Wyatt spoke up. “We’ve got break coming up. Can we do something our last night other than stand around here?”
Yuri smiled, all earnest, goofy adoration of her. “We should all go out. I have found an appropriate promotion ritual. It’s called wetting down.”
“Wetting down?” Wyatt said. “Where you buy us drinks and throw us into a body of water?”
Yuri’s smile dropped off his lips. “I was going to buy dinner instead.”
“Dinner’s fine, but forget throwing us in the water.”
“Yeah,” Vik spoke up, completely in agreement with Wyatt for once. “Every company in the world dumps stuff in the Atlantic. We’d have kids with five arms.”
“They could form one-person bands,” Tom told Vik.
He saw Vik’s eyes light up with the possibilities.
Wyatt cried, “No. No throwing us in the water! You’re still buying us dinner, though, Yuri.” There was no question in her tone.
The others headed upstairs to change clothes. Tom lingered, staring at the golden eagle, amazed that he’d thought it was glaring at him his first day in the Spire. It had been so intimidating. But it looked smaller now, somehow. Or maybe he’d just grown.
A shadow slid over the marble floor behind him. He turned and met yellow-brown eyes and a starship-wrecking smile.
“Heather.”
“Congratulations, Tom. I knew you’d go places here.”
“Oh, you mean Middle?” Tom fingered his new insignia self-consciously. “Yeah, thanks.”
“No, I’m talking about that other thing.” Her eyes twinkled, and he knew she was congratulating him for winning the Capitol Summit. “Looks like you’re going to be with us in CamCo someday.”
Tom straightened and held her eyes, awed by the thought. It really looked to be a sure thing now, didn’t it? Marsh’s look on the stage, his reaction, Elliot’s support, now this.... He’d make his way here. It was only a matter of time.
“Are you heading out with your friends?” Heather stepped closer. “I thought I’d take you somewhere to congratulate you.” She let out a breath that fluttered her dark hair. “Of course, I’ve also been asked to talk to you about opportunities down the road with my sponsor, Wyndham Harks, but really …” Her eyes flickered downward and then traveled back up to his in a way that made him aware of how hard his heart was beating. Her voice sounded a bit breathy as she said, “I’m just so excited for an excuse to hang out with you.”
The glitter in her amber eyes dared him to do something reckless. Tom found it a bit hard to catch his breath suddenly, keenly aware of how close she was, close enough for him to smell her shampoo. Coconut. He realized suddenly that she could still do this to him. She could still make him feel like that shrimpy kid his first day at the Spire, so thrilled a girl was talking to him. Maybe she’d always be able to do it.
But his thoughts kept wandering away from her toward something else, something much more compelling. Someone else.
And suddenly, Tom’s brain was working again, and he found himself answering Heather with a shake of his head. “Sorry, I’ve got something I have to do.”
TOM DIDN’T KNOW why tonight would be any different. He’d hooked into VR every day since the Capitol Summit. He wasn’t sure why it mattered so much, this hope of finding her. He knew he’d destroyed whatever he had had with Medusa, and even if he hadn’t … if he hadn’t … that pretty Chinese girl he’d built up in his imagination didn’t exist. And she knew the guy she’d met over the internet didn’t really exist, either. What could have prepared her for the person he turned out to be? Nothing in their conversations, in their battles, in those moments when they smiled at each other over their bared swords, could’ve readied her for the truth about him: that he was someone who could do something so vicious, so personal, so cruel, just to win against her.
It bothered Tom to think about it, so he tried not to. And maybe he would’ve been a better person if he’d just left her alone after what happened. But whenever he closed his eyes, he still saw her flying, fighting with ferocious genius. He still remembered that kiss.
So he still returned to the internet. He hooked in straight from his bunk. Maybe it was reckless overconfidence, but he couldn’t bring himself to fear much of anything after the events of Capitol Summit. General Marsh had called him up to his office to congratulate him again. Members of CamCo suddenly waved to him in the corridors, and upper-level Alexanders had all started talking to him like he’d been inducted into some club he didn’t even know about. Lieutenant Blackburn was careful never to bother him in class, not even for demonstrations. He’d taken instead to watching Tom from across the mess hall, across the lobby, but still never breathing a word to his face.
So Tom lay on his bed and checked their message board, then he visited their simulations. Siegfried and Brunhilde’s stone castle stood empty, no queen of Iceland waiting, sword in hand. No luck in the old RPG of the Egyptian queen and the ogre, either. Prepared for disappointment, he hooked into the Renaissance England simulation, and found himself snapping into character.
He was facing her again.
She stood by a throne at the head of the English royal court, her back to him, simulated courtiers milling about on all sides. Tom stood before her, tension making his every muscle clench. He glanced down at his character, and the simulation informed him he was Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex. When Medusa turned toward him, he was greeted not by the pretty redheaded princess, but the aged face of what the program informed him was The sixty-seven-year-old Queen Elizabeth I. Her lips curled into a thin, downward twist and her cold eyes glittered like polished onyx, black and hard.
Tom closed his own eyes, the information spinning in his head.
The young Earl of Essex flattered and flirted with the much older Queen Elizabeth. He took advantage of her affection and betrayed her. As he began to fall from favor, he fought her guards and charged desperately into her chamber. He burst inside before she’d been made up for the day, and beheld her aged face, her white hair without a wig. All pretense of flirtation between them shattered in one instant. Shortly after, she ordered him beheaded.
She must’ve edited it. It was too pointed. Tom opened his eyes again and faced her unflinchingly. “I need to talk to you.”
“What could you possibly have to say to me?” Her voice was cold.
He’d prepared for this. He waggled his fingers, accessed an image file from the Spire’s database. His guise as the Earl of Essex vanished, replaced instantly by another: the Tom Raines who had walked into the Spire. The short, skinny kid with terrible acne, flat blond hair, a slouched posture. Tom stood there as that guy, the guy he’d sworn not to show her, and then opened his arms wide to let her see him in all his complete lack of magnificence.
“This is me. Okay?”
“That’s not you.” Medusa waved Elizabeth’s wrinkled hand, and her own appearance morphed. A boy Tom almost didn’t recognize stood in her place.
The boy was him. Tom as he was now. A taller, clear-skinned guy with cold blue eyes, who stood there with a confident posture controlled by a neural processor, whose muscles had been honed during Calisthenics, whose self-assurance radiated from every plane of his face.