Rhodes jerked away from something touching his face before he realized where he was. Ora sat on the bed next to him in their house in Stonebridge. She was in the act of stroking Rhodes’s cheek when he woke up.

  “It’s all right, darling,” she murmured. “You had a bad dream. I was just trying to wake you up to get you out of it.”

  He stared at her for a second, but the memory of the lab, Fort Bastion, and all the rest of it was already starting to fade. It was just a dream.

  He collapsed back on the bed. Cold sweat soaked his hair and clothes. He felt himself trembling. He still remembered the pain, terror, and horror of that other world.

  “You’re safe,” Ora murmured. “You’re home. Nothing will harm you here.”

  He shuddered and passed his hand across his face trying to compose himself. He was okay. He was home in his own bed.

  She passed her soft fingers down his cheek again and then leaned in and kissed him. Her lips felt magical on his.

  He let his arms close around her and he pulled her down on top of him. She melted into him and propped her elbow next to his head to hold herself up while they kissed.

  He clasped his arms tighter around her. She felt incredible—better than he could ever remember. Gratitude flooded him that none of his nightmare was real. This was his life—right here.

  Her breath caught in her nostrils as their lips met. Her body stiffened in his arms. He loved that feeling of her responding to him.

  He tightened his grip—and just as fast, he snapped back to Fort Bastion.

  He stood in the center of the barracks. The rest of the battalion milled around doing this and that. Dietz, Thackery, and Coulter cleared the table after dinner. Rhodes didn’t remember eating it—because he didn’t.

  A thousand thoughts and images rushed in front of his eyes—and so did Fisher. He was back.

  He wasn’t there in Stonebridge. He was never there in Stonebridge. Fisher lived across the road in Stonebridge.

  Now he occupied the top right corner of Rhodes’s vision—where Fisher belonged. “Are you okay, Captain?”

  The interface connected to the other SAMs and everyone in the battalion. Oakes looked up from the computer terminal. “Captain? Is something wrong?”

  “None of this is real.”

  Rhinehart spun around. He’d been about to sit down on his capsule for the night. “Huh? Yes, it is. We live here. We always have.”

  “No, we haven’t. We lived at Coleridge Station before the Masks captured us. Now we’re in a lab while they try to stabilize these hallucinations we keep having.”

  “Hallucinations?” Lauer snorted. “You’re the only one around here who’s hallucinating.”

  Rhodes surveyed his subordinates, both the people and the SAMs. Which one of them would be the most likely to back him up?

  His wildest dreams came true when Dietz spoke up. “The captain is telling the truth. The Masks are keeping us in a drug-induced coma to make us cooperate with them. They keep creating these Grid landscapes to trick us into thinking we’re happy so we don’t try to escape.”

  “You lying sack of shit!” Rhinehart countered. “Who the hell ever believed a word you say?”

  “I don’t expect you to believe me, but you might believe the captain,” Dietz replied. “He wouldn’t make this shit up. He couldn’t. No one could.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant,” Rhodes murmured and then let himself ask the question that had been nagging him for days. “Did you always know? Did you always see through the fa?ade?”

  Dietz only shrugged. He wouldn’t look at Rhodes. “You know, I’ve taken a lot of drugs in my time. These are tame compared to some of the stuff I’ve taken. I guess I’m just too messed up even for this.”

  “There has to be a way out of it,” Rhodes exclaimed. “There has to be a way that we can keep our awareness to break away when we get close enough to the Legion.”

  Dietz finally looked up and made eye contact with Rhodes. “It looks to me like you’re already going that way, Sir.”

  Rhodes winced. He really, really didn’t want this illusion to end. He would do just about anything to avoid going back to the lab where he could feel exactly what was happening to him.

  Oakes frowned at the wall. “If we went back to the Legion now, we would be as screwed up as we are in the lab. This illusion is the only thing keeping us sane.”

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “So—what—you want to stay here?” Dietz countered. “You’re a Legion soldier, Lieutenant. You couldn’t betray the Legion like that.”

  “I’m not saying we stay here and I’m not saying I’d betray the Legion…..”

  “We already did,” Thackery husked across the room. “We killed hundreds of Legion soldiers. How could we go back after what we did?”

  Rhodes turned around. She sat on another bench at the other table, hunched her shoulders, and rubbed her arms while she squirmed in mindless agitation. The organic side of her face twitched and trembled all over the place.

  “To hell with the Legion,” Fuentes growled. “The Legion did this to us. They all deserve to die for this.”

  “Those soldiers didn’t do jack shit to you, you cocksucker!” Oakes roared. “We all saw you when you attacked those soldiers and when you attacked the captain. You didn’t do it to pay them back for this. You enjoyed it! Just admit it. You’re a psycho who wants to kill people. Now the Masks are giving you the chance to do that without any guilt. That’s the only reason you want to stay here.”

  Fuentes bared his teeth at Oakes. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “I swear to God, if you raise a weapon to any of us again or if you attack any of us again, especially the captain, I’ll put you the hell down,” Oakes fired back. “I don’t care what else is happening. I don’t care if you’re malfunctioning or not. I don’t even give a shit if the captain tells me not to. You’re a menace to all of us. You shouldn’t even be alive right now.”

  “You want to take a shot at me?!” Fuentes bellowed. “Come on!!”

  He stormed across the barracks and swelled out his chest to threaten Oakes. Before Rhodes could even think about intervening, two more Vipers released from somewhere.

  Rhodes had a split second to see that they came from Rhinehart. He fired them, they wheeled across the barracks, and blasted into Fuentes’s chest.

  The impact ripped him off his feet and smashed him straight through the barracks wall behind him.

  Rhodes didn’t feel a thing, and in a single thought, he woke up in his bed in Stonebridge again. He stared at the ceiling remembering everything.

  He knew exactly what just happened. He didn’t dream any of it. It was all horribly real and he couldn’t do a thing about it.

  He didn’t feel any pain or anguish or distress here. Everything felt wonderful, even lying on his back in bed.

  Ora wasn’t here, though. The house sounded quiet.

  Rhodes glanced around and stiffened when he saw B sitting in the rocking chair by the fire. He looked as human here as he did in the city machine.

  “What the hell do you want?” Rhodes snarled.

  “You and your subordinates aren’t responding to the drugs the way we hoped.”

  “You got that right,” Rhodes snapped. “You never should have drugged us in the first place.”

  “We did it to save your lives. You wouldn’t have survived without them.”

  “We would have survived just fine if you hadn’t captured us in the first place.” Rhodes sat up on the edge of the bed. He wanted to get as far away from this asshole as possible, but he couldn’t do that in this place.

  Rhodes stuck his feet into his boots and started tying them as fast as he could.

  “We’ve decided to send you back to Stonebridge until we can stabilize your systems,” B went on. “Sending you into battle is too risky.”

  Rhodes snorted again. “It’s risky that we’ll realize what we’re doing and escape.”

  “I mean your systems are rejecting our programming. You would be as likely to shut down completely as you would be to escape. None of this would be happening if you just cooperated.”

  “You obviously don’t know squat about human nature, pal,” Rhodes fired back. “Which is bizarre considering that you came from the Legion.”

  B frowned. “What are you talking about? We didn’t come from the Legion.”

  “Of course you did. Why do you consider the SAMs your own kind? The Legion invented the SAMs and discarded the ones that malfunctioned or otherwise didn’t perform the way the Legion wanted them to. Those prototype SAMs evolved into you. You probably have more information about humanity than anyone in the whole Treaty of Aemon Cluster, but you don’t understand the first thing about how human beings operate.” Rhodes stood up. “See you around. Let me know when you have something intelligent to say.”

  “We will find a way to adjust your programming so that you cooperate, Captain,” B called after him. “We won’t just give up. Eventually, you’ll cooperate with us and fight on our side the same way Fuentes is.”

  Rhodes turned around extra slowly. “Where is he? Is he dead?”

  “Of course not. We would never let that happen to him or any of you. We repaired his implants. He’s living down the road as we speak.”

  “He’s a psycho. You should take him offline before he kills someone.”

  “He’ll kill Legion soldiers—which is what the program tells him to do.”

  “We’re Legion soldiers, you jackass!” Rhodes bellowed. “He’s already tried to kill me more than once—or are you too stupid to notice that? If he’s so valuable to you that you wouldn’t let him die, why are you letting him threaten the rest of us—especially me?”

  B waved that away. “I admit he has a few malfunctions…..”

  “He isn’t malfunctioning. He’s functioning exactly the way you programmed him to. It’s only a matter of time before he kills one of us.”

  “I doubt that. He only wants to do what’s right. He’s living right down the road. You can go see for yourself. He’s perfectly integrated into this society. He supports his family better than most.”

  “He doesn’t have a family,” Rhodes snapped. “Not here.”

  B stood up, too. “We will work out the problems with your programming. Then all of you will be just as enthusiastic about fighting the Legion as he is. He won’t consider you a traitor anymore because he won’t see you trying to turn the battalion against the Masks. He won’t attack you anymore after that. You’ll see.”

  Rhodes made a face. “You’re the ones living in a delusion, pal.”

  “We’ll see. In the meantime, you and the battalion will stay here until we satisfy ourselves that we can send you back into battle safely.”

  B walked past Rhodes and out of the house. He left the door standing open.

  Sunshine flooded in from outside. Rhodes looked across the threshold at the dusty road outside.

  All the familiar sounds came through that door. Stonebridge just kept going on and on no matter what. No one here knew anything about the outside world.

  But they did, didn’t they? A few people in the battalion already knew. Rhodes had to talk to them.

  Rhodes got ready to leave the house. He no longer cared about hiding what he was doing from anyone.

  The Masks planned to leave the battalion here—maybe forever—if the drugs didn’t wear off first. The Masks wouldn’t send the battalion back into battle as long as Rhodes refused to cooperate.

  Continuing his efforts to try to escape might sabotage his very efforts to escape. Cooperating would be the quickest way to get the battalion sent back to the Legion.

  He didn’t want the battalion sent back to the Legion—not until he got through to some of them.

  End of Chapter 28.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

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