Chapter 4: Attuning

  The Jell-O was red. Or maybe orange. The fluorescent lights made it hard to tell, and honestly, I wasn't sure it mattered. Jell-O was Jell-O, that peculiar hospital staple that existed in a quantum state between liquid and solid, food and punishment.

  I poked it with my spork. Yes, spork. Because apparently the hospital didn't trust me with the structural integrity of separate utensils.

  The Jell-O jiggled. Mocked me with its gelatinous indifference.

  "You know what the worst part is?" I said to the empty room. "It's not even that it tastes like disappointment mixed with artificial flavoring. It's that this is my second day of eating it."

  My second day. Because Michaela, in her infinite wisdom, had decided I needed to stay for observation. Observation of what, exactly, she hadn't specified. My condition hadn't changed. My numbers were the same boring disaster they'd been yesterday. But she'd insisted, and when Michaela Sytes insisted on something, you generally just accepted it and moved on with your life.

  Still didn't explain why I was eating Jell-O for lunch when I should have been home, in my own bed, watching something mindless on my laptop and pretending the world outside our apartment didn't exist.

  I gave up on the Jell-O and moved on to the sandwich. White bread, processed turkey that had probably never seen an actual turkey, a single leaf of lettuce that looked like it had given up on life sometime last week. The mayonnaise had soaked through the bread in spots, creating little translucent windows into the sadness within.

  "Gourmet," I muttered, taking a bite anyway because my body needed fuel even if my soul rejected the concept.

  The sandwich tasted exactly like it looked. Like someone had consulted a manual titled "How to Make Food Technically Edible" and followed it to the letter without once considering whether they should.

  I was halfway through forcing it down when my phone buzzed. I fumbled for it, my fingers not quite cooperating, the tremor in my right hand making it take three tries to grip it properly.

  Text from Dad: Michaela says you're doing well. Should be home soon.

  I stared at the message. Doing well. That was one way to describe "exactly the same as always, just in a hospital bed instead of my own." I typed back with my left thumb, the only digit that still had reliable fine motor control.

  Yeah. Soon.

  I didn't add anything else. Didn't mention that I had no idea why I was still here. Didn't mention the Jell-O or the sandwich or the fact that I'd counted the ceiling tiles so many times I could probably recreate the pattern from memory. Dad didn't need the details. He never really wanted them anyway.

  I set the phone down and looked at the tray. At the Jell-O and the half-eaten sandwich and the small carton of milk that was probably fine but tasted vaguely of plastic. This was my life. This was what I had to look forward to. Meals that barely qualified as food, rooms with exactly 247 ceiling tiles, texts from my father that said everything and nothing at the same time.

  The anger from yesterday was still there, buried under the usual layers of resignation and dark humor, but there. Michaela had poked something awake with her ice floe speech, and it hadn't gone back to sleep yet.

  I wasn't sure if that was good or bad.

  The door opened. I expected another nurse, maybe Sarah-or-Sandra coming to check my vitals and tell me everything was "looking good" in that tone that meant absolutely nothing was looking good but we were all going to pretend otherwise.

  Instead, Michaela walked in.

  She wasn't in her usual professional mode. There was something different about her expression, something sharp and focused that made my instincts perk up. She looked like she had a plan. Michaela with a plan was either the best thing that could happen to you or the worst, depending on whether you were the beneficiary or the target.

  "Get your shoes on," she said without preamble.

  I blinked. "What?"

  "Your shoes. Put them on. We're going for a walk."

  "I'm eating lunch."

  She glanced at the tray, at the Jell-O and the sad sandwich. "No you're not. You're committing a hate crime against your taste buds. Shoes. Now."

  I looked down at my feet. At the hospital socks with the little grippy treads on the bottom. "I'm in a hospital gown, Michaela."

  "You're wearing sweatpants under it. I can see them. Stop making excuses and get your shoes on, or I'll put them on for you, and we both know how much you hate that."

  She was right. I did hate that. Hated the feeling of someone else's hands on my feet, the casual intimacy of it, the reminder that I couldn't always manage the simple task of putting on my own goddamn shoes.

  I reached for them. They were on the floor next to the bed, right where I'd kicked them off yesterday. My hands shook as I picked up the first one, and it took me three tries to get my foot positioned right, but I managed. The second one was easier. Muscle memory, or whatever passed for it these days.

  "Good," Michaela said. She was already moving to the wheelchair in the corner. "Now get in."

  "Where are we going?"

  "For a walk. I already said that."

  "Michaela."

  She stopped. Looked at me with those dark eyes that had seen me at my worst and somehow hadn't flinched. "Adam. Do you trust me?"

  It was a hell of a question. Did I trust her? She'd been my nurse practitioner for three years. She'd seen me through flare-ups and infections and the slow, grinding deterioration that was my life. She'd never lied to me, never sugar-coated things, never treated me like I was made of glass.

  She'd also called me out yesterday in a way that had hurt more than any of my symptoms.

  "Yeah," I said finally. "I trust you."

  "Then get in the chair, and when we get where we're going, keep your mouth shut and go along with whatever I say. Can you do that?"

  My heart rate picked up. This wasn't a normal walk. This was something else, something that required deception and compliance and trust.

  This was related to that look she'd had yesterday. The scheming one.

  "Okay," I said.

  She wheeled the chair over, and I transferred into it with the practiced ease of someone who'd done this a thousand times. My legs were weak today, trembling with the effort of supporting my weight even for the few seconds it took to pivot and sit. But I made it, and Michaela didn't comment on the difficulty.

  She started pushing me toward the door.

  "Michaela," I said as we entered the hallway. "Seriously. Where are we going?"

  "You'll see."

  We passed the nurses' station. Passed the rooms where other patients were probably eating their own terrible lunches and counting their own ceiling tiles. Passed the elevators that would have taken us down to the main entrance, to freedom and fresh air and the outside world.

  Michaela kept pushing.

  We turned down a corridor I'd never been in before. The walls here were newer, the paint fresher. There were signs with the UN logo, the same one I'd seen yesterday on the construction notice. The same one that had made Michaela stop and get that look on her face.

  My pulse was hammering now. "Michaela."

  "Mouth shut, Adam. I mean it."

  We turned another corner, and suddenly there were soldiers. Actual soldiers in actual uniforms, standing outside a set of double doors that looked like they belonged in a sci-fi movie. Heavy. Reinforced. With a security panel that glowed with soft blue light.

  The sign above the doors read: The Forge - Induction Center 7

  Oh shit.

  Oh shit.

  Michaela pushed me right up to the soldiers. They looked at us with the kind of professional assessment that military people always had, like they were calculating threat levels and response protocols in real-time.

  "Can I help you?" one of them asked. Young guy, maybe mid-twenties, with the kind of posture that suggested he'd never slouched in his life.

  "I have Adam Smith for induction," Michaela said. Her voice was different now. Crisp. Professional. The voice she used when she was dealing with doctors who questioned her judgment.

  The soldier frowned. Pulled out a tablet and started scrolling. "Adam Smith. Let me check the schedule."

  My heart was trying to escape through my ribcage. This was insane. This was completely insane. I wasn't supposed to be here. I wasn't military. I wasn't anything. I was just a guy with a degenerative condition who couldn't even put on his own shoes without a struggle.

  The soldier looked up. "I'm showing First Lieutenant Adam Smith scheduled for induction tomorrow at 0900 hours. In Phoenix, Arizona. Not Detroit, Michigan."

  Michaela didn't miss a beat. "I don't know what to tell you. I already did all the medical prep work. He's ready to go."

  "Ma'am, the schedule clearly states-"

  "Look," Michaela said, and there it was, that forceful personality that could bulldoze through bureaucracy like it was tissue paper. "I've been prepping inductees all morning. I'm on a tight schedule. I have another one coming in forty-five minutes, and if I have to redo all the prep work on this one because of some scheduling mix-up, I'm going to be behind for the rest of the day. You want to explain to your CO why the induction pipeline is backed up?"

  The soldier hesitated. Looked at his partner, who shrugged.

  "He seems a bit... out of it," the second soldier said, looking at me.

  I let my head loll slightly to the side. Tried to look woozy. It wasn't hard. My heart was pounding so hard I actually did feel a little lightheaded.

  "Bad reaction to the anesthesia," Michaela said smoothly. "That's why he's in the chair. The meds to ease the transition hit him harder than expected. But his vitals are stable, and the prep work is done. We're good to go."

  "Can I see his ID?"

  Michaela reached into her pocket and pulled out my wallet. Handed it over. The soldier examined my driver's license, looked at me, looked back at the license.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  "Adam Smith," he read aloud.

  I almost laughed. My absurdly generic name, the one that had caused confusion at every doctor's office and pharmacy and government building I'd ever been to, was suddenly an asset. There were probably a thousand Adam Smiths in the military. Probably a hundred in the induction program. One mix-up was completely plausible.

  The soldier handed back my wallet. Looked at his tablet again. Looked at me.

  "Alright," he said finally. "But I'm noting the discrepancy in the log. If there's an issue, it's on you."

  "Noted," Michaela said. "Can we proceed? Clock's ticking."

  The soldier nodded to his partner, who swiped a card through the security panel. The heavy doors hissed open, revealing a corridor that looked like it belonged in a spaceship. White walls. Recessed lighting. The faint hum of serious machinery.

  Michaela pushed me through.

  The doors hissed shut behind us.

  "Holy shit," I whispered.

  "Mouth shut," Michaela said, but I could hear the smile in her voice.

  We moved down the corridor. Passed rooms with windows that showed equipment I didn't recognize. Passed technicians in white coats who barely glanced at us. Everything was new and clean and expensive-looking, the kind of expensive that came with UN funding and international cooperation.

  We reached another set of doors. These opened automatically, and suddenly we were in a prep room. Medical equipment. Monitors. And in the center, a chair that looked like a dentist's chair had mated with a fighter jet cockpit.

  A technician looked up from a computer terminal. "Adam Smith?"

  "That's him," Michaela said.

  "Great. We're running a bit ahead of schedule, so this is perfect timing." The technician, a woman with short gray hair and the kind of efficient movements that suggested she'd done this a hundred times, walked over to us. "I'm Dr. Page. I'll be overseeing your neural attuning process. How are you feeling?"

  I opened my mouth. Closed it. Looked at Michaela.

  She gave me the slightest nod.

  "A little nervous," I said. It was the truth.

  "That's completely normal," Dr. Page said. She was already checking monitors, pulling up screens, her fingers flying over keyboards. "The attuning process is non-invasive, but it is intense. Your brain is going to be mapped in ways it's never been mapped before. Some people find it disorienting."

  "Okay," I said.

  Michaela squeezed my shoulder. When I looked up at her, she was smiling. Just slightly. Just enough.

  She raised one hand in a small wave. Goodbye. Good luck. Don't fuck this up.

  Then she turned and walked out, and I was alone with Dr. Page and the technicians and the chair that was going to change everything.

  If I didn't get caught first.

  Dr. Page was talking, explaining the process, but I was only half-listening. My brain was spinning, trying to process what had just happened. Michaela had smuggled me into The Forge. Actually smuggled me in, using my generic name and her forceful personality and a lie about anesthesia reactions.

  She'd risked her career for this. For me.

  Why?

  Because she thought I'd given up. Because she'd seen something in me that I'd stopped seeing in myself. Because she was Michaela Sytes, and when she decided something needed to happen, she made it happen, regulations be damned.

  "Lieutenant Smith? Are you ready?"

  I focused on Dr. Page. She was holding what looked like a helmet, sleek and black with a faint blue glow along the seams.

  "Yeah," I said. "I'm ready."

  Two technicians moved to help me out of the wheelchair. Their hands were professional, impersonal, but I felt them hesitate when they gripped my arms. Felt the moment they registered how weak my muscles were, how little resistance there was.

  "You okay?" one of them asked.

  "Just tired from the meds," I said, echoing Michaela's lie. "I can move, just... slowly."

  They helped me into the chair. It was surprisingly comfortable, molding to my body in a way that suggested serious ergonomic engineering. Restraints came down over my chest and legs, not tight but secure. Making sure I wouldn't fall if I had a seizure or a bad reaction or whatever else could go wrong when you let an AI map your neural pathways.

  "We're going to bring in the drive now," Dr. Page said. "This is the AI component that will be attuned specifically to you. Once the process is complete, this unit will be yours and yours alone. The neural mapping is unique and irreversible."

  A different technician approached with a tray of medical supplies. IV bag, catheter kit, antiseptic wipes. The practical necessities of keeping a human body alive while their consciousness was somewhere else entirely.

  "We need to place an IV and catheter before the attuning process," she said, her tone matter-of-fact. "You'll be in immersion for an extended period. Your body will still need hydration, and we need to manage waste."

  "Ah yes," I said. "The glamorous side of virtual reality warfare. Really selling the experience here."

  She smiled slightly. "It's not in the promotional materials, but it's necessary. The IV will go in your left arm. The catheter will be uncomfortable for a moment, but you'll barely notice it once you're under."

  "Story of my life," I muttered. "Uncomfortable medical procedures I barely notice."

  She worked efficiently, sliding the IV needle into my arm and taping it down. The catheter was worse, exactly as advertised, but I'd been through enough hospital procedures that this barely registered on my personal scale of indignities. Just another violation of bodily autonomy in a long series of them.

  At least this one had a purpose beyond keeping me alive for another day of ceiling tile counting.

  "All set," she said, checking the IV flow. "Dr. Page, he's ready for neural mapping."

  I nodded. I'd heard about this. Read about it in the articles and press releases. Each unit cost millions. Each one had to be calibrated to a specific person's brainwave patterns, their neural architecture, the unique way their brain processed information and sensation.

  Once attuned, it couldn't be reset. Couldn't be reused. It was locked to you forever.

  The door opened, and two more technicians wheeled in something that looked like a server rack. Black metal. Heavy. With cooling vents and status lights and the kind of serious hardware that suggested this was not consumer-grade technology.

  This was military. This was cutting-edge. This was the kind of AI that nations went to war over.

  And it was about to be permanently linked to my brain.

  "Holy shit," I whispered.

  Dr. Page smiled. "That's what everyone says. Don't worry. ARIA knows what she's doing."

  ARIA. The AI that ran The Forge. The one that was supposedly completely autonomous, beyond any nation's control. The one that would decide the rules and adjust the parameters and keep everything fair.

  The one that was about to get very intimately acquainted with my fucked-up nervous system.

  They connected cables from the drive to the helmet. Checked readings on monitors. Dr. Page asked me questions, standard medical stuff, and I answered on autopilot while my brain tried to process what was happening.

  What was the worst that could happen? I could die. But death wasn't exactly a new fear. I'd been living with it for years, watching it approach in slow motion through muscle weakness and respiratory decline and the gradual failure of systems that were supposed to keep me alive.

  At least this would be interesting.

  At least this would be something other than counting ceiling tiles and eating Jell-O and waiting for the inevitable.

  "Alright, Lieutenant Smith," Dr. Page said. She was holding the helmet now, ready to place it on my head. "The initial mapping will take about thirty minutes. You'll feel some unusual sensations. Tingling. Pressure. Some people report seeing colors or patterns. It's all normal. Your brain is just trying to interpret signals it's never received before. If at any point you feel pain or severe discomfort, say so immediately. We can pause the process."

  "Okay," I said.

  She lowered the helmet onto my head. It was heavier than I expected, and cold. The interior pressed against my skull, and I felt dozens of contact points, sensors that would read my brain's electrical activity and translate it into data that ARIA could understand.

  "Initiating neural mapping," someone said.

  The world went white.

  Not bright. Not painful. Just... white. Like someone had replaced reality with a blank canvas.

  Then the tingling started. In my scalp first, then spreading down through my neck, my spine, my limbs. It felt like my entire nervous system was waking up, neurons firing in patterns they'd never fired before.

  Colors bloomed in the whiteness. Blues and greens and purples that swirled and merged and separated. I could feel ARIA in my head, not as a presence but as a process, mapping and measuring and cataloging every neural pathway, every synapse, every connection.

  She found the damaged areas. I could feel her attention focus on them, on the places where my motor neurons were dying, where the signals from my brain couldn't reach my muscles anymore. Could feel her analyzing the peripheral neuropathy, the way pain signals were muted and distorted by years of constant input.

  For a moment, I was afraid she'd reject me. Flag me as unsuitable. Shut down the process and alert someone that there'd been a mistake, that this Adam Smith wasn't the right Adam Smith.

  But she didn't.

  She just kept mapping. Kept learning. Adapting her algorithms to account for my unique neural architecture, my damaged pathways, my brain that had learned to function despite everything working against it.

  Time stopped meaning anything. I floated in the white space with the colors and the tingling and ARIA's relentless, thorough attention. Felt her build a model of me, neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse.

  Felt her lock that model into the AI drive, permanently and irreversibly.

  The white faded. The colors dimmed. The tingling receded.

  But I didn't return to the prep room.

  The white faded into something else entirely.

  Rough ground pressed against my back. Canvas above me, the peaked ceiling of a tent. Voices outside, muffled but distinct. The smell of earth and smoke and something cooking.

  I was lying down, but I could feel my legs. Really feel them. Not the distant, disconnected sensation I'd grown used to, but actual proprioception. My toes. My calves. My thighs. All present and accounted for.

  "Hey. You awake?"

  I turned my head. A soldier stood at the tent entrance, silhouetted against daylight. Male, maybe mid-thirties, with the kind of weathered face that came from actual outdoor living rather than a tanning bed. He wore what looked like medieval-ish military gear, leather and cloth, practical rather than decorative.

  "Yeah," I said. My voice came out stronger than expected. "I'm awake."

  "Good. Let's get you up and moving. We've got seventeen more coming in over the next few hours, and I need to process everyone before the briefing."

  He walked over and extended a hand. I stared at it for a moment, then reached up and took it.

  He pulled. I rose.

  And kept rising.

  Holy shit. I was standing. On my own two feet. The soldier had let go of my hand, and I was still standing, my legs supporting my weight without trembling, without that constant threat of collapse.

  "You good?" the soldier asked.

  "I..." I looked down at my legs. They looked like my legs, lean and pale, but they were holding me up. Actually holding me up. "Yeah. I'm good."

  "First time in The Forge?"

  "That obvious?"

  "You've got that look. Like someone handed you a winning lottery ticket and you're waiting for the catch." He pulled out a tablet, old-school military issue. "Name?"

  "Adam Smith."

  He scrolled through his list. Frowned. Scrolled back up. Frowned harder.

  "Adam Smith," he repeated.

  "That's what I said."

  "I don't have an Adam Smith on my roster."

  Of course he didn't. Because I wasn't supposed to be here. Because Michaela had pulled off some kind of bureaucratic magic trick that apparently hadn't extended to updating the military's internal lists.

  "Well," I said, "I'm definitely here. And I definitely just got attuned. So unless you've got a way to send me back..."

  "No communication with the outside world until formal program start," the soldier said, his voice taking on the resigned tone of someone reciting a rule they didn't make and didn't particularly like. "ARIA's mandate. Came down two days ago, surprised everyone. Something about ensuring fair integration periods and preventing external interference during the adjustment phase." He looked at me, then at his tablet, then back at me. "You're sure your name is Adam Smith?"

  "Pretty sure. Had it for twenty-two years now."

  "Christ." He tapped something on the tablet. "Fine. I'll flag it for the brass to sort out after the blackout period ends. Not like I can do anything about it now anyway. You're here, you're attuned, and that's a multi-million dollar investment that can't be undone." He gestured toward the tent entrance. "Come on. Let's get you oriented to the world."

  I took a step toward the entrance.

  My right leg moved forward smoothly, my weight shifted, my left leg followed. Basic human locomotion. The kind of thing I used to do without thinking, before every step became a calculated risk.

  I took another step. Then another.

  "Easy there, Bambi," the soldier said, a hint of amusement in his voice. "You're walking like a baby deer."

  "Feel like one too," I admitted. Because I did. My legs worked, but my brain hadn't caught up yet. Each step required conscious thought, deliberate intention. Lift. Shift. Plant. Repeat. Like learning to walk all over again, except this time with legs that actually cooperated.

  I made it to the tent entrance and stopped, one hand on the canvas for balance. Not because I needed it, but because twenty-two years of needing support didn't disappear in an instant.

  Outside, the camp spread before me. Dozens of tents arranged in rough rows. A central area with what looked like a mess hall. Soldiers, or conscripts, or whatever we were supposed to call ourselves, moving between the structures. Some walked with the same uncertain gait I had. Others moved with confidence, like they'd been here longer.

  The sky was blue. Impossibly blue. The kind of blue you only saw in places without pollution, without the gray haze of civilization. Mountains rose in the distance, their peaks still capped with snow despite what felt like temperate weather.

  This was The Forge. The virtual world where nations would fight their wars. Where pain was real and death cost resources and medieval weapons made killing personal.

  And I was actually here. Living in it. My consciousness transferred into this reality while my body lay in a prep room somewhere, kept alive by an IV drip and a catheter.

  "Welcome to Forward Operating Base Alpha," the soldier said. "Or FOB Alpha, if you want to save syllables. This is the staging area for all new conscripts in The Forge. You'll spend your first week here learning the basics, getting used to your body, figuring out how not to die immediately when we send you out into the field."

  "Comforting," I said.

  "Not supposed to be comforting. Supposed to be honest." He stepped past me, heading toward the central area. "Come on. I'll show you where you'll be bunking."

  I followed him. Each step came a little easier than the last. My legs remembered how to do this, even if my conscious mind was still catching up. Lift. Shift. Plant. The rhythm of it, the simple mechanical process of moving through space under my own power.

  I started grinning. Couldn't help it. Probably looked like an idiot, grinning like a lunatic while stumbling through a military camp, but I didn't care.

  I was walking.

  My body was doing what I told it to do, when I told it to do it, without negotiation or compromise or the constant background calculation of energy reserves.

  The soldier glanced back at me. "You're smiling."

  "Yeah," I said. "I am."

  "Most people are terrified when they first get here."

  "Most people," I said, still grinning, "probably didn't spend the last three years in a wheelchair."

  He stopped walking. Turned to look at me properly. His expression shifted, something like understanding crossing his weathered face.

  "Ah," he said. "That explains the baby deer thing."

  "That explains a lot of things."

  He studied me for another moment, then nodded. "Well. Welcome to The Forge, Adam Smith. Try not to die in the first week. It's embarrassing for everyone involved."

  "I'll do my best," I said.

  And I meant it. Because whatever came next, whatever horrors or challenges or medieval weapons this place had waiting for me, I'd face them on my own two feet.

  For the first time in three years, I had control of my body.

  I wasn't going to waste it.