Battalion 1

Rhodes opened his eyes and groaned. He was lying in another capsule. It looked like the same capsule he’d been lying in when he first woke up at Coleridge Station.

He was back in Dr. Neiland’s lab, but she wasn’t here. He didn’t see anyone. He was all alone.

He felt like absolute shit—a sure sign that he’d been in a conversion cycle for a long time. That made sense if he got shot in the head.

Poor Georgie. He felt sorry for her. She probably blamed herself for this when it wasn’t her fault at all.

Rhodes looked around. He didn’t see Fisher anywhere. That was strange….or maybe Fisher was making himself scarce to give Rhodes time to wake up.

He collapsed back on the mattress fighting down the usual wave of nausea. He’d become so reliant on Fisher these last few weeks.

What would Rhodes do if Fisher tried to kill him like that? Rhodes didn’t want to believe Fisher would do anything like that. Fisher had only ever tried to help Rhodes.

Fisher wouldn’t be able to stop himself. Any random malfunction might cause Fisher to snap. It happened time and again. How long would it take before the same thing happened to Fisher? What would Rhodes do then?

He didn’t want to think about it. The thought made him shudder.

Now he had to deal with this whole glorious disaster. Oakes. Rhinehart. Henshaw. Fuentes. Coulter. Thackery. Lauer. None of them got off without some catastrophic problem.

The only person on that list who hadn’t suffered some meltdown was Lauer, but he would. It was only a matter of time.

Rhodes knew that now. These implants didn’t have to malfunction. Their very existence conflicted too deeply with the battalion’s humanity. No one could go through this without suffering some life-changing problems.

The malfunctions were just the icing on the cake. They were the symptom. The implants themselves were the disease. The only cure was death.

In a way, General Brewster shutting down the project would be a blessing in disguise. Rhodes actually looked forward to the day.

He made up his mind right then and there. The threat of Brewster shutting down the project would never make any decisions for Rhodes ever again. He would never let anyone hold that threat over his head.

If Brewster decided this project was too dangerous and too problematic, if he decided to shut it down along with everyone in it, so be it. He sure as hell wouldn’t get any argument from Rhodes.

Rhodes finally pried his limp carcass off the mattress and sat up. Rhinehart lay in another capsule nearby. Henshaw lay in another farther down the floor.

Rhodes didn’t see Dietz or Thackery anymore. Were they out of the lab now?

Just then, Fisher expanded himself from the corner of Rhodes’s vision. Fisher must have made himself small to hide from Rhodes. “How are you feeling, Captain?” Fisher asked.

“Awful,” Rhodes grumbled. “How long have I been in here?”

“About a month. Rhinehart and Henshaw have been in here the whole time, too. No one wants to reactivate them until someone figures out what went wrong with their SAMs.”

Rhodes snorted, but he did it quietly to himself. Something went wrong with their SAMs, all right. Something was always bound to go wrong with their SAMs.

“I’ve been thinking about how to correct their malfunctions,” Fisher went on.

“What have you come up with?” Rhodes asked.

“Well….nothing yet—but I’ve been thinking we might be able to correct it if we interface with them.”

“Good luck, pal,” Rhodes muttered. “You would be as likely to get infected with whatever is wrong with them.”

“Then Rhinehart and Henshaw will be taken offline. We can’t let that happen.”

“What would you do if you could interface with them?” Rhodes asked. “What could you do? What could any of us do?”

“I don’t know. Maybe something happened that reset Rocky back to the way he was when he first came online. Maybe that’s why Rhinehart lost it and tried to kill him.”

Rhodes looked down at his hands. “I don’t see what’s so bad about the way Rocky was back then. He looked like a regular SAM. There was nothing about him that would trigger Rhinehart.”

“Nothing we could see. Maybe the SAM had some feature that set off a stress response in Rhinehart. Maybe the two things are related somehow.”

“Assuming you’re right and assuming we could interface with Rhinehart and Rocky and assuming we could convince Rocky to turn back into a Khikvid, what would stop this from happening again sometime in the future? Any malfunction or battlefield injury could make Rocky switch back. The way he was might be his default voice and appearance. He did say at first that he couldn’t change. He might switch back without warning. Then we’d all be in exactly the same situation with Rhinehart trying to kill his own SAM.”

“What other option is there?” Fisher asked.

Rhodes glanced across the lab at Rhinehart asleep in his capsule. He actually looked peaceful like this. His blonde hair, boyish features, and oversized body looked almost angelic.

Maybe it would be better to shut Rhinehart down right now. He never had to wake up and deal with this shit ever again.

Rhodes shook those thoughts out of his head. He already ordered the whole battalion not to think or talk that way about each other.

Rhodes couldn’t start thinking about putting down his subordinates. He could fantasize all he liked about putting himself down, but not them. He owed them better.

“So what’s your plan on how to deal with Koen?” Rhodes asked.

“I don’t know,” Fisher murmured. “I don’t know what’s wrong with Koen.”

“I don’t see any explanation for anything that goes wrong with any of us,” Rhodes muttered. “Besides everything.”

“I’m beginning to agree with you Captain,” Fisher murmured. “Perhaps it would be better if the battalion never went back into battle.”

Just then, the door opened and Dr. Irvine came into the lab. Rhodes stiffened for a second. He relaxed when he saw that it was neither Dr. Neiland nor Dr. Montague.

Rhodes didn’t trust Irvine any further than he could throw him, but anyone would be better than Neiland.

“How are you feeling, Captain?” Dr. Irvine asked. “I’ll just take some readings on your implants to make sure they’re functioning correctly.”

“They seem to be,” Rhodes replied.

Dr. Irvine raised his eyebrows over his device. “And your SAM? Is he functioning correctly, too?”

“He seems to be. He doesn’t seem like he’s changed.”

“Does he look the same—no appearance changes?”

Rhodes studied Fisher’s face. “No, he looks the same.”

“That’s excellent. You should be clear for release as soon as you feel strong enough to stand up and walk back to the barracks.”

“What about Rhinehart and Henshaw?” Rhodes asked. “How long do you plan to keep them in here?”

Dr. Irvine shrugged. “We have no way of correcting whatever malfunctions caused this latest incident.”

“Why can’t you just readjust our behavioral protocol back to the way it was?” Rhodes asked. “That should solve the problem.”

“We already did. We adjusted it while you were asleep.” Dr. Irvine bent in to study Rhodes. “Do you feel different than you did after the adjustment?”

Rhodes thought about it. “I guess I do. I guess I feel calmer—and the memories aren’t there anymore. I mean, they aren’t as invasive as they were. I can still remember everything, but they don’t bother me the way they did after the adjustment.”

“That’s excellent. Then you’re free to go.”

“What about Rhinehart and Henshaw? They should be free to go, too. Why aren’t you waking them up?”

“Their SAMs malfunctioning had nothing to do with the behavioral protocol….”

“Of course it did! Everyone in the whole battalion went nuts after that adjustment. The incident with Dietz and Thackery happened because of the adjustment.”

“This was different. Rhinehart threatened his SAM before the adjustment, so it couldn’t have caused him to threaten it again now.”

“Are you sure about that? Maybe he had a malfunction then that didn’t get resolved. Maybe he only coped with it because his SAM looked and sounded different. Then, when the SAM returned to its original appearance, it triggered the malfunction again.”

“We aren’t detecting any malfunction in him or his SAM. Henshaw, on the other hand—her SAM definitely malfunctioned and that had nothing to do with the behavioral protocol. Her behavioral protocol doesn’t affect her SAM at all.”

“So you don’t know why Keon tried to kill her—or me?”

“We have no idea. We’ve searched his programming and we can’t find anything wrong with that, either.”

Rhodes compressed his lips to stop himself from saying what he really thought. These doctors and technicians obviously didn’t know what the hell they were doing.

They were playing with fire, but it was actually worse than that. They were playing with loaded guns. The doctors and officers were just too stupid and arrogant to realize that’s what they were doing.

Rhodes wasn’t getting anything done in here. He stood up and headed back to the barracks.

“I still think we can correct them by interfacing with them,” Fisher murmured in Rhodes’s ear on the way there.

“But we would have to wake up Rhinehart and Henshaw in order to interface with them,” Rhodes pointed out.

“True,” Fisher replied.

“Which means we’d need authorization from someone higher up the chain of command to release Rhinehart and Henshaw to us. Is it really worth that? What if someone else gets hurt—or killed?”

Fisher didn’t get a chance to answer before Rhodes walked into the barracks. Dietz and Thackery were there.

It threw the whole battalion into another confusion or readjustment. Dietz and Thackery were back. Rhinehart and Henshaw were both still gone.

Rhodes didn’t say much to either Dietz or Thackery. Rhodes made up his mind to let Dietz show himself one way or the other.

If he really was a violent, dangerous murderer in disguise, he would reveal his true colors sooner or later.

Maybe this last conversion cycle changed him. Maybe getting his behavioral protocol adjusted back to something closer to normal would make Dietz a productive member of the battalion now. Rhodes could only hope.

He decided to give Dietz a chance. Rhodes had to put up with Dietz one way or the other. If Dietz proved himself, who was Rhodes to argue?

Rhodes had to rework his whole concept of reality when it came to dealing with Thackery. Getting shot in the head definitely changed her.

She’d always acted so bouncy and delighted by the whole Battalion 1 project. She said at first that she should have signed up for this. She might even have paid for it.

Now she sat hunched at the table glaring at everyone. She curled her lip in disgust at the sight of her comrades. She even glared at Fuentes.

She kept gulping every few seconds and scraping her facial implants across her shoulder like they irritated her.

She looked and acted exactly the way Rhodes and the others had been looking and acting all this time. She didn’t get it until now.

Rhodes hesitated to go over to her, but he couldn’t just ignore her. He stopped by the table. “How are you doing, Alyssa?”

She dragged her one good eye up to meet his. Her expression turned even more horrifically disgusted when she looked at him. “I tried to kill Georgie,” she husked.

“You didn’t try to kill her—and you didn’t kill her. You got mad at each other—and she feels the same way about you getting shot. She can’t get over the guilt that she was fighting with you before you got shot.”

She cast another revolted glance around the barracks. “This…..this is a nightmare.”

Rhodes sighed. “Yes, it is.”

She gulped again. “My father…..I didn’t remember him until…..He died when I was little. I forgot all about him. Now I can’t get him out of my mind…..”

“The behavioral protocol adjustment did the same thing to all of us.”

“I’ll never….I’ll never be able to leave here…..I’ll never have a normal life.” Her eyes skipped around the room a little faster. “I didn’t realize….I didn’t think it would be like this…..” She panted faster in rising agitation. “I gotta get out of here….I can’t be like this…..”

He swiveled around the table and rested his hand on her shoulder. She immediately jerked away and snarled at him.

“We’re all going through the same thing,” he murmured. “We’re all struggling to come to terms with this.”

She snorted, but she didn’t look at him. She kept glaring at everyone and gulping down disgust at the sight of her comrades.

Rhodes backed away and went over to his capsule. He couldn’t help her. He couldn’t help any of them. He couldn’t even help himself.

The doctors had adjusted the behavioral protocol back to the way it was, but at what cost?

End of Chapter 36.