Oh, yes, it is. If I lose, it very much becomes your problem.
He felt a surge of irritation. He couldn’t guarantee a win. Not against Medusa. Not against the single person who could battle him on a level playing field. You can’t keep demanding more and more at the last minute.
I can because, in case you haven’t noticed, I have the upper hand here. I have you by the throat, and if you’re wise, you won’t forget it.
His teeth began grinding together. For a moment, he fought the urge to rip off the interface node, consequences be damned. He found himself looking at the screen again, panning over all those skyboards glowing with logos he heartily despised, gazing at the sinister eye logo of Obsidian Corp.
Rage rocked through him at the very thought of Vengerov. Tom tore his gaze from the screen and found himself looking at more of Vengerov’s work: the surveillance cameras, all directed at the crowd. His gaze drifted upward toward the drones hovering over them in the sky, scanning in images of the people in the crowd for future databases. He saw the massive wall of bulletproof, missileproof glass surrounding the steps up to the Capitol, all to protect those legislators put in office by voting machines and the caprice of the men behind those logos. Vengerov protected all those companies, maintained the security and the surveillance state that let them loom so large over the crowd.
When Heather signaled and hooked a neural wire between her interface node and the Capitol’s server, Tom’s consciousness filled with the buzzing of his neural processor and he jolted out of himself into the liberating formlessness of swapping signals, strings of zeros and ones, glowing electronic systems. . . .
Then with a rush, Tom soared into the ship Heather was steering. Her electronic sensors were focused on Medusa’s ship.
Go on, Heather thought at him. Go into her ship and damage it.
Tom found himself gazing at Medusa’s ship, soaring beneath the glowing neon array of skyboards, and a great certainty swelled in his chest that this time he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t hurt her again.
Tom, Heather urged him, why are you are sitting in my systems? Go after her.
Tom flashed for a moment to his distant body, ringed by the crowd. For a fleeting moment, he was behind Heather’s eyes, interfacing with her processor, seeing her legs crossed carelessly in front of her in the empty room near the Rotunda, the massive screen on the wall in front of her showing the expectant, proud faces of the most powerful men and women in the world, encircling their pretty little performers, Elliot and Svetlana. Tom saw Reuben Lloyd and Sigurdur Vitol, Joseph Vengerov and Pandita Rumpfa, Prince Abhalleman and the Roache brothers from Dominion Agra. . . .
His heart began to scorch his chest, seeing the masters of the world all in one place, and the full apparatus of the police state ready to protect them. They’d taken everything. Everything, and people simply had let them. People had meekly surrendered the world to them in hopes those CEOs would finally have enough, finally have reason to leave them be. But Tom knew better. Even if a Reuben Lloyd or a Joseph Vengerov possessed the entire rest of the Earth, and the solar system besides, they’d still begrudge Tom the ground directly under his feet, simply because it was his and not theirs. That’s the sort of people they were. There was never enough for them.
And Heather was the same way. A malfunction wasn’t enough, she needed a win. Fame wasn’t enough, she needed to be the most famous. That’s why she’d smeared the other CamCos to the media; she hadn’t wanted success, she wanted the other CamCos to fail. If he won Capitol Summit for her, she’d return with another demand down the line, and another. That’s the sort of person she was. And surrendering was never going to appease her. There would always be something more she wanted to force out of him.
Tom made his decision then.
Heather, he sent to her.
What, Tom?
Here it comes.
Then he seized control of Heather’s weapons, aimed them at the nearest Dominion Agra skyboard, and blasted it to pieces. There was no reaction from Heather for a long moment. Tom maneuvered the ship in a graceful arc to its next target. Obsidian Corp.’s board. Yes. He launched missiles and took that one down in a liberating hail of flames. Burning fragments of skyboard rained down about the ship as Heather screamed at him in his head. He flashed to her neural processor and grew aware of the way she was reaching up to tear out the thought-interface node.
He acted quickly, activating the heat receptors in her processor, reveling in her shock when merely touching the interface node seared her fingers.
Nope. I’m not done yet, Tom thought to her. Touch that and you’ll have as many fingers as me.
If she’d had a moment to reason it out, she might’ve realized it was an illusion, not a real burn, but Heather was upset and furious and confused, seeing all her plans spiral hopelessly out of her control. Tom, are you crazy? Are you INSANE? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
Tom aimed his weapons at a massive image of Sigurdur Vitol’s face, then blasted one Wyndham Harks board after another. He carried on like that, dodging through the rain of debris, curving around one board, soaring straight through the narrow gap between two of them, the landscape below him growing and receding, skyboards raining debris from all directions.
And then words appeared in his brain. And they weren’t from Heather.
I like this game. But are you only going to target your own multinationals?
Medusa!
Fair enough, Tom messaged back, whipping Heather’s vessel in a joyful loop before blasting some Russo-Chinese boards. He popped out of the ship only a moment to dissuade Heather, yet again, from pulling the interface node out of her neck. He saw briefly through Heather’s vision center, the view of the most powerful men and women in the world gathered in the Rotunda, goggling up at the destruction.
Elliot and Svetlana stood frozen in the center of the room, no longer pretending to steer the ships. No one was looking at them right now anyway. Then Tom soared back into the vessel and messaged Medusa as he blew up a Harbinger, then a Nobridis board. Be honest. Are you impressed?
I’m awestruck, Mordred.
She knew it was him. The realization made his head spin. He took out two more skyboards with one shot.
Awestruck, huh? Then you know how I always feel around you, he thought back.
Cheesy?
Tom’s distant lips smiled. Extremely.
His distant ears picked up on the confused voices all murmuring around him as people in the crowd outside the Capitol tried to figure out what the Indo-American Combatant was doing this year.
For what it’s worth, he messaged back to her, I could kick myself for the way I acted the last time you dropped by.
Medusa began playing a game of sorts with him. She’d dodge behind one skyboard, and the next. Tom enjoyed this one, too. He took potshots not meant to hit her, and saw them ricochet off the orbiting advertisements. Through Heather’s ears, he heard someone in the Rotunda say, “That girl is a terrible shot,” which about killed Tom as he blew up a Stronghold Energy board Medusa had dodged behind and then one belonging to Matchett-Reddy.
And soon the atmosphere above the Texas battle site was a glittering ring of debris, burning away in the atmosphere as it plunged downward. Tom and Medusa’s ships circled each other through the endless blue sky.
Want this one . . . Chun Li? Tom thought at her.
He almost felt her laughter. Beat me in an honest fight, and I’ll tell you my real name.