Rhodes woke up and groaned again when he remembered what he did. He tried to shut his eyes, but he couldn’t block out the sight of Fisher in front of him.
Rhodes cringed when he saw his SAM—his friend. Rhodes didn’t want to face the aftermath of destroying the lab the way he did.
“How are you feeling, Captain?” Fisher asked again.
Rhodes looked away. “I feel like I don’t want to be here.”
“Unfortunately, that option is no longer available. General Brewster ordered your weapons to be taken offline until the doctors and technicians satisfy themselves that you’re no longer a danger to anyone.”
“I’m sure I don’t need weapons to do it, pal,” Rhodes growled. “Corporal Poole killed himself without using weapons. I suppose it’s just as well. I’m not going into battle any time soon. Better for me to not have any weapons. I can live with it if it means no one gets killed.”
Fisher hesitated for a moment of tense silence. When he spoke, he used the same calm undertone as always. He expressed no emotion at all when he said, “Someone already did get killed. Dr. Irvine is dead.”
Rhodes collapsed back on his mattress with a broken sigh. He clamped his eyes and his lips shut and looked away, but those words stabbed him in the heart.
“I should have known,” he choked. “I should have known. Someone was bound to get hurt one of these days. Too many things have been going wrong.”
Fisher cocked his head to one side. “You’re experiencing another emotional distress response. Why? You did not kill Dr. Irvine. I did.”
Rhodes spun around fast. “You?!”
“I took control of your movements and responses and made you destroy the lab. I malfunctioned exactly the way you said. I had an emotional reaction and I used The Grid to cause you to attack the lab.” Fisher inclined his head the other way. “Didn’t you feel it while it was happening? I sensed you trying to resist and stop yourself….but I may have been mistaken.”
“I…..I thought I was the one doing it. I felt…..something outside myself…..but I thought I was just mad. I didn’t know…… I’m so sorry, Fisher.”
“Why are you sorry? You’ve been in stasis all this time because of me. I’m surprised they brought me back online at all after what happened.”
Rhodes ran his fingers through his hair. This was the worst yet. “I am, too, honestly. I’m surprised they brought either of us back online.”
“They had no reason to take you offline. You were the one who put yourself into a conversion cycle when you saw yourself spiraling into a violent rage. You wouldn’t have attacked Irvine or the lab if not for me.” Fisher looked away. “I would have expected them to take me offline and give you a different SAM.”
“I don’t want a different SAM. I want you. You must have malfunctioned again. In fact, I know you did. You wouldn’t have attacked the lab otherwise. The doctors must realize that.”
“I hope you’re right, Captain,” Fisher murmured. “I would hate for something like this to happen again.”
Rhodes would bet any amount of money that it would happen again, but he didn’t say that out loud.
He couldn’t even blame Fisher for this. Rhodes wanted to destroy the lab. He enjoyed it.
Fisher probably didn’t have to try too hard to control Rhodes. Rhodes doubted he resisted very much if he resisted at all. Maybe Fisher just said that to make Rhodes feel better.
He was one malfunction away from doing exactly the same thing without any help from Fisher or anyone else.
Rhodes didn’t even need a malfunction to do it. His own hopeless fury over this situation could make him snap any second now.
He was too weak to get out of bed now. He must have been in stasis for a long, long time the way Fisher said.
Rhodes would get his strength back soon enough. Then what?
He was more of a danger to himself and others now than he’d ever been. He didn’t trust himself to stop himself if he really, really wanted to do something.
“Is there any word on the others?” he asked.
“They’re all in long-term stasis, too—or they were,” Fisher replied. “The station records indicate that everyone in the battalion has suffered malfunctions.”
“Wonderful,” Rhodes muttered. “I can just imagine.”
“None of them required a Ravager firing on them to shut them down, though. That special honor goes to you alone.”
Rhodes snorted. He really didn’t want to talk about this anymore.
He didn’t blame Fisher at all. At least he was functioning now. He didn’t show any further sign of emotional disturbance.
Rhodes was too grateful for his SAM to hold this latest incident against Fisher. Malfunctions could and would happen to everyone. This one just turned out to be worse than the others. That wasn’t Fisher’s fault.
Rhodes stayed where he was until the nausea passed. Then he got to his feet and shuffled around the lab for a while until his strength started to return.
He was back in Dr. Neiland’s lab—the same lab where Rhodes woke up from his first stasis. The Legion must have rebuilt it while he was asleep.
Rhodes didn’t ask how long he’d been unconscious. One of these days, the Battalion 1 governing body would decide to leave him like that. Then everyone would be much better off, including Rhodes himself.
He finally worked up the energy to leave the lab. He was back at Coleridge Station, which meant he could go back to the battalion barracks.
The rest of his people would go back there as soon as they got out of stasis, too. Going there would be the quickest way to see them—wherever they were.
He really needed them right now. He needed other people in the same boat as himself.
They wouldn’t hold Dr. Irvine’s death against him and Fisher, either. Everyone in the battalion wanted Dr. Irvine dead.
Fisher read his mind. “Dr. Neiland isn’t on the station roster anymore, Captain. Her record indicates that she resigned from the project.”
Rhodes snorted. “Lucky her. Where do I go to resign?”
“At least you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”
Rhodes walked out of the lab and stopped dead in his tracks when he stepped into the corridor. A squad of ten armed Legion soldiers stood there waiting for him.
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They all wore riot gear and carried Jackhammers. He didn’t recognize any of them from his recent rampage.
Two of them flanked the lab entrance. Another two stood across the hall facing him.
The rest spaced themselves out on both sides to surround him heading in both directions.
He shouldn’t have been surprised by this, but their presence didn’t even intimidate him—not even with all of them bristling with weapons.
He could have taken them all out with his bare hands. Did they even realize how badly he outmatched them?
He felt nothing but pity for them whether they knew or not. He wasn’t here to hurt them or even to resent them for guarding him. Even that made a sick kind of sense.
He decided to ignore them and set off down the corridor heading for the barracks. He just wanted to see his subordinates. He didn’t care about anything else.
He tried to access The Grid on the way there, but the interface still didn’t work. The Grid of the station worked the way it always did, but it still didn’t return any information about anyone in the battalion, including Rhodes.
“It’s kinda spooky, isn’t it?” Rhodes remarked to Fisher on their way down the hall. “It’s almost like the brass is getting ready to take us offline for good.”
“I’m starting to see things your way, Captain,” Fisher murmured. “Maybe that would be for the best—for everyone concerned.”
“We’re a ways past that now, pal,” Rhodes pointed out. “Dr. Irvine is still dead.”
“Dr. Montague has requested transfer to the station’s personnel medical wing. He no longer works for the Battalion 1 project, either. Osborne and Trudeau are our only doctors now.”
“Good,” Rhodes replied. “I won’t say I trust them completely, but at least I don’t suspect them of malicious intent.”
“Did you suspect Neiland, Irvine, and Montague of malicious intent? I didn’t. I thought they were merely incompetent—or perhaps too inexperienced and ignorant of their subjects to do the job justice.”
Rhodes sighed. “You’re right, pal. I guess I didn’t suspect them of malicious intent, either. Osborne and Trudeau don’t strike me as being quite as ignorant or incompetent, though. They seem to take the job more seriously.”
Rhodes and Fisher didn’t have a chance to discuss it further before Rhodes walked into the barracks.
Whatever he might have been hoping to find here went right out the window. All his subordinates were already here. So here Drs. Osborne and Trudeau.
Rhodes saw right away that nothing had been fixed. He was the only person present who was functioning—at all.
Dr. Osborne was trying to do something to Thackery’s cranial implant while she glared at him and smacked his hands away from her head.
Rhodes distinctly heard her yell at him to get the fuck away from her.
Her voice was one of the few he could distinguish in a sea of noise. Dietz and Coulter stood across the room bellowing at each other at the tops of their lungs.
They gesticulated wildly. The miracle was that they hadn’t resorted to violence yet, but it would happen soon if things kept escalating like this.
Rhinehart was in the act of overturning the terminal desk when Rhodes walked in. The terminal went flying and Rhinehart went to town on both the table and what was left of the terminal.
He scooped up sections of the table, tore them to pieces, and then lifted the terminal above his head to smash it onto the floor. He stomped it under his feet until he reduced it to tiny fragments.
He kept bellowing in rage the whole time. When he finished, he swung both fists and pounded them into the wall.
Lauer lay sprawled face down on top of his capsule. He kept his head buried under his arms while he thumped his fists onto the cover again and again.
He smashed in the transparent cover, but he didn’t seem to notice. He kept striking again and again with no awareness of what he was doing.
An agonized yowl of broken misery echoed off the cover from his mouth pressed against the device’s metal housing.
Fuentes sat huddled in a fetal ball in a corner of the barracks. His lips, cheeks, and body trembled with anguished emotion while he watched his comrades fall to pieces all around him.
He kept jerking, spasming, and trying to shove his way farther back into the corner, but he was already as far back as he could go.
Oakes stood over him in a guarding posture. Oakes planted his feet wide apart and glared out into the room. He clenched his fists at his side and gritted his teeth ready to attack anyone who came too close to Fuentes.
Dr. Osborne bent over Georgie Henshaw. She lay flat on her back on the floor and she was out cold.
He worked frantically over his remote device trying to do something, but she never responded.
Rhodes took in the whole scene in a split second, but that didn’t help him decide what to do. He didn’t know which of his subordinates to approach first.
He had to admire the two doctors for getting involved in this. They could have retreated for their own safety, especially after what happened to Dr. Irvine.
They turned out to be braver even than these armed soldiers. Another twenty stood guard all around the barracks, but none of the soldiers intervened to stop Lauer and Rhinehart from destroying Legion property.
The soldiers guarding Rhodes didn’t enter the room. They stayed near him—as if he was somehow more dangerous than the rest of these people.
Rhodes took a deep breath and stepped into the room, but he still didn’t have a clue what to do or say first.
Oakes and Fuentes didn’t seem to be in any danger. Rhodes wouldn’t have been able to help with whatever was wrong with Henshaw, either.
He headed for Coulter and Dietz to break up the fight.
Before he could get there, Rhinehart finished demolishing what was left of both the terminal and the table.
He spun away, and without looking where he was going, he charged for the capsules, too.
Rhodes recognized that crazed look in Rhinehart’s eyes. Rhinehart wanted to destroy everything in sight.
Rhodes dodged in front of him and stopped Rhinehart in his tracks. “Stop, Lieutenant. You don’t want to do that.”
“YOU BASTARD!!” Rhinehart bellowed. “GET OUT OF MY WAY!!”
He seized Rhodes by the shoulders and hurled him aside. Rhodes tried to stand his ground, but Rhinehart’s size and strength overpowered Rhodes easily.
Rhodes would have pitched across the floor, but he stumbled and caught his balance.
Rhinehart charged to the nearest capsule, which was Fuentes’s, grabbed the open cover, and tore it off with one massive jerk of his powerful arms.
The cover went flying into another corner—away from anywhere it might hurt anyone. Then Rhinehart attacked the capsule tooth and nail. He smashed down on it with both fists and roared in mindless fury as he wrecked that, too.
Rhodes braced himself to dive in and try to stop the destruction, but he didn’t. He stopped where he was and watched.
The doctors and soldiers didn’t stop Rhinehart, either. They didn’t stop him from destroying the terminal and they didn’t stop him from destroying Fuentes’s capsule.
Oakes didn’t intervene, either, not even knowing that Fuentes needed this capsule to survive.
Osborne kept trying to do something to Henshaw through his device. Trudeau was getting more and more desperate to do whatever he was trying to do to Thackery.
Rhodes didn’t see anything wrong with her, but when she tried one more time to swat his arms away, she collapsed backward, toppled off the bench, and hit the floor.
Trudeau pounced on her, did something to her cranial implant, and then he started frantically working on his device, too.
He cast a few petrified glances around the barracks. The wild terror in his eyes said it all. These two doctors were more than aware of everything going wrong in here right now.
Thackery and Henshaw must have been suffering from the most dangerous malfunctions. That must be what knocked them out.
The other members of the battalion might be getting violently enraged and destroying Legion property, but they weren’t in any danger of dropping dead from whatever was wrong with them. Fuentes even had Oakes guarding him.
Rhodes decided to take a page from the doctor’s playbook. He left Lauer and Rhinehart alone, went over to Coulter and Dietz instead, and stepped between them.
Rhodes pushed them apart and pointed behind Coulter. “Go over there, Eddie. Back off!”
Coulter got in Rhodes’s face. “Don’t you fucking tell me what to do! This asshole tried to attack me!”
“I don’t care what he did!” Rhodes yelled back. “You’re both malfunctioning! Now get the hell over there NOW!! Back off, Dietz! Go over there!”
He pushed them farther apart and steered them into opposite corners of the barracks. They must have been at least partially rational because they did it, obeyed him, and separated to opposite corners.
They kept glaring at each other until Dietz turned his back and faced the wall.
“He’s a scumbag,” Coulter snarled in Rhodes’s ear. “I swear I’ll tear his fucking head if he looks at me sideways again.”
Rhodes opened his mouth to say again that Coulter only felt that way because he was malfunctioning.
At that moment, another broken roar split across the barracks. So much other noise echoed off the walls that the sound didn’t startled Rhodes at first.
Before anyone could move, Fuentes sprang to his feet and charged across the barracks. He made it halfway to Thackery before Rhodes realized what was happening.
Fuentes’s anguish and terror from a minute before erupted in animal rage. He bellowed in fury and picked up speed heading straight for Thackery.
Rhodes leapt forward to stop him from attacking her, but Fuentes wound up sprinting straight past her and he collided with the wall.
He hit it with such force that he pulverized it to rubble in seconds, charged through, and took off running down the station’s corridors.
He vanished out of sight before anyone realized what was happening. Both doctors looked up.
The sight snapped Rhodes out of his shock. He pointed at Osborne. “Keep doing what you’re doing and help her! I’ll go after him!” He waved to Oakes and the soldiers. “Come on! Let’s go!”
End of Chapter 9.