Tom knew she was mentioning this for a reason, to set him on the defensive. He supposed he should be alarmed, but he was just irritated. “You obviously want something from me, so spit it out.”

Heather shrugged. “A mutually beneficial agreement. I won’t tell a soul what I know about you, if you help me with something.”

He laughed softly. “You’re blackmailing me, then.”

“I tried making this pleasant for you, Tom, but you’ve been ignoring my attempts to become better friends with you, so, yes. I am officially blackmailing you. You see, I get to proxy for Elliot at Capitol Summit this year. But it’s very important that I don’t squander this chance. I have to win—and Medusa defeats everyone but you. Now that I know what you can do, I guess I know why.”

Tom leaned his head back, thinking of Medusa. The unexpected remembrance felt like a sharp pain. For a long, aching moment, he felt alone in the world.

And then Heather was pressing forward, her eyes boring into his. “I think if you caused an untimely malfunction or two for her while she’s controlling her ship, it would go a long way toward giving me a shot at beating her.”

“Obviously,” Tom said wearily, and Heather’s eyes glimmered with fury at the casual nonchalance he was showing her. He tuned out Heather as she tried to make it very clear this wasn’t a laughing matter, that she’d give him away if he didn’t do what she asked. All Tom could think was, it always came back to Medusa. To him striking at Medusa. However much he avoided it, however much he didn’t want to, it was like he was meant to be the bane of her existence.

TOM SAT SPRAWLED on the ground by Wyatt’s legs in the arboretum as she ignored him, working as usual on reformatting a processor. Olivia Ossare had given him a couple of dexterity exercises for his fingers. Apparently surgeons used them. It was rather odd, having an adult urging him along, trying to get him to play video games again. She seemed to think it would bolster his spirits or something.

The exercises were actually okay. One involved flipping a quarter from knuckle to knuckle. The other was skinning an apple with a knife, trying to get as little of the yellow insides as possible. Tom inspected his latest attempt, where he’d gouged a small chunk out of the meat.

“See, if I’d been doing surgery on someone now”—he showed Wyatt the apple—“someone would be hemorrhaging.”

She glanced up briefly to see, which surprised Tom a bit. He took a big bite of the apple, considering her. That’s when footsteps crunched toward them, and Tom threw a careless glance through the hedges to see Elliot emerging.

“Tom. Wyatt,” he greeted them. He pointed to the nearby bench. “Do you mind?”