Insignia

And then it happened.

Text planted itself in his vision center:

You’ve stopped dueling me, Mordred. Have you finally realized you can never defeat me?

Tom stared at the text, shocked. Medusa. She’d used net-send. She’d figured out somehow how to hack in and drop something in his neural processor, the way he’d done to her.

In the last couple weeks, he’d completely stopped checking the gaming message board he used to arrange meetings with Medusa. It hadn’t seemed like something worth doing, not while the Dominion Agra programs were jammed in his head. He’d thought of it as a pointless, needless risk.

Now he felt a sick, swooping sensation, realizing how close he’d come to severing their connection.

Tom rolled up his sleeve, glad he’d brought his keyboard, and messaged back quickly, Is that wishful thinking I see? I’ll never surrender. How’d you hack my firewall, anyway?

I’d kill you before telling you, she retorted.

That made Tom chuckle. I will live to duel you another day, but I don’t have time now. I am about to carry out an elaborate vengeance scheme. Everyone with Dominion Agra is going to have a really, really bad night.

She didn’t reply for a long instant. He wondered again how she’d hacked him.

What are your GPS coordinates? she asked finally.

Why?

Because I like revenge. I can help.

Tom began laughing suddenly. He couldn’t help it. It was brilliant. Yes, Medusa, I think you can help.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

AS THE ETIQUETTE installation ceased, neutralized entirely by Wyatt’s firewall, Tom knew it was time. He set about the elaborate scheme that he’d planned thanks to an idea of Vik’s. Following the directions Vik had given him, he hacked straight into the city’s central septic system.

“So at my primary school in Delhi, we played a prank, once,” Vik had told him, and Tom thought the idea was sheer genius.

Now he isolated the system for the Beringer Club. There he stopped. Vik had given him a complicated sequence of coding, but Tom didn’t even recognize this system. It wasn’t like the schematic Vik showed him of the other septic tank.

He faltered, dismayed. And then he decided to try that thing he could do. The same way he’d linked to the Spire, to the satellites, to the security cameras....

Tom gritted his teeth. Concentrated. Sensed the connection, sensed the elaborate system of codes and commands and algorithms controlling that machine. The electrical impulses in his brain sparked …

And he wasn’t all in his brain anymore. His organic body grew distant. It was a cold, numb thing unlike the cortex controlling the wastewater for the Beringer Club.

Panic spiked through him in this disengaged state, because there was so much data, streams of code pulling him in every direction and he wasn’t sure what he was—

Tom Raines. I’m Tom Raines.

And the thought saved him. Saved him enough to begin using that thing he had that no machine did. A will. He had a will and the machine only had a single, fixed program dictating its functions, and he seeded Vik’s codes to alter its function. It all fell into place.

TOM ENTERED THE club for the first part of the show. He walked through the well-dressed executives, their pet US congressmen, their trophy spouses. He saw Dalton and Karl in conversation with Mr. Carolac, Dominion Agra’s CEO, and headed over to them.

Dalton swept Tom into the conversation. “Mr. Carolac, this is him. Our newest acquisition. Thomas Raines.”

Mr. Carolac was a sickly-looking man with bags under his eyes, and a grayish tint to his skin. He shook Tom’s hand, looking him over. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Tom.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you, too, Mr. Carolac.” Tom smiled, aware that the Trojan he’d planted in Karl while he was unconscious last night was about to activate right … now.

“You and Karl are both making us very—”

Karl farted.

Mr. Carolac swung his watery gaze to Karl’s, shocked.

Karl flushed bright red.

He farted again, a loud one that rumbled all the way across the room.

Karl’s eyes widened and swung toward Tom, because Frequent Noisome Farts had to be flashing across his vision center, and only now did he understand what was going on.

“You!” Karl jabbed an accusing finger at Tom. “His programming’s not working!”

Tom made a show of furrowing his brow, all cavemanlike, as Karl farted again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Karl. Don’t blame me if you need a change of diet.”

Karl took a menacing step toward him, farting with each movement. The stench mounted in the air.

Dalton seized him. “Karl, for God’s sake, go to the restroom.”

“It’s not my fault. It’s Raines! I’m telling you, he—”

“GO!”

Karl dashed through the crowd of silent partygoers. Everyone in sight had hands clamped over their noses at the ghastly smell pervading the air.

They didn’t realize it wasn’t Karl they were smelling.

It was the septic tank Tom had reprogrammed. Gallons and gallons of sewer water were pumping in reverse, filling the sinks, the toilets, soon to be overflowing on the floor.

Tom cleared his throat. “Well, that was just awkward.” He gave a canned laugh, and looked at all the adults around him. “I’m going to fetch you ladies and gentlemen some drinks so we can pretend it didn’t happen.”

Mr. Carolac seemed mollified. “At least you got it right with one of them, Dalton.”

“I have to apologize for Karl, sir,” Dalton was saying as Tom headed off.

But Tom didn’t go to the bar. He strolled out the door and was beyond the portcullis when Karl began screaming from the bathroom about the sewage. Tom reached out and swiped the portcullis closed, and then modified its default password to a thirty-number password of his own.

Karl’s shouts were followed by Dalton’s, then by shouts from the other partygoers. The smell grew so nasty Tom fought back the urge to gag. He settled on the steps and watched the Dominion Agra execs through the bars. He listened to the cries of disgust as the sewage backing up in the toilets burst out of the bathrooms and seeped through the door into the club.

Mr. Carolac yelled at everyone to evacuate, and then when no one could get the mechanized portcullis open, yelled for someone to call technical support. Tom began to laugh. He laughed harder when he heard people shouting that their cell phones weren’t working. That must be Medusa’s touch. For a moment, Tom’s mind was blown. She’d hacked in and disabled satellites. Satellites! He wasn’t sure even Wyatt could do that.

Thanks, Medusa, Tom thought with a grin.

But apparently, she wasn’t finished. Loud music began blaring. It wasn’t music so much as a shrieking of metal scraping along metal from the speakers, ear-piercing and painful. Fists began pounding on the exits, hands yanking on the portcullis.

Dalton appeared between the steel bars, his turn at trying to yank it up. Tom swaggered into his view. Dalton spotted him, and seemed relieved. “Tom. Tom! Thank God, it’s you. You’re not trapped in here. Go outside and get us some help.”

Tom dug his fists in his pockets and looked over Dalton’s predicament with a long, lazy sweep of his eyes. “Hmm. I don’t think I will.”