Rhodes watched from a distance again while the doctors woke up the other six recruits. Rhodes really needed to come up with another word for them. The word, recruit, infuriated him.

He didn’t get involved at all while the doctors went through the usual checks and questions. Rhodes took the time to study and evaluate his remaining six people.

Lieutenant Ted Oakes was a tall man with brown hair buzzed high and tight.

He took excellent care of himself before this. His implants did nothing to conceal a wall of solid muscle across his back and shoulders.

His abdominal muscles rippled down to the implants around his hips. His legs looked extra thick inside their metal housing.

He snapped to attention in front of Rhodes when the doctors finally introduced them. “Sir!” Oakes snapped. “Lieutenant Ted Oakes of the 156th Platoon reporting for duty—Sir!”

“At ease, Lieutenant,” Rhodes murmured. “We aren’t keeping that kind of formality and protocol here. You can relax.”

Oakes frowned. “But…..aren’t we an elite military unit, Sir?”

“Only on paper. In real life, we’re just normal people trying to get through the day. Do you feel any disorientation, distress, or discomfort about your implants, Lieutenant?”

Oakes frowned again like he didn’t understand the question. “Um…no, Sir.”

“That’s good. You report to me if you start feeling any distress or any problem coping. Understand?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Rhodes turned to Georgie Henshaw. She sat on the edge of her capsule staring up at Dr. Neiland. “He did what?” Henshaw gasped. “My father did…what?”

“He enrolled you in this project to save your life,” Dr. Neiland told her. “You would have died without the implants.”

“Are you serious?” Henshaw gasped. “He sent me here….to become a robot?”

“You aren’t a robot. None of you are.” Dr. Neiland looked up when Rhodes walked over to them. “This is Captain Corban Rhodes. He’ll be your commanding officer from now on.”

“So I’m in the Legion now?” Henshaw countered. “I’m supposed to be a soldier? This is ridiculous!”

“How do you feel, Henshaw?” Rhodes asked. “Do you feel strong enough to stand up and walk around?”

She gaped at him in shocked horror….and then her eyes dipped to his body.

She scanned him up and down, took in every detail of his implants and robotic limbs, and then looked down at her own. “I don’t believe this!”

“Believe it,” Rhodes told her. “We’re all going through the same thing. None of us knew this was going to happen to us until we woke up here.”

Her one blue eye darted up to meet his. “So…..you’re a captain. You were a soldier in the Legion before this?”

“That’s right….and I guess I still am.”

She opened her mouth to say something else, but just then, a crash distracted everyone.

Rhodes turned around to see one of the capsules in pieces. Another recruit had rested his hand on the capsule’s outer edge to push himself to his feet.

He didn’t understand his strength and wound up caving in the side of the bed. The capsule’s side wall lay in pieces on the floor.

“I’m so sorry!” he exclaimed and started to bend over to pick up the pieces.

“Nothing to worry about!” Dr. Irvine rushed over and pulled the guy away from the wreckage. “You don’t have to worry about that. We’ll clean it up. Go back to what you were doing.”

“I really didn’t mean to,” the guy exclaimed. “I swear it.”

“Calm down, man,” Rhodes told him. “I broke General Brewster’s hand on my first day.”

The soldier turned around and locked one brilliant blue eye on Rhodes. The controls at the end of the guy’s capsule read, Lieutenant Dane Rhinehart.

Rhinehart was even taller, broader, more muscular, and more powerfully built than Oakes. Rhinehart had blonde hair, blue eyes, and a soft, teddy bear quality like a big, lovable kid.

“This is Captain Corban Rhodes, your commanding officer,” Dr. Irvine told Rhinehart. “He’s here to orient you to your new unit and make sure you adjust and adapt to your implants.”

Rhinehart’s eyes went through the same process of measuring Rhodes and all his mechanical body parts. “Captain…..” Rhinehart began.

“Don’t worry about it, Lieutenant,” Rhodes told him. “We’re all in the same boat here.”

Rhinehart looked away. “I need to contact my family and tell them where I am.”

“I’m sorry, but you can’t. We’re all cut off from our loved ones. We can’t go back. I’m sorry.”

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Rhodes expected some emotional reaction. Rhinehart scowled, compressed his lips, nodded once, and turned away.

Rhodes didn’t realize the rest of these people were listening. “You mean….” Henshaw stammered. “You mean….we can never go back? We can never see our families again?”

“Basically,” Rhodes replied. “The Legion has already notified your families that you’re dead. You basically did die in whatever circumstances brought you here. Whatever life you had out there is over.”

Another man stood off to one side rotating his arms back and forth in front of his face. The name at the end of his capsule read, Sergeant Jairo Dietz. He was tall and thin with uncut hair, quick, wary black eyes, and unnaturally long fingers.

“This is great!” he exclaimed when he moved his fingers around. “I would pay for this and now I get it for free.”

Corporal Keller Gannon walked around his capsule studying all the controls. He was Rhodes’s size with plain brown hair and a no-nonsense attitude.

Gannon studied the controls with interest. “How does this work? How does it read all the person’s vital functions while they’re inside?”

“If you don’t mind, Captain,” Dr. Montague told Rhodes. “We really need to accelerate our timeline. If you wouldn’t mind taking your unit back to the barracks, we need to get started on our training routine.”

“Your timeline calls for me to orient three of them at a time,” Rhodes pointed out. “The next thing I know, you’ll be telling me to take them into battle without any training or orientation at all.”

“We wouldn’t do that, but we do need to get them out of the lab. If you don’t mind…..”

Montague waved toward the exit. Rhodes surveyed his people one last time. Jesus, could this get any worse? He didn’t even have time to get to know them first.

The last member of the battalion was a young guy with mousy brown hair and blue eyes. Corporal Eddie Coulter sauntered over to Henshaw on their way out of the lab.

Coulter was by far the smallest man in the room with short, light hair and a wiry, energetic, almost frenzied quality like a spring about to pop.

He grinned at Henshaw. Rhodes could have mistaken that grin for flirting if they had been anywhere else in the universe.

“So….” Coulter began. “You weren’t in the Legion before this?”

“No, I was an executive in a marketing firm.”

“Then you’re definitely moving up in the world,” Coulter remarked.

Henshaw laughed and Coulter cracked a crazy grin. Neither of the new people showed any sign of disorientation or distress.

Their interaction gave Rhodes a feeling of impending doom. When would one of them snap and do something dangerous either to themselves or someone else?

He took them back to the barracks and introduced them to Lauer, Fuentes, and Thackery.

Fuentes sat hunched on a bench at the table staring at the floor. He didn’t respond to anything Rhodes said.

Gannon went over to the capsules and started tapping on the controls. “Don’t touch that, Corporal,” Rhodes told him.

“How am I supposed to learn about all this?” Gannon asked.

“These machines regulate your vital functions. These controls have been dialed in to make your bodies function at their optimum. You could risk your own life if you mess with the levels—or you could cause a malfunction that could cost someone else their life. Just leave it alone.”

Gannon turned away and mumbled, “Yes, Sir.”

He started searching the room and studying all the furniture and furnishings in minute detail. Someone had replaced the computer terminal while Rhodes was away.

Thackery sat behind it studying it. Gannon went over to her and bent over to see what she was reading.

“Normally, I would take some time to let you all get comfortable and take in what’s happened to you,” Rhodes began. “Under the circumstances, the doctors want us to escalate our timeframe, so I have to start training you now.”

“Won’t that cause problems later on?” Thackery asked.

“Do I sound like I think this is a good idea?” Rhodes asked. “Let’s go. We can explain things as we go.”

He led the way outside. The rest of his people talked to each other on the way down the hall heading for the training room.

“How long have you been here, Sir?” Gannon asked.

“I guess about three weeks,” Rhodes replied. “I had some problems at first, so the doctors didn’t want to wake up the rest of you until I straightened myself out.”

“What kind of problems?” Rhinehart asked.

Rhodes shrugged. “Problems adjusting to my implants. I was alone. I didn’t have anyone to explain to me what was happening. I was the first person to go through the process, so no one really knew what was normal for me.”

“Damn! That sucks,” Coulter remarked.

“Yes, it did, so don’t be shy about speaking up if you have any problem adjusting. We’re all in uncharted territory here. No one knows how this will affect anyone. In fact, we can expect it to affect everyone differently.”

Rhodes glanced at Fuentes, but Fuentes didn’t react to what Rhodes said. Fuentes walked down the hall with the rest of the battalion. Fuentes didn’t try to talk to anyone, but at least he wasn’t a puddle of tears on the floor.

Maybe these other people would be good for him the way they were good for Rhodes. Maybe that was the only problem—being alone with this nightmare.

“All the soldiers’ brainwaves appear to be functioning normally,” Fisher told Rhodes on the way. “I don’t detect any distress in any of them.”

“What about Rudy?” Rhodes asked.

“Who are you talking to, Sir?” Oakes asked.

“I’ll explain it to you when we get there,” Rhodes replied.

“Fuentes appears to be regulating much better now, too.”

“Keep an eye on it for me, will you?” Rhodes asked.

“Of course, Captain.”

Rhodes escorted his people into the training room. “What are we doing here?” Henshaw asked.

“I told you. We’re here to train our implants. We’re about to enter a world that will become your everyday existence for as long as you’re in this battalion.”

“What does that mean?” Oakes asked.

Rhodes sighed. “I can’t explain it to you. I’ll have to show you.”

He signaled Fisher and the whole group dropped into The Grid. The recruits looked around them.

“What is this place?” Gannon asked.

“It’s The Grid,” Thackery replied.

“I can see that, but what is it?” Gannon asked.

“It’s essentially a computer construct of the world,” Rhodes explained. “The Grid will morph and change shape to create battle scenarios to train us. The Grid will also modify your implants into different forms and shapes so you can fight the enemy more effectively.”

Dietz snorted. “That’s impossible.”

“You never said anything to us about this,” Thackery pointed out.

“We were going to train that next, but the doctors decided to wake up the rest of the battalion first.” Rhodes turned to his new soldiers. “The Grid is going to start to change right now. You’re going to see some shapes and then your SAMs will come online.”

“Whats?” Henshaw asked.

Rhodes didn’t even try to explain. He signaled Fisher and the SAMs activated in front of each person’s face. The interface showed Rhodes everything the soldiers saw.

The grid lines went through their usual twisting contortions until each one settled each a particular image.

Henshaw’s SAM turned out to be a baby-faced panda named Koen. Oakes’s SAM was an outline of grid squares with no color or visible features at all. It had a male voice and its name was Dash.

Gannon’s SAM was actually a normal human man named Santos. Dietz got a cosmic pulsating orb of crackling lightning named Zen. Coulter got a dog named Murphy.

Rhodes stood back and watched and listened to his people holding conversations with their SAMs He didn’t see any of these people having any problem adjusting. Everything seemed to be working the way it should.

That only made him dread the day when they did start having problems.

End of Chapter 15.