Rhodes nodded to Fisher and activated The Grid. Rhodes didn’t really have to do anything because The Grid was already active.

He brought up the grid lines. They covered the barracks walls, all the capsules, the table, the computer terminal, and all the people present. The grid lines even covered all the SAMs’ faces.

Rhodes manipulated the grid lines to change the surroundings. He didn’t really know what he was doing at first. He just stretched the lines apart, yanked them back and forth, and tried everything possible to change them and tear them out of position.

“Attack that spot right there, Captain!” Fisher ordered, and at the same instant, he made a red dot appear on the wall next to the table.

Rhodes shot his grid lines toward that one spot. More grid lines erupted from Fisher’s head and converged on the same target.

Their lines merged, tangled with each other, and knotted in the grid lines that made up the wall itself.

The longer this went on, the more obvious it became that the grid lines covering the walls weren’t just Rhodes’s neural core reading the surroundings.

Those grid lines were part of the fabric of the Masks’ illusion. The grid lines constructed this fake reality and made everything around the battalion seem real.

Rhodes attacked the lines with all his might. He raised his hands, grappled his fingers into the lines, and pulled.

They stretched out of position. He put more force on his own lines and felt Fisher tearing at the lines from right next to him.

The two of them wrenched and tugged. Little by little, they succeeded in ripping the lines far enough apart. A few inches of the wall separated.

Everyone stared at the spot as it opened into a hole big enough to see through. Masks appeared beyond the breach. They stood around an upright conversion station with Fuentes standing in it.

“No way!” Oakes whispered.

“Those bastards!” Wild muttered.

Rhodes fought harder to widen the opening. He never dreamed it would be this hard. “Help us! Bring all your grid lines to this one spot. We can break out of….”

A broken roar echoed across the barracks and a heavy weight slammed into Rhodes from the side.

He pitched across the floor and his grid lines snapped out of the wall. The hole closed and The Grid vanished again.

Rhodes hit the floor with Fuentes on top of him. Rhodes floundered to figure out what the hell was going on, but not before Fuentes scrambled on top of him, straddled Rhodes’s middle, and started flailing his fists in Rhodes’s face.

Fuentes landed five solid punches before Rhodes reacted well enough even to raise his hands. Fuentes hit Rhodes’s facial implants on the right side, but Fuentes’s blows from the left side connected with Rhodes’s jaw, cheekbone, and eye socket.

Rhodes lay flat on his back taking the hits while he tried to decide what to do about this. One part of him told him to raise his scourge gun and blow the kid to kingdom come.

The other part of Rhodes just stared up at Fuentes in stunned disbelief. Rhodes couldn’t connect what he’d just been doing with Fuentes attacking him like this.

Everyone else in the battalion reacted much quicker. Van and Fisher both threw their grid lines around Fuentes trying to wrestle his arms away from Rhodes.

Fuentes’s rage overcame their best efforts. He bared his teeth in Rhodes’s face and kept swinging for the fences. He landed a dozen more punches before Rhinehart, Lauer, Oakes, and Coulter rushed over to intervene.

“You ruin everything!” Fuentes bellowed. “You ruined my life!”

Rhinehart grabbed Fuentes by one arm. He handled Fuentes just fine on that side without any help. It took Oakes and Lauer working together on the other side before all three men dragged Fuentes off Rhodes.

“YOU SON OF A BITCH!!” Fuentes roared at Rhodes. “YOU ROTTEN BASTARD!!”

“Back off, Rudy!” Rhinehart gave Fuentes an almighty yank, sent him staggering across the room, and slammed him against the wall.

Fuentes tried to blast off the wall just as fast. Rhinehart slammed his hand against Fuentes’s chest and pinned him there.

“You aren’t going anywhere, son,” Rhinehart snapped. “Keep still before I pound you into the dirt.”

“YOU FILTHY, ROTTEN PIECE OF SHIT!!” Fuentes yelled again. “I swear I’ll fucking kill you!”

“What the hell is wrong with you, kid?” Lauer countered. “We all saw….”

“You ruin everything!” Fuentes thundered again. “You ruined the one good thing that came out of this whole nightmare.”

“You actually want to be the Masks’ prisoner?” Oakes demanded. “You just saw them experimenting on you.”

“How do we know that isn’t part of the illusion?” Thackery asked. “That doesn’t prove anything.”

Wild chimed in. “If the captain is right, then all of us working together should be able to….”

“NO!!” Fuentes roared. “NO!! You can’t!!”

Rhinehart braced his arm again to hold Fuentes down, but Fuentes turned out to be stronger than anyone gave him credit for.

He squirmed out from under Rhinehart’s hand and tried to charge across the room to attack Rhodes again.

Rhinehart reacted instantly, lunged for him, and tackled Fuentes around the waist. Rhinehart’s bulk brought Fuentes crashing down on the ground. The impact thumped the floor under Rhodes’s feet.

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He stayed lying down where he was watching the whole disaster. He didn’t even stand up to get involved in this.

Fuentes fought back, but Rhinehart wasn’t taking any prisoners this time. He wrestled Fuentes back down onto the floor, clambered on top of him, and sat on Fuentes’s chest.

Rhinehart crushed Fuentes’s arms under his knees. When Fuentes still didn’t settle down, Rhinehart swiveled his scourge gun forward and aimed it straight at Fuentes’s head.

“Don’t you even think for two seconds I won’t blow your shriveled little head off!” Rhinehart snarled. “You think I’d let you keep all of us as prisoners because you can’t handle reality? Shut the fuck up, you little shrimp! Make another sound and I swear I’ll fucking kill you!”

Fuentes didn’t make another sound, but he didn’t stop jerking and fighting to free himself. He couldn’t get out from under Rhinehart’s weight.

Rhodes didn’t move or make a sound, either. He’d never seen Rhinehart like this. He bared his teeth and an insane light of brutal fury blazed in his cold, light eyes. He really looked like a monster.

Oakes finally broke the tense silence. “Rhinehart is right. If the captain is telling the truth, then we have to find a way to break out of here and escape.”

“If the captain is telling the truth?!” Fisher countered. “You all saw it for yourselves. You saw the evidence with your own eyes. This is The Grid. It’s a fabricated landscape to keep you all docile and cooperative.”

“How do we know you didn’t fabricate this for some reason?” Dietz chimed in. “You’re always in the captain’s pocket….”

“You better shut the hell up!” Rhinehart bellowed.

“Just listen to me for a second, will you?” Fisher went on. “You all remember what life was like at Coleridge Station. Some of you wanted to end your lives because you couldn’t stand to live with these implants. What happened to that? The Masks are either feeding you these positive experiences or they’re outright drugging you to make you forget. Either way, we have to find a way to escape.”

“YOU BASTARDS!!” Fuentes howled. “I’LL KILL YOU!! I’LL KILL YOU ALL! YOU RUIN EVERYTHING!!”

No one answered him. Oakes finally walked over to Rhodes and held out his hand to help Rhodes get up. “You okay?”

Rhodes nodded, but he already felt the left side of his face swelling up from Fuentes’s beating.

“Your systems and brainwave functions are all reading as normal, Captain,” Fisher informed him.

Rhodes didn’t answer. He really didn’t care if his systems and brainwave functions were reading as normal. Getting punched in the face didn’t mean a thing compared to being some enemy’s prisoner.

Oakes turned around to face the room. “So what’s our next move?”

“Our next move is whatever General Overstreet says it is,” Thackery replied. “This proves nothing. It could be another trick.”

“A trick—for what purpose?” Oakes asked.

She raised her eyebrows at him. “You aren’t actually going along with this, are you? So he used his grid lines to change The Grid exactly the way he said he would. He could have created that image to show us. It means nothing.”

“You are not standing there calling the captain a liar!” Rhinehart bellowed over his shoulder.

“I’m not saying he’s telling the truth, either. If someone is messing with our heads, they could have created some fake version of the captain to trick us all into betraying the Legion. Did you ever think of that?”

“Oh, for shit’s sake, use your head!” Oakes countered. “You heard what Fisher said. Don’t you remember what it was like at Coleridge Station?”

“Maybe those memories are the fake ones,” Thackery replied. “I like it here better. If I have to choose, I choose to stay here.”

“Even if you’re a prisoner?” Oakes asked.

She shrugged. “I haven’t seen anything to prove to me that I am one.”

Oakes groaned, threw up his hands, and spun away. “I don’t believe I’m hearing this.”

“I agree with Thackery,” Dietz chimed in. “If someone is messing with our heads, that someone is as likely to be the captain as anyone else.”

“You always were a piece of shit, Dietz,” Rhinehart snarled. “You’re next on my list as soon as I take care of Fuentes here.”

Rhodes couldn’t listen to this. He stepped forward and waved at Rhinehart. “Let him up, man. We’re not going to start threatening our own people.”

Rhinehart pretended to ignore him, bent over Fuentes, and jammed his weapon harder into the organic side of Fuentes’s face.

“Don’t think you’re getting away with something ‘cuz the captain is a nice guy,” Rhinehart snarled. “Try it again and your brain will be decorating that wall over there with all kinds of pretty colors. Just give me one reason, you little shit.”

He stabbed his weapon a little harder into Fuentes’s face before Rhinehart leaned back, stood up, and backed away.

Rhodes didn’t reprimand Rhinehart for threatening Fuentes again. Rhodes didn’t say anything when Rhinehart gave Dietz and Thackery dirty looks, too.

Rhodes raised both hands. “Look. I didn’t expect to convince any of you. If someone doesn’t believe me….”

“We do,” Oakes interrupted.

“Speak for yourself,” Thackery snapped. “I’ll believe this whole illusion bullshit when I see it.”

“You just did see it, you stupid bitch!” Rhinehart bellowed.

“Hey—Lieutenant!” Rhodes snapped. “Cool it—right now!”

Rhinehart wheeled away and stormed across the room to get as far away from Fuentes, Dietz, and Thackery as he possibly could get.

Oakes turned to Lauer. “Come on, man. Say something. Back up the captain.”

Lauer’s dark eyes darted around the room. “I don’t know what to think.”

“Oh, come on!” Oakes countered. “You just saw the Masks standing over Rudy’s station.”

“I’m….I’m sorry,” Lauer replied. “I can’t accept that. I need to see more. I don’t say anything against the captain or Fisher or anything like that. I just…..It isn’t exactly conclusive proof, is it?”

“Thank you,” Thackery interjected. “That’s what I said.”

“I don’t expect you to accept it at face value,” Rhodes replied. “If we all work together and combine our grid lines, we can make better progress. Maybe we’ll even break through and see that we really are in The Grid.”

“To hell with you!” Fuentes blurted out. “We finally found something good and you want to tear it all down! You want us all crazy and scared and even dead! You’re the one who got Henshaw killed! You want to screw with all our lives….”

This time, it was Oakes who overreacted. He shot out his arm and hit the blade of his hand against Fuentes’s chest. “Hey! You take that back right now! The captain had nothing to do with Henshaw’s death. That was a malfunction.”

“This could be a malfunction, too,” Lauer pointed out. “How do we know what’s real and what isn’t? We could all be okay and someone or something else could be messing with our programming from out of sight.”

“Yeah. The Masks are messing with it,” Oakes countered. “They’re making this world feel so much better and all of us so much happier exactly the way Fisher says. It all makes sense.”

“None of it makes sense,” Thackery fired back. “The Masks are our allies. They couldn’t have gotten the Inviria off the planet without the Legion—without us.”

“Who are the Inviria?” Fisher asked. “Where did they come from? They don’t exist. This whole Grid illusion invented them to make us cooperate with the Masks and think of them as our allies.”

She shook her head, but right then, Dr. Littlejohn and Dr. Rollins entered the barracks for some reason. The timing was too perfect to be a coincidence.

“We need you all to come down to the lab,” Dr. Littlejohn announced. “The governing body plans to send you to a different front of the alien invasion wars. We need to make some modifications to your systems before you deploy.”

Rhodes and his comrades exchanged glances. Rhodes couldn’t talk about this in front of the two doctors.

Why did he hesitate to talk about it? They interfered with everything else. The Masks must be able to see and hear everything going on in The Grid.

No one moved for a second. Oakes and Coulter both glanced at Rhodes to see what he would do.

He finally walked out of the barracks and followed the two doctors to the lab. What the hell else was he supposed to do?

“At least we tried,” Fisher murmured on their way there. “At least Oakes and Rhinehart listened—or at least Oakes listened.”

Rhodes didn’t answer him, either. Fisher didn’t make Rhodes feel better. He might have convinced Oakes.

Rhinehart stood up for Rhodes because….well, because Rhinehart was Rhinehart and Rhodes was Rhodes. Rhinehart would have stood up for Rhodes no matter what.

Rhodes walked into the lab and went into a trance waiting for the doctors to finish whatever adjustments they had to make. He had too much on his mind to pay attention to them.

Dr. Littlejohn moved around his head doing something with her electrodes. Without warning, she tapped a spot at the base of his skull and the whole world went black.

End of Chapter 17.