“But you can turn it back on later, right? When I have more, uh, resources?”

“There’d be no point.”

“What do you mean, no point?”

But Dr. Gonzales strode from the room without answering him. Tom sat up, gritting his teeth at the grinding sensation in his joints. “What does he mean, there’d be no point?” he asked Nurse Chang, who was typing something into a computer.

Chang came over and joined Olivia at his bedside. “Tom, the neural processor takes over some of the natural functions of the human brain. The brain’s a use-it-or-lose-it organ. The areas of the brain that become unnecessary begin to atrophy. Some areas that regulate growth are among them. That’s why we have the processors spike your hGH when you first get here. We want to make sure you don’t miss out on those growth spurts you’d normally have over the next five years.”

“So if I don’t get taller now, it’ll be too late,” Tom concluded. “Fine, I get that you have to turn it off—but can’t you wait just a few days? Until I’m six feet, or maybe six two?”

Dr. Gonzales reentered the room and moved to the computer, not even looking at him. “No. I can’t wait an hour. You should’ve come to me the moment the pain flared up. Your body has a finite number of resources to support bone growth. We try to aid the process with nutritional supplementation, but nothing can make up for fourteen years of poor eating habits. For instance, I can tell from the plaque buildup in your arteries that you were raised on a steady diet of junk food and have never seen a vegetable in your life.”

“That’s not true.” He ate French fries all the time.

“Plug this in for me.” Dr. Gonzales offered him a neural wire.

Tom didn’t take it. “I want to wait.”

“Sure, you can wait, Mr. Raines,” Dr. Gonzales said drily. “And after you’ve decalcified your bones and contracted osteoporosis in your mid-thirties, you can sue me for malpractice.”

Mid-thirties? That was years away. “I won’t sue. I swear it.”

Dr. Gonzales scoffed. “The decision’s not yours to make. Lieutenant Chang, plug it in.”

Nurse Chang plugged in the wire. Tom slumped down to the bed, feeling the numbness of a neural connection seeping through his muscles. “I don’t see why it’s your decision, though. It’s my body. My osteoporosis. The military doesn’t own me.”

“No, but it owns the neural processor in your head regulating your pituitary gland.”

Tom felt Olivia’s hand on his wrist. “You’ll thank him for this one day.”

Resentment boiled through Tom as he listened to Dr. Gonzales’s keyboard tapping, tapping away, switching off the growth hormone. He wouldn’t be grateful for this. Not ever. He’d have to go through his life as a short guy.

Well, not so short anymore. But not the guy he’d wanted to be. A big guy. A huge guy Karl Marsters would never mess with. He didn’t understand why someone else was allowed to make this choice for him. Yes, it was their processor, but it was his brain.

He closed his eyes and tried to shut out the phantom echo of his father’s words: You’re just a piece of equipment to them …

CHAPTER TEN

LIFE AT THE Pentagonal Spire brought something new into Tom’s life. He’d never quite experienced it before.

Routine.

There was a code of conduct in his neural processor, there to inform him of what he could and could not do. He knew he had to be in the Spire by 2000 every weeknight, 2300 on weekends. He knew a GPS signal tracked his movements to ensure he stayed within the Designated Zone twenty miles around the Spire. Even the design of the Spire was careful and predictable. Each fifth of the Spire was divided by the letters A, B, C, D, E, and each room numbered from lowest to highest the farther outward he wandered from the elevators in the center.

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.