of separate forms. He clanged his way toward the forms his neural processor identified as Vik and Wyatt, who were on the other side of the massive transmission pole that jutted up from the roof and pierced the clouds above them. He craned his head, squinting up into the sky to see it. The entire building was a transmitter, and this was the very tip.
“How was the climb?” Vik’s voice drifted to him from the rippling air where their hidden forms lurked. “Enslow and I actually made great time. I think I was being too enticing for her to handle.” He jumped when the shimmering outline of an arm aimed a blow at him. “No good-natured punching with superhuman strength!”
“Oh. Right,” Wyatt remembered.
Tom didn’t share Vik’s good mood. “Blackburn kept jerking me to a stop because I was climbing too fast for him. Like a dog or something. I’m telling you, man, it’s like having a leash.”
Wyatt went to talk to Blackburn, leaving Tom and Vik to gaze upward, the very tip of the transmitter disappearing into the bright sky.
“You know, climbing the building was one thing,” Vik said, “but climbing this? That’s the real climb.”
Tom’s heart picked up a beat as he contemplated it. It would be a marvelous feat. “I bet I could do it.”
Vik laughed. “No way.”
Tom’s neural processor rapidly flitted over the schematics in his head, calculating the point where it was simply too narrow to climb farther. “Fifty bucks says I can get within ten meters of the top.”