Tom laughed, his head whirling. His legs felt a bit funny beneath him. “You’re kidding. Nigel Harrison Nigel Harrisoned me?”

“That’s right.” Blackburn sounded annoyed. “And if he’d written a self-termination sequence, I would’ve given him a day off. Since I was stuck dismantling it, I revoked his victory.”

Tom’s eyes riveted on a smear of blood on the stage below him. He raised a shaky hand to the side of his head and pressed the stinging bump gingerly.

“Don’t poke at it,” Blackburn warned, plucking Tom’s hand away.

Yeah, like he cared. Tom ripped out of his grip and jumped down from the stage. The floor gave way beneath him, and he tumbled to the ground.

“Graceful.” A thump of boots behind him, and then a large hand seized the back of his tunic and hauled him to his feet.

“Let me go. Stay away from me!”

Blackburn steered him jerkily down the aisle. “You have a head injury, Raines. You’re going to the infirmary.”

“I’m great. I’m perfect. Let go!”

He turned Tom around and clasped his shoulders. “You were unconscious for fifteen minutes, Raines. Your pupils are uneven. You need to see a doctor.”

Tom felt awkward, seeing him this close, hearing him actually speak softly. He turned his head away. “So you got what you wanted, huh? This was bad for my health.”

Blackburn considered him. “No. This went too far. Come on.”

Tom stopped trying to break away from him. Blackburn remained silent the rest of the trip to the infirmary.

Tom swayed dizzily when Blackburn delivered him to Nurse Chang, who urged him into one of the beds and flashed a penlight in his eyes. Then Tom pressed his cheek against the mattress, and it felt solid and calm when his head was so jumbled. He was suddenly glad to be here. He didn’t feel like delighting Karl by puking all over himself in the middle of the mess hall.

“Stay awake, Mr. Raines,” Nurse Chang ordered.

Tom forced his eyes back open, watching the bedside table blur in and out. He felt so sick. The lights were too bright. He didn’t like that Blackburn was still there, standing over him. He tried to shut out the sound of his voice as he asked, “How long do you expect he’ll be here? I should inform General Marsh.”

“I’ll let you know after his CT, but he’s young. Something that would floor you or me for a few weeks, they can shake off in days.”

“You don’t need to tell me. Two boys, one year apart. There were more than enough trips to the ER.” He was silent a long moment. “Just keep me informed.”

Heavy footsteps, and then the hiss of a door sliding open and closed again. Like some dark cloud had dissolved, Tom was finally able to relax, certain Blackburn was finally gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

AFTER A COUPLE days, Tom was allowed to leave the infirmary, but he was ordered to remain on bed rest. That’s why his GPS signal was situated in his bunk, while he hung out in the VR parlor of the Pentagon City Mall.

He’d spent all Saturday morning fighting Medusa in Pirate Wars. He was the leader of the Black Flag pirate fleet, and she was Ching Shih, the Chinese pirate queen leading the Red Flag Fleet. Despite the low, persistent headache left over from his concussion, Tom fought valiantly and managed to board her ship. Just as he set about massacring her crew, he noticed Medusa’s dark head bobbing in the water beyond the ship, her huge grin filled with expectation.

She waved happily. It was his only warning.

Her ship exploded, taking out Tom, the ship, and the bulk of his Black Flag Fleet.

They met back in the RPG, and Tom slipped into his ogre avatar. Medusa’s Egyptian queen was turning a series of backflips on the couch, celebrating her victory.

“You’re still celebrating?” he asked.

Medusa laughed and spun toward him. “You’d be gloating much more if you ever won.”

Tom laughed. “A hundred times more, at least.” His ogre tromped forward, and they started circling around each other, another duel in the making. “Tell me something.” He fixed his gaze on her avatar, as though a few megapixels could give him a clue to the real person behind it. “Did you grow up speaking Mandarin?”

“Cantonese.”

Tom congratulated himself for weaseling her nationality out of her. She’d conceded the girl issue, since her voice was a girl’s, and he’d figured she was Chinese, but he wanted to be sure. Now he was getting a mental picture of her—shiny black hair, lively black eyes. Short, he thought.

“I figured you weren’t Russian.”

“Russians only train in the Forbidden City two weeks a year, or we go to their underground facility beneath the Kremlin.”

“Only two weeks a year, huh? Some of the Indians train here with us all the time. So do the—” Tom stopped before he could tell her about the handful of trainees at the Spire from the Euro-Australian block.

Medusa was quiet a minute. They always had to walk a careful line between their strange friendship and the treason charges they’d face, giving away military secrets.

“That’s probably not so classified,” Tom said, reconsidering it.

“Everyone knows about the underground Russian facility,” Medusa said, sounding a bit uneasy. “Just like the Bombay facility for the Indians.”

“What about the other countries you’re allied with?”

“They tend to want to live in Moscow, not with us. You have to join our military to be in our program.”

“Really? We’re not military here. Not till we’re eighteen.” Tom’s ogre leaped up onto the couch. His massive weight tilted it, and with a gale of laughter, Medusa’s avatar fluttered off, letting it unbalance and flip on top of Tom’s avatar. “Are the Russians military?” he asked.

“Yes, but they don’t take it seriously. They can quit anytime they want. They have a real problem there, because so many rich Russians buy their kids a place in the program just to get a neural processor in their brains, and then pull them out.” She began taking advantage of the way Tom’s ogre was pinned down to stomp on his head. “Most of the time, they don’t even get the neural processors taken back out of them, even if it’s early enough.”

“Clever. So parents send them there to get turned into instant geniuses, huh?”

“Well, you’d think that’s why they do it. But one time a family got investigated for it, and it turned out the girl who got the neural processor wasn’t even their kid, just some girl they paid to impersonate her. And by the time the military realized this, they’d already had the girl’s head cut open, and sold the processor on the black market.”

“Wow.”

“We just don’t approach things the same way they do. That’s why the Russians hate it when they visit us. This year they kept complaining because they wanted to sleep every single night.”

Tom paused in his struggle to throw off the couch as her boot descended into his face over and over. “Wait, you guys don’t sleep every single night?”

“You do?”

“Sleep is good, Medusa. Sleep is great.”

“We have scheduled slow-wave sleep periods. But daily sleep isn’t necessary with the neural processor.”