“Well, Tom?”
“It’s a long story.” And he didn’t want to talk about it. He really didn’t.
But Vik insisted. “This is a long battle. Come on. Talk.”
Worn boots scrunched the grass next to Tom’s head, and a familiar voice rang out: “Timothy.”
Tom opened his mouth to ask why he was going back to the wrong name, then remembered that Vik didn’t know Yuri was unscrambled. So he settled with, “Hey, man.”
“Tom was going to explain who disappeared him,” Vik said. “Drop dead with us.”
“Very well.” Yuri tossed aside his musket so the nearest zombie could come kill him.
But he miscalculated his death. The zombie pounced on his large back, tore out his throat, and his immobility sequence engaged. Yuri dropped like a falling tree, and landed sidelong across Tom and Vik’s stomachs, knocking the breath out of them.
“Oof!” Tom struggled against the weight. “Yuri, did you have to land right on top of us?”
“I am sorry, Tim. I’ll try to drag myself over.” Yuri clawed at the grass, hauling his immobile body inch by painstaking inch, but his progress was sluggish.
“Wyatt, help us!” Vik shouted.
Nearby, Wyatt dodged a zombie—which went on to kill a plebe behind her. She staggered over to them. “Tom, you’re back!” A big grin broke over her face. “We thought you fell down a hole and died somewhere.”
“Close. I was with Blackburn. Hey, can you drag your boyfriend’s body off us before we suffocate?”
Yuri said apologetically, “My very great muscle mass makes me heavy.”
She tugged at Yuri’s arm, dragged him to the side—far enough to relieve them of the worst of the weight. Then a zombie got her from behind, and Wyatt dropped across Yuri, her weight making up for the few inches she’d dragged him. Tom and Vik both groaned.
“Sorry,” Wyatt said. “At least we can hear each other. Where have you been?”
“Census device.” Tom shoved at Yuri’s immobile mass, but it wasn’t going to budge again now that Wyatt was on top of him. “Blackburn thought I was the leak. I have this internet friend in China. It looked bad. Actually, the friend’s Medusa.”
Stunned silence. Tom turned back to see the other three dead trainees gaping at him. That, more than anything, reminded Tom how stupid he’d been to befriend Medusa in the first place.
“Look,” he said, “I was curious about seeing Medusa again after the incursion. We played games and she killed me a lot and stuff. Oh, and Medusa is a girl. Yeah, I found that out, too.”
“A girl?” Wyatt said, frowning. “Like a girlfriend girl?”
Tom’s cheeks flushed. “No. I mean …” He still wasn’t sure what to say to that. “No!” He considered that kiss. “Well, maybe. I’m not sure.”
“How long has this been going on?” she mumbled.
“Not so long.”
“You never told us.”
“So? Why’s it such a big deal?”
“It’s not,” Wyatt said. “I don’t care.”
“Good.” Tom was distracted then. A new Machiavelli plebe with stubbled hair ran past with Jenny Nguyen. The new girl, whom his processor identified as Iman Attar, pointed at them. “Why are they all lying on top of each other?”
Jenny glanced their way, then urged her onward. Her voice drifted their way, “Alexander boys are weird. That kid Vikram sat next to me the other day in the planetarium …”
Vik groaned and clamped his hands over his face. Intrigued, Tom raised his head up to see. Wyatt and Yuri did so as well.
“… and Vikram said, ‘Uh-oh, looks like you have spicy Indian on your lips.’”
“That’s your great line?” Tom burst into his first laughter in days.
“Shut up,” Vik muttered.
Jenny’s voice reached them over the screams and the gunfire. “I was like, ‘You’re creepy,’ and got up to leave, and then he head-butted me.”
The girls moved off. Utter silence hung in the air for a taut moment. Tom gaped at Vik. Wyatt’s lips were tightly pressed together like she was straining not to react.
“Well?” Vik said. “Just get it out of the way.”
“We’re not going to laugh at you, Vik,” Tom assured him. “I have bigger things to worry about right now”—his voice started shaking with suppressed laughter—“so it doesn’t matter if you’re a SPICY INDIAN.”
Yuri and Wyatt broke into laughter, and Tom threw his head back, cackling helplessly. And for a few wonderful moments, it felt like the census device never happened and he had no cares in the world.
“Thanks, everyone. You’re good friends,” Vik grumbled.
“And I can’t believe you head-butted her after we saw that happen with Wyatt!”
“It’s surprisingly easy to do, Tom!”
“Yeah, maybe when a girl’s desperate to run away from you.”
“Do not take her rejection personally, Viktor,” Yuri said gently. “Maybe she has a phobia of spicy Indians.”
Vik raised up his arm and thwapped Yuri, then Tom. Tom kept laughing.
“Vik,” Wyatt objected. “Stop thrashing. You’re getting spicy Indian on us.”
Vik made a frustrated noise and waved his hand impatiently in the air, gesturing for them to get all the laughter out and over with. Then, when it died a bit, he finally said, “We done?”
“Spicy Indian will never be done,” Tom vowed.
“Yeah, well, right now, you do have bigger things going on.”
Any desire to laugh drained away. Tom’s thoughts spiraled back to the last two days, a dark pit in his stomach.
“Here’s what I want to know,” Vik went on. “Medusa. Tell us. She’s a girl. So, is she hot?”
Tom was relieved, because talking about Medusa wasn’t nearly as awful as discussing Blackburn or his treason charges. “She wouldn’t let me see her,” he admitted.
“Oh no, young Skywalker. The ugly is strong in that one.”
Wyatt glared at him. “Or perhaps she has a classified identity? You know, the same way we do?”
“Nah. Ugly. Face it, Tom,” Vik said, “no girl who fights like that can be hot, too. It would cause a huge imbalance in the cosmos that would unravel the space-time continuum and make the universe implode. And she won’t show you. That’s a red flag. Big, bright, waving red flag.”
Tom shook off the thoughts of Medusa’s hypothetical ugliness, because really, he was an idiot even wondering about this right now when he had much more significant, life-changing issues plaguing him.
“It doesn’t matter, anyway, Vik. I can’t see Medusa again. I got caught, and now Blackburn’s out to fry my brain in the census device.”
Wyatt gasped. “He’s seen your memories?”
Yuri looked over at him, openmouthed.
Tom knew what they were worried about. “He hasn’t seen everything,” he said meaningfully, watching them. “But he knows I’m hiding something from him, and he won’t stop until he gets it.”