Vortex Read Free

the last few days. It struck him as strange. Photogenic and charming as she was, Tom expected her to be one of the foremost CamCos trotted out and shown off to the public.
    “Look at those kids.” Neil glared at the TV over his drink. “They look like a bunch of plastic puppets. Ever notice how they don’t blink so much? Eh, Tom, ever notice that?”
    Tom managed, “No, never noticed it.” He’d asked his friend Wyatt Enslow to write up a program for his neural processor to randomize his blink rate. He was pretty sure that was one reason Neil hadn’t noticed anything too off about his face—Tom had made an efffort to act as normal as possible. Between that and the hair he kept swept down over his neural access port, he’d been careful so far.
    Now the focus of the press segment shifted to the CEOs of corporations sponsoring the CamCos. The show flipped to an interview with Reuben Lloyd, CEO of Wyndham Harks. The weedy little man with an unfortunate resemblance to a rat smiled toothily and spoke into a microphone.
    “Just look at Reuben Lloyd here, playing up the PR so Wyndham Harks can angle for its next taxpayer bailout.” He sighed, his voice growing strangely flat. “You know, Tommy, you’re the only reason I’ve got any stake in this dump. Otherwise, I’d be glad to watch this whole world burn. I’d rather burn it than let them take it all from us.”
    Tom sensed danger in the air: Neil working himself up into a rage after the indignity of being robbed. He tried to think of something to say to distract him, but the screen filled with a glowing image of Joseph Vengerov, CEO of Obsidian Corp.
    Tom’s muscles froze.
    The news report was fawning, because Vengerov had been named CEO of the Year by the Institutional Investor for the fifth time. All Tom could think of was the census device. Those three syllables that had nearly doomed him rolled through his mind, Ven-grr-ahv. . . . As soon as Lieutenant Blackburn realized Tom knew him, terrible things ensued. Tom almost lost his mind, his place at the Spire, everything. . . .
    He was still shaken by the reminder several minutes later, after a hasty shower. He swiped the fog from the bathroom mirror, water still dripping from his thin face, matting his blond hair to his skull. The strange little flashes of numbers across his vision center were mostly gone now, so Tom figured there was no real need to do anything about it, even though technically, very technically, he was supposed to contact Lieutenant Blackburn if he had any problems with his neural processor over vacation.
    Blackburn had even given all the trainees a remote-access node to hook into the port on the back of their necks. It was there to connect their processors with the Spire’s server so Blackburn could examine their hardware from across the country.
    Tom fished the remote-access node out of his backpack and weighed it in his hand, considering it, then disregarding the thought. He was about to flick it away again when he noticed the marks on his torso, the bruises over his ribs where he’d gotten tased. Something dark boiled up inside him, his mind flashing over the face of the banker’s pet cop. He’d probably handed the money back to the bald banker, who was probably counting it up somewhere.
    Tom’s fist contracted around the remote-access node.
    Maybe he had a use for it, after all.
     
    A LL THE MAJOR government servers were linked, so as soon as Tom jolted out of himself into the stream of data leading to the Pentagonal Spire’s server in Arlington, Virginia, it didn’t take long to find his way into the server of the Department of Homeland Security.
    For a disconcerting moment, he felt strange, detached, a free-floating signal in a void. He was never entirely sure what he was doing when he interfaced like this. It seemed to come so much more naturally to the only other person he knew who could enter machines like this, the Russo-Chinese Combatant and his sort-of ex-girlfriend,