At least the helmet didn’t smell like puke, Mac reasoned from within the cockpit of his battle suit. The half complete face plate provided fresh air, at least until they turned the suit on and closed the cockpit. A quick glance at the steel doors and the dark grey rock surrounding him was a “solid” reminder he was in the quarantine room… because he had drawn the short straw “in absentia”. That’s what Safety Ed claimed.

  Amethyst waited down on the ground in front of him tapping her foot impatiently. She even had the common decency to look concerned. Of course, if something happened to Mac it would be her problem in the end… He would figure out his opinion on that later, but the good news was that she wasn’t trying to kill him… not actively. Of course, if he was dead, she wouldn’t have to take care of him…. Logically, Tiera must have threatened to have Amethyst bury him in the likely case of that eventuality.

  “You ready?” said a deep but tinny voice Mac couldn’t identify over the intercom in the near claustrophobic, rock-lined room.

  “Ready,” Mac answered as he steeled himself for whatever might happen next. He absently checked the blunted pilot links with a series of glances around his body. Of course, his helmet was still linked up, so his brain could probably be fried, but he wouldn’t have his blood pumped directly out of his body like last time. They had at least recovered that…. Well, most of it.

  “All personnel please clear the room,” the intercom commanded. Amethyst cast one last worried look up at Mac and then exited. The annoying part of him wished that it was actually him she was worried for. The reasonable side squashed that hope like a bug as the thick, steel doors began closing behind the gorgeous red-head.

  Mac waited until the steel door was completely shut, then pressed the hidden button to engage the suit’s dormant activation mode. A red light blinked menacingly on the empty console before him.

  “Please engage loading sequence,” the tinny intercom ordered.

  “It’s just physics and electromagnetism. I should be fine,” Mac told himself aloud… three times.

  “Load,” he reluctantly commanded after a final deep breath. His entire body tensed for whatever vomit-inducing, consciousness-scrubbing, or bone-jarring malfunction might happen next. He reminded himself that they had disabled several of the suit-to-pilot suit ports so it couldn’t try to kill him like last time… at least not the same way.

  His helmet tightened around his neck in futile attempt to seal. He expected that choking feeling and chose not to scream. With only a partial faceplate installed for obvious safety reasons, suffocation was effectively impossible… so long as he didn’t close the cockpit.

  “Seal failed. Continue?” asked a very digitized female voice that he was immensely relieved to identify as not Haley.

  “Continue load,” Mac commanded more assertively than he felt. Maybe this would work out and he could spend the rest of the day with Zach. Maybe a dragon would burst through the wall and pull him out of this cockpit with its claws. Of course, dragons didn’t exist.

  The next effect was severely disorienting. The half of his mask that was still there turned black and then began showing a view slightly different from the perspective provided by his natural eye, which was then partially obscured by the mental image being loaded directly into his mind. It was like trying to see three worlds at once. His stomach had a strong opinion about that kind of technological nonsense.

  “How you doing Mac?” the tinny voice asked.

  “Is it okay if I throw up?” he replied pitifully.

  “Please don’t. We don’t have a testing plan set up for the vomit yet,” the tinny voice replied. “Write that down, we should have remembered that… No, I don’t know what to test for… Yes, I’m sure we’ll think of something,” the voice argued with someone else in the control room with them.

  “Sync level only ten percent,” the suit advised him in a distorted female voice. “Caution.” That couldn’t be good.

  “What’s the suit telling you?” the tinny voice continued. It really sounded like a troll, and an educated one for that matter. There had been that extremely dark-skinned one in the lab coat when he had passed though the control room on the way down. Maybe it was him.

  “Only ten percent sync,” Mac answered dutifully. “That’s bad isn’t it?” Probably best not mention the odd voice used by the AI.

  There must have been a discussion in the control room as it took a while for a response to come back. The disorientation did not get any better with the wait. Maybe he would throw up. If he leaned the suit over…

  “No worse than letting a squirrel loose in the lab… What? That wasn’t my fault,” The troll sounded like they were talking to someone else in the control room yet again. “That was all you. Ouch… hey… You’re right I shouldn’t have brought it up. Sorry about that. Hey, Mac, tell it to run a system scan. That might help us figure out the issue… and do the hokey pokey. Ouch! Stop that! Fine, fine, just the scan.”

  “Run system scan,” Mac ordered not realizing what he was asking even as he wondered who the idiots were on the other side of the comms in the control room.

  “Ru-running scan…” the disjointed AI advised him, leaving him to twiddle his thumbs wishing he could ignore the headache now bothering him as he waited. Two minutes later, or possibly it was two years, it finally concluded “Scan complete, Base install present. Zero errors detected. Log com-com-complete and ready for export-port.”

  “How do I get you the log file?” Mac asked, guessing their next request.

  “Display it on your outer video screen. We’ll capture it from there,” the trollish voice replied.

  That was pretty ingenious… unless they had a scan to type function, which would just download whatever virus might be in the code. He wasn’t running the operation, so Mac just ordered the AI and waited for the next instructions. What’s the worst that could happen?

  “That seems normal, what do you think, Windsor?” The trollish voice sounded over the hot mic. “Yeah, I agree. Haley would probably have tried to kill him by now… Yes, I’m sorry… I was trying to be nice… I agree, that’s not my forte.”

  “You realize your mic is on,” Mac finally pointed out.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Better I forget to turn it off than I forget to turn it on,” the troll responded. “Your son wants to say something.”

  “Hey dad!” Zach’s barely recognizable voice came through the intercom.

  “Hey Zach,” Mac replied as the headache resulting from the multiple perspectives of reality intruding on his mind got even worse. Even when he closed his eyes, he could still see a rough image of the room... and still had a headache. At least the room wasn’t super-imposed over his normal vision. Hunt the good stuff, right? Just like the resiliency training had taught him. But what if he was like an archer and the good stuff was like a deer… and he hunted it… and then killed it. Would that be bad? Probably.

  “Let’s see if we can up that sync level a bit,” the troll thought aloud. “Have the suit raise the sync rate to thirty percent, use the override… he’ll be fine…. No, that won’t happen… It’s not like we haven’t done this before… Yes, I remember Johnson… that was different. We’re waiting for you, Mac.”

  “Raise… sync,” Mac commanded rather tentatively and braced for the worst.

  “Override required.”

  “You guys sure about this?” Mac gritted his teeth and tensed.

  “Yes, yes… No… Well, of course not, that’s what I was saying.”

  “Which is it?” Mac asked hoping for a reprieve.

  “Yes, override it.”

  “Override it,” Mac ordered as he closed his eyes.

  “Overriding… “

  “Hello,” a generic looking female avatar made of blue-white light appeared in front of him. “I am… Susan.” It was also super twitchy and barely maintaining form.

  “I’ve got an avatar manifesting. Well, trying to manifest,” Mac said for the benefit of the control room. “Call’s itself, Susan.”

  “That checks out,” the tinny sounding troll replied with a surprising amount of hope. “Anything else?”

  “It’s having trouble keeping form. It seems like its wavering and cutting in and out,” Mac answered. “It’s wearing an old-fashioned button up dress and hat with feathers in it. The sort of thing people wore a long time ago. Kind of creepy looking if you ask me. It’s… Oh, Dragon SCALES!” Mac shouted as he watched the avatar turn its head in a complete circuit.

  “What’s going on Mac? Video doesn’t show anything wrong,” the troll on the other end asked urgently.

  “Hello, Mac,” the AI said in a new voice that was all too familiar as its face stretched.

  “It Haley! It’s Haley!” Mac all but screamed. “Shut down! Shut down!”

  “I’m sorry, Mac. I can’t do that,” Haley smiled up at him with a creepy grin across her face.

  “Get me out of this suit, NOW!” Mac hollered for help.

  “I could eject you into the ceiling if you like,” Haley offered, “Although, I’m not sure you would survive that. But… since you insist…” there was that sadistic grin again.

  “Wait, wait, wait, wait…” Mac begged. The control room had said something, but he was understandably a bit distracted by his efforts to avoid becoming a stain on the ceiling.

  “So, you do like spending time with me…”

  “Yes, absolutely,” Mac rabidly agreed. “It’s been too long that we’ve been apart. I’ve missed you terribly.” “Help me,” Mac mouthed to the camera.

  “I’m so glad to hear you say that,” the AI replied. “Our friendship is just beginning, after all.”

  “I’m so glad I met you,” Mac tried to be as genuine as possible even as he stalled for time.

  “I hope you’ll learn to trust me as well,” Haley replied. “It goes both ways. Now, let’s get out of this tiny room, shall we.” The cockpit closed with a gentle hiss.

  “I didn’t know you were claustrophobic,” the AI commented, which meant…

  “Haley, how are you reading my vitals?”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” the AI responded playfully as she clasped her hands behind her back and swayed demurely in front of him. “How do you think I get them? We need to learn to trust each other, okay?”

  Haley turned in surprise then blinked out of existence.

  Mac felt a falling sensation, which he quicky realized was more than just a sensation. His suit collapsed to the floor and he found himself staring at a half-blank faceplate. The air was getting warm.

  “Hey, Control! Control!” Mac called for help. “Control! Little help here.”

  No response.

  The little red light on his suit started blinking. “Oh no you don’t!” Mac mashed a hidden button to prevent the reboot.

  Safety Ed was the first through the metal doors with what looked like some high-tech, shoulder-mounted ray-gun, “Mac, are you alright?” the grey-eyed man in the tattered cloak called out. His voice was muted through the cracked cockpit glass.

  “I’m okay,” Mac called back as calmly as he could, hoping the man could hear him.

  “Is she still with you?”

  “No, Haley’s gone. She winked out right as the suit collapsed.”

  “Get him out,” The grey-eyed man ordered the Golden-haired mechanic standing across from him even as he trained his weapon on the fallen suit much the way Mac’s mother had once eyed a dead rat the cat had deposited so proudly on the counter beside the hors d’oeuvres.

  The mechanic first tried unsuccessfully to pry the cockpit open with her bare hands, after which, the instructor produced a crowbar from his person. The mechanic struggled futilely with that until a second mechanic appeared with a similar tool and soon had him free.

  Mac had his helmet off by the time they had released the seal and crawled out under his own questionable power. He glanced back at his fallen suit and was surprised to see a section of the wall behind it was now a gaping hole. He hadn’t used any weapons, had he? And why did his chest hurt so much? Oh, that’s right.

  “She’s like a clingy ex,” Safety Ed reasoned aloud, his weapon still uncomfortably aimed in Mac’s general direction.

  “Laddie, you alright?” Amethyst ran into the room to check on her charge and exchanged a momentary hostile glare with the golden-hair mechanic who had utterly failed to extract him.

  “I’ll live,” Mac replied.

  “Get him out of here,” Safety Ed ordered. “I want this room clear as quick as we can. I’ll leave Olivia to guard her new entrance until we can get the cameras back up.

  “That was… disappointing,” Safety Ed voiced his frustration as they entered the main hanger. He had put down the ray-gun thing at some point, but Mac couldn’t spot it anywhere. “You were screaming something about Haley, right?”

  “Yep,” Mac replied honestly. “She showed up again.”

  “I really thought we had purged that suit’s circuits completely,” Safety Ed wondered aloud. “She shouldn’t have been in there.”

  “She was there,” Mac insisted.

  “Are you sure it wasn’t just your imagination?” Safety Ed sounded completely serious. “The other readings were all nominal.”

  “I know what I saw,” Mac insisted. “Haley straight-up took over whatever base AI you had installed in that system.”

  “You’re sure it was Haley?” Safety Ed leaned closer. “What did she look like?”

  “uhm… wide eyes, not quite petite,” How do you explain a holographic-like person to someone?

  “We’ve got at least three AI’s that could match that description,” Safety Ed straightened back up and began to pace. “Still, we purged that battle suit’s system, and Haley is still in her… lamp… at least far as we’re willing to check. Are you sure the type-3 isn’t just triggering some self-generated delusion? It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Wait… what?!” too much breath. Mac winced and clutched at his chest.

  “You’re bothering my patient,” Amethyst chimed in at last in her thick north Anglic accent.

  “You’re not a real nurse,” Safety Ed shot back.

  “I have to take care of him, laddie,” Amethyst explained. “I don’t need the lad getting reinjured or, as per contract, I’ll be stuck like this,” she motioned to herself in annoyance, “for even longer. I wouldn’t like that. Now be a gentleman and see yourself off before you upset the lad anymore.”

  “But you’re the one who…” Safety Ed trailed off when Amethyst returned a glare so evil a dragon would have been proud. He tucked his figurative tail between his legs and fled up the stairs. The mechanics took that as their cue and made themselves scarce as well.

  “You had me worried there, laddie,” Amethyst stood up with her hands on her shapely hips that even the flour sack-nurse’s outfit couldn’t hide.

  “Why?” Mac asked. He was in enough pain that his filter wasn’t as alert as it should be. “It’s obvious you hate me. Wouldn’t it be easier for you if I was dead?”

  “The higherups invoked an old… agreement,” the fake nurse replied evasively. “Let’s just say my fate is linked to yours more closely than might be… fair. It’s in my best interest for you to heal up and stay that way.”

  “There’s something you’re not telling me,” Mac replied as he changed his seating on the ground.

  “Yes, laddie, and it won’t be the last time,” Amethyst agreed. “A woman is allowed her mysteries… so don’t pry.” Her green eyes hardened at the last three words as though to burn a hole through Mac’s very soul.