Tom knew the minute Wyatt and Vik reached the top, because they net-sent a triumphant VICTORY! to his vision center.

Disgruntled, Tom tore off the climbing harness as soon as he alighted on the top of the Spire with Blackburn. He looked around for the telltale ripple of air that indicated someone in an exosuit was moving in the area, and his eyes even traced the outline of separate forms. He clanged his way toward the forms his neural processor identified as Vik and Wyatt, who were on the other side of the massive transmission pole that jutted up from the roof and pierced the clouds above them. He craned his head, squinting up into the sky to see it. The entire building was a transmitter, and this was the very tip.

“How was the climb?” Vik’s voice drifted to him from the rippling air where their hidden forms lurked. “Enslow and I actually made great time. I think I was being too enticing for her to handle.” He jumped when the shimmering outline of an arm aimed a blow at him. “No good-natured punching with superhuman strength!”

“Oh. Right,” Wyatt remembered.

Tom didn’t share Vik’s good mood. “Blackburn kept jerking me to a stop because I was climbing too fast for him. Like a dog or something. I’m telling you, man, it’s like having a leash.”

Wyatt went to talk to Blackburn, leaving Tom and Vik to gaze upward, the very tip of the transmitter disappearing into the bright sky.

“You know, climbing the building was one thing,” Vik said, “but climbing this? That’s the real climb.”

Tom’s heart picked up a beat as he contemplated it. It would be a marvelous feat. “I bet I could do it.”

Vik laughed. “No way.”

Tom’s neural processor rapidly flitted over the schematics in his head, calculating the point where it was simply too narrow to climb farther. “Fifty bucks says I can get within ten meters of the top.”

“You’re on, Doctor,” Vik said, and they tried to shake hands, but Vik’s exosuited hand just clanged against Tom’s wrist.

This was in the bag. Tom leaped up in one great bound, flipping on the clamps so they instantly sealed to the pole. No problem. He’d be up and back before anyone was the wiser. . . .

But he didn’t get another arm’s length up before a hand closed around the back of his exosuit and tore him down. Tom’s exosuit clanged against another behind him. He looked back, and his stomach sank as his neural processor identified Blackburn’s IP address.

“See, Raines, when I said you’d do something reckless and phenomenally stupid?” Blackburn’s voice said right in his ear. “This is the sort of thing I was talking about.”