Rhodes woke up lying flat on his back. He instantly felt the prongs in the back of his head, shoulders, hips, and feet.

  He couldn’t move, but he didn’t want to. A closed capsule cover blocked him from seeing anything—except Fisher.

  Fisher hovered in front of Rhodes’s eyes—exactly where Fisher should have been. He looked the way Rhodes remembered with all of Fisher’s correct facial expressions.

  “How do you feel, Captain?” Fisher asked in his soft undertone.

  “I feel like a failure,” Rhodes muttered. “I didn’t convince the others in time.”

  “What would you have done if you had been able to convince them?” Fisher asked. “How would you get out of The Grid after the Masks sent you there?”

  Rhodes’s eyes snapped to Fisher’s face. “You remember that Mask using your face to talk to me. You told the other SAMs about it.”

  Fisher looked away. “Yes. I remember.”

  “Did they tempt you? Did they offer to send you into The Grid as a person if you helped them by making me cooperate?”

  “Of course not, Captain. I had nothing to do with that person telling you to cooperate.”

  “So…..” Rhodes frowned at Fisher. “You don’t feel at all tempted to….you know….be human?”

  “Like you? No, thank you. I wouldn’t wish your life on my worst enemy.”

  Rhodes snorted and looked away. “Thanks a lot, pal.”

  “I admit that false version of me they created did lead a charmed life.”

  “You don’t find that version of human life tempting? It’s a perfect life. I’m sure nothing like this ever happens there.”

  “I’m sure you’re right—which is exactly why I wouldn’t want it.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “It’s a perfect life. Nothing ever happens there. There are no challenges, no trials, and no problems. I don’t know if the people in that town are real enough to interact with each other. If they are, their interactions aren’t real. None of it is real. If anything tempts me about human life, it’s how real and immediate it is. Everything you do holds so much weight and monumental significance. That must be why you react to things with such powerful emotions. I couldn’t get that in The Grid.” Fisher hesitated and then blurted out, “I can only get it from you.”

  Rhodes gulped down a lump in his throat. “I’m really glad you’re back. I was going crazy without you.”

  Fisher smiled at him. “We are dependent on each other, Captain. I am as dependent on you as you are on me. We would both be lost without each other—me no less than you.”

  “Is this what the Masks are looking for—what they want to get from studying us—this reality you’re talking about?”

  “I don’t understand what it is they want. I can only speculate based on what B told you in The Grid.”

  “I didn’t understand what he told me in The Grid.”

  “He said the SAMs have something the Masks don’t have. He said the Masks are an incomplete version of the same programming process. They want to merge the SAMs with their own programming to complete the errors and fill in the gaps. I can’t imagine what that would be if not individuality, sentience, and self-determination. I can’t think what else they would be missing.”

  “Maybe you could explain it to them and show them that human life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  Fisher laughed. It was one of the very few times Rhodes had ever heard one of the SAMs laugh. “I don’t believe they’ll listen to me. They won’t understand until they see it for themselves.”

  “By then, it will be too late and they won’t be able to take it back. They might wind up like me and the rest of the battalion. The Masks might wind up hating their own existence, decide life isn’t worth living, and end their lives. Then the war will be over.”

  Fisher cocked his head to one side. “How are you, Captain? That laser shot put you in the hospital.”

  “I didn’t think it would harm me. Getting hit has never harmed any of us in The Grid before.”

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  “Is that why you deliberately flew into its path—to prove to the rest of the battalion that they were in The Grid?”

  “No, I wasn’t even thinking about that. I just wanted to save Thackery. I would have done the same thing even if I knew that shot would kill me.”

  “You’re truly selfless, Captain,” Fisher murmured. “I consider myself very fortunate to be your SAM.”

  “I consider myself very fortunate to have you as my SAM,” Rhodes replied. “You don’t know what a relief it is to talk to you again. I thought….” He broke off. “I thought all kinds of crazy stuff. I don’t know if it’s real or if the Masks made me think it.”

  Fisher’s eyes darted down to Rhodes’s body. “You appear to be recovered. I wonder how long the Masks will keep you in this conversion cycle.”

  “How long have I been in here?”

  “I don’t know. I came back online a few seconds before you opened your eyes. I’ve been offline this whole time.”

  “I guess I can’t get out of this capsule until the Masks release me.”

  “Are you still committed to escaping?”

  “More than ever. I just have to figure out how.”

  “Do you remember how you used your grid lines to hack that transponder code?” Fisher asked. “Then you used your Grid Vipers to break the Masks’ hold on me—and the Strikers did the same thing to free the other SAMs. Do you remember?”

  “Yes, of course. How could I forget?”

  “Maybe we could do something similar. The next time the Masks send you and the battalion into The Grid, we could try using our grid lines to break The Grid. We would find out where they’re keeping us.”

  “We’re probably in the lab hooked up to those prong stations. That wouldn’t help us.”

  “We might be able to break down The Grid, though. We would be able to interrupt the simulation and see the real world for what it is. We can at least test it and find out if there is a way to escape from The Grid. If there is, we can find out just how far we can get before the Masks assert their control. We have to at least try it. It’s our only option.”

  “I guess,” Rhodes murmured. “I’m just glad you agree and you aren’t trying to convince me to cooperate anymore.”

  “I never did try to convince you to cooperate. That wasn’t me.”

  “I know, pal. It’s just really hard to keep straight what’s real and what isn’t. It gets harder and harder—especially……”

  Rhodes broke off. He couldn’t say it.

  All the tortures the Masks put him through—they wore down his resolve. They broke down even further his ability to distinguish reality from illusion.

  Fisher jolted, spun sideways, and his expression changed. “Someone’s coming, Captain. It’s one of the Masks. I think it might be B, but I can’t be certain. All the Masks read the same. They’re all identical. I think they might be able to send any Mask to talk to you with the same face, the same voice, the same appearance, and the same personality. It’s a facsimile of someone who doesn’t exist—and yet he exists in all of them. He’s another illusion.”

  He barely finished speaking when one of the Masks halted outside Rhodes’s capsule. Rhodes saw the metal helmet and eye slit through the capsule cover.

  The robot looked exactly like every other Mask = Rhodes had ever seen. The Mask did something to the capsule and the cover started to open.

  The prongs didn’t release. They help Rhodes down on his back and immobilized his arms and legs the way the station did when the Masks first captured him.

  He stared up at the Mask standing next to him. The Mask stared down at him.

  Grid lines appeared all over the helmet and superimposed B’s face, head, and body over the armored robot. “That was an exceptionally foolish thing to do, Captain,” B muttered.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Rhodes growled back.

  “You could have gotten yourself killed saving a less skilled soldier. Alyssa Thackery isn’t even a soldier. She’s a civilian. Were you trying to kill yourself? Is that it? Did you finally decide to end yourself?”

  Rhodes looked away. “Like I said, you wouldn’t understand.”

  “If you took steps to help us understand, you could get out of here sooner.”

  “I already told you I won’t cooperate with you—and don’t give me that shit about getting out of here. You don’t plan to release us—not alive, at least. You’ll take what you want from us and then eliminate us. You don’t have to spell it out. We would already be dead if you could find a way to take the SAMs from us without killing them in the process. Don’t even bother to lie about it.”

  B’s human face pursed its lips. “We have decided to send you back to The Grid. Living outside is too damaging to human physiology and psychology.”

  “The way you do it is. There are other ways.”

  “It’s affecting the SAMs and you. You will go back into The Grid until we need you.”

  “I already told you I won’t cooperate,” Rhodes countered. “I don’t care what you do to me. You might as well send me back to that freezing compartment.”

  “We’ve already made the decision. Keeping you in The Grid is the only way to keep you alive.”

  “Let me die, then.”

  “Your wellbeing is our responsibility….”

  Rhodes snorted. “You’re doing a really shitty job of it so far.”

  “We’ve already made the decision, Captain. You’ll complete your treatment here before you go back to Stonebridge.”

  “What?” Rhodes asked. “Go back to where?”

  “Stonebridge. That’s our name for the town you visited last time. It’s a standard Grid environment we use for rest, recovery, reprieve, and for enhancing wellbeing when anyone needs it.”

  Rhodes raised his eyebrow at this creature. “You use The Grid for that?” He frowned. “I didn’t think you were capable of feeling those things.”

  “Perhaps you’ll understand when you visit the town and meet the people living in it. It’s a healing place for many things.” B turned away. “You will go back into a conversion cycle. I don’t anticipate you staying here much longer than another day.”

  He did something to the capsule and closed the cover. Rhodes felt nothing but relief when the thing finally left. Now he could be alone with Fisher.

  “I should have asked him where we are,” Rhodes muttered. “I should have asked him a lot of things.”

  “Try to remember our conversation once we get into The Grid,” Fisher told him. “Try to remember our plan of hacking The Grid with your lines.”

  “What if I forget?”

  “I’ll try to remind you.”

  “And if you forget?”

  Fisher made a face. “Then we’re in trouble.”

  “We’re already in trouble, pal.”

  “The important thing is that we keep trying. If the Masks keep us alive long enough, we’re bound to find some crack in the system—some vulnerability we can exploit. Then we’ll be able to escape—to whatever is outside all this.”

  End of Chapter 7.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

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