He laughed. “I should’ve addressed it to ‘the Troid.’”
“Then you’d be dead.”
“Yeah,” he said, suddenly serious. “I’d be dead.”
“Once I knew where you’d gone,” she said, “I kept those ships on standby. As soon as you were outside the building, I homed in on your GPS coordinates to see if you needed help.” She punched him lightly. “You should have asked me from the beginning.”
Tom gazed at her. “But we were doing it because our friend needed us to destroy that transmitter, Medusa. I couldn’t have asked you to risk that. . . .”
“You didn’t have to,” she told him. “You’ve never had to.”
“I guess not,” Tom breathed.
A year ago, before Capitol Summit, he’d tried to ask her to take a dive for him, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He’d known she’d say no. Why would anyone do that for him? She’d said to him afterward that maybe it would’ve been a possibility. He hadn’t believed her. Not even long afterward. Not until now, when she’d done something so hazardous just for his sake. The realization rocked through Tom that she’d risked drawing Obsidian Corp.’s attention to herself and she’d done it for him.
Tom’s grip tensed around her, because he had this sudden, terrible sense something awful would happen if he let her go. “I have to ask you something, Medusa.”
She eased back, waiting for it, her eyes searching his.
Tom stroked her black hair nervously. “Listen.” He licked his lips, his stomach dancing. For a tangle of reasons. “Tell me something. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m going to guess your name again.”
“Now?”
“Now.” His voice was intent. “Is your name ‘Yaolan’?”
Medusa jerked in his grip, and Tom felt something cold and frightening squeezing inside him, knowing it was.
“How did you . . .” she breathed. “Did you go in the personnel files in the Citadel? I told you not to do that, Tom!”
“I didn’t.” Tom clasped her shoulders, full of dread. He leaned down so he could stare right into her eyes. “Joseph Vengerov said it. I interfaced with his neural processor, briefly—”
“His neural processor?”
“His neural processor,” Tom confirmed. “He has one. You were right when you said LM Lymer Fleet was surveilling you—that was Vengerov surveilling you because he’s on to what you can do. I couldn’t get into Obsidian Corp. because he’d already figured out how to block our way. He knows there’s a ghost in the machine. He knows how to detect us, block us, and when he found me in his system, he called me ‘Yaolan.’”
She folded her arms, withdrawing one step, then another. He wished she wouldn’t pull away from him when something upset her.
“Don’t you see?” Tom said urgently. “You’re in danger. He’s going to come for you, especially after what happened at Obsidian Corp. I think this is why he wanted me to use the virus on you—he wanted to knock you out for a while to see if the ghost in the machine went away when you did. If that happened, he would have all the confirmation he needs about who the ghost is. He already suspects it’s you.”
Her jaw set as she straightened to her full height. “It’s good you warned me. I’ll be careful.”
“Careful won’t do it, Medusa! He knows.”
But she shook her head, and Tom felt a surge of frustration, because she couldn’t understand. Joseph Vengerov was another Coalition CEO to her. She hadn’t been in Vengerov’s mind for that brief instant, hadn’t felt his ferocious desire to possess, the blinding need to own without conscience, without scruple, without self-doubt. She didn’t have a Blackburn or a Yuri to serve as walking examples of how little value Vengerov placed on human life.
“What am I supposed to do, then?” Medusa demanded. “Even if he suspects me, it’s not like there is any way I can fix this.”
“Yes, there is,” Tom said. “You can come over here.”
“Go there?” she said disbelievingly. “To the Pentagonal Spire?”
But Tom’s thoughts were racing ahead, and he grew so sure of this. There was one thing he had over here that Medusa didn’t have—and strange as it was, Tom realized it was the strongest weapon in his arsenal.
He had Blackburn.
Blackburn knew everything about him. He was the single person who could face Vengerov on a technical level. He was the only person who could be counted upon to hate Vengerov without wavering. And after seeing Blackburn kill Heather, Tom knew one more thing: Blackburn would do whatever he had to do to keep Tom’s ability out of Vengerov’s hands. He’d do it by any means necessary. It was strange that Tom felt no connection with Blackburn, no fondness, but he knew to his bones that he could rely on Blackburn’s hatred for Vengerov in a way he’d never been able to rely on anything else, even his own father.
In one respect, at least—Tom could absolutely trust him.
Blackburn had to keep Vengerov away from Tom; he also had to keep Vengerov away from Medusa. There was nowhere on Earth safer for her than within Blackburn’s reach.
“Yes, come here.” Tom grew excited. “Interface with a ship, or I’ll do it and fly you over. I’ll hide you, we’ll watch out for each other, and . . . and I can tell you more about why, but I know you’ll be safe here. I know it. Then if Vengerov tries to get you at the Citadel, you’ll be gone, you’ll be out of reach. Don’t you see?” Something else clicked, too. His stomach flipped. “We can meet. I mean, we could really meet. For the first time.”
Medusa’s face softened. She leaned forward and tapped the tip of his nose in a way that made Tom feel a bit foolish. “I appreciate the offer of protection, but I think we’ve established here which one of us tends to be the damsel in distress.”
“Medusa, if you don’t get over here now, you might not have a chance later. I don’t have programs in your system to let me know if you get in trouble. I won’t even know something’s happened. I won’t know to help you.”
“I’ll have to risk it,” she said softly. “I can’t leave. I’d lose everything.”
Tom realized it: nothing he could say would change her mind. Even if she took the threat as seriously as he did, she couldn’t bring herself to trust her fate to him, and Tom could understand that. He couldn’t imagine leaving the Spire willingly, casting himself into her world. And she’d never even betrayed him, not the way he’d once struck at her.
He let out a slow breath, and felt her arms sliding around him. He pulled her gently against him, caressing her silken hair, the strands fluttering as he breathed her in.
“Yaolan, huh?” His processor translated it. “Oily orchid?”
“Shining orchid.” She pulled back and tilted her chin up to meet his eyes. “How strange. We finally know each other’s names.”
His lips curved. “This relationship is moving so fast.”
Her eyes sparkled playfully. “I know. Hyperspeed. We need more space. China and the United States aren’t far enough apart.”