The pretty and petite med tech shook her head. “Sorry, Joe, elevated core temp is one of the enhancements.”

  “Why? You mean I’m going to stay like this?”

  She offered a sad smile. I liked this one. She had been friendly at least and, as far as I could tell, completely honest with me. “Kirsten,” I pleaded, “can you get Doctor Reichert? This can’t be normal.” She was taking my pulse; the touch of her skin was awakening parts of me I had feared were completely dead. Okay, maybe a fever wasn’t all bad.

  “Do you feel bad? Are you in pain?” she asked.

  Truthfully, I didn’t. “Just chills.” She made some notes on the screen.

  “Expected, you may prefer warmer settings in the future, dress in layers. Once you begin retraining, you will also notice spikes in your temperature. This is all expected, Master Sergeant.”

  Damn…I liked it better when she called me Joe.

  “Part of that is simply the denser muscle mass and cellular boost the treatments have made. Some of it is due to a metabolism shift in your body. One advantage to this is you will probably never get sick.”

  “How is that?” I asked, now intrigued. She pursed her lips in a way I found incredibly alluring, although that could be mostly because I had been in these med wards for months already. A white room 32 feet by 18 feet, confined mainly to a bed that was smaller than the one I had in basic training.

  “Fever is normally the body’s natural way of fighting off infections. The fever is not the problem, although persistent or very high ones can do harm. We’ve improved your body’s systems to withstand the additional stress, though.”

  “So, if I always have a fever, infection can’t take root?”

  “You remember hearing how bats supposedly caused Covid back in the twenties and a new version of SARS in forty-two?” she continued without answering me. “Bats are mammals but are also notorious reservoirs of all kinds of viruses, many of which are zoonotic, meaning they can transfer to other animals, including humans. For years, researchers couldn’t figure out how bats managed to not get sick themselves. They do have a difference in their immune system, but what they found was the bats’ metabolism works at a much higher level. This is probably an adaptation that helped them master flight. Higher metabolism means higher core temperatures, and the infections just can’t take hold.”

  “So what? You gave me bat DNA?” She laughed; it was a kind of adorably sexy laugh. The sheet was tent poling around my waist. Not now, you freakin’ idiot, I thought, glancing down. She followed my eyes down and smiled more and… was that a blush?

  “No bat DNA. You won’t be needing to feast on human blood or anything. Just a slight temperature elevation. You will probably need to eat more often to maintain your weight, and your life expectancy might be slightly reduced, but otherwise, nothing to worry about.”

  She left me alone with my thoughts again. They were not happy thoughts; I was going stir-crazy in here. Magnus had been around less and less; I had no access to any news from the outside. Now I was being transformed, enhanced mostly against my will, but I had to admit some of it sounded pretty cool. A chill raced through my body as I pulled the blanket up.

  The next few weeks blended together in my head as a host of unfamiliar faces seemed to come and go. My body ached; my bones ached. At one point, my voice stopped working, and my vision began going in and out. Coming out of anesthesia on the very familiar operating room table, it surprised me to see Doctor Reichert himself. He pulled down his mask, and it shocked me to see how bad he looked. Not just tired, but exhausted. His skin was an unnatural shade of gray, the color of walls in a funeral home. His cheeks were sunken, and his eyes were ringed by dark circles.

  “Shit, Doc, you look worse than me.”

  The man smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He just seemed devoid of life.

  “Joe, you’ll be glad to know we are finishing up with this phase.”

  He sounded muffled until I turned my head to the other side.

  “Whoa, careful there,” he said, reaching down to my face. “That side of your head is heavily bandaged. “

  I reached up and touched it. Just one side of my cheek and ear were covered. “What was this one?”

  He looked contemplative but shook his head. “I can’t tell you, and… you won’t want to know.”

  “Is it a bomb? Did you put a bomb in my head like with Snake Plissken?” I knew it was an old reference to a long-lost movie, but hey, it was what came to mind. Besides, my dad made us watch tons of the classics, especially the stupid 2D action movies. Shit, he would walk around quoting those awful cheesy lines for weeks afterward.

  “No bomb, and no, you don’t have to escape from New York… and I think that was on his wrist,” the doctor said, impressing me with his ancient cinematic knowledge and his humor despite his withering appearance.

  “Doc, no offense, but you look like you need some of my treatments. You sure you’re up for doing surgery and shit?”

  Magnus gave a nod to the others, who discreetly left the operating room. “Mister Kovach, you understand, I’m sure, how compartmentalized things are here. It’s government and all.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, things are changing, getting worse out there. They want more assets… and yes, before you ask, yes, like you, but we have other defense projects we are working on as well. Not just here. I am sure I am one of dozens, maybe hundreds scattered around the Alliance countries.”

  I thought I knew where this was heading. “You need to deliver the goods… is that it?”

  The man’s drawn face nodded slowly. “About the gist of it, my boy. They need you and the rest of our goodies. We are going to have to speed up the next few steps, then kick you out. I’m sure you will miss seeing my pretty face, but we’ll be checking in with you.”

  I nodded, my acceptance of my fate long a non-issue. “So, what else is left? I mean, to do here?”

  “Something… unpleasant, I’m afraid.”

  Shhhhiiiitttt… he was not kidding. The next fourteen days was a constant intravenous infusion followed by long sessions in a modified MRI machine followed by hyperbaric chamber sessions.

  “The carbon graphene mesh is bonding with your bones to strengthen your skeletal frame by a factor of five,” the rehab tech said as he worked my aching legs. My body trembled. It hurt so much. Not the white-hot agony of a knife wound or gunshot, more the constant pulling apart of every bone in my body at the same time. Even my cheeks hurt. I felt like my head was being wrapped with bands of metal and a demonic blacksmith was hammering each one into place. I’d been through hell up to this point, but this was the worst month of my entire life by far.

  Finally, they left me alone and let me sleep, and man, did I ever sleep. I came slightly awake when someone was replacing an IV bag, another time when I saw an orderly changing my bed. I knew from the smell I’d shit myself. I had zero fucks left to give. I should have chosen to die back on that first day. I don’t know how long I was in that state or what else they may have done to me while I was out of it. I prayed to not wake up again because the pain never stopped, it never gave up. It was relentless and being sentenced to eternal hell could not have felt any worse. My body was on fire, my head an explosion of suffering, and my will to go on was gone.

  Later… much later, I was wheeled down a long corridor and into an elevator. People had come out of offices to wave to me. Apparently, I was leaving. Reichert had said this phase was ending…what comes next?

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  I discovered, after a long hover copter ride in a blackout cabin, and yes, if you want to know the full joy of what motion induced nausea can feel like, by all means, please do just that. Anyway… I then discovered, much to my horror, that the last of the scheduled Joe Kovach upgrades was less intrusive, yet somehow even more disturbing.

  “Look Dude,” the kid said, invoking visions of him with a skateboard and weed stick. “Like, hey… it’s not up to me, man. Shit, I wouldn’t do it, but you know it’s cool and all.”

  I looked up and yelled loudly, “Can someone find me an adult… someone who speaks English!”

  The kid with the surfer boy’s speech tried to make eye contact, but totally failed. “Yeah, like they aren’t, um… coming. It’s just me. They don’t have like the clearance and stuff. There was another girl, she used to be here. Cute, Asian, kinda militant look, you know? She helped design and code a lot of this stuff, but like, she bailed. Off the grid and shit. You know, with the politico shit going on and all.”

  I, of course, had no idea what he was talking about, having lived in a fucking hospital bed for most of a year now. “You’re the most qualified person they have?” I asked with as much respect as the situation seemed to demand... which, if you are keeping score, was precisely NONE!

  “Oh yeah, Dude, like I have degrees and shit, you know—did my time.”

  “Okay, Doctor Hotshot, what have you got for me?”

  He beamed and unclasped the latch on a silver hardcase he’d been holding. The case was just foam padding with one small object in a cutout placed neatly in the center of the padding. He gently pried it free and held it up for me to inspect. I was clueless about what it was and clearly less impressed than the kid was hoping. It was an item about as thick as an old-style credit card but only a fraction as long or wide.

  “Do I even want to know?”

  “This is the coolest thing ever, Joe,” Surfer Doc said smugly.

  So now I had gone from being Dude to first-name basis with this Mister Nerdnick 9000.

  “And where does that go?”

  “In your anus,” the kid said, trying to stifle a laugh.

  “You know I can kill you even without my enhancements.”

  “Sor, I mean, no…no, sir. It actually adheres to the base of your neck… maybe just a bit farther down.” As he bent behind me to study his subject closer, I felt his fingers mapping out the vertebrae of my spine.

  “Just sticks onto my skin? That doesn’t sound like you people. Ya’ll like surgical implanting stuff. In my ass would actually not have surprised me.”

  “Well, it sticks rather permanently,” the kid said in a tone of genuine apology. “The adhesive, if you want to think of it as that, is new. It bonds at a near subatomic level to be like… you know, totally accurate. The contents of the neural card will imbed in your skin over time, and the filaments are self-routing. Most of it is wireless, though.”

  “What the fuck is it?”

  “Oh, brain stimulator, comms array, and data retrieval and storage.”

  “It’s a computer?” I asked.

  “No.” He suddenly looked more uncomfortable. “Joe, you’re the computer. Your brain, I mean. You have been on a cocktail of neural enhancers as well as the transcranial electrical stimulation therapies. You also have the uploaded comms block from our Biological Technologies lab. This little beauty just ties it all together and allows us to go live, ya know?”

  “I’m the computer. Did you happen to see my ASVAB scores, Son? My father actually cried when he saw them they were so bad.”

  “Yeah,” he snorted. “So, I suck at tests, too. Like this one time in grad school…”

  I snapped my fingers in front of him. “Focus, Lawnmower Man.”

  “Oh, um… yeah. Okay, well, you are getting smarter, but that stuff is just taking effect. I believe Doc Mags may have even done some epigenetic changes, but you won’t be like genius level IQ or anything… at least probably not. More like, you know, it’s specialized knowledge battle tactics, survival skills, and shit.”

  This kid was about to realize the human version of a hard drive crash. My fist kept clenching and unclenching with every sloppily assembled sentence he spoke. The trigger was if he started another sentence with ‘so.’ I quickly decided that was my kill command. My father was an absentee for most of my formative years, but he made damn sure we knew how to fucking speak the English language to someone. “Scuse me, Chuckles, any chance there is a grown-up around I could speak to? Someone who hasn’t been hitting the meth pipe?”

  “Huh?” Captain Oblivious said before continuing, “Oh, hey, like nah, man… sorry, no, not anymore anyway—right?” He chuckled nervously. “Anyway, soon as this is synched up, you’ll understand better.”

  The surfer dude, doper doctor kid, moved again to my back, pulled down my hospital gown, and did something between my shoulder blades. I felt a coldness, then a sensation of intense burning, but within ten or fifteen seconds it was gone.

  “So, what? I can pay my bills through this, surf the internet, play Halo X?”

  “Nah,” the kid said. “Well, maybe. I mean, it does have some games loaded, and yeah, you could probably play the online versions.”

  “So, my brain is going to be on the Internet?” Shit, now I was starting sentences with so! Sorry, Dad.

  “Nah, just the root bios. But in time, you’ll figure out how to access it.”

  “Which one?” He knew what I meant; the Internet had evolved over the years. The original web now came in multiple flavors. Most adults like myself only accessed via the Blue line. It was more restrictive, actively policed for trolls, viruses, spammers, and such. You could only access it via a verified address that was as personal to you as the old social security number. While you could assume any public persona you liked, if you crossed the line, did something wrong, you would be fined or worse. The internet provider could and would immediately tell the governing body who was responsible where you were and withdraw the fines from your digital wallet. Therefore, behavior, while still anonymous, was much better than it once was. Anonymity no longer equaled unaccountability.

  “Oh, like for sure. Like we have it programmed for Blue. You can add your personal IP address at boot-up. Ya know, in truth, the core level AI can access all of them, even the old www or dark web if you needed it to. Built-in standard and Milcrypt text and SatCell comms of course. Battery should last indefinitely; it literally draws power from…”

  I cut him off. I had seen the old Matrix movies. More of my dad’s favorites. “That’s okay, I got it. I’m a human battery.”

  Wearable computers had been around for decades, and personal AIs had been a growing fad, but this was neither. It was more. Still, I couldn’t sense anything.

  “How do I turn it on?”

  Surfer Doc was scrolling through his tablet, humming some inane pop tune at the same time. “Huh? Oh, yeah… it’s on, Dude. So, you see, right now, it’s just synching up and installing hot patches, you know? Like to some bugs we found.” He quickly punched something on the screen. “And the interface is like pretty intuitive and stuff—you’ll know when you see it.”

  He should have said ‘hear it.’

  “Hello, Joseph.”

  A light tone had preceded the unbelievably sexy voice. Still, it scared the piss out of me. Then I realized I had not actually heard it, not aloud anyway.

  “Hello,” I replied.

  “Oh, so you don’t have to speak aloud, the system is tied into your speech, auditory, and optic nerves, so you can say it mentally or just think it. It will take a while to integrate fully, but within, say, forty-eight hours, it should be fully functional.”

  “Then this thing is running wires throughout my brain?”

  The computer AI answered, “Not at all, Sergeant Kovach. We use synthetic nerve bundles to tap into your existing systems as needed. These are biologically indistinguishable from your body’s own network of arteries, neural, and nerve pathways.”

  I knew exotic biotechnologies had come a long way, but this was an off-the-charts level of tech.

  “Pretty amazing stuff, huh?” Surfer Doc said.

  I had no answer for that. My body was clearly not my own, and I was feeling more tricked out than the latest Ford pickup and a lot less useful. “Does it… she have a name?”

  “I can be programed with one,” she answered. “Whatever name you prefer.”

  Surfer Doc smiled, apparently reading her response from the tablet screen as well. “Yeah, they have an evolving personality code that adapts to the user. We typically leave them blank for installs as some people prefer to just think of them as a tool, like a PC or Smartcomm, you know?”

  I nodded. “But even those had AI interfaces. Hell, Siri, Alexa, Doris, and Prime have been around for decades. Let’s go with Ada.”

  “Ah, your third-grade teacher,” Surfer Dude said, looking at his tablet. “Damn, she was a looker, Dude. Little Kovach was a playa.”

  “Fuck me, kid. How much info do you have on me?”

  “Sorry, Joe, I actually revealed that,” Ada said. Your memory centers lit up with that name and history, which I then cross-referenced with your old school records.

  Shit… I thought. This is going to be…

  “Fun?” Ada said in a tone that was somehow both upbeat and foreboding.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  I was still at what they referred to as Delta Site a week later. Seven days and the only other live person I had spoken with was Surfer Doc, whom I eventually learned was named Jace. And, of course, he would be. And where was Delta Site, you might ask? I have no freakin’ clue; the government, military whatever, loves their little secrets.

  I was still getting accustomed to Ada, and although as odd as hell as it was the first few days, it was amazing how quickly I got used to having her there. “Ada, can you show me a tactical terrain map of the area?” I asked again, in a slightly different way, just to see if she could slip past the handler’s firewall.

  “I can give you an example terrain map of any coordinates you select. I am not privy to your precise location.”

  “But you are here with me?”

  “Not exactly, you are a single remote node. I am a distributed network AI. My presence, or virtual consciousness, resides on many servers and network connections. Due to security concerns, I, of course, cannot offer anyone maps of those geographical coordinates either.”