Lauer took off racing up the hills toward the enemy artillery along the peak. A bunch of aliens scurried around up there trying to set up their guns so they could open fire on Stonebridge.

The rest of the battalion sprinted after Lauer, but he still got there first.

Rhodes went with them, but only so he could try to convince them. “Don’t you remember talking to me in that capsule in the Masks’ hospital?” he asked Fisher on the way. “You said there might be a way to hack the grid lines to break out of this place.”

Fisher frowned at him. “I never said that.”

“You don’t remember being a human being just a few minutes ago? You changed when this battle scenario started. How do you explain that? You aren’t a person. We belong to Battalion 1—which is a part of the Aemon Legion. Stonebridge and everyone in it are a Grid simulation to keep us docile and cooperative so the Masks can experiment on us.”

Fisher started to reply, but they didn’t have time to discuss it any further before they got within range of the aliens’ artillery.

Lauer swooped in low, bombarded the artillery with Vipers, and kept racing down the line delivering dozens of strikes to the alien position.

He kept going to the edge of the mountain, plunged down the other side, and attacked the Inviria fighting vehicles with lasers.

Rhinehart, Fuentes, and Coulter dove for the artillery, too, and those three didn’t leave. They hammered multiple artillery posts with Vipers, destroyed seven of them, and landed on the ground between the others.

The aliens grabbed their weapons to defend the artillery. The Inviria used some kind of pulse technology and two shots hit Coulter.

They knocked him off his feet, but they didn’t damage him. He sprang up just as fast, charged back into the attack, and used his grid lines to change himself into a machine with multiple laser ports firing from all sides.

He cut down a dozen Inviria and started on the artillery. He cut each weapon to pieces and left them lying in piles along with all the dead aliens.

Rhinehart and Fuentes rampaged down the line destroying and killing just as fast. Dietz, Oakes, and Thackery dove over the other side of Miller’s Peak to intercept a bunch of enemy vehicles coming up the back slope.

They carried more artillery parts to assemble there so they could assault Stonebridge. Rhodes lost his head for a minute, raced to catch up with his people, and opened fire on the vehicles.

Two of them exploded right in front of him before he remembered. He had to use this moment to access The Grid and try to break out of this false world.

He started to turn toward Fisher again. Fisher was his only hope. The others either didn’t believe him or were too busy to listen.

Was this the Masks’ plan all along—to distract the battalion so no one would think too hard about what they were doing?

Rhodes opened his mouth to ask Fisher about using The Grid to interfere with this simulation.

At that moment, an Inviria spacecraft thundered overhead laying down dozens of shots. Pulses boomed from the ship’s sides and smashed Dietz, Oakes, and Thackery out of the sky.

They hit the ground and Rhinehart and Fuentes stopped what they were doing to rush to their comrades’ aid.

The sight of his people in danger did something to Rhodes. He gunned his boosters, rocketed into the atmosphere, and targeted the spacecraft.

It towered to the clouds as big as a Ravager, but it wasn’t a Ravager. He didn’t recognize what type of ship it was.

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He dodged more pulse shots aimed at him, dove in close to the ship’s side, and carved his laser through its hull. The Grid didn’t tell him anything about where to hit this ship to do any damage.

He got to the other side of the ship’s underbelly and swerved upward to keep cutting up the side hull.

“The ship’s reactor is located a hundred feet inside the starboard fusion ports.” Fisher showed him an interior diagram of the ship. “You’ll have to hit that to destroy the ship.”

Rhodes didn’t answer. He was too busy blasting his lasers through the hull. The heat sparked off the metal, spurted in his face, and left tiny pinprick burns on his skin.

That faint sensation of heat and pain exploded his energy off the charts. A surge of power, energy, and pleasure rushed through him. He was destroying his enemies. He never wanted to stop wreaking destruction on them.

He pivoted up the ship’s side, narrowed all his firepower into two giant lasers, and punched through the hull with devastating force.

Some kind of fighter craft he hadn’t seen before wheeled in the air behind him. These aliens—whoever they were—they didn’t have fighter craft before. These ships just materialized out of thin air, but Rhodes didn’t think about that.

He brought his lasers together, torched a breach through the hull, and forced his way inside.

As soon as he got inside the hull, he widened his laser spread. He threw his arms out to his sides, but he also used his grid lines to change his weapons configuration.

Lasers fired from every part of him. He didn’t think about how he did it. The Grid changed him into whatever he wanted to be. It all happened seamlessly, effortlessly, and without thought.

He didn’t even take the time to check what shape he was or what shape he was becoming. He only cared about one thing.

Lasers spouted from his fingertips, his eyes, and every other part of his body. He revolved through the ship’s interior blasting everything to scrap metal.

Aliens fled from him. They couldn’t defend themselves inside their own ship.

He barely saw any of that. He didn’t check what he was destroying or how. He didn’t care.

He kept his gaze locked on The Grid in front of him. He tracked his own progress getting close to the reactor.

“As soon as you blow it, you’ll have to get out of the ship as fast as possible,” Fisher told him. “You can’t go out the way you came. Take this route instead.”

Fisher showed Rhodes an exhaust duct leading from the reactor upward to the ship’s engines.

He’d broken down too many walls, bulkheads, and ceilings along the route he took to get here. His own destructive path blocked him from going that way.

The duct was wide enough for Rhodes to fly through to escape the ship once it started to destruct.

He read a split-second’s view of the reactor—just long enough to see how to destroy it.

He flew into a different conduit, slammed his boosters to full throttle, unleashed a single Viper missile on the reactor, and took off at his top speed heading for the duct.

He didn’t stick around long enough for the Viper to hit its target. He soared into the duct making tracks for safety in the open sky, but neither he nor Fisher planned on the reactor blowing up the way it did.

The Viper struck home and a brutal concussion slammed Rhodes into the wall before he even got into the duct.

He crashed into the wall hard enough to dent the metal. Fire plumed into the conduit and another sickening boom shuddered the ship all around him.

“Get up, Captain!” Fisher bellowed. “You have to get out of here now!”

Rhodes floundered upright and staggered as a second lick of fire erupted into the conduit.

“You’ll have to fly through the explosion!” Fisher told him. “It’s the only way to get to the duct. Go! If you stay here, you’ll go down with the ship!”

Rhodes reacted instantaneously to every word Fisher said. Rhodes never once questioned Fisher—not like this—not while Fisher was here in The Grid. Rhodes could trust this Fisher. Rhodes trusted Fisher with his life.

Rhodes fired his boosters and immediately saw what Fisher was talking about. The reactor kept letting off one explosion after another. Fire and burning plasma consumed the reactor and dozens of decks all around it.

Rhodes didn’t think twice. He launched himself straight into the burning reactor, used his grid lines to change himself into a round metal ball with no organic flesh on its exterior, and hurtled through the fire.

The ball slammed into the duct, caved in part of the wall, and Rhodes changed himself into a Striker. He just had to get off this ship alive. Nothing else mattered.

He took off at high speed, but he still didn’t make it in time. The reactor gave one last brutal explosion before the whole ship detonated in a deafening boom.

Rhodes had a split second to change himself back into a ball. He couldn’t think of any shape that would withstand the explosion.

The impact hurled him through another section of the ship’s outer hull wall, flung him clear, and he sailed out—right underneath the exploding ship.

The shockwave hit him and knocked him closer to the ground. He didn’t have time to correct or get out of the way before the burning hulk crashed into him from above.

The fuselage started falling way too fast—faster than he could react. An instant later, the ship smashed into the ground with Rhodes underneath it.

End of Chapter 12.