Insignia (20 page)

Every weekday at breakfast, there was morning meal formation at 0700. Twice a month, male Alexander plebes were assigned to be the ones who rose an hour earlier than usual, formed up at the door to the mess hall, and shouted out the time at five-minute intervals until the start of Morning Meal Formation. Nights were dreamless times filled with downloading all the material needed for the following day’s classes.

The only real free time came in the evenings, and it was filled with Vik, Yuri, and Beamer, and increasingly with Wyatt Enslow.

When Tom’s shoulders healed, he got back into playing VR sims. As time passed, though, he spent fewer and fewer hours diving into video games. The world of the Spire was consuming him, one where the shooting would one day be real, where the victories would actually mean something. A new favorite activity began to take up his free time: he started watching Medusa’s battles over and over again.

It didn’t matter that he had basically memorized the Russo-Chinese fighter’s every move. He still marveled at each of the files he’d downloaded to his neural processor, enjoying the ultimate warrior in action all over again like it was the very first time he’d seen the Achilles of the modern era. When he got bored in class with the civilian instructors, he accessed the Medusa clips then, too. When Elliot gave long speeches, he didn’t have to pretend to be entertained, because he was tuned into Medusa. He was sure that if he could dream with his neural processor, he’d see the battles in his sleep.

The rest of his life at the Spire was shaping up nicely as well. For a while after the Genghis chicken debacle, the threat of Karl hung over Tom’s head, but Karl never moved, almost as though he was leery of risking another humiliation.

Elliot Ramirez never moved openly against Tom, either, though there was always an air of disapproval whenever he spoke to him. Tom had wondered for a while whether Elliot sent Karl after him, but quickly decided against it. Elliot wasn’t a revenge type of guy. The worst Elliot ever did was make pointed comments about
some
people not being team players.

As for Wyatt Enslow, she accessed the Spire’s internal cameras to edit herself out in case any of the Genghises carried the story of their mysterious computer virus to Blackburn. But she couldn’t resist the urge to save a short video clip of the Genghis chickens, which was edited so no one else appeared in the picture with them. She showed it to Vik and Yuri, and then Vik got a brilliant idea and planted Karl’s finest moment ever in the homework feed.

Wyatt was so angry, she refused to talk to Vik for a whole week. Vik told Tom it was his greatest week ever, but Tom couldn’t help noticing the way Vik bugged Wyatt more and more, trying to get her to say something to him. And he was in a great mood the night he finally needled her so much, she snapped back at him.

But Wyatt had more reason to be upset soon enough, because the clip reached Blackburn. He surprised them all by playing it in class one Tuesday.

“This, right here, is an incredible program.” He gave some mock applause and encompassed the audience with a deceptively lazy sweep of his eyes. Only the intensity in his voice betrayed him when he asked, “Who wants to take credit? Don’t be shy.”

Tom could see that Wyatt wasn’t fooled by his mild tone. She shrank down a bit farther in her seat. Today, it wasn’t as easy to hide as usual. The rows of benches in front of hers looked sparse, even though the Lafayette Room was only missing the twelve Combatants in Camelot Company.

Tom had puzzled over their absence earlier at Morning Meal Formation. Then everyone received a message in their processors to apprise them that the Russo-Chinese forces had launched a surprise attack on the Indo-American shipyards near Neptune. If they destroyed them, it would be a massive setback to Indo-America. It took so long to get machinery to the outer solar system, much less to establish shipyards there, and that arsenal formed part of the access corridor to the mineral-rich Kuiper Belt. The CamCos had all been summoned to the Helix, the area between the ninth and tenth floors with neural interfaces that directly controlled ships in space. As the minutes dragged by in Programming, Tom grew more and more aware there was some awesome battle going on in space, and he had no way of knowing who was winning.

If Blackburn had heard any news of the latest battle, he showed no sign of it. He was too busy studying the coding of Wyatt’s program and firing questions at Karl’s friends, the Genghises who had been turned into chickens.

“Where was the programmer standing? … Did you hear a voice? … What did you do when you first recovered?”

The muscular blond Genghis, Lyla Martin, finally grew tired of it. “I’m telling you, sir, we don’t know who did it. I can’t help you.”

Blackburn’s lips pulled into a flat smile. “Oh, you can help me, Ms. Martin. If you don’t have a name for me, I’ll think of something else for you to help me with today.”

Everyone knew what that meant: it meant he’d be selecting her for his next demonstration.

Lyla grew desperate. “Ask Tom Raines!”

Oh no
. Tom slouched down in his seat.

“He was there. He saw it all. He probably knows!”

Blackburn’s gaze crawled to Tom’s. “Is that so, Mr. Raines?”

“No, I didn’t see anything,” Tom said quickly.

“But you were there.”

“I wasn’t …” Tom looked at Lyla, and the other Genghises who’d been
chickened
. They’d all argue against him. He sighed. “I was there, yes.”

“And you have no name for me, I presume.”

“No, sir,” Tom said, knowing Blackburn wasn’t going to let him get away with this, especially not with everyone watching.

“Fine, Raines.
You
can be my volunteer today. Get up here.”

Tom gave Vik and Beamer a mock salute, then rose to his feet and plodded down the aisle. His gaze darted to the device Blackburn had brought into class. The metallic instrument that looked like an upside-down claw. He hoped this wasn’t going to be too awful.

“Today,” Blackburn announced to the class, “we’re discussing Klondike. I am not referring to an ice-cream bar. Like Zorten II, Klondike is a neural processor–specific computer language. It’s used in two areas: it helps a neural processor communicate with technologies in the intrasolar arsenal, and it tweaks the brain in certain ways Zorten II can’t, specifically when it comes to indexed memories.”

Tom mounted the stage. Blackburn gestured him over, then jabbed his index finger toward the screen over the stage.

“Focus on that, Raines.”

Tom heard faint sniggers as he neared the podium. People still remembered him falling in love with it. His cheeks burned and he tried to focus on the screen, but it was hard. Blackburn was preparing the clawlike device, positioning it right over his head. With a flick of a button, Blackburn sent thin beams of blue light from the claw tips into Tom’s temples. He flinched reflexively, but he felt nothing other than a tingling against his skin.

“This won’t be painful,” Blackburn assured him, typing at his forearm keyboard. “Just keep staring at the screen.”

Tom focused on the wriggling line on the screen. It was wavering. It reminded him of a snake or a spider or something. Apprehension bloomed through him, hearing Blackburn typing, typing away on his forearm keyboard, but Tom kept his eyes fixed on the line. A memory drifted into his head—
that weekend Neil spent in the hospital and Tom had to stay at his buddy Eddie’s house. He opened a closet and found a bunch of scorpions. Eddie screamed, but Tom laughed and stamped on them and—

“There you are,” Blackburn said triumphantly.

Tom jumped, startled from the memory.

Blackburn twirled his finger, telling him to face the class again. “This contraption is called a census device. For the majority of the people in this room who can’t ever hope to understand how to use something like this, it’s a large, shiny object to admire. For the few of you who might one day master Zorten II and Klondike, it’s a potent psychological weapon. Your neural processor indexes all your memories, new and old. This device accesses those memories. And once you can access memories, there are worlds of applications. I’m going to show you one right now.”

More typing as he spoke.

Tom’s eyes remained fixed on the waving line that suddenly looked like a scorpion, and his memory drifted back to him of
the time when he opened that closet and the scorpions came scuttling out. They’d climbed up into his jeans and stung his skin along his legs. He shrieked and shrieked in pain and ended up in the emergency room, and he remembered the smell of antiseptic in the hospital, and the pain, and the venom that had burned like fire all over his calves....

Blackburn’s voice yanked Tom from the memory. “Now, hold out your hand, Raines.”

Tom eyed him. “Why?”

“Do it.”

Tom raised his left hand.

“Thatta boy. Now palm down.”

Tom turned his palm down, and Blackburn placed something on his skin.

He felt it before he saw it. Felt the tiny, pointed little legs, the exoskeleton. He was aware of the blood draining from his cheeks, the sickness churning up in him, the coldness seeping into his shaking limbs. His heart pounded faster and faster in his ears and he didn’t feel he was breathing, he was suffocating. His vision focused with horrified clarity upon the scorpion nestled on top of his hand.

“Don’t move.” Blackburn settled back to watch his face.

“Wh—what—”

“Stand very still or it might sting you.”

Tom gasped for breath, cold sweat pricking over his skin. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t. It would sting him like that time, that time they all scuttled out of that closet, and he remembered shrieking, and even though he’d been a little kid back then, he felt the panic clawing up inside him again. His vision tunneled, his head spun. He couldn’t take this. He was going to scream. This was so much worse than the virus that made him fear the podium.
It was standing there right on his hand!
He was going to dissolve right here in front of everyone—faint or something—and he’d get laughed at, laughed at.

“Why don’t you tell the class how you feel, Raines?” Blackburn suggested. “Be honest.”

Tom glared at Blackburn, fury seething through him. He knew what Blackburn wanted. Well, he wasn’t going to look like a weak, pathetic person in front of all his friends. He
wasn’t
. He’d rather gouge out his own eyes.

So he seized the scorpion in his right hand, squeezed the body as hard as he could in his fist, then raised it to his mouth and ripped the head off with his teeth. The bitter taste of triumph flooded his mouth. He spat out the head, and realized with a strange sense of shock he hadn’t even been stung.

Blackburn stared at him, stunned into silence. Then, “Mr. Raines, if that had been a real scorpion rather than a nutrient bar your neural processor projected as a scorpion, you’d be poisoned right now. Do you realize that?”

Tom looked at the headless remains of the scorpion in his hand, and realized that it was, indeed, a grayish mass with lumpy green clumps. A nutrient bar. He’d bitten into a nutrient bar.

“I didn’t think that through,” Tom admitted.

Blackburn rubbed a hand over his mouth, eyeing Tom, then he plucked the remains of the nutrient bar from Tom’s hand and tossed it into a waste receptacle by the podium. “There’s a difference between bravery and rash stupidity. Learn it.” He tapped his keyboard. “Get back to your seat, Plebe.”

Tom headed back to his usual bench, his whole body shaking, sweat plastering his uniform to his body. He found himself thinking about the scorpions again, the way they’d scuttled out of the closet. It was the same weekend Neil had gone to the emergency room, not him. Tom had never even been stung by one scorpion, much less a whole bunch of them. Blackburn had changed the memory somehow.

Blackburn spoke, “I exposed Raines to a trigger designed to mimic a small, crawling creature. It brought a memory related to that to the forefront of his brain. The census device retrieved it and allowed me to see the recollection of scorpions. Using the Klondike computer language, I rewrote it, and then I stuck it back in his brain. This new version of the memory created a phobia, and if I hadn’t chosen to demonstrate on this particular plebe, then maybe you would’ve seen a natural panic reaction. Instead, you saw Mr. Raines trying to show us all what a big, tough man he is.”

Tom slouched down on his bench, ignoring the laughter bubbling up around him.

Blackburn’s gaze moved to the Genghis Division trainees, laughing louder than the rest. “Another demonstration is in order. Lyla Martin, come up here so we can do this properly.”

Lyla stopped laughing. Once Blackburn changed her memory of squashing a black widow into a memory of being stung by one, he got the proper fear reaction out of her—she shrieked and bolted from the room. Blackburn sent them from class early, and started off after her to undo the program.

As soon as Tom walked out of class, Vik turned to him and said, “I thought that was awesome. He wanted you to get all shrieky, and you were like—grrr!” He mimed biting something in a feral, animalistic way.

Beamer sniggered and put in, “Yeah, he was just annoyed you didn’t wet yourself up there.”

Tom shoved his hands in his pockets, instantly cheerful. He spotted Wyatt Enslow through the crowd, and she gave him a quick, grateful smile since he’d covered for her again. Beside her, Yuri looked mildly confused the way he always did after Programming, but he gave Tom a friendly wave. A warm feeling spread in Tom’s chest, a sense of rightness soaking down to his very bones, like he was home for the first time in his life.