Rhodes helped himself to a bunch of different desserts from the trays in front of him. Koenig kept Rhodes supplied with beer through the whole meal.
He had to pace himself so he didn’t get too drunk. Whatever liver he might have left after the Battalion 1 project got through with him couldn’t hold his liquor the way he used to—not that he’d ever been much of a drinker.
The meal lasted a lot longer than he expected. By the time the group left the house and went back outside, the sun was going down. Brilliant crystal stars scattered across the sky up there.
Rhodes didn’t notice what time it was when he first woke up in that house. Time really did lose all meaning here.
A sliver of moon hung low over the pale horizon. The dark outlines of trees stuck up into the sky falling into shadow. The town looked as beautiful now as it did in daylight.
“I’ll see you folks tomorrow,” Lauer announced. “Don’t stay up too late, Captain.”
“Good night, Lieutenant,” Rhodes replied.
Lauer walked away. Rhodes didn’t even think until that moment where each of them would stay tonight.
Lauer crossed the road to a different house, pushed the door open, and walked in like he owned the place.
Golden firelight poured from inside. Rhodes caught a glimpse of the interior before Lauer shut the door.
A slender blonde woman worked around the table where three children sat eating their dinner. The woman looked up from her work when Lauer came in.
She smiled at him in such obvious affection that Rhodes stopped in his tracks. He knew that look. It was the look of a wife greeting her husband after he comes home from work.
Rhodes stood stock still and gaped in mounting horror as each of his subordinates split away to a different house.
Thackery met up with a man Rhodes didn’t recognize. She slipped her arm around this stranger’s waist, kissed him right in the middle of the road, and they went off together with their arms around each other.
They entered a house across the road and shut themselves inside it. Oakes, Rhinehart, and Coulter all entered houses with women and children living in them.
A brick dropped into the pit of Rhodes’s stomach when he saw the same rapturous expression on all their faces. It was the look of devoted love—from all of them.
Why did he think it would be any different? What else was the battalion supposed to do here? How else could they be happy?
While he stood there scrambling to make some sense of this, Koenig came out of the house the battalion just left.
He stopped next to Rhodes, turned to Van, and Koenig slipped his hand into hers. “Are you ready to go home, my dear?” Koenig asked.
She burst into a huge smile. “Always. Let’s go.”
They kissed each other and walked away. Dietz, Fuentes, and Murphy left in different directions. Rhodes didn’t see where they went.
Fisher snapped Rhodes out of his trance. “Come on. I’ll walk you home.”
Rhodes stumbled after him. “Where is home? Where am I supposed to live in this town?”
Fisher stopped in the middle of the road and pointed behind Rhodes. “Over there.”
Rhodes turned around to see what Fisher was pointing at. It was the house where Rhodes woke up this morning—or whenever it was.
The door stood open. The woman Rhodes had seen going into that house earlier bent over an iron pot hanging from a hook above the flames glowing in the fireplace.
She ladled soup into a wooden bowl and placed it on the table in front of the little boy Rhodes had seen earlier. Then the woman served another bowl of soup to a girl sitting across from her brother.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The woman served two more bowls and placed them on the table. She sat down in front of one of them. The other one she positioned across from her at an empty place on the bench next to the girl.
Rhodes’s chest tightened at the sight. That was his house? Was that the place he was supposed to live? Was he the person who was supposed to sit at that empty place and complete the domestic picture?
Fisher bumped his elbow. “I’m going home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Rhodes jolted out of his shock and spun around. Fisher was already walking away and grinning over his shoulder on his way to a different house—a house directly across the road from the one he said was Rhodes’s.
Fisher walked into another scene of a woman serving dinner to her children. She stopped what she was doing and rose on her tiptoes to kiss Fisher when he entered. Then she went back to work.
Fisher took a step into the house and pulled the door toward himself to shut it. He paused there on the threshold and stared out at Rhodes in the darkness.
The light shone all around Fisher. He looked so human like this.
His eyes locked on Rhodes in an expression Rhodes had never seen before. It was the blatant look of challenge of a man who will do absolutely anything to protect his family.
He looked at Rhodes like that. Fisher wouldn’t let anything take this experience away from him. He wouldn’t let anyone shatter the dream. No man in his right mind let that happen.
Rhodes stood still until Fisher shut the door. It cut off the light. Darkness and chill fell over Stonebridge as one door after another closed for the night. Rhodes was the only person left outside.
One door remained standing open. It waited for him to go inside and fall back into the rhythm of domesticity, family, and belonging.
He could fall back into that world so easily. He already knew how good it would feel to sit at that table and talk to that woman and her children about all their activities, concerns, and challenges.
He couldn’t bring himself to do it. He had three children, not two. That woman didn’t look enough like his wife to complete the illusion. She was a stranger.
He would be betraying his real family if he went in there. He would be betraying himself.
The whole idea of substituting someone else’s family for his own—it revolted him. Who was the father who should have been sitting at that table?
It certainly wasn’t Rhodes. He knew nothing about any of those people.
Did the father die? Did he leave?
He didn’t do any of those things because he didn’t exist. None of this did. It was all a projection in The Grid.
The Grid created a family for Rhodes to move into. The Grid created that house, that table, and the perfect scenario for Rhodes to sit down and become the missing piece of the puzzle.
Those children didn’t have a father. They had never been born. That woman might have materialized on the spot when Rhodes woke up this morning. How could he really know?
He cast a glance around the shadowy town. How much longer would the woman leave the door open waiting for him to come in?
The whole town looked so different, now that he remembered why he was here. He was a prisoner. He always had been and he always would be.
He would be even more a prisoner inside that house. That house was the Iron Maiden that would seal his fate. He couldn’t go in there. He didn’t want to go in there. He would rather die.
He walked away. He had no idea where he would go instead. He only knew he couldn’t stay here.
He set off walking farther up the road heading west. It was in the opposite direction from where most of the battalion lived.
He was just making up his mind to sit down under a tree to think about this. Then he spotted a barn behind a different house. The people who owned livestock kept their animals in these barns.
Rhodes slipped into one of them. It was completely dark. No one could see him here.
He climbed into the hayloft, stretched out on a pile of hay, and stared up at the ceiling. It was another beam ceiling with hand-shaved planks nailed to the beams.
He was still in The Grid. The whole battalion was in here, including the SAMs.
Fisher obviously didn’t remember his conversation with Rhodes in the hospital. Fisher didn’t remind Rhodes about their plan to use The Grid to break out of this simulation.
Rhodes didn’t remember in time to remind Fisher, either. How would Fisher react when Rhodes told him about their plan to escape?
Rhodes didn’t trust Fisher—not this human Fisher—especially not after the way Fisher looked out at Rhodes just now.
Why in God’s name would Fisher want to give up this life? He sure looked happy with his new family and his humanity.
Heaven help the man who tried to drag Dash away from his women. The rest of the battalion was all happily settled here with families of their own.
Only one person offered Rhodes any hope. Wild kept to himself. He didn’t join the domestic bliss. He didn’t share the battalion’s meal or their beer or their talk.
Rhodes would bet his last penny that Wild didn’t have a family in The Grid. Did he realize this was all fake?
Wild always did have a way of calling a spade a spade. He never varnished over anything. He told it like it was—always. That’s what made him a perfect SAM for Lauer.
Lauer had one fatal weakness. He loved his family. What man didn’t?
Rhodes loved his family, too. He loved his real family. He didn’t want another one, especially not some fantasy the Masks cooked up to keep him sedated and passive.
He had to find a way out of here. Fisher thought they could use the grid lines to shatter this illusion.
Rhodes tried, but he couldn’t even drop into The Grid from here. It didn’t work here the way it did in the real world. How could he use his grid lines to tear this world apart if he couldn’t access his grid lines?
Was he really planning on destroying this world—so he could go back to the torturous outer world of the Masks’ captivity? He really must be out of his mind.
That didn’t matter because he couldn’t get out. He couldn’t use The Grid. He couldn’t use his grid lines. He couldn’t shatter this illusion at all. He was trapped here exactly the way the Masks planned all along.
End of Chapter 10.