Tom Raines was crouched behind a desk, trying hard to keep his breaths quiet and minimise his presence. He'd been intrigued by what Blackburn would say to Anna. After all he still felt cold at the thought of being strapped to the census machine, puking on himself, shivering as Blackburn passively looked on, madness in his eyes, waiting to get that memory. He had seen the person Blackburn truly was and it was terrifying. He wanted to know if Anna had seen that too. After all, she had been stuck on a desert island with him for so long. Everyone was talking about it, but she wasn't giving any details and he had to admit, he was curious.

He watched as Blackburn started drumming his digits and asked how she was. He was surprised at the venom in her tone as she answered. Blackburn was a terrifying man, Tom didn't mind admitting it. He was someone you tried to spend as little time as possible with unless you were weird like Wyatt but even she was scared of him. But this girl was speaking to him like he was dirt on her shoe, a tone she surely would never have used in the lesson. "I didn't spill your little secrets, didn't give any details. So don't get your knickers in a twist!" her voice was low and spiteful, Tom couldn't believe the quiet girl from his class would talk like that to a professor, but then, it could be that she knew what he was really like. Perhaps she had seen the real Blackburn. But that was the other problem. What were the secrets she was going on about? His curiosity piqued, he listened on. He gathered Blackburn had threatened her judging by her indignation at the word 'agreed'.

This was definitely getting suspicious. Blackburn was openly threatening her now, something had clearly happened. Tom found that with secrets, when protecting one others started to build up around it until you had many that needed protecting. That was when the young lady on the other side of the room had plain lost it. She had literally screamed at Blackburn, losing all of the careful composure she had meticulously cultured, throwing away her mask. She was swearing at him, something Tom had done but only because he had an excellent reason. He certainly wouldn't have thought she would be capable of it. Then she called him 'James'. At that moment Tom decided she was a hero. It was such a bold, unheard of breach of etiquette. Then he started focussing on what she was saying. 'What you are capable of'. So she had seen the man, who slipped so easily between his persona of gruff Professor and madman. Then his blood froze and he forced his hands into fists, clenching his teeth. He'd tied her up. He'd seen her naked. Tom didn't even want to know, didn't want to think about that. It was clear she'd been his prisoner. He felt sick. Then she began throwing herself at him, fighting tooth and claw until he was on top of her, crushing her to the ground.

"I know what this is about", it was almost like being back there, when Tom had fought against Blackburn, got angry at the way he'd been treated after the census machine. Tom had seen red that day. He wasn't sure if he should do something. He knew in his heart that he didn't stand a chance against Blackburn but the man had her pressed to the floor. Suddenly he heard a choking sound and peeked round to find, to his disgust, that Blackburn had his hand around her throat. "Big man, huh. Hurting a woman" he muttered. Blackburn was speaking again so Tom had to strain to hear him. He was straight up threatening to kill her! Tom was about to jump out when it stopped, the eye of the storm, as things calmed down so suddenly. He couldn't keep up with their twisting turning moods.

He could not process what he had seen. He thought back to the reason for Blackburn's interest in him. Tom, for a reason he did not understand, had the ability to interface with machines at will, even if they were not designed for such a thing. All he had to do was connect to a network and he could communicate with satellites, bypass security and firewalls and even get into the computers of the Russio-Chinese. No one else knew about this ability but Blackburn had discovered it when he had put Tom under the census machine after investigating him as a traitor for having an online girlfriend, Medusa, on the side of the enemy. He had spied a memory of Tom interfacing and became obsessed. More so when he thought Venegrov was behind it. He wasn't, though Venegrov was a worm of a man who had tried to manipulate Tom's processor to make him more polite and programmable. But Tom couldn't tell Blackburn the secret he had been hiding, that his friend Yuri, whose abilities in the Spire had been limited due to fear of him being a Russian spy, had had his processor fixed and abilities enabled by Wyatt who was sure he was not a spy. If Tom let anyone know about that then Wyatt and Yuri would end up in prison as traitors and he would endure what he had to in order to ensure that this would not happen.

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R to the E to the V to the E no hang on that's wrong. To the I to the E is that it? No? Maybe not. To the W. Go there!