Rhodes snapped out of a deep trance. He might have been asleep or just in a cold-induced stupor. Did it matter anymore which one it was?

He floundered to see straight. His eyes didn’t track right anymore. The cold numbed everything, including the muscles of his organic eye.

Fisher wasn’t here anymore. Rhodes still sat in the same place against the wall. Thackery, Coulter, and Rhinehart hadn’t moved.

Rhodes’s mind kicked back into gear, but it didn’t function the same way, either. He slammed back and forth between numb, stupid shock, fury toward the Masks, and terror that he would die in this hole.

The pain of the cold freezing his remaining organic tissue never eased, not even when the Masks pumped a tiny trace of warmth through those wires.

A wave of hazy delirium accompanied each surge. Were the Masks drugging him and his friends, too? He wouldn’t have been at all surprised.

Those surges of confused, altered consciousness played havoc with The Grid. It kept shifting and adjusting in front of his eyes.

It changed the shape of the room and kept showing him images and pictures. He recognized some of them from his memories.

Others resembled monsters or shadow phantoms. His emotions went haywire, too. Crushing fear gripped him every time he saw one of these.

Then, when he saw someone he loved in the past, wave upon wave of despair, nostalgia, and agonized longing tore him apart.

He slammed back and forth from one extreme emotion to another. He couldn’t control it.

He eventually stopped trying. He just wished he could talk to someone about this.

He would have given anything to talk to Fisher. Fisher knew. He’d seen that picture of Rhodes’s family before Rhodes destroyed it.

What a fool he’d been to ever get rid of it. He should have kept it no matter what. He should have stuck it to the underside of his capsule cover where he could see it every morning and evening the same way Lauer put Rhodes’s sketch inside his capsule.

That didn’t matter because Rhodes remembered exactly what his family looked like. He didn’t need the Masks to show him, but they did anyway.

They also didn’t create these emotions to torment Rhodes. These emotions had been lingering just beneath the surface ever since he woke up from stasis and found out he was trapped in this nightmare.

He couldn’t even turn his head away to avoid seeing all their faces—his whole family, people he grew up with, comrades-in-arms killed in action and others irreparably wounded, men he’d carried in his arms to get them out of danger and save their lives….

The Masks dredged up every forgotten memory, even the ones Rhodes had long since forgotten or wished he’d forgotten.

Just when he thought he couldn’t stand the grief any longer, The Grid changed again. It switched back to the battle on Rono when he and the battalion shot down Legion soldiers.

Those soldiers fell to their deaths under the battalion’s weapons. Rhodes’s rage flared again. He wanted to kill the people who did this—but they weren’t people.

That would just make them easier to kill. He didn’t have to worry about hurting anyone. He could just shut these rotten machines down and call it good.

He was just getting used to hating the Masks again when his memories switched back to Coleridge Station.

He transferred all that rage, betrayal, and bloodlust onto General Brewster, the governing body, and the three doctors who woke Rhodes up from stasis.

He tried one last time to shut his eyes and block out all of this, but it came from inside his own head. His thoughts became real in The Grid. He only had to think about something and it became real.

He didn’t even have to think about it. The Masks brought up every detail of his past—the good and the bad.

Rhinehart startled Rhodes out of his nightmare. “Rocky!” Rhinehart choked. “Rocky….!”

Rhodes glanced over at Rhinehart. This was the first time any of them had spoken since Rhodes entered this compartment.

Rhinehart shifted in his seat like he wanted to get up and move around, but he never quite got his feet under him. He pushed his hands off the floor. That was as far as he could go.

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He kept blurting out, “Rocky…..ROCKY!!”

“It’s okay, man,” Rhodes husked. “He’s just offline. He’s okay. Nothing’s wrong with him.”

Rhinehart barely glanced at Rhodes and went back to searching the compartment all around him. “He….he’s in danger! I….I tried to kill him……I tried to…..when he first came online…..”

“That was a long time ago,” Rhodes pointed out. Speaking cost him all his strength. “You two have been tight ever since.”

“He’s gone!” To Rhodes’s horror, Rhinehart burst into tears. His whole face spasmed. “He’s gone! The Masks will destroy him! Then what will I do?”

“The SAMs betrayed us,” Thackery snarled under her breath. “I never want to see that son of a bitch again as long as I live.”

“We’re disconnected from our SAMs and the rest of the battalion,” Rhodes explained. “None of us is thinking clearly.”

“He was my best friend!” Rhinehart howled. “I’ve never had a friend like him before! What will I do without him?”

He broke down in wretched sobs. Rhodes dragged himself off the floor and scooted over to sit down next to Rhinehart.

“You have to stop crying,” Rhodes told him. “The tears will freeze and damage your skin more than it already is.”

He raised his hands and wiped the tears off Rhinehart’s cheeks. The tears froze instantly on Rhodes’s mechanical fingers.

The cold burned Rhodes even worse than the frigid air itself, but he kept wiping the tears away. He didn’t want them to freeze on Rhinehart’s face—or in his eye.

Rhinehart’s mouth screwed up in knots trying to fight himself under control. His whole big body quaked with buried sobs. “I gotta get him back! I gotta get him back!”

“You will get him back,” Rhodes murmured. “He’s still here. The Masks value the SAMs more than they value us. We’re alive right now because the SAMs can’t survive without us.”

“I should have killed myself a long time ago,” Thackery growled. “That would have been the best way to kill that piece of shit.”

Rhodes didn’t argue with her. Everyone in this room was losing their minds right about now.

Coulter kept his head turned aside and his chin buried against his chest so he wouldn’t see any of his comrades. He couldn’t help but hear them, though.

Rhodes stroked down Rhinehart’s cheeks a few more times. “It’s gonna be all right, man. You’ll get Rocky back. He’s as anxious about you as you are about him. You know he cares about you, right? Hey, Lieutenant! Look at me.”

Rhodes forced Rhinehart to look up at him. Rhinehart’s blue eye swam with more tears.

“He cares about you,” Rhodes repeated. “He wants to help you. He’s waiting to come back to you. He’s still there. I promise you that.”

Rhinehart nodded fast, but he had to clamp his mouth shut to stop himself from breaking down all over again.

Rhodes sat back against the wall, but he felt himself starting to lose it, too. He needed Fisher.

Rhinehart’s breakdown only brought up all of Rhodes’s worst fears. What if the Masks really did take the SAMs offline—permanently?

What if he never got Fisher back? Rhodes wouldn’t be able to cope with that.

He’d never been separated from Fisher for this long. Fisher had always been there.

Rhodes had convinced himself that Fisher always would be there. He was the one person who was always there no matter what.

Fisher was there even when he malfunctioned. He was the one person who went through all of this with Rhodes.

The more malfunctions, setbacks, and disasters they went through together, the more their thinking synchronized. They thought and felt the same way about everything.

Fisher suffered the same doubts and hopelessness. He questioned his own existence and even suggested taking himself offline. He really did understand. He understood in ways no one else ever could.

What would Rhodes do without that rock-solid foundation to lean on?

He was finding out right now what his life would be like without Fisher. It wouldn’t be worth living at all. Rhodes really would be totally, utterly alone without Fisher.

Rhodes shut his eye and rested his head back against the wall. He tried not to think about Fisher not being here.

Rhodes recreated his early morning experiences when Fisher made himself tiny, invisible, and silent to give Rhodes some privacy.

Fisher was doing that right now. He was making him a silent pinprick in the corner of Rhodes’s vision. Fisher was still here. Rhodes just couldn’t see him right now.

Fisher would expand in a few minutes. He would make himself visible where Rhodes could see and talk to him. Then everything would be fine…..but what if it wasn’t?

What if Thackery was right? What if Fisher wasn’t here because he decided to cooperate with the Masks?

What if that man Rhodes talked to in The Grid really was Fisher? What if he betrayed Rhodes and went over to the Masks’ side?

He said the Masks and the SAMs were the same race. Fisher was the one who first said the SAMs couldn’t fight the Masks because they were the SAMs’ own kind.

What if the Masks offered Fisher the one thing he most wanted in the world—a life? What if they turned him into a real man with a body, a smile, and a town to call his home? Who would say no to that?

Doubt seized Rhodes’s heart. Was Fisher his enemy after all?

In that moment, Rhodes remembered the shockwave Fisher used to incapacitate Fuentes when he first woke up and couldn’t cope.

Did Fisher use the same weapon against the battalion? What if Fisher and the other SAMs were the ones who knocked out the battalion so the Masks could take Rhodes and his people as prisoners?

Rhodes shook those thoughts out of his mind, but they wouldn’t go away. He really must be losing his marbles if he thought like that.

He needed to talk to someone—someone he trusted—but the only person he trusted that much was Fisher himself.

Was Rhodes really losing it….or did the Masks manipulate him into questioning Fisher, too? They made Rhodes question everything else. Why not that?

What better way to break down the battalion’s defenses? No one stood to gain more by supporting the battalion than the SAMs did.

Taking the SAMs away—or better yet, driving the battalion away from their SAMs—that would be the perfect, most effective way to stop the battalion from escaping—or from doing anything else.

Fisher had been gone for a matter of hours and Rhodes already felt himself losing the ability to function. Would the Masks ever send Fisher back? They would be stupid to give the battalion back the one thing they most needed to survive this.

Rhodes shut his eyes. The sight of The Grid without Fisher in it drove him insane. He kept looking around for Fisher and not seeing him anywhere. Would he ever come back? Did he even want to?

End of Chapter 5.