Vortex

Hank threw up his hands in surrender and stood there, defeated, as Tom circled the drone around him like a vulture. Certain Hank was good and scared, Tom accessed the drone’s text screen and gave the banker an order, knowing it would be relayed via communication screen and a mechanized voice.

“TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES.”

Hank shook his head, his face flushed like he was outraged. He leaped for his car again, so Tom sent more electricity lashing out. That stopped Hank.

“TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES,” Tom had the drone order again. “RIGHT NOW.”

Hank seemed to get the message this time, and he stripped down. Tom decided it would be worth his eyes bleeding for the payoff.

“NOW RUN. RUN FAST.”

Hank hesitated, so Tom launched the drone toward him, zapping the ground at his feet. The banker began running away, and Tom dogged his steps awhile, zapping behind him every so often, making sure the words “KEEP RUNNING, KEEP RUNNING” were displayed on the drone’s communication screen. Tom kept it up until his drone corralled Hank onto the street near their hotel, then he released the drone from his control, launching it back into the sky.

He jolted back into himself, yanked off the transmitter, and popped out of the bathroom.

“Dad, you have to come outside.” His voice throbbed with excitement. “Right now!”

Neil gave a grunt of acknowledgment but nothing more. His melancholy stare was fixed on the TV like he was in some sort of trance.

“Dad, come on, get up.” Tom seized the remote and flipped off the TV, and then tore Neil’s drink from his hand. That got his attention. “Believe me, you want to see this.”

“Give me my drink back,” Neil slurred.

Tom reluctantly handed it back. “You’re going to miss it. Then you’re gonna be sorry.”

“Fine. Fine, I’m up.” Neil was visibly irritated, but he followed Tom outside. That’s how he walked out of the hotel in time to see the naked man arrive on their street, gazing up into the sky, searching for the rogue drone.

“Hey.” Neil straightened a bit. “Hey, isn’t that . . .”

Tom’s lips blazed with a grin. “What a coincidence. It’s your favorite leecher.” He shoved past Neil to access one of the strip’s emergency phones. Tom informed the dispatcher, “There’s some crazy naked man running down the street. He’s flashing kids and selling drugs and . . . and shouting about a holy war.” He figured all three threats would get a hasty police response.

“What are you doing, Tom?”

Tom shrugged. “I figure he’s so fond of cops, let’s bring him a whole bunch.”

The banker was busy haranguing people for clothes when the armada of cops arrived to deal with the drug-dealing, pedophiliac terrorist. Hank Bloombury had never learned to respect the men and women he regarded as his private goons, and he’d never been on the other end of their wrath. As soon as the cops piled out of their cars, he started bawling them out over their rogue drone, but the police didn’t see any fancy suit, and they had no way to realize this guy was important. All they knew was, he was naked and aggressive, so they swarmed him, nightsticks flashing, Tasers flickering.

As the police brutality began in earnest, Tom raised his eyebrows at his dad. “Well? What do you think?”

Neil scratched at his unshaven cheek, blinking like he was trying to be sure he was actually seeing this. “I think I have no idea how you pulled this off.”

“Let’s just say that the military’s taught me a lot of tech skills. That’s all I can tell you. Classified.”

Neil leaned closer, his voice a whisper. “Is there any way someone can trace this back to you?”

“Nope,” Tom assured him breezily, even though he wasn’t sure. “They’ll probably figure out I put in the call to the cops, but the rest is a mystery.”

Even to Tom. He wasn’t sure why he was different from other trainees with neural processors or why Medusa was different, too. He had no idea why they could interface with machines other trainees could not. . . .

He just knew he had a particular skill at something, and his mind danced with possibilities about how he could use it.

“Tech skills, huh?” Neil marveled. “Those military guys are really doing right by you, after all. It blows me away when I think about that.” He chuckled quietly. “My kid, actually having a shot in life . . . I never knew it was possible.”

There was something different in his dad’s face, in his voice now, and Tom swore, Neil seemed almost happy. The cops cleared the scene, and Tom felt a deep sense of satisfaction. Obviously his terrible vengeance on the leecher had done its job.

THE FINAL NIGHT Tom spent with his dad, he couldn’t sleep. He ventured out onto the balcony into the neon embrace of Las Vegas. Lights bombarded him from every direction: the streets below, the buildings around, and even from skyboards overhead. Over Las Vegas, there were dozens of the mile-wide screens, all competing for attention from the tiny people so far below them.

Tom gazed upward, ignoring the ad from the DHS about hearing a whisper, giving them a whisper, and the ad from Nobridis about how its efforts to get rich off the war were actually beneficial to Americans. All he could think about were the possibilities ahead of him. He planned to be an Intrasolar Combatant who controlled the drones fighting the war in outer space, but now he was thinking he could also be a vigilante or maybe even a superhero.

Why not? He had the power to strike back at people like Hank Bloombury. He wasn’t traceable, and everything was digitized now.

Medusa and I could even team up. Tom leaned his elbows onto the rail, thinking of his greatest foe, his sort-of ex-girlfriend, and the deadliest warrior on the Russo-Chinese side . . . the single person he knew who could’ve pulled off the same revenge on Hank Bloombury that he himself had.

Oh, and Tom grinned at the thought of what he could do to his mom’s awful boyfriend, Dalton Prestwick, if he wanted to. Yeah, he’d find the guy in his Manhattan home and have some fun with that. Or maybe he’d do something to that Georgetown mansion of Dalton’s. There were so many possibilities, they made Tom’s head whirl in giddy circles.

He’d even get Karl Marsters.

No. No, wait. Maybe this was abusing his power. It probably was. So how about he only went after Karl once? After all, if he did the world-justice-vigilante stuff, he probably earned himself the right to follow up on a personal grudge just once.

At that moment, a loud roaring mounted in his ears, and with shocking swiftness, a black shape descended from the sky, blotting out the skyboards. Tom’s entire body grew rigid, and he stood there frozen in place, as one of the Centurion-grade drones used in outer space began to hover, right in front of his balcony.

It wasn’t a measly little police drone like the one he’d controlled. This wasn’t for surveilling individual suspects and subduing them; it wasn’t for breaking up crowds. This was built to blow things up in space. And it was close enough to touch.

Tom gaped at it, amazed. He’d never seen one of these suckers up close, not through his human eyes. The sharp, scythelike missile turrets curved toward him in open menace, their blackness stark against the skyboard light streaming about them. After a moment of looming there, the drone’s optical camouflaging activated, shimmering its mass into invisibility, leaving only one visible aspect: the pinpoint camera eye, glaring right at him. Optically camouflaged ships were only detectable when they moved—and only if a person knew to look for the telltale wavering of the air. The camera seemed to float in space.