“Fine, then,” Elliot cut in, impatient. “Don’t play the game. Tear yourself apart raging against something you can’t change. Do that, Tom. Then I can tell you what happens next: nothing. Not for you. Those executives won’t care if you destroy yourself. They will never notice if you drop off their radar. Your fate won’t make a single difference to any one of those people. The only person you’re harming here is yourself.”

Tom’s chest tightened. “Then that’s the way it’s gonna be.”

Elliot sighed heavily. “I was going to ask you to do your fly-along with me. I’ve wanted to help, guide you. I see now it would be a waste of my time and energy.”

That stung a bit. Tom shrugged. “No one’s forcing you.” But Elliot seemed so genuinely disappointed in him, like he’d really been invested in Tom doing well, that Tom felt a pang of remorse. “You know, I am sorry. About all this.”

“I am, too.” And then Elliot’s footsteps scuffed away across the rocks.

Tom stayed alone in his somewhat voluntary exile at the edge of the cliff, the light stealing away from the sky. He tried to ignore the sick feeling in his stomach, and told himself over and over again that this was the only way it could’ve gone.

Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE BEST PART of the visit to the Coalition companies was taking suborbital planes from Yosemite back to the Pentagon. Suborbital planes launched into the Earth’s outer atmosphere, and they could cross the United States in twenty minutes instead of the hours an airplane would require. They were faster, even, than the Interstice with its vactube. They were also as close as anyone got to space travel nowadays, since flying in a suborbital meant experiencing microgravity and seeing the curvature of the Earth. The only people who got to fly in them were the ridiculously wealthy.

And Intrasolar trainees, apparently.

Tom didn’t care about almost anything else that had happened that day as he, Vik, Wyatt, and Yuri strapped into a suborbital manned by a couple military officers, along with two dozen other trainees.

“You will remain in your seats for the entire flight, from liftoff to landing. Am I understood?” the officer said sternly.

Vik’s face fell. “But we only get a few minutes of zero-g. We don’t get to float?”

The officer glared. “No.”

“What if this is the only time we’ll ever be in space—” Tom began.

“You will remain seated, trainee.”

Tom felt his heart sink. Stay seated? He saw his disappointment mirrored on Vik’s face. An idea crawled into his brain. He whispered, “Too bad about your weak stomach, eh, Doctor?”

A wicked gleam stole into Vik’s eyes. “Oh, yes. My stomach is very weak, indeed.”