Tom grew sad. Iman hit him one last time and ran away. Tom’s feelings were hurt, and so was his head. He’d nearly forgotten his abbreviated conversation with Vik when the sim finally ended, and Tom woke up in the training room.

Britt and Yosef were already in grim conversation, haunted looks on their faces.

“. . . a catastrophe,” Yosef was saying. “What were you thinking? Why would you choose that program?”

“The title was the First World War. I thought it would be World War One, not literally the first world war.”

Tom and Iman exchanged a flustered look, then Tom hurried out of the training room, and ran into Vik right in the hallway. He stopped. Vik stopped.

Vik grinned, a certain lightness to him that seemed forced. They started walking again. “That sim, huh?”

“Come on. You wouldn’t even fight me, Vik. What’s going on with you?”

Vik let out an exasperated breath. “Fine. You really want to know, Tom? Here it is. I have a huge problem with what went down in Antarctica.”

Tom’s steps stuttered to a halt. “Wait. What? Why?”

Vik straightened his collar. “Do you realize I knew you were missing? I noticed way before anyone else did. Way before Blackburn. I didn’t say anything.” He raked his hand through his hair. “I thought you were gone because you’d sneaked off to do something, to mess around or something—like you always do. Like we always do. I thought I was covering for you.”

“Nine times out of ten, that would’ve been the right call, man.”

“I know,” Vik said. “Nine times out of ten, that would’ve been the right call because you would’ve been doing something dumb and I would’ve been helping you. This time, it almost killed you. What about next time it goes wrong?” And then the words all flooded out of him, and he sounded almost angry. “Like with Yuri! You and Wyatt made the decision to unscramble him, but I didn’t get a choice. I would never have done that, but you guys did, and I’m guilty, too, because I’m covering for you.”

Tom stirred, uneasy. Yuri’s unscrambling was hitting a bit too close to home right now.

“I remember Wyatt wanted to erase my memory when I found out,” Vik whispered, since other trainees were rounding the corridor near them. “You should have let her.”

“You wanted her to erase your memory of that?”

“It would’ve been better not knowing, yeah.”

Tom shook it off. “Fine. Let’s do it. Let’s get Wyatt to erase it right now.”