Giuseppe had obviously spent much of the tour daydreaming about some hotel in Paris he liked, because the images of Obsidian Corp. were intercut with those mental images.

A simulated Russian soldier rushed at Tom, and Tom narrowly managed to impale the guy on his bayonet before more of the memory washed over him. Giuseppe was admiring himself, straining to see his own face reflected in one of the large windows. Nearby, Giuseppe could see Blackburn with his large back to the Obsidian Corp. techs, shoulders curled protectively over the forearm keyboard he was tapping. Tom knew that must’ve been when he’d hacked Obsidian Corp.’s intranet and found his blackmail material.

In his own simulation, Tom staggered away from the main body of his group, figuring that he couldn’t focus on both fighting and the memories. He had to stay low, and worst-case scenario, someone would find and kill him. He sank against a wall inside a half-destroyed house, the boom of cannons rumbling like thunder in the distance, more memories rushing into his brain.

His neural processor automatically integrated the varying images of Obsidian Corp., stitching them together in a full mental map, matching up the time stamps. It was strange seeing things as if he’d been in several different places at once, like he’d had more eyes than his own. He could gaze around an entire image from a single time frame and see what many people had seen.

It grew stranger still seeing memory after memory from the time frame after he’d been stuck outside, when he could reference his own memories of the bitter cold. Everyone else had been on an innocuous tour. Some had noticed Blackburn hacking the intranet, some had not.

While Tom had been outside trying to stand up again, all the other trainees had been inside, taking turns petting a Bengal tiger named Kalkin, who was as domesticated as a house cat, complete with a neural processor of his own. . . .

While Tom had been lying on the snow, unconscious, Blackburn had finished his hacking, looked over the group, and said sharply, “Someone’s missing.” And then, “Raines. Where is he? Where is Tom Raines?” He looked at Vik.

Vik squirmed uneasily but did his best to look innocent.

Blackburn jabbed at his forearm keyboard and swore ferociously. “How did that kid get outside?”

And in every memory, Vik’s eyes grew very wide, terrible comprehension on his face.

It was Vik’s own memory that made something inside Tom go still. He noticed through Vik’s eyes that he’d left—right after Tom really had been cut off from the group. Vik said nothing, covering for him.