He’d also learned what a Taser felt like, so he knew it wasn’t normal feeling this weak, feeling the strange buzzing in his skull, seeing the strange numbers dancing over his vision. It had to be the computer in his head, registering its objection to that electric jolt. He hoped he hadn’t messed it up too much.

The neural processor didn’t calm its strange seizure of flashing numbers until Tom was lying on his bed in their hotel room, the AC pumping a jet of icy air at him, the television buzzing. Tom could hear Neil muttering where he sat, drinking on the other bed.

Tom lifted his head blearily to see the screen was graced by the newly public Camelot Company Combatants. The Indo-Americans and the Russo-Chinese had worked out a temporary cease-fire, allowing the CamCos to go on publicity tours, where they touted their efforts in the war and their sponsors from the Coalition of Multinational Corporations. The military was also taking advantage of the absence of the younger trainees to open up certain areas of the Spire for a bunch of media events.

Ever since CamCo’s identities had leaked, they’d become famous. Tom saw strange rumors about them all over the internet, too. “Britt Schmeiser’s Weekend of Debauchery”; “Alec Tarsus’s Dark Past”; even headlines about the old favorite: “Elliot Ramirez’s Forbidden Love.”

Now Tom watched the screen hazily, seeing the handsome face of Elliot Ramirez, the Pentagonal Spire’s longtime public CamCo. The dark-haired boy sat easily in the center of the massed CamCos, graciously assuring the reporters that he was pleased to share the spotlight. Snowden Gainey was preening in the chair next to his, and Cadence Grey kept darting nervous glances toward the camera. Everyone was there but . . . Someone was missing.

Huh. Heather Akron.

That gave Tom a dull sense of surprise, because he’d seen a lot of the gorgeous brunette from Machiavelli Division the first few days of vacation. Now that he thought about it, though, she’d virtually disappeared from the public radar the last few days. It struck him as strange. Photogenic and charming as she was, Tom expected her to be one of the foremost CamCos trotted out and shown off to the public.

“Look at those kids.” Neil glared at the TV over his drink. “They look like a bunch of plastic puppets. Ever notice how they don’t blink so much? Eh, Tom, ever notice that?”

Tom managed, “No, never noticed it.” He’d asked his friend Wyatt Enslow to write up a program for his neural processor to randomize his blink rate. He was pretty sure that was one reason Neil hadn’t noticed anything too off about his face—Tom had made an efffort to act as normal as possible. Between that and the hair he kept swept down over his neural access port, he’d been careful so far.