“Wow, did you hear that cry of horror?” Tom marveled. “Good job with the shirtless pics, man.”
“You think it was horror?” Vik mused, rubbing his chin. “I thought it sounded like a shriek of delight.”
“Sure. We can ask her tonight, buddy.”
Vik sighed tragically. “She’ll lie. Face it, Tom: Enslow will never admit she finds me enticing.”
“IT’S NOT TRUE,” Wyatt told Yuri urgently later, when they were all hanging out. “I don’t find Vik enticing.”
“Vik says you do,” Tom countered.
Since Tom had stomped Yuri at VR games so many times, Yuri insisted on a game he was better at. That’s why tonight, he and Tom were hunched over a chessboard, with Wyatt observing them.
Vik wasn’t sitting with them; he was sprawled on the floor of the plebe common room. As soon as they’d driven out the plebes, Vik made a big show of dying of what he called a boredom seizure, with convulsions and gargling sounds and everything, because he thought playing chess was the most boring thing in the world, second only to watching people play chess.
By silent but unanimous compact, Tom, Wyatt, and Yuri had said nothing and pretended they didn’t notice the dramatics going on behind them. Vik committed to the theatrics, though. He’d thrashed hard enough to upend a table, and now he was lying mock dead on the floor.
“I mean it. I really don’t find Vik enticing,” Wyatt said, louder, and the three of them waited for Vik to break character and argue with her.
When he didn’t, she raised her eyebrows, reluctantly impressed.
“He’s determined,” Tom said.
Yuri cleared his throat, and Tom remembered to place his next piece on the board. He ignored the sad eep sound Wyatt couldn’t help making.
“Check,” Yuri said, making his next move.
Tom examined the board, then plucked up his bishop.
“No, Tom!” Wyatt cried. “Don’t.”
“Wyatt,” Tom exclaimed, “you wanna play against Yuri yourself, that’s fine, but stop telling me where to move things. He and I are doing this mano a mano, not a womano.”
“And no computero,” Yuri added.
“Computero?” Wyatt echoed.
“No computero, because Thomas and I have agreed that chess must be played between two human brains,” Yuri explained to her gently. “We do not let the neural processors do the work, or it will become two computers playing each other, which will not be rewarding.” He took Tom’s bishop.
Tom’s pawn was stuck, so he moved his knight. Wyatt made a sad eep sound again.
“Wyatt!”
“I can’t help it, Tom,” Wyatt said. “That was a bad move.”
Tom focused on the board. No computero. That meant no downloading anything from the Spire’s databases about chess strategies and no allowing the neural processor to calculate the merits of every move and the ramifications from there. Since Wyatt’s brain was already as close as a human brain would get to a superprocessor, she kept seeing his mistakes as he made them and making that annoying sad noise.
Sure enough, Yuri took Tom’s knight with his queen.
Wyatt grew very sad and shook her head tragically. “Tom, you lost the game. You don’t realize it yet.”
Whether she intended it or not, Wyatt was doing a fantastic job of psyching him out. Three moves later, her solemn pronouncement came true.
“Checkmate,” Yuri said, moving his rook into position, pleased with himself.
“I saw it coming,” Wyatt said. “And that’s without using my neural processor. No computero. Just braino. My braino.”
“You have a magnificent braino,” Yuri murmured. Wyatt beamed at him, and Tom suddenly felt like he was spying on a private moment.
“Are you guys done?” Vik launched himself up from the floor. “Oh, thank God. Let’s go do something else. I’m so bored right now, I feel like I’m in Connecticut.”
Wyatt leaped to her feet. “Vik, no! I thought you’d stopped using that.”
“Why? It’s great. All I need is you in earshot and a word with negative connotation, and there, I’ve got a Connecticut joke.”
She sputtered for a comeback, then threw a pillow at him. It bounced off his head, and he made a show of staggering back. “Ow, that hurts! It hurts like being in Connecticut!”
Wyatt began chasing him in earnest, but Vik snatched a cushion from the couch and shielded himself with it. One thrust of the cushion nearly sent Wyatt sailing back to the ground. Yuri surged upright, and declared, “This will not end well for Vikram.”
“VIK, RUN!” Tom bellowed.
Yuri launched himself into the fray. Vik shrieked in fear and bolted into Alexander Division, the massive Russian boy barreling after him.
Tom was doubled over laughing after the door slid shut behind them, and Wyatt muffled her giggles, too. Then she started smoothing her hair. Her gaze strayed over to him. He knew she was going to bring it up now. He knew it.
“Are you okay?” she said. “You seemed weird and kind of strange earlier in the cell.”
“Thanks, Wyatt.”
“I don’t mean in a bad way.”
“Just in a weird and strange way, huh? Well, I’m fine.” He tossed a chess piece into the box. “I’m A-OK.” He looked toward the door where Vik and Yuri had gone, half expecting them to pop back and hear this. When they didn’t, he said urgently, hoping to get this over with, “I was okay earlier, too. Ms. Ossare was overreacting, okay, and I didn’t wanna tell her I didn’t need her there or anything. I mean, you know how no one really goes to her. I think that gets to her, right? So, yeah, that’s what that was about. And, sure, maybe it was a bit unsettling, being back there, but that’s because I know Blackburn would tear my mind apart in a second if he could.”
“He’d never choose to do that.” She frowned at him. “You’re being a bit paranoid.”
“I’m not paranoid!” Tom burst out. “Blackburn’s paranoid. He’s the paranoid schizophrenic.”
“Not anymore. He controls all the symptoms. If he’s paranoid, it’s his regular personality.”
“I still think you shouldn’t have forgiven him for acting that way to you.” Tom clenched his fist around a chess piece. “I won’t forget what he did. Not ever. He would’ve done it, you know. He would’ve driven me insane. I would be crazy now, if it had been up to him.”
“He had to. He thought you committed treason.”
“He didn’t have to.” He opened his aching fist, and saw that the chess piece he’d been gripping had left red marks in his palm. “Just forget I said anything. You don’t wanna believe me, that’s up to you. Do me one favor.”
He waited until she dragged her gaze back over to meet his.
“Don’t ever talk about me around him, Wyatt. Not ever. If he asks you anything about me, don’t answer him. I don’t care how harmless the question seems. Don’t tell him anything.”
Wyatt stared at him a long moment. Then: “It’s not exactly like we sit around talking about you all the time. Not everything’s about you.”