Battalion 1

Rhodes sat up from his capsule in the barracks and put his feet on the floor. He really wished he could put his boots on.

Putting his boots on had become an essential daily ritual during his years in the Legion.

Those few seconds of putting his boots on and tying the laces—they gave him a chance to think about the day ahead and get his head screwed on straight.

Those few seconds had gotten him through years of war. He really missed those few seconds, especially now. He could have used a few seconds to get his head screwed on straight for the day ahead.

He stared down at his robotic feet. Right then, just in case he somehow forgot where he was and what was at stake, General Brewster and Colonel Kraft walked into the barracks.

Rhodes only glanced at them to see who it was. Then he went back to looking at his feet. Looking at his feet would have to take the place of putting his boots on.

“How are you feeling, Captain?” General Brewster asked.

“Do you really want to know?” Rhodes asked.

General Brewster frowned. A frown didn’t look right on his boyish face.

Frowns suited Kraft much better. He didn’t frown. His serious expression told Rhodes that Kraft already understood. He didn’t have to ask how Rhodes was because Kraft already knew.

“It was an unfortunate incident in the training Grid last week,” Brewster went on. “We didn’t realize this project would cause such serious distress.”

“Maybe you should have tested it on yourself first,” Rhodes mumbled.

Brewster either didn’t understand or pretended not to. “We’re going to go ahead with the next training session. If we can’t resolve these issues, we may have to scrap the project. I would hate to do that, Captain, and I’m sure you would hate it, too. We’ve all invested so much in this and we had such high hopes for the other recruits.”

Rhodes resisted the urge to snort in the man’s face. Recruits. These assholes never recruited anyone. They took these people by force and mutilated their bodies without their consent.

Rhodes didn’t say that. Brewster didn’t have to spell out the obvious threat. If Rhodes didn’t find a way to function in this new reality, they would shut him down.

He could live with that. He would have welcomed it, but he couldn’t do that to the rest of the battalion.

Those people sleeping in the other capsules—they didn’t even know he was doing this for them, but he had no choice but to at least give them the choice.

He couldn’t do anything that might make the brass shut them down. If it all went south—if he couldn’t make it work—if he lost his ever-loving mind in this lunatic asylum—he had to at least try.

Brewster laid his hand on Rhodes’s shoulder. “I know you’ll do your best, Captain. I know you’re as anxious to make this work as we are.”

Rhodes would have liked to slap the man’s hand away and spit at Brewster never to touch him again.

Rhodes didn’t do that. He just sat there staring at his feet until the two men left.

He waited until they walked out of the barracks before he allowed himself to stand up and move around. He already knew what he had to do. He just had to go ahead and do it.

He had discovered what might have once been a bathroom or washroom attached to this barracks.

He understood enough about the conversion cycle by now. His body didn’t need any kind of hygiene. The conversion cycle took care of that.

He’d replaced his usual morning routine with a habit of coming in here and looking at his reflection in the mirror. It was the only place in the whole station where he could see his reflection.

The left side of his face looked the way he remembered it. One blue eye looked out at him from under a shock of wavy brown hair.

The conversion cycle somehow stopped his hair from growing so it never got any longer. The hair didn’t seem to die or need to be combed, either.

He ran his fingers through it just because. Running his fingers through his hair made him feel more human. It made him feel normal even if he didn’t look normal.

His implants looked like they belonged to someone else. They looked like they belonged to another species. Even after a week, he still didn’t recognize that they were even a part of him. They weren’t.

After a week both in the hospital and recovering in the barracks, the feeling of wanting to tear the implants out still didn’t go away. The feeling didn’t fade at all.

If anything, it became more entrenched. The implants felt more alien, more invasive, and more excruciatingly irritating than ever.

They enraged him. They made him mind-numbingly furious at the people who did this to him, but he finally realized that Fisher wasn’t one of those people.

Rhodes could have killed General Brewster and the three doctors. The only person around here Rhodes didn’t feel like killing was Colonel Kraft.

Spending a week in what turned out to be one long conversion cycle somehow brought Rhodes to a grudging acceptance of the inevitable reality. He wouldn’t be able to change any of this no matter what he did.

He already knew he wouldn’t kill himself. He just had to find a way to live with it. Christ only knew how he would do that.

He didn’t feel like killing Fisher anymore, either. Rhodes could almost forgive Fisher’s intrusion simply because Fisher tried so hard to make it better. He was the only person who did.

Rhodes couldn’t even call Fisher a person, yet he was the one person in this whole disaster who actually tried to help Rhodes. Not even Kraft did that.

Fisher had figured out how precious and vital these first few minutes of the day were to Rhodes’s sanity.

Fisher had gotten into a morning habit of his own of making himself into a pinprick at this time of day so Rhodes wouldn’t see him.

Fisher didn’t speak to Rhodes until he had a chance to stare at his feet, think things over, and then look at himself in the mirror. Fisher didn’t interrupt those private moments by speaking or making himself visible.

He waited until Rhodes turned away from the mirror and returned to the barracks before Fisher made himself bigger.

Even then, he expanded his face to half its usual size to make himself less obvious. “Good morning, Captain. How was your conversion cycle?”

“I’m okay, Fisher. Good morning.”

“We have another training session today,” Fisher pointed out.

“I know,” Rhodes muttered.

“How would you like to approach it? We should discuss our strategy before we go in—to avoid another outcome like the last one.”

Rhodes only nodded. “I guess you can advise me the way you’ve been programmed to. I guess that’s just the way it has to be.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way if it causes you distress.”

Rhodes took a deep breath and sat down on the edge of his capsule to face Fisher for the first time.

Rhodes had spent the last week avoiding all eye contact with Fisher. Rhodes wanted to erase Fisher from existence.

This was the first time Rhodes actually sat down to have a conversation with his SAM.

“You aren’t what’s causing me distress, Fisher,” Rhodes began.

“Are you sure? You were adamant the last time we spoke that I was.”

Rhodes pulled himself together with an effort. “I apologize for implying that. I suppose it was just the disorientation.”

Fisher cocked his head to one side. “The disorientation should have dissipated by now. My programming indicates that the disorientation shouldn’t last more than a few days.”

“I’m going to go out on a limb and say that your programming was written by people who never went through this disorientation themselves. Dr. Irvine said I’m the first person to ever go through this process. So no one really knows how the disorientation will affect anyone. I could be like this for the rest of my life.”

Fisher’s expression changed, and for the first time ever, he broke eye contact and looked away. “You’re right, Captain. That is a distinct possibility no one in this Battalion 1 project has foreseen. I apologize if my assessment made light of your difficulties.”

Rhodes swallowed down a lump in his throat. He never dreamed having this conversation with a machine would be so hard.

He struggled to stop his voice from shaking, but it happened anyway. “Look, I don’t want to do this and I know you don’t, either. Neither of us is in any position to break off or change anything even if we wanted to. Let’s just agree to work together and make the best of it, okay? I really don’t know what else we can do.”

“Of course, Captain. That is all I want, too. You have my word I will do everything in my power to make this process as tolerable for you as possible. If I can do anything for you, you only have to tell me.”

Rhodes only nodded. He already knew Fisher felt that way without Fisher saying it.

Fisher was the only person here who would say it. He was absolutely the only person who would say it with any meaning.

General Brewster or one of the doctors might say they would do anything for Rhodes, but they would only say it as a formality. They wouldn’t really mean it—not the way Fisher did.

Of course Fisher meant it. His whole existence hinged on Rhodes. Fisher had no choice but to help Rhodes. They were stuck in this together for good or bad.