Tom shrugged. “For what it’s worth, people like you way more than they like me. There are tons of people who’d love to beat me up. I mean, tons. And, yeah, people who don’t know you want to beat you up because you’re a celebrity and all the little twelve-year-old girls love you, but, uh, not people who have actually met you. They like you. You’re not weak. I guess you’re smarter than me.”

Elliot gazed back at him, his mouth quirking. “Of course you have more enemies than me, Tom. People who need to control others are threatened by strength and you’re indomitable. And that’s why they don’t mind me: I’m not.” He considered that. “I wonder sometimes if that’s not such a good thing, after all.”

Tom didn’t have an answer for that. As Elliot’s footsteps crunched away, Tom settled back by Wyatt’s knee in the middle of the unnatural serenity of the arboretum. He looked down to see her nudging tentatively at the apple he’d impaled with his knife.

After a little while of that, she grew still, and she spoke her first words to him in months. “You should never be a surgeon, Tom.” She pronounced this with great solemnity.

Tom froze, so surprised he didn’t know what to say for a while. Then he sorted out his thoughts and opted for the best route to handle this—as casually as possible.

“Yeah,” he agreed, picking up the knife by the handle and holding the apple up. It was sort of like a head on a pike, so he smeared some mud on it to form eyes and a mouth. “I find it easier taking heads off than putting them back on.”

She ducked her head again as she resumed working on the processor, but Tom saw that smile again, and he realized things might eventually turn out okay after all.

Chapter Twenty-Three

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CAPITOL SUMMIT WAS broadcast from inside the US Capitol, where the dueling combatants would face off in the Rotunda, steering their remotely controlled vessels. The server they used was inside the Capitol, but the Chinese always circumvented the connection between Svetlana and her vessel, and gave control to Medusa. The Americans likewise replaced Elliot with his proxy—this year, Heather. She would spend the fight in the hidden room looking upon the Rotunda, remotely navigating Elliot’s ship.

Before she left the Spire, Heather gave Tom one half of a pair of thought-interface nodes. Beneath her sweep of dark hair, she’d be wearing the other. They were short-range devices, so Tom had to go to the Capitol to get close enough to interface with Heather, and through her, with her ship—and Medusa’s.