Tom hooked his neural wire into his VR gaming system for the first time in a long while. The Pentagonal Spire had a large database of games for the trainees, and Medusa had obviously chosen one set in a vast, rolling desert of sorts. Then her avatar appeared—a big, muscular male character with long, flowing locks, whom the neural processor informed him was the mythological figure Sampson, the strongest man in the world. Tom looked down at himself and realized he was playing his mom’s namesake, the diabolical temptress Delilah.

“I’m the girl?” he said, examining his chest closely.

“Don’t worry. You’re very pretty, Tom.” The teasing note abruptly dropped from her manly voice. “Maybe these avatars will make this easier.”

“Make what easier?”

She folded her arms. “I should stay away.”

“But you’re here. Right now. Not staying away. And I’m okay with this.” He stepped toward her. “Listen, I was a jerk last time you were here. I have a friend in trouble, and there was something I needed to get at Obsidian Corp. to save him, so I was frustrated and thinking about that, not about anything else. After we kissed, I wanted to talk to you. I scared you away. I know it.”

She groaned. “If my character wasn’t about twenty times stronger than yours, I’d punch you right now. You didn’t scare me. You don’t scare me. You caught me off guard, Mordred. This is a terrible idea. We’re on opposite sides of the war. You were charged with treason, and I nearly faced the same thing the last time we did this.”

“But that’s because we weren’t using what we can do,” Tom told her, drawing closer. “Yeah, it was dumb, meeting online when we could be tracked, but interfacing and moving into the systems like you and I can isn’t the same thing. We’ve got this power, and maybe we can’t use it out there, but why not use it like this? For each other? See, I’m not sorry about kissing you. I’m not. I want to do it again. I don’t know anyone else like you, and if you looked slightly less manly right now, I’d be grabbing you.” He reached down to shove his hands into his pockets, but the Delilah character didn’t have any. “So that’s it. Ball’s in your court.”

She raised her hand into the air, and her long-haired, manly avatar vanished, leaving the Medusa he knew in its place. Tom felt his body shift back to the one he was familiar with. He closed the distance, but Medusa planted a hand on his chest to stop him.