“Dad, it’s really okay now. I only needed you to give me a trump card in this one situation. I was …” He fumbled for a way to say it that Neil might appreciate, a way that wouldn’t reveal anything classified. He came up with it. “I was bluffing.”

“Bluffing, eh?”

“Yeah. Gambling for something. And I won.”

His father studied him for a long moment. Then his lips cracked in a knowing smile. “I bet I know what you were gambling for.”

Tom wondered what his theory could be. “Do you?”

Neil leaned toward him. “You were aiming to fly in that Capitol Summit thing, weren’t you?”

Tom jerked. “What?”

“It was everywhere, clips of the way we won this year. I knew with one look it wasn’t that Ramirez kid. Flying right at that satellite? I saw that, and I knew it was my boy.”

“How did—” Tom stopped, realizing he’d given away too much.

“I’ve seen you play thousands of those games. Think I don’t know how your brain works, Tommy?”

Tom stared at his dad’s collar. Neil had seen him play games over the years. He’d noticed him.

“Uh, I found out something yesterday,” Tom said. “We have promotions twice a year, right? And I heard I’m getting promoted.” He wasn’t sure why he suddenly wanted Neil to know. “It’s to Middle Company. It’s not Camelot Company yet, but it might be soon. I might be one of the call signs on the news one day.”

Neil turned away from him and squinted into the sunlight. “Rising up the ranks, huh?”

Tom watched Neil’s back, waiting for some jab about serving the “corporate war machine.”

But Neil surprised him with, “Sorry I can’t be there to see that.”

Tom couldn’t speak. He could not say a word.

He turned to stare into the distance, just like his dad was, aware of his chest aching as he stood next to him on top of Mount Everest. For the first time, he knew that even if his father hated what he was doing, he was still proud of him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“GORMLESS CRETIN.”

Vik’s words, spoken a few weeks later as they stood in formation outside the doorway to the Lafayette Room, made Tom jump. “What now?”

“It’s your new nickname,” Vik said.

The long-awaited manly equivalent of Evil Wench didn’t make much sense to Tom. The formation of a dozen plebes began marching forward into the room. His brain was not sorting out the reference. What did “gormless” mean?

“Not stored in your neural processor, right?” Vik raised his eyebrows as the doors parted around them. “I picked it on purpose just for that. We have a deal—you have to answer to it.”

Tom laughted. “Fine, but, Vik, nothing in the world can top Spicy Indian.”

“Die slowly, Tom.”

Tom laughed as they marched into the Lafayette Room and began heading down the aisle in single file At the front of the room, Marsh, Cromwell, and Blackburn waited on the stage. The rest of the trainees stood at attention in front of their benches for the ceremony.

Tom caught eyes with Yuri in the plebe section—and received a faint smile. As much as Yuri had tried to put on a cheerful show when he heard all his friends were getting promoted, it obviously bothered him. First he’d been scrambled, and now this: more confirmation he didn’t have a chance of moving up in the ranks. Tom turned back to the stage and arranged his face into a stiff, formal, getting-promoted-type expression. A quick glance at Vik told him he was doing the same. He was straining so hard for a serious expression that he just looked constipated.

They stood in a line in front of the stage while Marsh launched into a speech about patriotism. Major Cromwell’s lids drooped, like she was about to fall asleep. And Blackburn was standing rigidly in place, like he’d braced himself for an impending root canal.

The best musicians among the trainees played a march when the speech ended, and the plebes scheduled for promotion filed up to the stage. Vik was the first to received his promotion—a neural chip with upgrades from Blackburn, a new rank badge from Cromwell, and then a handshake from General Marsh. Tom searched Vik’s face as he left the stage for any sign of pride, but something was off there. He looked a bit pale. It wasn’t until Vik’s eyes darted to Yuri in the plebe section, that Tom realized why: Vik was worrying about the treason they’d committed together. Wyatt was the next to stand before a granite-faced Blackburn. She stared below him and he looked above her as he thrust a neural chip with a new set of software updates into her hand. She almost stumbled in her eagerness to move on to face Cromwell.

Tom’s name was called last. Blackburn’s jaw clenched. He stared at him with an intent, unblinking gaze as he handed him the neural chip. Tom took it, and decided he was going to get Wyatt to scan this whole thing, directory by directory, before hooking it into his brain. He saw a flash of satisfaction on Cromwell’s face as she switched the old rank badge on the collar of his tunic with a new one: same eagle, only with two arrow-type lines beneath it instead of one. Marsh shook his hand, pride in his face.

As the ceremony concluded, and the trainees applauded the newly promoted, Tom scanned the reactions in the Combatants assembled in the front row. Karl was sulking. Then Elliot nudged him, and he began the world’s most halfhearted clapping.

As Heather clapped, her gaze moved to Tom’s and locked on, and he found suddenly that he couldn’t tear his eyes from hers. There was still something mesmerizing about the intensity of her stare. He broke away then, his ears growing hot, feeling foolish. The band played them from the room as the assembled trainees stood at attention.

Tom felt like he could breathe again once in the main lobby beneath the enormous, outstretched wings of the golden eagle. Vik plodded up behind him, so Tom turned and elbowed him, hoping to knock some life back into his face and get him over whatever it was troubling him. “Come on, man. Cheer up. Doctors of Doom aren’t supposed to worry about stuff.”

Vik turned to him, his voice dropping to the faintest of whispers. “Tom, what if we regret this?”

“What, you think Yuri is actually an evil spy?” Tom said just as softly.

“No, I just—” Vik looked around quickly, checking again to make sure no one was close to them. “Come on, Tom! We did something we don’t have a right to do. It’s treason.”

Surviving the census device and winning Capitol Summit had left Tom feeling near invincible. He’d been there, done that. “Look, if we’re just careful, no one will know. If they start to suspect? Then we get Wyatt to change him back. And if that doesn’t work, then I’ll take the blame, okay? You’re safe. I’ll be the idiot here.”

That seemed to mollify Vik. His voice rose to a normal volume. “Well, of course you’re the idiot here, Gormless Cretin.”

“What is a gormless cretin?” Tom burst out.

“A redundancy.” Wyatt’s voice rang out from behind them. She emerged from the crowd filling the lobby, Yuri behind her. “A ‘dim-witted dumb person.’”

Tom groaned. “Really, Vik?”

“The fact that you needed Wyatt to explain it for you supports my ‘gormless’ theory,” Vik argued.