Tom shook his head. He wasn’t sure what Marsh was talking about or where a wolf had come into this converstion.

“It ends when the boy meets a real wolf and no one comes to help him. . . . The thing I fear is, it may already be too late. There are too many drones, there is too much surveillance. Sometimes I think that even if the game ended today, it would be too late to get back the country we once had. The world’s enough of a prison for the rest of us that it won’t matter to our elite if no one comes running to fight the next wolf—we may not matter enough to make a difference now.”

Tom watched the dark trees swaying in the distance, thinking of his own spot on the terror watch list. So that’s the sort of thing Marsh meant by “crying wolf.” Apparently, he was a wolf now.

“The security state is an iron fist,” Marsh said, “and it is closing around our throats. When I look at my grandson, I try to imagine his future, and I don’t see one. Those executives you met are part of an elite club, and my grandson will never be a part of it. Exosuits and drones and neural processors are the beginning of the end for the rest of us. In a few years, that club won’t need soldiers, they won’t need farmers, they won’t need those of us who have stayed useful to them. In fact, even now, if you had any idea what sort of next-generation neural processors Joseph Vengerov’s trying to get in here, to prepare for the general population . . . it sends a shudder down my spine. The vast majority of human beings are becoming obsolete, and this security state means we can be treated that way without repercussion. I was a part of this, son, and I owe it to my grandson, to my kids, to do what I can to tip back the scales in favor of the rest of us. But I have to do it now. And I need your help.”

Tom eyed him uncertainly. “Sir?”

“I told you why I recruited you, Raines: we need a different sort of Combatant. We need someone with that instinct to win wars, not just win public support. I can’t beat these people”—he gestured vaguely toward Washington, DC—“but I can nudge them. I need one very effective fighter up there, someone who can win us some ground and whet those executives’ appetites with the spoils of victory, not just the spoils they’ve looted from the public. Show them real victory, and maybe that’ll give me the leverage I need to obtain more Combatants of the type I want, the type that wins wars. I get enough of those, and we can move on that moon. We end this war on our terms, and there’s no telling what’ll happen from there. That means I’m going to need you to do your part and fix the situation with those CEOs.”

Tom gazed out at the trees. Easier said than done.

“I don’t care what you think of them. All that matters is, you have an objective—and that’s to get into space. Anything you do from here, Raines, should be oriented toward that objective.”

“You don’t understand, sir. The companies banned me.”

Marsh’s eyes flashed to his. “Have you really done everything you can do, Tom? Have you? I know you’re sharp. I wouldn’t be talking to you about this sort of thing if you didn’t have a brain in your head. There’s a reason I’m putting my confidence in you, son: it’s because I know you’ll come through. I know you’ll find a way.”

Tom wondered why Marsh knew that. Tom didn’t know it himself.

“You’re going to get one of those companies to put up a few billion sponsoring you, and you’re going to be a Combatant. I believe that to my bones. I expect nothing less of you, Middle.”

TOM STILL FELT a bit odd when he walked into his bunk later. He’d expected . . . he wasn’t sure. He’d expected to be yelled at, at the very least, or maybe for Marsh to tell him what a failure he’d been.

Tom stood there in the darkness with the Gormless Cretin statue and the scroll displaying the five “would nots.”

Marsh had such utter confidence that he’d fix this. There was no reason for it, really. For a moment, the stress grew too overwhelming. Tom closed his eyes, feeling like the entire world was spinning about him, and he was a singularity at the center, absorbing more and more expectation until it was impossible, impossible to escape the crushing mass of it. He knew he couldn’t do it. He’d disappoint Marsh, he’d screw up, and he’d get sucked into that vortex because he was sure Marsh would give up on him, and he’d be done for, he’d be crushed.

Then he thought of Medusa.

He opened his eyes.

Medusa!

She flared through his brain, and it was like he’d discovered some passage through that vortex, freeing him on the other side. The weight slid away from him like it had never been there, and he understood that there was a way. There had to be a way.

Medusa had no sponsor. She had none, but she was in space. So it was possible.

Tom felt something hard and relentless grow inside him, and he looked up at those evaluations, determination surging through him. Sure, he knew she didn’t want him to contact her again, and he knew she’d threatened to blast him if he drew too much attention to them . . . but he’d never been good at heeding threats.

And then, typing rapidly on his forearm keyboard, he deleted the scroll of failures and gave the statue a massive, deadly sword instead. His fight wasn’t over yet.

CHAPTER TEN

IN THE PAST, Tom had used a message board to get in contact with Medusa. Now that he knew she was like him, he didn’t need to. He stretched out on his bed, hooked in, and resorted to his old standby pipeline to the Sun Tzu Citadel: he interfaced with the massive current of power in the Pentagonal Spire’s central processor. He traced the pathway of zeros and ones he’d followed several times before.

His consciousness jolted into some satellites ringing Earth, with their electronic sensors. It took him effort to focus, to grab on to the next pipeline of signals, and jolt into the satellites ringing Mercury with its palladium mines.

Back the signals soared to Earth, jolting in the mainframe of the Sun Tzu Citadel, the stronghold of Russo-Chinese trainees. Tom began following the pipelines from one directory to another to another until finally the Russo-Chinese Combatant IPs flickered through his consciousness. He recognized Medusa’s IP and deposited a message he’d prepared in her net-send: I want to talk to you.

Tom lingered in the Citadel’s systems for a timeless period that he later realized was less than twenty seconds, and her mind appeared on the system.

A shock jolted through his body, knocking him off the bed. The words STAY AWAY burned across his vision center before fading out.

Tom lay there, breathless, a bit stung by the rejection, but then determination surged through him. The only thing left to do was try, try again.

HIS NEXT OPPORTUNITY to contact Medusa came even sooner than he expected: during his first fly-along with Heather Akron.

Heather probably wouldn’t have been Tom’s first choice, not just because she was in disgrace for smearing the other CamCos to the press but also because he’d had this lingering mistrust of her ever since she handed him over to Karl Marsters to get beaten up his first week at the Spire. His own disgrace meant he probably wasn’t Heather’s first choice, either.

However, now they had to be a team. Tom was woken by a ping at 0400 one morning, informing him to report to the Helix to meet Heather for a fly-along by 0430. It was his first chance to see a battle in person . . . sort of.