by Linda Nagata
“You’re from Guidance, aren’t you?” I ask her. “Are you monitoring me?”
Within the brain, truth and lies are very different things, constructed by different cognitive loops. When a linked soldier is wearing a skullcap—or a skullnet—Guidance can tell truth from lies as easily as I can distinguish black from white.
Kendrick answers for her, “Guidance hasn’t been able to explain your emotional breakdown that afternoon. This inquiry is looking into their involvement and responsibility, as well as your own.”
I turn back to him in surprise. “My emotional breakdown?”
“How much do you remember of that day?”
“Everything. I remember every damn thing.”
“You woke up in a state of panic.”
“No. Not panic. Fear. The way you’d feel if there was a gun aimed at your head. I knew I had to move, get out of the way, but I couldn’t see any reason for it, so I tried to ignore it, deny it.” I glance at the woman again, but her gaze is fixed on the tablet she holds balanced in her lap. “I thought maybe that tech Denario had fucked with my skullcap. Then I got a blank phone call on my overlay. Unknown caller. No one was there.”
I catch him by surprise. “That’s not in the record.”
“It’s in my call log—and it shouldn’t have happened. I’m not supposed to get outside calls when I’m in the field. It was like somebody was fucking with me. Trying to unbalance me. And it worked too. It shook me up. I decided to file a complaint with Guidance, but I didn’t have time to do it because I knew, I just knew, that our time was up.”
“No one told you what was going to happen?” he asks. “You received no other communications?”
“None. No reports came in, the perimeter cameras picked up nothing, even the dogs were quiet.” I tap my chest. “But I wasn’t quiet—and it wasn’t an emotional breakdown. I knew something was wrong, and I acted on that knowledge—but I should have trusted my instincts and acted sooner. Then maybe Yafiah and Dubey would still be alive.”
Kendrick studies me for excruciating seconds. Then he gestures at the woman. “Show him what he looked like.”
She taps her tablet a few times, then lifts it and turns the screen toward me, her blue eyes downcast but still visible over the tablet’s rim. I feel like she wants to tell me something, but doesn’t quite dare.
A surveillance video starts to run. My attention is drawn from her, straight into the nightmare of that afternoon. I’m looking down the hallway at Fort Dassari, gazing toward the door to the outside when it opens, for half a second overwhelming the camera with light, and then I see myself in the hall. I’m dressed in my skullcap, T-shirt, uniform pants, and boots. I’m clean-shaven, my dark eyes anxious beneath the rim of my skullcap—worried, but calm. Two steps into the hall though, and everything changes. My chin comes up, my lips draw back. Terror twists my features and I’m screaming like a madman, “Everybody, up! Now! Something’s coming.”
“Jesus,” I whisper as the skullnet icon glows.
Kendrick slides his palm sideways through the air and the woman lowers the tablet, tapping to stop the video.
“Powerful instinct you have,” Kendrick observes.
I meet his gaze, because I need to show him I’m not afraid of what he can do to me, even though I am. “It’s like I went crazy. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? I had a breakdown, and it was just coincidence that the jets came when they did.”
“No, Lieutenant. That’s not what I’m thinking. I’m thinking you were justified in wanting to file a complaint with Guidance. I’m thinking exactly what you suggested before: that someone fucked with your skullcap. That someone who knows you, who knows exactly how your brain works, and who knew what was coming, decided to save your life by hacking into your skullcap, subtly at first, but finally flooding your brain with panic juice. If not for that Good Samaritan, you would be dead. You almost died anyway, despite that Good Samaritan, when you made the dumbass decision to go back for Lin.”
Who? I wonder. How?
Then anger crashes in. “That’s shit,” I tell him. “That’s just a crazy story. Who could do that? No one could! And I bet there’s no evidence, is there? The skullcap keeps a record of every tweak. Every time a neuron is stimulated to produce a hormone, there’s a record. Did you find a record like that?”
“Not exactly,” Kendrick admits. “What we found was a big, glaring absence of any activity from the time you woke up until just before the first missile hit.”
“What are you saying? The record was deleted?”
He shakes his head. “A deletion leaves traces. It’s more likely the record-keeping function was disabled and no record was ever made.”
“How could someone do that?”
“No clue. But this someone pulled a similar hack on your angel during the roadside firefight you had the day before.”
“When our LCS was cut off from Guidance?”
“Right. It was like your hacker wanted that firefight to happen, like he wanted to make sure you didn’t get an order to stand down.”
“That’s the same thing I wanted.” I don’t know why I admit this. I should be trying to look innocent . . . but how can I? They already know what I was feeling that day.
Kendrick shows his teeth in what might be a smile. “I’m a hundred and ten percent sure you didn’t engineer any of this, Shelley. You’re smart enough to get by, but you’re not smart enough to hack your own head.”
This is a fair assessment.
“Do you think it was someone in Guidance?” I ask him.
The woman speaks for the first time. “It wasn’t Guidance, Shelley.”
Goose bumps prickle across my skin as I turn in disbelief to meet her steady blue gaze. “Delphi?”
She nods, but she doesn’t smile. Delphi was always a serious woman.
I stare at her, astonished, because she’s spent more time inside my head than anyone, but I don’t know her. Delphi’s voice is comfort and counsel, and I’ve trusted that voice with my life, literally, time after time, but until now, I’ve never seen her face, and I still don’t know her name, because “Delphi” is a code name. Soldiers know their handlers as a voice, a presence, nothing more.
Her eyes look into mine without wavering. “I would never have played with you like that, Shelley. You know it.”
I have to nod, because it’s true. I know she would never have done that to me.
“If I had known what was coming,” she says, “I would have told you. I would have gotten you out early. If there had been some five-star general standing over me, warning me not to say a word, I would have told you anyway.”
“I believe you.” If I can’t trust Delphi, who can I trust? “So what happened?”
“I don’t know.” Her gaze drifts to my new legs. “The King David incidents—”
“That’s just Ransom’s stupid term.”
“It’s as good as any. The incidents have been a subject of study for months. How can you know what you know?”
“God whispers in my ear.”
“Or into your skullcap. We pulled the data every time. We found indications of missing data, but nothing as absolute as the absence this last time.”
“You’re saying someone was fucking with me all the time I was over there.”
Again, she gazes at my titanium legs. “I want to believe that, because the other explanations I’ve heard use magical terms like ‘precognition’ and ‘clairvoyance,’ and ‘God.’”
“You don’t believe in God, Delphi?”
Her gaze rises to meet mine. “I didn’t used to.”
• • • •
It’s the end of the afternoon and I’m finishing my hour in physical therapy when a message from Command pops up on my overlay, with a notation appended that it’s been copied to my dot-mil address. Someone wants to make s
ure I get this one. It informs me that I’ve been transferred into an experimental program aimed at developing the abilities of LCS soldiers with cyber enhancements. The program’s director is Colonel Steven Kendrick, making him my new commanding officer. I didn’t know our meeting was a job interview, but I must have done okay. Either that, or Kendrick just wants to keep me close while he figures out who’s playing games inside my head.
• • • •
I’m back in the hospital bed. My overlay tells me it’s 0152—the perfect time of night for thinking strange thoughts. Somewhere deep down in my mind I’m aware of a tremor of panic, but the skullnet bricks it up. I watch its glowing icon while imagining my real self down at the bottom of a black pit, trapped in a little, lightless room, and screaming like any other soul confined in Hell.
But if my real self is locked away, what does that make me?
I know the answer. I’m a body-snatching emo junkie so well managed by my skullnet that the screams of my own damned soul are easy to ignore. But there is someone out there who can get inside my head. Am I haunted by a hacker? Or is it God?
A call comes through on my overlay.
I flinch in alarm. The last time I saw the green icon of an incoming call was right before my life blew up. God calling from an unknown number. This time, though, my address book recognizes the caller. It’s my friend Elliot Weber, notorious peace activist and contributing journalist to the War Machine website. I met Elliot that night I got arrested for walking with other citizens up Broadway. Elliot told me not to resist. I didn’t listen. Later, he let me post the video I’d made.
I accept the link and his voice is inside my head, breathy, panicked. “Shelley, say something,” he pleads. “Tell me I didn’t just call the hardware in a dead man’s head.”
A nervous laugh slips from my throat, but I keep it soft so the night staff won’t hear. “I think maybe you did.”
“Shelley.” He sounds like he’s about to fall over in relief. “I know you’re not okay, but at least you’re alive. I saw the show, all the way up to the end when the missile came in and the world caught on fire—”
“Elliot, what are you talking about?”
“—I thought that was it. The end. That there was no way you could survive that.”
“How do you know what happened? Who have you been talking to? Not my dad.” My dad hates Elliot, blaming him for my legal troubles.
“I told you, I saw the show.”
“What show?”
“Ah, geez. Where are you, Shelley?”
“In Texas.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“Elliot, tell me about the show.”
“It’s called Linked Combat Squad: Dark Patrol. It’s a docudrama. A reality show. Released yesterday. You had to know about it.”
“It’s about life in an LCS?”
“No. It’s about your LCS. Your combat squad. You didn’t know?”
It turns out that the army wasn’t just archiving the video recorded by my overlay. They combined it with video from helmet cams and surveillance cameras and put together a two-hour reality show on life and conflict at Fort Dassari. Elliot tells me it ended with a bang.
“When the missile came in—” His voice breaks. “I thought there wouldn’t be enough of you left for a funeral. And then the show ended. It just ended. They didn’t say what had happened to you, or the other soldiers. They wanted a cliffhanger.”
“So you picked up your phone and called a dead man?”
“You’re not dead. Tell me what happened. Was the air attack real? Tell me if everyone survived it. Tell me what happened to you.”
“Is the show viral?” I ask him.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen any numbers on it. I found it because I have an alert on your name. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t have stumbled on it.”
It rattles me badly to think something like that exists out in public. I have strong opinions and I’m not shy about expressing them. Quietly, I ask, “How many of my rants made it onto the show?”
“The director likes drama. You were on a lot.”
“And the audience?”
He gets evasive. “You know how it is. A military show like that would tank in New York. So it’s playing mostly in . . .” His voice trails off in guilt.
“In Texas? Where people hate taxes but love wars?”
Elliot’s smart. He understands people, he understands systems, and he has an uncanny ability to find motives when all I can see is chaos. He’s a lot like Lissa in that, though the two would never admit they have anything in common. “Do you think you can come out here?” I ask him.
“To Texas? Shelley, you’re not dying, are you? You’re not calling me out there for a deathbed scene?”
I’m offended. “Why? You wouldn’t come if I was dying?”
“No! Of course I’d come. I just want to know first, that’s all. I want to be ready.”
“I’m not dying.”
“Okay. Good.”
“So will you come?”
“Yeah. Will there be a story for me?”
“Not one you can use.”
“Secret stuff, huh?”
“’Fraid so.”
“Well, it’s Texas, so I’ll find something to write about. The newest secessionist movement maybe, or a corrupt defense contractor.”
“Come soon, okay?”
“I’ll check my schedule. And Shelley?”
“Yeah?”
“I am so damn glad you’re still alive.”
• • • •
On day three of my cyborg existence I meet the surgeon who put me together. The nursing staff speaks of Dr. Masoud in hushed tones, in awe of his genius and sure that he’ll win a Nobel Prize one day, or at least be declared a saint.
I wait for Dr. Masoud in a procedure room, marooned in a reclining chair like the kind in a dentist’s office. There are no windows in the room, and the door is closed. The assistant who left me here worked some levers on my programmable wheelchair, collapsing its frame before stashing it against the wall to “get it out of the way.” He assured me the doctor would be right in, and then he left.
Five minutes have passed. Ten more go by, each one noted in my overlay. No doctor wants to show up on time—that could give the impression they’re underworked—but when the wait time stretches past twenty minutes I start developing an escape strategy, working out the stages I’ll need to undertake to reach my distant wheelchair. I’m about to try the first stage, swinging myself out of the dentist’s chair, when the door opens at last, admitting a tall, physically powerful man with light brown skin, a neat black mustache, and carefully combed black hair that gleams under the ceiling lights.
There’s something covetous in his gaze as he looks me over, but there’s anxiety, too. A lot of anxiety. Despite the chill of the room, tiny beads of sweat glisten at his hairline. I want to ask Delphi for an emotional assessment, but I’m not linked to Guidance anymore. For now, I’m on my own. I watch him, relaxed but wary.
“Lieutenant Shelley, I’m Benjamin Masoud. We’ve spent many hours in one another’s company, though I think you don’t remember.”
The long wait has left me irritable and the joke falls flat. My turn. “Dr. Masoud, I’m getting concerned that I still can’t use my legs—I mean my organic legs, what’s left of them. I can’t feel anything, and I can’t flex the muscles. The nurse explained it’s not nerve damage—”
“Nerve damage?” His heavy brows draw together. Clearly I’ve said the wrong thing. “Who suggested to you it was nerve damage?”
“I suggested it, and the nurse said—”
He cuts me off again. “This should have been explained to you. The nerves in your legs are perfectly healthy. What you are experiencing is an induced paralysis, to ensure that no stress is placed on the bone-titanium j
oint during the initial phase of the healing process.”
“Right. That’s exactly what the nurse said. My question is, aren’t we past the initial phase?” My upper-body strength is coming back with physical therapy, but that just emphasizes the deterioration in my lower body. “I need to start working my hip and thigh muscles, or they’re going to be so far gone I won’t be able to stand up at all, even if the robot legs work perfectly.”
“Robot legs?” This scandalizes him even more than the nerve damage. It’s like I’ve called his daughter ugly. “Lieutenant, the prosthetics you’ve been given aren’t robot parts. They’re state-of-the-art, human-integrated devices.”
I’m not sure I see the difference, but that wasn’t my question. “Sir, I am not asking you about the robot legs. I understand those don’t work right now, that they’ve been switched off, and that’s why they’re deadweight. I am asking you about my legs, what’s left of them. My physical therapy sessions need to address my legs and hips.”
His eyes narrow. I don’t think he’s used to being questioned. “No, it’s too soon to withdraw the paralytic.” He studies me for several seconds more, wondering, maybe, if he got the right patient. If I don’t play by his rule set, it might mess up his Frankenstein experiment, and he won’t get his Nobel Prize—but he doesn’t try to appease me. He goes after my ego instead. “A man like yourself naturally fears weakness and dependency, but you are fortunate, Lieutenant Shelley, because you will be able to recover.”
Fortunate? I contemplate that word as my gaze shifts to the robot legs. Fortunate. The idea makes me angry, mostly because I know Masoud is right. Bad judgment, not bad fortune, put me in this chair, and I’m lucky to be alive. I’m lucky to be his experiment—though that doesn’t mean I have to like him.
I yield the argument with a shrug, chastened, if not quite grateful. Masoud accepts victory with a patronizing nod, and we begin anew.
“Let me show you the progress we’ve made,” he says, stepping over to a keyboard beneath a blank screen. A sequence of taps and swipes summons two 3-D projections into the screen. “These are color-enhanced and combined images, developed from the scans taken of your legs this morning.”