Vortex Read Free Page B

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.
     
    T HE 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