Rhodes sat up in bed and looked around. He didn’t have implants anymore, but he wasn’t in Stonebridge. He was in the hospital.

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed and looked down at his bare feet. They were human feet. His hands were human hands. He didn’t have any implants on his face, arms, or chest. He was human again.

  He ran his fingers through his hair. Doing that felt different with human hands.

  He was wearing a pair of plain white hospital pajama pants and matching shirt. That was it.

  He didn’t feel injured, but he remembered everything from the battle against those aliens. He didn’t even know who they were—not that it mattered.

  Sunshine streamed through the window at the head of his bed. He looked out at a tall, majestic city teeming with people.

  They all went about their business, took their children to school, conducted their commerce, and engaged in all the activities of any civilized city.

  The civilian transport craft flying between the buildings told him he was in a city somewhere in the Treaty of Aemon Cluster, but he didn’t recognize which city or which planet he was on.

  Spacecraft launched from the other side of town. Those spacecraft rocketed away into the atmosphere and more aircraft touched down beyond the buildings where he couldn’t see them.

  He didn’t recognize the make of any of those aircraft. They didn’t belong to the Legion or to any other Treaty of Aemon Cluster society. He would know if they did. He knew them all.

  He stood up and approached the open window. It let the breeze in. He inhaled a deep breath of the smell. It smelled like the ocean, but he couldn’t see any ocean from here.

  He searched the room. He could move easily enough. Was the whole Coleridge Station experience a bad dream?

  An Aemon Legion captain’s dress uniform lay draped over the chair by the bed. He picked up the uniform and smelled it. He knew that smell only too well, too. The uniform was brand new. It had never been worn before.

  He put it on. It felt amazing against his skin.

  The sensation of actually wearing real clothes again—it blew his mind in ways nothing at Stonebridge ever did. Was this real? Did he dare to believe he really was alive like this again?

  He didn’t want to believe that, but it sure felt good while it lasted.

  He couldn’t see Fisher anymore, either. The experience jarred Rhodes even more. He had to correct his whole concept of what was real and what wasn’t.

  He couldn’t see any grid lines, either. Why would he if this was a real world?

  He couldn’t decide if he was happy about Fisher not being here. Rhodes had gotten so used to Fisher always being there.

  Being human again and living a normal life with other normal people, wearing clothes, eating food, sleeping in a real bed—wouldn’t it be worth giving up Fisher in exchange for all of that?

  Rhodes would have liked to see Fisher again, but if Fisher wasn’t real—if Rhodes just imagined the whole experience and Fisher along with it—then Rhodes would be glad to give it up. Waking up normal and going on with his normal life would be worth it.

  He left the room and approached the nurses’ station in the hall outside. He had woken up in a ward dozens of floors above the ground.

  More patients occupied all the rooms around him. Most of those people were still hooked up to the medical equipment with doctors and nurses working on them and over them and around them.

  “Um….excuse me,” he stammered to a young, pretty nurse behind the desk. “Um….I’m not sure how I got here….or even where I am…..”

  She burst into a huge, beaming smile. It lit up her whole face. “No problem, Captain Rhodes. The superintendent is waiting to see you as soon as you’re up and around.”

  “Superintendent? Superintendent of what?”

  She laughed and handed him a piece of paper. “He’ll explain everything to you. If you go down this hall to the link at the end of the building, you’ll find a cab waiting to take you to his office. Just show this to the driver. It’s all taken care of.”

  Rhodes didn’t understand what any of that meant. He glanced down at the piece of paper in his hand. It had a series of random numbers and letters handwritten on it.

  He lurched down the corridor in the direction the nurse indicated. He didn’t see how he could catch a cab from miles up in the air or what a link was or who any superintendent in this city might be who knew him.

  Rhodes made it to the end of the building and discovered what looked like a taxi stand attached to the side of the building.

  The hospital ward opened into a covered kind of atrium with a bunch of spacecraft parked there waiting. A man in a black uniform with gold trim hustled over to Rhodes.

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  The guy had been leaning against one of the spacecraft doing a whole lot of nothing until Rhodes showed up.

  “Captain Rhodes?” the guy asked. “I’m here to take you to the superintendent’s office.”

  “Um….thank you,” Rhodes mumbled. “I’m a little lost here. The nurse told me to give you this.”

  Rhodes handed over the piece of paper. The guy stuffed it into his pants pocket without looking at it.

  He opened the door of his craft for Rhodes to get inside. The only place to sit was behind the driver. It really was a taxi.

  The driver got into the front seat, fired up the engine, and took off into the sky. Rhodes stared out the window at hundreds of aircraft flying all over the place.

  They parked at different buildings on different levels, let passengers disembark, took on cargo, and performed every other function in this thriving metropolis.

  The sun shone golden on all the building walls. Millions of windows reflected the light, but Rhodes still didn’t see any ocean.

  He did see the landing zone outside of town where spacecraft landed from orbit and launched into space.

  He would have liked to keep flying around this city and checking everything out. He would have liked to see everything this city had to offer.

  The cab ride ended soon enough when the driver landed in another open atrium attached to a different building. This one was much bigger than the hospital and much fancier.

  The atrium opened into a gigantic office full of couches, plush armchairs, computer screens, and a bunch of indoor plants.

  “Um…what exactly am I supposed to do here?” Rhodes asked.

  “Just go right in,” the driver told him. “The superintendent is waiting for you. He’s very anxious to see you.”

  Rhodes still didn’t know what to expect. The driver got out and opened the door for him. Rhodes fought the urge to salute the guy. Life sure felt different now that Rhodes was back in a Legion uniform.

  He went into the office and looked around for a few minutes. He was the only person here. No one was waiting for him or anxious to see him.

  He didn’t recognize any of the species of plants growing in the office, either. He must not be on any Treaty of Aemon Cluster planet after all—or at least not one he’d ever heard of.

  That shouldn’t have been possible because he knew them all and had been deployed on most of them.

  He was just wondering if all of this might be a colossal mistake when a door opened in the office’s side wall. A man walked in and strode toward him.

  In that moment, Rhodes realized that this had definitely not been a colossal mistake. He knew exactly where he was, how he got here, and why.

  The man in front of him was B.

  No part of him gave any hint of the Mask Rhodes had seen in the lab or in The Grid.

  He would never be able to mistake this joker for anyone else. B had the same square jaw, the same brown eyes, and the same thick hair.

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

  “I want to thank you for your help against the Ebilia.”

  “I don’t know what that means and I sure as hell didn’t help you.”

  “You destroyed that accelerator—at great risk to your own life. Your actions swung the battle in our favor. We’re grateful to you—which is why we brought you here to give you medical treatment. You were badly injured. You would have died otherwise.”

  Rhodes glared at him. “What the hell do you want from me?”

  “I just told you. We want to express our gratitude. None of us imagined you would sacrifice yourself like that for us.”

  “I didn’t do it for you, you bastard!” Rhodes snarled. “I did it for my subordinates. Where are they? Are they dead?”

  “They aren’t dead. They’re fine. The ones that got injured on the battlefield have received medical treatment, too.”

  “Then where are they?” Rhodes demanded. “I want to see them. I don’t trust a word that comes out of your mouth.”

  “They’re at Stonebridge if you must know. Does that convince you? They’re living in peace and comfort with their families.”

  Rhodes snorted. “They don’t have families—not at Stonebridge or anywhere else.”

  B studied him more closely. “We want you to understand us. That’s why we brought you here—so you can understand us. Maybe once you do that, you’ll realize that we aren’t your enemies.”

  “You’ll always be my enemies. You captured us and you’re holding us against our will. You tortured us, and when that didn’t work, you locked us up in some fantasy world to keep us docile and cooperative so you could experiment on us and send us into battle without us realizing you were doing it. That sounds like the way enemies treat each other. You certainly aren’t our friends.”

  B waved toward the atrium. “Come with me. I want to show you around.”

  Rhodes didn’t move. He didn’t want to go anywhere with this asshole. Rhodes definitely didn’t want to see anything or understand anything that would make him sympathize with the Masks.

  B strolled back to the atrium where a different aircraft landed in front of him. The door opened as he approached it. He turned back on the threshold and raised his eyebrows in an inviting, questioning way.

  What the hell else did Rhodes have to do? The alternative would be going back to Stonebridge where no one remembered any of this.

  He finally stormed across the office and got into the aircraft with B. It wasn’t the same style as the cab that brought Rhodes here from the hospital.

  He and B stepped into a small compartment without any seats. Both men stood at a railing looking through full-length glass windows at the scenery outside.

  The vehicle soared away into traffic, migrated between the buildings, and circled through the city so Rhodes could see everything.

  He looked through dozens of windows at people conducting their lives inside. He watched vendors plying their trade on the street. He looked in on classrooms full of schoolchildren getting lectured by teachers.

  “What are we doing here?” he asked after a while. “What am I doing here?”

  “I wanted you to see all this,” B replied. “I want you to understand that we’re just people living our lives just like you.”

  “I doubt that. You’re Masks. You aren’t people. You’re machines.”

  “We’re sentient machines just like your SAMs. We feel. We care about our young. We care about the future of our race.”

  “Race?” Rhodes made a face. “You aren’t like us at all.” He waved at the city around him. “This is all fake. These people….they’re human—which you are not. You aren’t living like this. Whatever way you are living, it isn’t this. Why don’t you show me what you really look like and how you’re really living? Then maybe I might be able to believe you. I won’t be able to believe anything you say as long as you’re pulling the wool over my eyes like this.”

  B stared out the window deep in thought for a minute. Rhodes couldn’t read his reaction.

  Rhodes had to continually remind himself that this wasn’t a person standing next to him. It was a machine covered in a veil of the same illusion that had kept the battalion in the dark for the last however long they’d been trapped here.

  None of these other people were actually people, either. They were machines, too.

  They didn’t breed. They didn’t conduct business. They didn’t send their children to school. They didn’t even have children.

  That was all part of the trick—the trick to get inside Rhodes’s head and make him think the Masks were something other than what they were.

  “All right, Captain,” B finally murmured. “If that’s the way you want it, I’ll show you what we really look like and how we really live. Then maybe you’ll understand. Maybe you’ll see that we’re only trying to survive the way the human race is trying to survive.”

  End of Chapter 20.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

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