“Really, Doctor. You’ll have better odds if I help you.” A note of ferocity crept into Vik’s voice. “That’s my friend. Let’s save his life.”

REVEALING HIS TRUE intentions to Vik meant revealing his true intentions to Wyatt. Tom had expected her to be horrified by the idea, but she lit up like he hadn’t seen her since Vengerov fried Yuri, eager for a chance to actually do something for Yuri. One glimpse at the mental map he’d put together of Obsidian Corp. using all the collected memories seemed to make up her mind.

“I think we can pull this off,” she told them.

As it turned out, Wyatt knew some secrets of her own, mainly about the contents of Blackburn’s databases. Apparently, he’d been amassing a trove of data about Obsidian Corp. over the years, from notes about the facility’s security systems to a database of hundreds of programming languages for various Obsidian Corp. machines.

“This is not normal,” Vik declared. “Someone doesn’t accumulate this stuff unless they’re planning something. What’s Blackburn up to?”

Tom was daunted by the computer languages. “There is no way I can work with one of these, much less a bunch of them.”

Wyatt nudged him. “Tom, it’s illegal for a computer to self-code. That means our neural processors can’t download and learn for us how to work Zorten II or Klondike, because those are neural processor languages. There’s nothing against downloading computer languages that don’t program processors. That’s not self-programming.”

AN HOUR LATER, Tom had written a complete program in the Bernays-6 language that controlled skyboards. He could program in it as easily as he could do mathematics now or speak a foreign language.

It was incredible.

It really made him understand for the first time what a big constraint it was that people with neural processors couldn’t simply work Zorten II so easily.

The best thing of all they discovered was in storage: a Praetorian left over from Obsidian Corp.’s stint in charge of the Spire. Wyatt tugged out its control chip and set out to practice some programs in the Praetorian-specific programming language, SE Janus.

Vik, meanwhile, set out to write Tom an embarrassing new bunk template. “If we’re going to perish on this venture, I want Tom to die knowing he has a humiliating wallpaper in his room,” he explained to them.

“You’re a good friend,” Tom told him.