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  Then Vik lifted a small, rounded object with a flattened base that Tom recognized from the infirmary. “What do you suppose this thing does? It was on the floor, not on any of the racks.”

  Tom quashed his smile. “Oh, I know what it is. Press that button on top.”

  Vik pressed the button. Confusion furrowed his brow when the device started beeping.

  Tom drew a deep breath, then bellowed, “IT’S A GRENADE!”

  Vik gave an earsplitting shriek and jumped so high, he crashed back into the wall, sending the device clattering to the floor. Tom cackled gleefully and scooped the device up, then flipped off the beeping. “Just kidding. It’s a timer thing. I’ve seen them in the infirmary.”

  Vik snatched the rounded timer from him and peered at it suspiciously. “I am going to put you in the infirmary now, you gormless cretin. Find something we can duel with in here so we can launch eons of dynastic Raines-Ashwan warfare.”

  Joy filled Tom, and he scoured around, hoping for some knives or something similar, but just as he claimed his gun, Wyatt joined them. She looked at Tom with one gun, Vik with another, and halted in her tracks.

  “Are you guys seriously messing around with real weapons?” she exclaimed. “It’s like you want Darwin Awards!”

  Tom flushed, and set his gun back on its hook. “It’s not like we were going to start a dynastic war or something.”

  “Yeah,” Vik said guiltily, returning his own weapon.

  Wyatt bit her lip. She threw an uneasy glance around them, looking daunted by the sight of all the weapons, right there for the taking. Tom spoke as casually as he could. “What did Blackburn want?”

  Wyatt reached out and poked at a piece of armor with a finger, like it was some animal that might snap at her. Then she poked it harder when nothing bad happened the first time. “He found out about something I did during my vacation, and he said it was good work.”

  “What?” Vik said.

  Wyatt shrugged mysteriously. “He also said he knew I didn’t hack his profile and he tends to assume the worst about people, so he apologized for getting so upset about the Roanoke thing and discontinuing my programming instruction.”

  “And, what, you forgave him?” Tom blurted. “After he yelled at you like that and ignored you for weeks, he just has to say sorry and you’re over it?”

  Her eyebrows drew together in her long, solemn face. “He said he was really sorry.”

  “You saw what a psycho he was, Wyatt. He turned on you for no reason before. You think that can’t happen again?”

  “It was only because you said that Roanoke thing. That’s the only reason he acted that way. Obviously it was a sore point.”

  “No. No, you don’t get it,” Tom said, agitated. “It’s not a sore point. It’s the only point. That guy you saw that day? That’s the real Blackburn. Trust me on this.”

  “I know him way better than you do, Tom.”

  “No,” Tom said, raking his fingers through his hair, frustrated. “You think you do. You see the way he pretends to be. He pretends to be reasonable; he pretends to be sane. He’s not.”

  He stopped talking, since Wyatt and Vik were both looking at him strangely.

  The thing was, they knew Blackburn had tried to “fry his brain in the census device,” in those exact words. Tom had never told them much more than that. He hadn’t told them Blackburn had set out to tear his mind apart when Tom had refused to show him his memory of Vengerov; they didn’t know Blackburn had threatened to wipe out the Spire’s systems, just to stop Marsh from freeing Tom; they didn’t know Blackburn had a vendetta against Joseph Vengerov, since Vengerov had intentionally implanted him with a neural processor that he knew would kill him or drive him insane. They didn’t know that during his psychotic episode, Blackburn had accidentally killed his own kids, and as a consequence, he’d thought nothing of destroying Tom in search of something he could use in his vendetta against Vengerov, the man he held responsible.

  But Tom couldn’t even begin to tell his friends about this. Not any of it, because there were too many secrets, not all of them his, and they were all tied into the memories Blackburn had discovered in his brain. Blackburn miraculously turning around and forgiving Wyatt felt like a direct threat to Tom. Sure, he might’ve been the one who told Blackburn that Wyatt never hacked his profile, that she didn’t even know about Roanoke, but Tom hadn’t done that to reconcile them. . . . He’d done that to rub Blackburn’s mistake in his face.

  He regretted it now.

  They headed out of the armory to join the rest of the Middles who were trickling into the Calisthenics Arena for their morning workout. Tom, Vik, and Wyatt waited outside the armory along with the other four new Middles—Makis Katehi, Kelcy Demos, Jennifer Nguyen, and Mervyn Bolton. They all nodded at each other, but no introductions were needed; they’d been plebes together.

  Soon Tom realized who they were waiting for. His fists clenched.

  Lieutenant Blackburn ascended the stairs from the lower floor of the arena, then halted before the armory. With a tap on his forearm keyboard, he caused eight of the machines that resembled headless, metal skeletons to step down from the platform and march out to stand before them.

  Blackburn turned to them. “Let’s get started, Middles. You’ll find Calisthenics much like it was when you were plebes—exercising, simulated images to motivate and direct your actions, that sort of thing. There’s a notable exception: the armory. Each Monday, simulations are programmed to expose trainees to a variety of weapons that military research and development plans to give to future, neural processor–equipped soldiers. Since muscle memory is vital, we physically give the trainees weapons without ammunition. Not only does this enable you to learn how to use them, but it enables our researchers to study how well you’re able to use them solely from the downloads installed in your processors. One of these weapons is particularly dangerous. Since they can only be controlled by someone with a neural processor, I’m the lucky guy stuck teaching you how to use them without killing yourselves or anyone else. What’s the first rule of this lesson you’re going to have with me?”

  No one answered him. Tom had no idea.

  Blackburn held up a finger. “Rule number one is: my time is infinitely more valuable than yours. Don’t waste it by messing around or ignoring your instructions. I will tell you once, and I expect you to remember. You have photographic memories and superhuman brains. You have no excuse for inattention, and no excuse for forgetting what I’ve said. Now, let’s discuss these exosuits.”

  He thumped his palm on the nearest metal machine.

  “There are your basic strength-enhancement tools. You see, top brass believes that every armed en terra—Earthbound—conflict in the future will be handled by a small number of soldiers. There’s a compelling reason for scaling down the number of soldiers in the armed forces: it’s easier to find one man willing to fire upon civilian insurgents than it is to find a few thousand. It’s cheaper to pay one soldier than it is to pay thousands. So these individual soldiers have to be walking arsenals. They need to be in command of heavy machinery that one person can’t possibly handle unless he has inhumanly superior strength and stamina. That’s where exosuits come in.”

  Blackburn inserted his legs into the wide, leg-shaped frames of an exosuit, then shoved his arms into the exosuit arms. When he clenched his fist, the metal mesh fingers contracted with his, and the metal frame closed around his arm, shortening so the metal joints aligned with his elbows and shoulders. Then Blackburn reached back and pulled up the metal neck of the exosuit, hooking the prong on the end of the neck into the access port of his own neck. Immediately, the rest of the exosuit mimicked the actions of the arms, contracting to fit around his body, the joints of the exoskeleton lining up with his joints. Soon, Blackburn was wearing what resembled a metal mesh frame from neck to toe.

  “Right now I have forty-two times an average man’s strength.” Blackburn held his arms out to the sides, displaying the way the t
hin metal even encased his fingertips. “Give me a pair of goggles with infrared and night vision; some high-density steel armor with fiber-optic cloaking capability to render me invisible; maybe a ceramic, medicine-secreting vest to clot up and heal any wounds I receive; some built-in air-conditioning to regulate my body temperature; a few mechanized drones to be my scouts; some overhead satellites to be my eyes and ears; a couple rocket launchers for my arms; a distant carrier ready to launch cruise missiles at my command, and . . . well, kids, give me all that, and I become a supersoldier, the decision maker at the center of a vast nexus of automated weapons and armaments. Theoretically, one supersoldier could travel back in time and obliterate the entire Third Reich. This is the future of warfare. Now”—his gray eyes roved over them—“what is the most important thing to remember when you’re wearing these?” His gaze snapped over to Vik. “Ashwan. Guess.”

  Vik blinked. “Is this the your-time-is-infinitely-valuable thing again?”

  “That was rule one, Ashwan. This is rule number two.” And then Blackburn grabbed Vik in one swift movement and hoisted him over his head, causing Vik to give a startled yelp. Then, to Tom’s shock, Blackburn hurled Vik up into the air a good twenty meters.

  Tom’s heart leaped as Vik’s kicking body sailed toward the ceiling and plummeted back down. Blackburn caught him easily and set him gently back on his feet.

  “Care to guess now, Ashwan? What is the next rule we are going to discuss?”

  “The s-strength.” Vik raised his wide eyes up toward the ceiling.

  “Thatta boy, Ashwan. Superstrength. The human body is a frail, weak, easily ruptured thing. These exosuits are not. Rule number two: respect the power of these machines. Mess around in these and you will kill someone. The prototypes for these machines were around when I was a cadet. Those versions were only seventeen times an average human’s strength. I got to witness one cadet jump up as high as he could in an exosuit. Before he smashed into the ceiling, he had a head. Afterward, he had something that resembled a smashed watermelon on top of his neck.”

  Tom looked up at the ceiling, intrigued. He figured if he jumped too high, he’d try to punch straight through the ceiling before his head got smashed. That would work. He was sure of it.

  “That’s why I’m teaching you the old-fashioned way how to use these,” Blackburn finished, “working on muscle memory with you, not programming exosuit use into your brain. There’s a fundamental difference between a human being and a machine. Human beings think in imprecise terms. ‘A bit’ means something to a person. If I told him to jump thirteen point seven centimeters, however, he would estimate and be wildly off because precise numbers don’t mean much to the standard human brain. Machines, on the other hand, are precision instruments. They don’t understand ‘a little.’ They do understand thirteen point seven centimeters. Using an exosuit properly means learning to be precise with your movements. The sole reason you can use these exosuits safely is because your brains are already part machine, but these are only safe if you’re careful. So pick a suit, hook in, and wait for my instructions.”

  After Blackburn’s intro, most trainees approached the exosuits with trepidation. Except Tom. He was excited to give it a shot. He eagerly hopped into his suit, flipped up the neck to connect it with his neural access port, and felt a thrill all over as the machine seemed to awaken around him, the metal legs and arms shrinking down to clasp around his limbs at the joining points. He stood there a beat, wondering if he should wait for everyone else, and he decided not to. He took a great, bounding step forward.

  He sailed eight meters with the first leaping stride, six meters with the second, eleven meters with the third. Another couple steps, and Tom realized he was at the other side of the arena. He wanted to live in one of these.

  And then he heard several loud clanks of exosuited legs pounding toward him. Before he could whirl around to see who it was, a steel-and-aluminum grip closed around the aluminum band across his collar and jerked him to a complete standstill.

  “What do you think you’re doing, Raines?” Blackburn’s voice was furious.

  Dread pervaded Tom. He dragged his gaze back to meet Blackburn’s.

  “Didn’t you hear a word I said, trainee? These are dangerous. I didn’t give you permission to move. You could have killed someone! Now hold still.” He seized Tom’s wrists and slammed them to his sides with a mighty clang that traveled all the way up the exosuit. Blackburn leaned in close so his gray eyes bore right into Tom’s and whispered, “This is not a game.”

  Then Blackburn hoisted him up by the collar plate of the exosuit and carried him step by careful step across the arena. Tom hung there, arms at his sides, the eyes of the other trainees fixed on them every clanking step of the way. He got a mental image of a cat carrying a kitten by the scruff of its neck, and the giggles and sniggers of the other trainees stung his ears and confirmed that he looked as ridiculous as he thought.

  Blackburn set him down carefully, then led them through exercise after exercise, working on finely tuned control, giving specific heights to jump to, specific stride lengths to walk. By the end of the lesson, Blackburn had progressed them at that same snail’s pace to the point where they could perform some basic marches. Some made less progress than others. Wyatt was reluctant to move at all, even though when she did move, she was much smoother than people like Vik, who seemed unable to walk without flailing jerks of his limbs.

  Tom tried to do the precision thing, but it made him feel awkward, the way thinking about breathing too much could make it difficult to breathe. The truth was, he found exosuiting easy. Very easy, actually—as natural as walking but a hundred times more thrilling. Since the very sound of Blackburn’s voice made him want to do something violent, Tom decided to tune him out altogether and go with his instincts whenever Blackburn was turned away. At one point, Tom glanced behind him and felt a surge of certainty he could do something awesome here. He crouched down then shoved off into a backflip.

  He wasn’t sure he could’ve landed one in real life, but now he clanked back to the ground on his feet with perfect ease. Kelcy Demos and Jennifer Nguyen were both staring at him, wide-eyed.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m awesome at this.”

  They rolled their eyes.

  Tom was disappointed. He’d hoped they’d be more impressed. He noticed Vik struggling with his own exosuit, so Tom made sure to saunter over to him and rub in his face how good he was with it by doing a jig right in front of him.

  “I get it. You’re good,” Vik grumbled.

  “Good? I’m like the Einstein of exosuiting. This is so easy. I even did a flip a minute ago. Seriously, I’ll take any challenge you wanna throw down, buddy.”

  “Will you?” Vik said, a crazy glint in his eyes. He cast his gaze about, and his dark eyes drifted upward toward the ceiling. “Thirty bucks says you can’t touch one of those lights.”

  Tom followed his gaze to the lights hanging from the ceiling thirty meters above them, thinking of Blackburn’s watermelon anecdote.

  Vik raised his eyebrows challengingly. “Well? Or do you want to revise your statement, Dr. Einstein?”

  Tom threw him a ferocious grin. “No way.”

  Blackburn was standing in front of Wyatt, trying to coax her into taking a step toward him, arms out like he was braced to catch her. “You’re doing great, Enslow. Move your leg.”

  Wyatt bit her lip. “What if I try to lift my foot, but my leg swings up and caves your head in?”

  He chuckled. “I’ll take my chances. Come on, Wyatt, you can do this.”

  Blackburn was busy. Good. Tom turned to face Vik, excited. It was now or never. “Adios, Doctor!”

  Tom sprang into the air, excitement surging through him as he soared upward, higher than any human being could hope to leap. He raised his fists, ready to punch through the ceiling if he seemed in danger of getting his head smashed, but he’d calculated the height perfectly. His head was well clear of the ceiling when he
began arcing down, and he reached forward to tap the light as he passed it.

  That’s where it went wrong.

  His exosuited hand exploded against the light, shattering it, sending fragments of glass sprinkling toward the floor of the Calisthenics Arena.

  Oh no, Tom thought as he plunged downward, stomach in his throat, glass raining on the ground as his metallic feet clanged against the dirt.

  Tom found himself standing there, the exosuit bruising his joints, everyone staring at him in the sudden, enveloping silence.

  Including Lieutenant Blackburn.

  “Wow,” Tom tried desperately. “These exosuits, man. I wasn’t even trying to jump. I swear. That happened by accident. It must’ve malfunctioned.” In a flash of inspiration, he added, “Shoddy Obsidian Corp. craftsmanship, huh?”

  But the smear against Joseph Vengerov’s company didn’t appease Blackburn. He advanced on Tom and loomed over him like he was fighting the urge to hit him. All Tom could think was, He is going to murder me, and for a moment, he felt trapped back under the census device, questions he couldn’t answer pounding into his ears. His chest grew tight, and he was only half aware of Blackburn craning his head back to survey the rest of the trainees.

  “All of you, take those suits off. You’ll be pulled into the workout with the other trainees. Raines, don’t you move a single inch.”

  Tom stood there, full of dread, as everyone around him yanked out the connection between their neural access ports and the exosuits. As soon as they stepped out, their faces grew oddly blank, the Calisthenics workout program sweeping them into the exercise scenario. Soon, they’d all gone bounding off to climb up a wall with the rest of the trainees, leaving Tom and Blackburn to face off amid the exoskeletons.

  Blackburn folded his arms, his shoulder stretching his uniform. A vein flickered in his forehead. “Disconnect and take the exosuit off.”