“He means programs that actually work,” Wyatt told Tom helpfully. It wasn’t an intentional insult; it was more the Wyatt-type of insult she tended to do by accident. A lot.

Then the stern-faced, older general Terry Marsh assumed the podium on the stage. His blue eyes surveyed them over his bulbous nose, and all the new Middles lapsed into silence.

“Trainees.” Everyone snapped to attention at the sound of Marsh’s voice. “First of all, congratulations on your promotions. You are one step closer to Camelot Company. Hook into your neural chips and prepare to download your upgrades.”

Everyone connected neural wires between their brain stem access ports and the chips they received at their promotion ceremony. Code flashed before Tom’s vision, and an executable file installed itself in his neural processor. A password prompt appeared in the center of his vision.

Marsh pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket, and propped a pair of reading glasses on his nose. “It says here the password to activate the programs is ‘I can see everything twice! Eleven, twenty-two, thirty-three, forty-four, sixty-six.’”

Tom thought it out, and code whirled before his vision and abruptly ceased. Content unpacked flashed across his vision center. Tom braced himself for the mental confusion that tended to follow a binge download of too much data without enough processing time, but he found his head completely clear.

Marsh nodded crisply, seeing that they were all done. “You’ll notice there wasn’t much to that upgrade. There’s a simple reason: Lieutenant Blackburn installed the upgrades before you left for vacation. This password unlocked them. Now, trainees, take a moment to look at the map of the installation and chuck those chips into this bin here for reuse.” He kicked a small box out from behind the podium. All the new Middles tossed their upgrade chips into the container. None missed.

Then Tom called up a map of the Pentagonal Spire in his neural processor. The familiar blueprint of the installation glowed across his vision center, showing fifteen floors of chrome and steel launching up from the dead center of the old Pentagon, but when he zoomed in to gaze inside the building, Tom found himself shaking his head. That couldn’t be right.

The Spire had changed. The Calisthenics Arena encircling the interiors of the second, third, and fourth floors now contained a massive room labeled ARMORY.

That wasn’t possible. He’d seen the upper floor of the Calisthenics Arena dozens of times. There was no armory there. He was sure of it.

And then he looked over the other new sections: entire wings for military regulars stationed in the Spire, an observation deck on the twelfth floor, sections of wall containing power relays or processor parts, and below the basement level of the Spire, there was a brand-new floor labeled Mezzanine.

Wait. He couldn’t have overlooked an entire floor for the last six months!