Insignia (25 page)

Tom found himself meeting Karl’s gaze all of a sudden. Karl drew a finger across his throat. Tom made a shooting gesture with his thumb and forefinger.

Game on
, Tom thought gleefully.

“So here are some rules. Whenever you launch a program at someone, you’d better send me the code immediately afterward. If it’s a pathetic program that does something like display ‘Hello, world’ in their vision center? No points. In fact, negative points for wasting my time. It has to be a good program to score. I’m thinking Genghis chicken caliber.”

Tom heard sniggering throughout the room from everyone but Karl and his friends. He used net-send and asked Wyatt,
How’s it feel being the gold standard?

She glanced back at him briefly and messaged back,
What difference does it make? It’s not like I can claim credit
.

At the front, Alec Tarsus raised his hand. “It sounds kind of arbitrary, sir. You just get to decide if we score points?”

“Thatta boy, Mr. Tarsus. You see how it works. This is all me, and I am the god of this conflict. When I choose, I giveth or taketh away as I please. Here are some more rules: anything you program has to self-terminate within an hour. It can’t leave permanent changes to your victim’s neural processor. No lasting injuries to the physical body or the software. No attacks involving biological functions that might get you—and us—sued for inflicting psychological trauma. Use your common sense. I hope I’m not making a leap here assuming you have some. And I want to emphasize this: I don’t want to see a single virus that will physically damage a neural processor. One of those is worth more than the lot of you put together.”

Karl’s shoulders slouched. He looked frighteningly sorry to hear he couldn’t permanently damage people. Tom supposed that should worry him, but it just made him feel even more eager to get started.

Vik elbowed him. “You and me, Tom.”

“You and me,” Tom agreed.

“The Duo of Death.”

Tom clenched his fist before him. “The Dealers of Destruction.”

“The Doctors of Doom.”

Tom thought about that one. “Isn’t there already a Doctor of Doom?”

“No, that’s Doctor Doom from the
Fantastic Four
. We’re plural, with an ‘of.’ Doctors
of
Doom.”

Tom thought about that, then whispered, “Okay, I’ll go for that. We have PhDs in the art of Doom.”

“Nah, nah. MDs of Doom. See, PhDs mean we’re university professors on the side. MD means we practice medicine.”

“Why would Doctors of Doom practice medicine?”

“Fine,” Vik said. “You be PhD. I’m MD. We both get the title ‘Doctor.’”

“Of DOOM!” Tom said, too loudly.

Tom and Vik both jumped with a sudden feeling like an electric jolt. Text flashed across their vision:
Datastream received: program Shut Up So the Rest of Us Can Hear initiated
.

And Wyatt Enslow was glaring over at them, keyboard raised.

Vik made a strangling gesture at her, and Tom aimed his fake gun.

“You know what she can do,” Tom said out of the side of his mouth to Vik. “Do we really want to make an enemy of her?”

“She’ll probably try to sit out. She can’t go all out.”

“Right.” They were free to posture all they wanted.

As class concluded, someone asked Blackburn when the war games began. He paused before striding from the podium. “When do they start? Well, I’d say you’re open to attack as soon as you’re in the hallway.”

Stunned silence followed that.

Blackburn’s unpleasant chuckle trailed him out of the Lafayette Room. He left the entire class sitting there, erupting in frantic whispers. Tom saw the sea of dipping heads, division members plotting their escape.

“Ten bucks says Blackburn’s watching a security feed of this and laughing,” Tom muttered to Vik.

“I’m not betting against that.”

Tom waited. Still, no one rose. Everyone was waiting to see what would happen to the first people out—if they’d get attacked, if someone in their midst had already cobbled together a program.

“Want to run the gauntlet, Doctor?” He glanced at Vik, feeling antsy like he was ready to burst out of his seat.

Vik nodded. “We should, Doctor. One, two …”

“Three!” They both jolted to their feet.

Every eye in the room swung toward them. Tom ignored them and shoved his way across the bench to the aisle. The silence loomed in his ears, pressing in around them, as they walked toward the doors. It seemed to take forever.

Vik burst into laughter. He hurled triumphant fists into the air and kept walking, as though daring anyone to attack. Tom smiled at his back, but his grin faded when he detected movement out of the corner of his eye.

Karl Marsters was rising to his feet.

Tom slammed Vik’s back with his palm. “Move!”

He didn’t need to tell Vik twice. Vik leaped forward, sprinting toward the entrance, Tom right behind him.

Tom’s last glimpse of the classroom was of Karl and a handful of Genghises shoving their way down the aisles after them.

T
HEY RAN SO
fast, their breath came in ragged pants. It was like Calisthenics on speed. They reached the empty mess hall before it occurred to them that this would probably be one of the easiest places for Karl to attack them. An open space, more than one entrance …

“Come on, let’s find a place we can defend ourselves!” Tom fumbled through the video games he’d played, and came up with a fitting reference: “This is our Alamo.”

“Didn’t Davy Crockett die at the Alamo?”

“Okay, we’re the attacking cyborgs, then.”

“There weren’t any cyborgs at the Alamo.”

“Yeah, there were, Vik.”

“I’m confused. Are you talking about the game Alamo or the actual event?”

“Wait, the Alamo really happened?”

Vik whapped the back of Tom’s head. “I’m not even from your country and I know that.”

They charged past the painting of General Patton and locked themselves into one of the mess hall’s private meeting rooms. Tom sprawled on the floor, back against the wall, and propped his arm up to type in Zorten II code, readying an attack virus for the inevitable moment when the Genghises caught up to them.

Vik stared down at him. “What are you doing?”

“Virus.”

“But you’re a terrible programmer, Tom.”

“You do it, then.”

“I will.” Vik dropped down next to him, and started typing at his own forearm keyboard.

“So what do I do?” Tom asked him.

“Stand between me and anyone else long enough for me to finish coding.”

“You want me to be a
human shield
?”

“You can do it, Tom. I believe in you.”

“I’m not questioning whether I can do it, I just—”

Suddenly, the room’s locks were overridden, and the door slid open. Karl filled the doorway. Vik shrieked in a very un-Doctor of Doom–like manner, and Tom felt a thrill of sheer terror.

Karl leered at them. Then raised his forearm and began tapping at his own keyboard, forehead furrowed, thick fingers banging away.

It was anticlimactic, the way the Genghises trickled in, and yanked Karl’s arm back and forth between them, manipulating the keyboard on his forearm.

“That’s not how you do it,” Tom said, seeing Vik mistype a segment of source code that he remembered seeing once before. He grabbed Vik’s arm and took over.

Then Vik said, “That’s not it, either. Back to your station, human shield!” He yanked his arm away and shoved Tom into position between him and the Genghises.

Tom looked nervously at the Genghises, expecting to be slammed by a virus from Karl and company any minute. They, meanwhile, were arguing over Zorten II themselves.

“You dunce, this isn’t working,” Karl snarled at someone.

“Wait, how do you do that error checker program?”

“Why’s this value null? What’s a null?”

“Give me my arm back! ‘Null’ means it’s not working, idiot.”

Tom leaned back against the wall, the room filled with the tapping of keys. The sense of menace and excitement was steadily draining away. Tom heard Vik curse quietly as he messed up the program yet again. Karl, meanwhile, was threatening to clobber them with his keyboard rather than let them type on it.

After some time, Wyatt wandered in and looked back and forth between them. “You guys have been in here for twenty minutes. You still haven’t written one program yet? That’s kind of pathetic.”

“Stop distracting me, Man Hands,” Vik ordered. “It’s not like I see you racking up the victories.”

Wyatt flushed.

“Man Hands,” Karl repeated with a snigger from across the room, typing at his own keyboard. “Hear that?” he said to one of his friends. “‘Man Hands.’”

Wyatt glared at Vik. “Thanks for spreading that nickname around. You know what? I hope Karl gets you first.” With that, she stalked from the room.

Another five minutes crawled by. Tom had given up playing human shield. He was pretty sure now it wouldn’t be necessary. “Karl, Vik, everyone, stop!” he called out.

To his surprise, they did.

“This is so stupid,” Tom exclaimed. “We’re all lousy programmers.”

The Genghises exchanged uneasy glances. It was true.

“We’ve been at it for a half hour and none of us has managed a program yet.”

“What do you suggest, then, Plebe?” Karl folded his beefy arms.

“We go our separate ways, program on our own time, come up with some great attacks, and then meet again later.”

Karl’s eyes narrowed. “Like a duel.”

“Yeah, like a duel. Tomorrow night. In the plebe common room.”

Karl stroked his chin, as if he had an invisible beard there. “Okay, I’d go for that. But night after that instead.”

“Night after?”

“Yeah, you have a problem with that? I said the night after tomorrow, ’cause tomorrow night, I’m scheduled to go get a haircut. I can’t cancel without twenty-four hours’ notice.”

“Night after, then.” Tom was fine with it. More time to program.

Karl gave a satisfied nod. “I don’t know anyone who can cobble together a program on the run, anyway.”

And then the doors slid open, and Tom glanced over carelessly to see Wyatt standing there again, her keyboard out this time.

“If you came to see Karl get us, you’re out of luck,” Vik informed her.

“That’s not why I’m here,” Wyatt replied. “I decided not to sit this one out.”

Vik blinked. “Seriously? Why?”

“You changed my mind, Vik.” She typed something on her keyboard, and immediately Karl and the Genghis trainees dropped onto their hands and knees and began baaing.

Tom whirled toward the Genghises, watching them all nuzzling their noses at the carpet as sheep. “You sure about this?” he asked her.

“Very sure.”

“Huh,” Vik said. “Well, guess we can have three Doctors of Doom, then.”

But Wyatt still had her keyboard up, a ruthless gleam in her eyes. “Why, Vik, we’re in different divisions, remember?”

Vik’s eyes widened. “Human shield, save me!” he cried, grabbing Tom by the shoulders.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Wyatt assured him, smiling. “I have enough for both of you.”

A flick of the button on her keyboard targeted both their IP addresses at the same time and sent text flashing across Tom’s vision center:
Datastream received: program Bleating Sheep initiated
.

T
OM CAME TO
himself, munching on a plant in the arboretum behind the mess hall. He wasn’t the only one. Far from it. Wyatt had left carnage all over the first floor. Some trainees were sheep, the way Vik still was. Some were gathered in a crowd, speaking together frantically in a cycling roster of languages, unable to remember English, and others were stumbling over their legs over and over again like they’d forgotten how to walk. She’d taken out a good thirty people luckless enough to cross her path.

“Ugh.” Tom swiped his sleeve over his mouth, scrubbing off the taste of tomato vine, and ignored the frantic
baaaa
s of people he passed, hunched on all fours, being sheep.

Tom found Vik and nudged him with his foot, ignoring his
baa
s of anger, until Vik snapped out of it. “What—what—”

Tom reached out and hoisted him up. “Wyatt went on a rampage. The Doctors of Doom can’t let this insult stand.”

T
OM AND
V
IK
decided to confront Yuri that night over whether he planned to unite with his fellow Alexanders to help take Wyatt Enslow down. Their tentative questions over dinner convinced them he understood just enough of what was going on to be of use to them, unless he planned to be a dirty, rotten traitor. But Yuri wasn’t in his bunk.

Beamer was.

Vik strode inside. “Hey, man, have you seen the Android?”

Beamer just lay there in bed and didn’t say a word. Tom and Vik exchanged an uneasy glance. Beamer hadn’t been at classes today. He must have spent the whole day in bed.