Tom didn’t press her on the subject. Heather had caught his eye and winked, so Tom nodded back, knowing she’d probably wear that same dazzling, so-happy-to-see-you look on her face while she slipped him poison if she had to. . . . Still, there was something about her that got to him sometimes. He followed the sway of her body as she strolled around the table and picked up a decagon.

“You may or may not know this, but there’s a function in your neural processors called net-send that allows you to send messages to each other, either by typing or using a thought interface. The net-send thought-interface function isn’t suitable for battle, though, because net-send directly captures the stray thoughts in your head. . . .”

Tom slouched in his seat a bit, remembering thinking to Vik over net-send, How do steak boobs function? He wasn’t very good with thought interfaces. He had stuck to net-sending with his forearm keyboard ever since.

“Plus, net-send has a lag time—microseconds, but that might as well be hours during space combat. These decagons, however, facilitate instantaneous group communication, and the messages sent are the dominant concerns in your head at any one time. There is no lag time. Before you do your fly-alongs with us, you need to gain some basic mental discipline so you can communicate the way we do during combat, and do so in an effective manner. Today, we’re going to have two to three CamCos at each decagon. You guys pair up, and let’s try this out together.”

Tom and Wyatt paired up. The first decagon they reached was the one in front of Heather and Elliot. Tom’s stomach contracted as he watched Karl come over to join them.

“Ready?” Elliot said, pulling out a neural wire. Then Heather raised her eyebrows, and he smiled. “Oh. Of course. Sorry, H. I know you need to take the lead.”

“Why, thank you, Elliot.” Heather turned to Tom and Wyatt. “Stick your neural wires into the ports on the decagon, sit down, then hook in like you would to any other machine.”

Tom dropped into one of the cushy chairs, aware of Karl still standing, glowering at him. He stuck his neural wire into a port on the decagon, then plugged the other end into the back of his neck, and the world grew utterly dark around him.

I’m blind! He tried to say it, but his voice didn’t come out. Tom flailed out his arms to alert someone, terrible suspicions flying through his brain that this was some plot of Karl’s or even . . .

Footsteps drew toward him, and Tom jumped when hands grabbed his shoulders.