He stuck his head up over the side of the dirt barrier. One of the cadets from the test room was sitting slumped up against a stack of sandbags. His left arm ripped free from his body. To the right of the screaming cadet was a foxhole and an ugly, grinning face glaring at him from the butt-end of an assault rifle.
Javen ducked and heard a whistle as the bullet cut the air where his head had just been.
A quick, biting acid bit at the back of his throat but he fought it down. Real pain, Nero had said. He lay there a minute, watching the rise and fall of his chest. The maimed cadet’s uncontrolled screaming abruptly ended in a hail of gunfire and explosions.
Javen glanced over the side of the ditch. The cadet’s body was strewn across the ground in chunks.
Ducking back down, he pressed his back against the ditch.
This isn’t real, he told himself. This is Nero. He’s messing with us.
None of the words he told himself made him feel any better. As long as he was here, he had only one objective, and that was to get to Alexis. She was real. And she needed his help.
He continued down the trench towards the overturned vehicle. Bodies littered the narrow trough, one every few feet. Some of them were Terran soldiers, their youthful faces bloodied and sad to look upon. But he found far more colonists. Cruel, hard faces with dark eyes and lips seemingly curled in anger at the moment death had taken them.
The sight of such men disturbed Javen.
The ditch ended abruptly, just twenty feet short of his destination. He saw the vehicle ahead of him. It was an armored moonrover. Five soldiers were hiding behind it. Alexis was there and she spotted him and yelled something to a man beside her wearing goggles and a white and grey camouflaged jumpsuit. He shouted out orders and began waving for Javen to run. The five soldiers all popped up from behind the moonrover and laid down a heavy fire. Javen sucked in a lungful of air and jumped up, racing off at a sprint. He stumbled as he reached the cover of the vehicle and fell to his knees.
The man with the goggles bent over him and grabbed Javen’s shoulder. “You alright, kid?”
“Yeah,” shouted Javen, taking in the new figure.
“Good, we need you. Here’s the situation. There are four or five colonists keeping us pinned down. They’re bunkered in a crater about fifty yards south of us. Could be more hiding out, playing it cool, so be careful.”
The man with the goggles lifted Javen to his feet. “Watch your head, okay? They have a sniper.”
Javen nodded as the man returned to his position against the moonrover.
Two male cadets were leaning against the vehicle holding their guns tight. Alexis was squatting beside them.
“I’m glad you came back,” she shouted, a weary smile on her lips.
“We’re at the first Lunar Skirmish, aren’t we?” said Javen, kneeling next to her. He picked up a handful of the grey powdery dust and ran it through his fingers.
“Yeah, that’s right. This is straight from Nero’s memory. He fought in the First Lunar battles. But he’s changed one thing—the enemy. Have you seen what they look like?”
Javen nodded. He recalled the faces in the ditch and the man who shot at him in the fox hole.
Alexis snarled, “Nero’s using his imagination to cover up who we’re really fighting.”
“And who’s that,” said Javen, allowing the doubt he felt to creep into his voice. “Nice, friendly folk? I just saw one of the other cadets with us turned into hamburger chunks.”
Alexis paused, her smile gone. “It’s kill or be killed. War is ugly no matter how you splice it, but the real people fighting out there should be farmers and terraformers, not the die-hard soldiers in Nero’s imagination. I’ll prove it to you.” Alexis stood and looked around, her eyes suddenly fixed on something. “Follow me.” She began to crawl behind a row of sandbags to the right of the moonrover.
Javen followed her. She stopped beside a body lying face down in the dust. It was wearing the uniform of a lunar soldier.
“I want to show you something I discovered the last time I took this test. Lift his head,” she said. “Do it real quick and look at his face.” Javen positioned himself at the top of the corpse. He dug his fingers into the man’s thick black hair, then glanced up at Alexis. Her eyes were intense.
“This is a real memory from Nero’s time on the front lines,” said Alexis.
Javen lifted the head up. In that instant, Javen saw the dirty face of a young boy who looked to be fourteen or fifteen years old. The eyes were dried open and partially covered in fine dust. The purple mouth was cracked and blistering.
The lips began moving.
They grew wider and thicker, until the mouth froze in a defiant sneer. Dark stubble replaced the delicate skin around the bloodless cheeks, and Javen was now looking into deep, furrowed eyes, the pupils waxed and hardened inside the sockets. Javen dropped the head and fell backwards.
“Nero changes them,” said Alexis. “He mixes reality with a little imagination to fool us. It’s the same with the negotiators’ reports. Mixing reality with lies, a change here, a change there, a twisting of truth when they need it, and before long, the colonists are monsters to be hated and feared.”
Javen nodded, still staring at the back of the soldier’s head.
They both crawled back to the moonrover under cover of the sandbags. The two other cadets were shooting alongside the officer with the goggles. But there was another man who’d joined them.
As he and Alexis took their places behind the vehicle, the unidentified man turned and called to the officer, “I got one rocket left, sir!”
The man had a red, stubbled face and an unmistakable smile that made Javen’s stomach churn. It was Sergeant Nero, only he looked a lifetime younger.
“You think you can time that shot, Nero?” called the officer.
“Of course I can,” he growled, Nero stepped out from behind the moonrover.
“Cover fire!” shouted the officer.
Javen sprung up, following everyone’s lead, but had no idea what he was doing. The deafening rattle of gunshots blazed all around him.
The rocket whistled from Nero’s launcher. A fireball bucked into the sky and a split second later, the roar of the explosion pounded at Javen’s ears. A man, engulfed in flames, rolled up over the crater’s edge. Nero dropped the launcher and fired his rifle until the flaming man lay still.
“Come on, kiddos,” shouted Nero, waving them forward. “Time to blow the heads off some colonist hags and their wee moon spawn. The farm perimeter’s just a mile ahead.”
“Hold,” said the officer. “Orders are to stay here until reinforcements come. And you know the rule about noncombatants.”
A wild intensity blazed in Nero’s eyes. “There’s nothing else living in this sector.”
“You’re a fool—you don’t know that,” snapped the officer, lifting his goggles to glare at Nero. “Besides, orders are orders.”
“Can’t kill nobody hiding like this,” growled Nero.
The officer spat and turned back to peer cautiously over the torn moonscape.
Javen saw Nero’s hand slip down the side of his uniform. He pulled a foot-long blade from his belt and flung it.
The officer gasped twice, staring wide-eyed at Nero as he clutched at the knife buried in his chest, then he collapsed against the rover.
As sick as the sight was, Javen couldn’t believe this was an actual memory from Nero’s mind. It all seemed too smooth, too bizarre. There was no way he was that impulsive and crazy. He’d have gotten himself locked up long before he ever made it to the moon skirmishes. To knife an officer over something so petty—Nero was just messing with him and the other cadets. He was only trying to make them fear him more. It was stupid, and Javen had had enough. If Nero thought he could manipulate all his cadets, he was wrong about one of them.
“We’re movin’ up, ain’t that right?” hissed Nero.
The two males who stood, hunkered against the moonrover, n
odded timidly. Alexis’s face was pale, her eyes glazed over in shock.
“I’m not moving,” said Javen. He gripped his assault rifle tight.
Nero’s whiskered face hardened. “You want to repeat that, rich boy?”
“You heard me,” said Javen, battling Nero’s glare and fighting back his fear with rage. “That man you just killed was right, you’re a fool. And another thing,” Javen added, “you keep your dirty hands off Alexis.”
The red, twisting hairs about Nero’s mouth parted in a yellow-toothed grin.
In a single motion, Nero sprang behind Alexis and wrapped his right arm around her neck. He tapped his pistol to her head. She gasped as he bent her head at a painful angle.
Javen took a step back. He saw the agony in Alexis’s eyes.
“That’s right, ease it on back. Good. Now drop the gun.”
Nero’s left eye peered out, cold and calculating, from behind Alexis.
Javen felt defiance well up in him, but alongside it was an equally rising fear. The knowledge that this was all taking place in everyone’s minds and not in reality didn’t change the fact that something very real was coming to pass. Would he still be able to make the vid call to his home? Would he have the chance once he was sent back to the test room? The helmet would still be secured to his head.
“Why do you do this?” asked Javen. “Why do you want us to hate you?”
“The gun!” screamed Nero, digging the gun into Alexis’s skull.
She winced, crying out as tears flowed down her face.
Javen lowered his assault rifle and tossed it on the ground.
Nero released Alexis, raised the pistol at Javen, and fired.
Pain ripped through Javen’s chest. He clutched the entry point and sank to his knees, gasping in agony. The bullet had gone in just under his right arm and out through his side.
He stared up at Nero. It was impossible to keep the terrible pain from showing in his eyes.
Nero aimed the gun at his head and fired.
* * *
--
* * *
Javen jumped in his seat, his breaths coming in long heaves.
He was back in the test room, and mercifully, the pain was gone.
For several minutes, he sat there, breathing hard. The memory of the pain still tingled the skin beneath his shoulder, and mingling with that sensation was an anger that burned hot through his veins.
He wanted to kill that man. He’d never felt a desire like it before.
Javen slumped back into the chair, perspiration drenching his shirt.
The room was silent. He brought his hands up to the helmet and, very lightly, began to lift. The pain was instantaneous.
He let go and decided to wait and listen, focusing his attention on where Sergeant Nero should be. Minutes passed. Javen wasn’t sure he wanted to leave the test room and reenter whatever hellish world Nero had created next.
He tried calling Alexis by name, and like before, she didn’t respond.
The thought of Nero cornering her in the arena only fueled the fire in Javen’s blood.
He had to go back for her.
Minutes passed before the tension eased from his body. Javen drifted back into the dark machine where Nero sat, a single disturbing thought returning again and again to his mind.
He was about to find out something about Nero.
…how far was the psycho willing to go?
The staging room emerged before his eyes. It was empty, but the doorway before him stood open.
It appeared they had gone on to the next arena. The moment he stepped through, the fog was so heavy, it was as if he were completely blind.
No smells. No noise. Nothing. Then, barely imperceptible, he heard a faint click.
The fog lifted only slightly. He began to hear very soft breaths coming from somewhere out in front of him. There was a dead ambience all around him.
Walls grew out of the haze. A stilted cough echoed a moment later, its origin some distance ahead of Javen.
The walls took form, and he suddenly recognized the shape of the room.
The fog vanished
He was in the test room—it was the new arena. He saw the four other cadets sitting in front of him, still attached to their helmets. The room was dark. Moonlight filtered down through a series of windows, bathing everything it touched in bluish-white. The cadets sat motionless in their chairs. Javen looked up at Nero. The metal coils of the machine rose up about him like a hand, blocking the moonlight from most of his features.
Nero’s head moved, his face ducking out from underneath the shadows.
The glint of Nero’s eyes beamed through a slotted metal sheet at the head of the machine.
Slowly, Nero leaned forward, then lifted himself off the mechanical seat, but as he rose, Javen felt his mind yanked away and the room went black, his vision descending into darkness.
Javen froze.
What had happened?!
He was still seated, but where was he?
The silence felt familiar, and with a growing certainty, he realized he’d been wrenched from the arena and sent back to the stillness of the real test room.
Had Nero ejected him, or had it been his own fear that expelled him?
He sucked in a deep lungful of air, determined to go back, when a sound stopped him cold.
It was the quick scraping sound of a desk being pushed aside in the front of the room.
Someone was there, awake.
Javen’s left hand went for his gun, and his thumb popped off the leather strap that secured it to the holster.
This wasn’t the arena, he reminded himself. What he did here was worlds apart from what he did in the virtual world of the mind. Here, everything was permanent. And the consequences didn’t go away when the helmet came off.
A faint tink sounded near where the scraping sound had come from.
Who else could it be but Nero? He had left the machine in the test room arena of the virtual world, was he now messing with Javen here in the real test room?
He waited, blind, the helmet making sight impossible.
In the silence, Javen quietly thumbed his pistol’s safety, switching it off.
He tried to reason with himself that he was taking things too far…that Nero was only going to mess with his mind, but wouldn’t physically touch him. Nero might have shot him in the head in the arena, but he wouldn’t pull the trigger in the classroom…would he?
Javen kept his hand pressed against his weapon. All the reasoning in the world felt feeble when weighed against the despotic sergeant he’d met in the virtual world. And beyond that, how could he explain away all the stories he’d heard—Roger’s stories, and all the cadets’ from the other testing stations.
Another faint sound came from the front of the room, only it came from the left side and sounded closer.
Javen tried to relax his muscles. He had to see somehow! If he could peek back into the imagined test room what would he find there?
Fighting to keep his adrenaline in check, he took a deep breath. Slowly, he made his way back into the virtual world. Blurring shapes slowly sharpened into objects.
The moonlight fell upon the empty machine.
Javen looked frantically around. Darkness enveloped most of the room. He scanned all four walls. A chalky-grey figure, just visible, stood in the shadows. The arm hung
loose. Something protruded from the figure’s hand but its outline faded into black.
Something pulled in the back of his mind, trying to force him back into the physical test room. He fought back, consciously relaxing his body despite the tension.
The shadowed body shifted, and the figure began to walk towards Javen and the cadets. There was no doubt in Javen’s mind who it was, the scraggy beard protruding from the chin like the unkempt mane of a lion.
Javen was losing the battle to stay in the arena. Objects became indistinct. Nero was close and moving swiftly now. His fading outline swung around to the left and push
ed aside the last desk separating him from Javen.
The arena burned away and blackness enveloped him.
Javen stood blind, raised his gun and pivoted left.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK, he fired five shots to his left, then turned, visualized where the seat of the machine lay, and unloaded two more rounds.
The explosive CRACK of gunshots faded into a deafening silence.
Javen gripped his gun, fingers clamped tight around the textured metal grip. His chest shook with every breath, yet he tried desperately to detect motion in the ringing silence.
Lieutenant Amanda Brighton’s breathless voice buzzed in over the intercom, “Cadet Worth! Put your gun back in your holster!”
Her voice echoed like a spirit calling to Javen from another world. A sane place far removed from the cruel imaginings of Nero he’d experienced only moments ago.
He hesitated to follow Brighton’s orders, then slowly he lowered his gun. When he heard no other sounds, he carefully placed the pistol in his holster.
A new thought crept into his mind, and it grew with each passing second.
What have I just done?
He heard his helmet click and felt a quick stab of pain at the back of his head.
Brighton’s voice sounded from a speaker, “You can remove your headgear.”
Javen yanked the helmet off and immediately turned to look at where he’d shot. Standing there was a rubbery, tan body in the shape of a man. Five holes marked up its chest. Javen turned to the machine at the front of the room. Another dummy sat in it, a pair of holes dotted the skin just below the neck.
He found the four cadets still seated in front of him. They were also dummies. Alexis appeared to be nothing more than a blond-haired mannequin.
Confusion and panic set in. Where was Alexis?
Had she been swapped with a mannequin during one of the arenas?
She had slipped him the conductor at the very beginning. He had felt the touch of her fingers as she placed it into his hand. He remembered the pleading look in her eyes.
Javen reached down and touched Alexis’s lifeless shoulder. It had the rough textured feel of a uniform. Javen brushed his fingers across her face. It felt soft and smooth to the touch. He applied pressure and her cheek dimpled like skin.
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