Tom sat up painfully as Wyatt retrieved her forearm keyboard, then hooked a neural wire into Tom’s access port, and set about removing the program gripping his muscles, sending pain riveting through his body.

Neither Blackburn nor Yuri was moving. Blackburn seemed at a temporary loss, and Yuri had taken shelter from him on the other side of the computer consoles controlling the census device.

“So Ashwan’s net-send was right,” Blackburn said, breathing heavily. “Someone dismantled the filtering program.”

Wyatt’s head shot up, terrible comprehension on her face.

“It’s gone,” Vik confirmed, sprawled limply across the floor, his head tilted back. “It’s been gone for a while. Since before Capitol Summit.”

Tom’s every muscle tightened. It was treason. He felt himself beginning to shake as he dragged his gaze up to the census device. He’d spent two days under that trying to keep this from Blackburn.

For Wyatt.

For Yuri.

For nothing.

Wyatt still stared at Yuri, horrified.

“Well, that limits my options,” Blackburn remarked, half to himself. “There’s a very able programmer in Obsidian Corp. right now, making sure I can’t knock Sysevich out.”

Wyatt neutralized the virus keeping Tom and Vik down, her hands trembling. Tom heaved himself upright, his legs shaking. They discovered that Yuri was still holding his distance, across the room from them, an alien look on his face. There was nothing of Yuri there. Just this cold, sharp blankness.

“What’s happened to him?” Wyatt’s voice was a quavering whisper. “Why is he acting like that?”

Blackburn kept his eyes on the large boy. He seemed to be thinking carefully, trying to figure out what to do. “Because that’s not Yuri Sysevich, Enslow. My guess is, you triggered a semiautonomous security daemon. The process runs in the background of his system until it perceives a threat. Then it launches and assumes neural sovereignty—full control of his mind—and attempts to neutralize that threat. In this case, the three of you.”

“Wait, so it’s like an artificial intelligence, then?” Vik said, his voice hoarse. “There’s some AI in control of Yuri?”

“There’s no self-awareness.” Blackburn walked to the side, to survey Yuri head to toe. “It’s a preprogrammed response system, though since someone was counterhacking my attempts to get into his processor and knock him unconscious, I’d guess there’s a remote administrator paying attention to this situation now. . . . What were you three doing when it triggered?”

“We asked him if he’s been spying for Vengerov,” Vik admitted, “and if he’d let us rescramble him.”

“Rescramble,” Blackburn repeated, acid in his voice. “And here it is, then. The source of the breaches. Sysevich. And you three. Did you think I put that program in his processor for fun?”

“I only wanted to help him,” Wyatt mumbled.