“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I am so, so sorry. I know why you were so mad at Blackburn now. I didn’t understand before. I do now.”

Her words rang distantly in his ears. He felt like he was drawing breath through a straw. He swiped his hand through his hair, trying to get his head straight, but he couldn’t seem to think, he couldn’t.

“You really saw all that?” was all he could manage.

“Well, not all of it. I mean, there are things missing. Um, these segments. Big segments. It’s like they were erased. Like, at first you and Blackburn seemed okay and there’s this big blank spot, and everything got weird after that. You two were okay before that, and after, you were both acting . . . differently.”

Tom closed his eyes, knowing that was when Blackburn had seen his memories of what he could do with machines. When Tom had made the fatal error of admitting he’d met Joseph Vengerov, leading to Blackburn jumping to all sorts of conclusions. So Wyatt had seen the aftermath of that, but none of the context or the reason for it.

“I don’t understand what you were hiding from him.”

“What was I hiding from him?” Tom burst out. “What do you think, Wyatt? Does the word ‘unscrambled’ ring a bell? How about ‘treason’?”

Her cheeks grew white. “That.”

“Yeah. That.”

“I wouldn’t have asked you to do that. Yuri wouldn’t have, either. If we’d known . . .”

Tom let out a frustrated groan and thumped back against the wall, exasperated. “Yeah, well, it doesn’t matter now. It’s over. It’s the past. Look, forget it all, okay? It’s over and done and let’s say it didn’t happen. So don’t talk about that stuff you saw. Don’t tell anyone.” The words tumbled out of him, so fast they were almost incoherent. “Not any of it. Just keep it to yourself. It’s personal. Not even Vik. Don’t tell Vik. You haven’t told Vik, have you? Wyatt, you can’t tell Vik about that stuff. Don’t tell him—”

“I wouldn’t tell him anything,” she promised him.

Tom’s head throbbed. He rubbed his palm over his face, his feelings all mixed up. He wouldn’t have shared those memories or those scenes from the census device with anyone if he’d had a choice. Not even his friends. Especially not his friends. He liked the way things were. He liked the way they saw him. He didn’t want them to think he was some sort of a wimp or a loser or pathetic. Or stupid. He couldn’t stand that. He wondered what she thought about him now.