The day he had feared the most had come. Bitterness and anger overwhelmed him, even before fear and pain had a chance to settle.

“Arnel,” the man going by the false identity of Ermin Wright said the moment the pod opened. “I’d like you to meet Mister Voyrin.”

The man in question was tall and dark-haired. He had a square jaw, and a military uniform decorated with so many badges, flags and merits that Arnel immediately understood the man’s importance. The secretive title of Mister did exactly what it was supposed to: Hide his true rank and identity. The room was flooded with soldiers and doctors — about six of each.

It was only then that Arnel realized something wasn’t adding up. Not only did he spend so much time in the virtual freedom of Singularity, but, as his heart monitor would confirm, fear and the myriad negative emotions occupying all his real-world, very limited, emotional buffer made him miss something crucial and relevant to his condition.

He could see.

Perhaps calling it seeing was a bit of a stretch. No, the two men standing shoulder to shoulder right in front of him were massless, shapeless blobs of excited electron plasma, firing off photons through a hazy mist of air molecules. But somehow, even though that is all he could see, another version of him, in his brain, saw the room for what it was, and “narrated” it to him. That was the only way he could describe the feeling of seeing. Sometimes, the two ideas would merge and then diverge again, for a moment, like a stabilizing image, returning to him the sensation of having true sight.

More importantly, there was something else. Even as a scream ripped itself from his throat, purely in anticipation of the coming pain, he was already aware of another change.

There was no pain, either.

“Give him some morphine,” Ermin nodded to the army of doctors — army doctors? — seeing Arnel’s twisted up face. Even Mister Voyrin frowned, no doubt even he realized how inhumane it was to keep Arnel like this.

Arnel had learned over a month of pain that it is better to scream first, rather than allow himself to have hope that the pain would disappear. Those crushed hopes, as the nerves came alive and burned with the fires of all Hells, hurt more than the pain itself did. Pain of the physical form was one thing, and one could, perhaps, even get used to it if it did not outright kill him — not that his ‘concerned’ medical professionals would allow such a thing; oh no, buddy, death was not an option — but the pain of the soul was far worse.

So he screamed again, just for good measure. He had nothing left to lose; no dignity, no pride, nothing. Even if by chance — and he cursed himself for even considering such a possibility, relying on the fairy dust that was hope — the pain would not return, then there was no disadvantage to letting these people believe he was in pain. But he could already imagine why they were here. How would that conversation go, anyway? You are accused of possessing a Weapon of Mass Destruction, banned by Commonwealth Treaty Bogus-Number-dash-Article-something.

Oh no, Arnel had long given up on the idea that he might see sunlight again, both on the account of being blind as a bat, and the fact that if he was not going to be put to death, they would throw him into a hole under some God-forsaken mountain and forget he ever existed. Considering an entire lifetime of pain, which was still possible, Arnel would rather choose death. So, scream as hard as he might, if he could draw out even one iota of mercy from Mister Voyrin, he hoped it would materialize into a summary execution, instead of Option B: Lifetime imprisonment.

And it worked. Voyrin looked more and more distraught by the sight of Arnel, who had screamed so hard the monitors showed damage to his vocal cords once again — only recently repaired in the Sim Pod. He screamed so hard that his brain got the idea and created a problem. Arnel felt pain, but it was a phantom shadow of what it was only who knows how many hours prior.

Then the morphine kicked in, and Arnel, on cloud nine so-to-speak, could not give a single damn about anything ever going forward. For at least a few hours until the opiates clear out of his bloodstream. Even modern medicine could not find a replacement for morphine and opiate-based medicines. Sure, in a majority of cases, they could put someone under, or administer electrical signals that blocked or confused pain receptors, but in Arnel’s case it didn’t work.

Immediately, Arnel’s heart-rate plummeted to reasonable levels and his pain diagrams evened out to around three and a half out of ten. The AI managing the checks must’ve been conservative and prudent, because Arnel could not feel a thing. Not only could he not feel pain, he couldn’t feel his toes, fingers or face. He thought he could feel his hair growing, but that was probably the drugs. He heard waves in the distance, but he was not sure if that was fantasy or reality.

“It appears the new dose is working, Arnel,” Ermin said, patting the sixteen-year-old’s knee, like a father would. “Aren’t you happy? Soon, you will be able to go to school again.”

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Arnel nodded. Somewhere, trapped in his mind, the real Arnel cursed himself for so easily admitting everything.

“That AI of yours...” Ermin sighed. “It filters it all out before it gets to where it needs to go. It puts your synapses in a special mode — ah, you don’t understand a thing I am saying, do you?”

Smiling like a fool, Arnel shook his head vehemently, like it was a birthday party and his father was asking if he could guess what he got for his present. Opiates were terrifying things.

“Let me put it this way,” Ermin said. “The surgery did not go as planned. The Mind-Machine Interface… we still don’t know a lot of things.”

Oh really? No kidding! Arnel willed himself to shout at the doctor, but the drug-happy barely-legal teenager just continued smiling.

“But we are doing everything we can. Your AI is a Trained Agent, it will learn, I promise you, and soon, you won’t feel any pain and be able to see,” Ermin promised.

That is when Mister Voyrin stepped in. “On behalf of the Sector 9 Peacekeepers, I extend to you our sincerest apologies. We were against this idea from the beginning, but due to political pressure, we had no choice but to acquiesce and give you a Shard.”

Ermin nodded. “Likewise, on behalf of the Sector 9 Military Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence, we also extend to you our sincerest apologies. In theory, and theory only, there should have been no complications. We didn’t mean you any harm. If things went the way they should’ve gone, you would be famous today, as the first person in history to have an AI-assisted brain.” He licked his lips, and his face twisted up as if he was both angry at himself and might start crying at any minute. He wiped his dry eyes with the back of his wrist and continued. “I am really, really, sorry, Arnel.”

Meanwhile, Arnel continued smiling like an idiot.

“There is nothing we can do for you here, anymore. If you want to, we can have you sign some papers — non-disclosure agreements included — and we can send you home. We’ll even give you a Sim Pod, like that one there, that can monitor your health and administer painkillers,” Ermin explained. “We are certain that eventually your Trained Agent will wake up and do what it is supposed to do, but we have no means of achieving that here, other than…”

The doctor thought about his words, but before he had a chance to speak, Voyrin raised his voice. “Don’t even think about it! Do you have any idea what would happen if we reconnected a Shard with the AGMI it came from? It could kil—“

The two — in fact, everyone — looked at Arnel as if he had gone mad.

“Why are you laughing?” Voyrin asked.

Arnel was seemingly having the time of his life. His screaming laughter echoed through the halls outside. Everyone had been used to his screaming by then, but not laughter.

“You are letting me go?” he asked in between fits of laughter. “Even though I have Leviathan?”

Somewhere, deep inside, under the frozen ice that was opium, the real, conscious, Arnel screamed in terror at his mindless, opium-dosed impostor. Why would you ask that? What is wrong with you!?

Voyrin’s gaze hardened, and even Ermin lifted an eyebrow. A cold bead of sweat appeared over Voyrin’s brow and slid down. The man changed colors. From normal pink-yellow, to bright red, to green then to pale.

It happened in an instant. Voyrin reached for his sidearm at the same instant that the Death Line appeared in Arnel's unhindered and clear vision. Time went by in slow motion. Arnel could clearly see each muscle on the Military Officer’s face become recruited, tightening into an expression of terror and determination. Arnel understood what the man thought, at a glance: Kill the monster.

But Arnel wasn’t going down without a fight. He exhaled slowly, and followed the death line — Leviathan’s instructions. It was a short one — only a few meters in length — and it circled only once in front of Arnel, at chest height, and then connected to Voyrin’s eye.

Arnel's hand fell on Voyrin’s pistol as the man pulled it out and brought it up; it was an automatic firearm capable of firing six shots per second from an internal magazine of thirty-four six-millimeter bullets. With a tug and a twist, the top slide detached from the pistol, and the spring shot out with a loud twang, and became lost somewhere in the room. The chambered bullet popped out of the uncovered chamber and glinted in the artificial light.

Arnel stabbed the top slide into Voyrin’s eye with one swift motion, and reached for the officer’s knife. He reached the end of the death line and then the soldiers shot him three times in the chest.

___

“... think about it! Do you have any idea what would happen if we reconnected a Shard with the AGMI it came from? It could kill the poor guy. Take over his mind. Or worse.”

< Abandon your current action. >

Leviathan’s words came as a sobering thought. Whatever power opium had over his mind disappeared in an instant. Arnel was in control again, deathly cold and calm. Fear flickered in his eyes, like a deer caught in the headlights.

He just had a premonition. A version of potential events unfolded before him, and in them, he died. What was that? Was it Leviathan? Desperately, he wanted to believe it was the drugs, but no matter what, he could not convince himself of such. The warning he received from Leviathan did not help either. Arnel was forced to recall the words Mister Voyrin said: that a meeting with the AGMI could kill him or take over his mind. Could that really happen, and more importantly, has it happened already?

“But it could help him!” Ermin argued with Voyrin.

“And it could make it worse. Look at him!” Voyrin pointed a finger at Arnel, and the two stared at him for a moment, noticing that the boy was not smiling anymore. This confused Voyrin, because apparently, he lost his train of thought. “Anyway, even if it was guaranteed to succeed, we can’t do it now. I cannot go into details.”

“Shall we discuss it in private?” Ermin asked.

“It is classified. Above your paygrade, director.” Voyrin spat out the last word with a healthy dose of contempt.

< They do not mean you harm. Lay low. Bide your time. I will help you. Follow my instructions. >

Arnel’s heart monitor picked up a change in his heart rhythm and started flashing a warning light. His heart was approaching its limit.

Ermin cursed. “The damned AI blocked out the opium again. Arnel, think about what I said. We can send you home, or you can stay here. We’ll have to cut this short. I am sending you back to sleep.”

Ermin pressed a button on the Pod’s door, and the bed retracted into the warm embrace of machine’s blissful sleep.

Everything went dark.