Insignia

Tom looked up from where he’d been wolfing down his meat loaf. “That can happen?”

Wyatt nodded. “Once you get the neural processor, your memories start getting stored on there instead of inside your brain. So I guess a part of you actually gets stored in the neural processor. Blackburn told me it’s how they scramble Yuri.” She darted a quick glance at Yuri where he was zoning out over his salad. “They have some malware in him that downloads scraps of memory from other neural processors and jumbles what he’s hearing with them. That’s why he understands some things, but not others.”

Tom glanced at Yuri, with his glazed eyes, a bit disturbed even thinking about what was going on in his head.

“Blackburn showed me one of the brains, too,” Wyatt went on. “It was one of the adults who survived almost three years with the processor because they gave him a bunch of epilepsy drugs. Once you look past the frontal lobe and the limbic cortex, you see the rest of the brain’s atrophied. It looks like a shriveled husk.”

There was such a look of horror on Vik’s face that Tom started sniggering.

“Wyatt, food,” Vik said, gesturing to the punctured crust in front of him, trying to get her to stop talking about this while he was eating.

“Tummy troubles?” Tom asked.

“Die slowly, Tom.” Vik glared at him as he shoved a forkful of pot pie in his mouth.

Wyatt waited for Vik to start chewing again. “Maybe not a shriveled husk. More like ground-up shiitake mushrooms.”

Vik choked again.

“Actually,” Wyatt added, “I think the brain belonged to the person who used to have your processor, Vik.”

Vik spat out his food.

Wyatt smirked. “Just kidding.”

“You’re an Eviler Wench every day,” Vik accused her, tossing his napkin down on his meal, giving up on eating.

Yuri roused from his stupor as Vik said that. “That she is,” he said adoringly.

Ever since he’d admitted to liking Wyatt, Yuri had begun sounding her out, trying to gauge her feelings for him, and repeatedly hinting about his crush. Tom and Vik found the whole thing comically fascinating, seeing Yuri try to yawn and put his arm around her in class, and clueless Wyatt then complaining that he was taking up her space. Yuri tried to ask her to a movie, and Wyatt told him the movie he suggested sounded dreadful.

It took Yuri a whole week to score one victory: he finally managed to convince her to go out with him to a museum. Unfortunately, Wyatt didn’t even seem to get that it was a date, because she asked Tom and Vik if they were going, too.

“Sure, we’re going,” Tom told her, just grinning shamelessly at Vik’s warning look. They’d made a bet about when Yuri would finally manage to get somewhere with Wyatt, and Tom was going to lose if it happened this soon.

So when the following Saturday came, they were tailing a few steps behind Yuri and Wyatt in the Smithsonian.

“It doesn’t count if you sabotage them,” Vik informed Tom as they passed the caveman exhibit.

“Come on. They sabotage themselves.”

“He’s going in,” Vik proclaimed, grabbing Tom’s arm to halt him.

They ducked behind a mock saber-toothed tiger, out of sight of the two. Wyatt was staring fixedly at a woolly mammoth skeleton, and Yuri was staring fixedly at her. Resolve filled Yuri’s face. He leaned down, reaching out to draw her into his arms, and Wyatt turned at the same time and smacked her forehead into his.

Tom burst out laughing. Vik’s hand clamped over his mouth to muffle the sound.

Wyatt’s voice rang in the air. “Ow! Why’d you have to head butt me?”

Tom fell down, laughing so hard he was suffocating. He couldn’t get to his feet. He couldn’t. He was going to die, going to choke to death on smothered laughter. Vik hauled him from the room and let Tom fall down again. Then he staggered away, waving for him to stop laughing. Then he fell down, too.

“That was so”—Vik gasped, when he could manage it—“It was just so Enslow.”

Tom clutched his ribs where they were starting to hurt. “Just pay up now, Vik. Save your dignity.”

Museum visitors were starting to stare at them. Vik hoisted himself to his feet. Tom lurched to his feet, too, his sides aching.

“I am not surrendering, Raines. Yuri might go for it again. Double or nothing, the Android gets his hands on Man Hands by tonight.”

“You seriously wanna pay me double? The only base Yuri’s getting to is—” Tom stopped talking.

Wyatt was standing just in the doorway, staring at them, her face deathly pale. The smile dropped from Vik’s face, and Tom suddenly felt like the biggest jerk in the world.

She cast a stiff look back toward where Yuri was and then looked back at them.

“I get it,” she said. “I suspected something when you guys started inviting me places and telling me to sit with you in the mess hall. I get it now. I suppose this is some real funny joke, isn’t it?”

Tom blinked. Wait, she thought they were all having her on?

Yuri emerged from the room behind her. “Wyatt? I must explain myself.”

Wyatt spun around and shoved him back. “Go away!”

Yuri’s face filled with hurt.

“Find someone else to make fun of with your friends!” She turned around and stormed from the room.

Tom stood there frozen for a moment, and Yuri rubbed at his bruised forehead, staring helplessly after her. Vik looked at Tom, then mouthed, “You?”

Tom let out a breath. “I’ve got it.” He turned around and headed out after Enslow.

HE CAUGHT UP to Wyatt outside the museum, where she stood on the sidewalk, reaching up to scrub her sleeve across her face. Tom would never have imagined her as the crying type, and he really felt like the scum of the earth.

“Hey, come on, Wyatt. Don’t cry.”

She jumped. “I am not crying! I have allergies.” She started for the Metro stop, and Tom tailed after her.

“You can’t just leave, okay?”

“I’m not stupid.” She tore around to glare at him. “I know people don’t like me. I just thought Yuri … I just thought you were different.”

“Yuri is different. He’s a good guy. And me, I don’t … I’m not … Come on, okay? Vik and I are just jerks. We didn’t mean anything by the bet thing. We were just messing around. Yuri’s got no idea, okay? It’s not like we were all setting you up. You’ve gotta know he’s into you.”

“Me,” she echoed flatly.

“Yeah. You’ve gotta see it. He wouldn’t even help us go after you in the war games.”

“I don’t believe you. Yuri doesn’t see me that way. Even Vik calls me Man Hands.”

“That’s just a thing we humans call a joke. Vik gives most everyone nicknames. Again: me, Vik—jerks, got it? It doesn’t mean every guy in the world thinks the same thing. You’re supposed to turn it around on us, anyway. Like, maybe tell Vik he only thinks that because his hands are delicate and girly. That’s how it works. Anyway, I’ve never heard Yuri say it. I bet he thinks you have girl hands. I mean, have you seen that guy’s?” He raised his palms. “They could envelop people’s heads.”