Rhodes scrambled to his feet. He had to find a way to get out of this devastated city, but he couldn’t even hold himself up. He had to support himself against the wall of another wrecked building just to keep himself upright.

  He wobbled there for a second trying to see straight. He didn’t get hit in the head, but he sure felt like it.

  His brain didn’t want to connect to his boosters, his weapons, or anything else. He didn’t trust himself to fly anywhere or target anything.

  He really wanted to, especially when he saw Strikers wheeling through the night sky. The accelerators targeted the battalion and one of the Strikers took a shot across its left side. Rhodes couldn’t do anything about that right now.

  He couldn’t even comfort himself by thinking those Strikers were the battalion’s real Strikers. They weren’t. The battalion’s Strikers weren’t here. They were back at Coleridge Station where they belonged.

  Rhodes tried to check The Grid for anything that might give him a clue about how to handle this. He could see The Grid just fine. He just couldn’t get off the ground.

  “The nearest building has five accelerators in it,” Fisher pointed out. “We might be able to do something about them. The aliens aren’t looking for us when we’re like this.”

  Rhodes snorted. “That’s because I’m not a threat to anyone like this, pal—except maybe myself.”

  Fisher smiled at him. “You can still use The Grid. If it really comes to that, you can crawl to the building, crawl up the stairs, and fire your Vipers at the accelerators.”

  “With myself inside the building? You’re a real prince, you know that?”

  Fisher chuckled. “Something tells me you would be able to pull it off.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, pal.” Rhodes let out a shaky sigh. “I gotta sit down. I don’t feel good.”

  “Your neural core took damage. Your cognitive processes aren’t functioning properly.”

  “At least now everyone will know I’m crazy—but that’s nothing they didn’t already know, is it?” Rhodes sank down on a block of broken concrete. “At least I don’t have to worry about shooting unarmed civilians like this.”

  Fisher’s smile evaporated. “I’m sorry I didn’t intervene sooner than I did.”

  “I appreciate you doing it at all. I know it took a lot for you to give me that warning. You’re the true hero here.”

  “I wish I didn’t keep losing my memory. I wish I could be more help to you.”

  “You are a help to me. You’re more help to me than anyone else around here.” Rhodes cast a wary look around and grimaced at the surroundings. They didn’t give him much hope at all. “I guess we can talk freely here without the Masks interfering. I don’t suppose they can monitor or manipulate us while we’re outside of The Grid.”

  “You’re right. The Masks are obviously not in any position to control this situation. They wouldn’t be losing so many of their own if they did.”

  Rhodes tried one more time to stand up and wound up buckling onto his knees. He had to waver there for a few minutes before his head stopped spinning.

  “You just don’t listen, do you?” Fisher remarked. “I told you not to try to stand up.”

  “You told me to crawl, so that’s what I’m doing. Talk to me about how to break out of The Grid. It didn’t work last time.”

  Rhodes set off crawling through the rubble toward the nearest intact building. The Grid displayed enough of the landscape and the buildings’ interiors.

  He could see the accelerators, the aliens, and the routes to take to get near them. He could also see where he would have to release his Vipers to destroy the accelerators—if he made it that far.

  He had to stop every few feet to wait for the stars to stop bursting in front of his eyes. He tottered on his hands and knees. Just staying conscious took every ounce of his effort.

  “Maybe now isn’t the right time to discuss this,” Fisher muttered. “You’re barely conscious.”

  “Now is the only time to discuss this,” Rhodes replied. “This is the only time we’ll ever get to discuss it without interruption and without the Masks overhearing us.”

  “It isn’t like them overhearing us will make any difference. We don’t even have any productive ideas for how to overcome this Grid landscape.”

  “We aren’t in a Grid landscape right now,” Rhodes pointed out. “If I was at all functional, I could fire my boosters and fly the hell out of here. The Masks wouldn’t be able to stop me.”

  Fisher looked around him. “You’re right about that, Captain, but you would have to leave your subordinates behind. Besides, you aren’t at all functional and you can’t fly. I’m surprised you survived that plasma shot.”

  “I’m not dead yet, pal.”

  “I can see that.”

  Rhodes didn’t answer for a second. He had to concentrate on crawling the rest of the way to the building in question.

  He didn’t let himself look at The Grid of his subordinates in battle against these aliens. He didn’t want to see one of his people get shot down when he couldn’t help them.

  Taking out these accelerators would be the best way to help them. He didn’t let himself think about the fact that he would be helping the Masks, too. One thing at a time. He could barely handle that.

  He paused at the building entrance while he gathered the energy to go any further. He would have to climb more than twenty flights of stairs to get within Viper Range of the lowest accelerator.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  He only planned to hit the lowest one. The resulting explosion would take out all the accelerators above it.

  The resulting explosion would also take out the whole building, including the floors below him. He would have to make tracks to get out of the building before it imploded on top of him.

  He couldn’t think clearly enough to decide how he would do that. He just had to get this done and fast.

  He started climbing. “So why do you think the two of us couldn’t break The Grid by ourselves? Do you really think we’ll have any better chance if we get the others to help us?”

  “I’ve been thinking about the same thing,” Fisher replied. “I mean, I’ve been thinking about it in those few minutes when I’m able to think about it. I’m not able to think about it most of the time—as you’re aware.”

  “Never mind that. So what’s the answer? We’ll have to overcome it on our own if we can’t convince the others.”

  “You just said it yourself, didn’t you?” Fisher asked. “You’re outside The Grid right now. You aren’t in the Stonebridge landscape or the Fort Bastion landscape. If you flew away right now, the Masks wouldn’t be able to stop you.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re telling me.”

  “Do you remember how we got here? We flew overland from Fort Bastion. If we aren’t in The Grid, then Fort Bastion really is somewhere south of this city—which means the battalion really was at Fort Bastion.”

  “I doubt that. For a start, Fort Bastion is too similar to Coleridge Station minus the pain, confusion, misery, rage, and desperation. Everything there feels fantastic—and the battalion didn’t really eat all that food at Fort Bastion. It’s a Grid landscape if anything is.”

  Fisher thought it over for a minute. “You’re right, Captain. You understand this so much better than I do.”

  “I wish it could be that easy, but if the Masks tricked us into living at Stonebridge, they tricked us into thinking we left Fort Bastion this morning to come here. This might not be a Grid landscape, but Fort Bastion is. Everything else we’ve seen is.”

  “Then where are we? I mean—where are the Masks keeping the battalion when we aren’t here?”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say the Masks are keeping us on one of their invasion ships—probably the ship that took us off Rono. They transported us here and used The Grid to make us think we were leaving from Fort Bastion. You saw the Masks’ lab when we broke through The Grid. It was similar to the lab we were in when the Masks first captured us. I don’t see that they had time to take us anywhere else.”

  “Hmm,” Fisher murmured. “You are thinking about this clearly considering the damage to your neural core.”

  “Let’s assume for the moment that we’ll never be able to convince anyone in the battalion that we’re being held as captives. Let’s assume we’ll never be able to convince any of them to help us overcome The Grid.”

  “That isn’t a very optimistic way to look at the situation, Captain.”

  “So what’s Plan B? What are our other options if we can’t break out of The Grid?”

  Fisher looked at The Grid around him. “Maybe this is our best bet. This could turn out to be a trend of things to come. The Masks could continue to send the battalion into real battles.”

  Rhodes snorted. He had to stop on the stairs to sink onto his seat, lean against the wall, shut his eyes, and catch his breath. “Now who’s being pessimistic?”

  “Do you remember what you told the battalion? You said the Masks wanted to turn the battalion to their side and use us to fight our own. If you’re right, then they may plan to send us against the Legion. We would be able to break away then and rejoin the Legion.”

  “You’re assuming we would remember at the time that we even wanted to break away. All the evidence so far suggests we wouldn’t remember. The Masks would make sure we didn’t.”

  Rhodes glanced up the stairs. He had to keep climbing, but he didn’t want to. He wanted to fall over.

  The feeling of cold, sick dread in the pit of his stomach got stronger the farther he went. The damage to not just his neural core but everything else must be worse than Fisher let on.

  Fisher pretended not to notice or at least he didn’t bring it up. “Something might happen to jog your memory—like it did just now. You didn’t remember until you got hit. Then you could break away to the Legion side.”

  “And leave my subordinates behind. Isn’t that what you mean?”

  Fisher made a face. “I didn’t like to say so, but if that’s what it took, wouldn’t you rather return to the Legion side and save yourself?”

  “No, I wouldn’t. I’d rather stay here and make sure we all got out.”

  “But maybe you would all go down on the Legion side. Maybe you would all remember or one of you would remember in a time and place where you would be able to get everyone out.”

  “I don’t like betting on maybe, pal,” Rhodes growled.

  “You’re nearly at the targeting coordinates,” Fisher told him. “We should stop talking about this now. Something may come up. You never know.”

  Rhodes couldn’t talk about this anymore anyway. He was nearing the limit of his strength.

  He blundered onto a landing five floors below the lowest accelerator. He had to summon all his remaining energy to stagger through a doorway into a large room adjacent to the stairs.

  He collapsed there, tumbled onto his back, and sprawled. His head swam and he might have lost consciousness again.

  He came to his senses staring at a plain blank ceiling. The Grid gave him a clear view of the accelerator directly above him.

  He raised his arm and aimed his scourge gun at the ceiling. “If you blow out the ceiling, the building will collapse on top of you,” Fisher murmured in his ear.

  “Is there another option?” Rhodes croaked.

  Fisher said something, but Rhodes didn’t hear him. Rhodes’s brain switched off. He wasn’t thinking anything at all anymore.

  Some hazy part of his mind saw the Strikes under hellish bombardment outside. Only half of them were even still in the air. He didn’t see the others.

  He couldn’t wait any longer. He rolled a few feet to his left so he wouldn’t be lying directly under the rockfall when he blew out the ceiling.

  He couldn’t get out of the building. He couldn’t move. He could barely hold up his arm. Aiming at the right spot on the ceiling took every ounce of mental concentration he could muster.

  He shut his eyes and fired. He didn’t need to see. The Grid showed him more than he needed to know.

  His scourge gun smashed in the ceiling and mountains of concrete pounded down onto the floor next to him.

  He had to throw himself farther out of the way to stop the cave-in from flattening him.

  He came to rest on his stomach and fired his Vipers up through the breach. They coiled through the building, collided with the accelerator, and a shuddering boom rocked the building.

  The structure shivered under the impact and then a massive explosion went off somewhere.

  Rhodes tucked his head under his arms and curled into a ball to protect himself as another catastrophic concussion tore the building apart.

  At that moment, something blasted through the building’s side wall and hurtled out the other side. He didn’t have time to see what it was before it snatched him off the ground.

  Whatever it was hit the opposite wall and rocketed into space, but not fast enough to save him. Another bone-crushing explosion erupted from the building’s side wall.

  A blazing fireball enveloped Rhodes and whatever this was holding onto him.

  The shockwave caught them both, tore them apart, and flung Rhodes hard against another building.

  This one had been completely obliterated by the alien bombardment. Its shattered exterior skeleton stuck up off the ground just high enough for Rhodes to crash into it.

  Something broke in his chest, he slammed down hard on the ground, and he lay there unable to move.

  He drifted in and out of consciousness for what seemed like an eternity. Fisher wasn’t there anymore. The SAM must have gone offline.

  In those times when he floundered back to his senses, he looked up at a dark sky too cloudy to let the stars shine through.

  Those clouds roiled back and forth like some wicked storm brewing. That movement was the only sign that Rhodes was still alive and not staring at the insides of his own dead eyelids.

  He only had one eyelid now. That thought seemed so surreal and nonsensical to him. He only had one eye if he even had that.

  He still lay there staring upward when a Masks invasion ship floated above his face. He blinked at it while it opened its hatch and lifted him inside.

  End of Chapter 19.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

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