All three men faded away, and I sighed with relief. I had cleared the first room successfully. If the others were similar, I judged my chances of completing the scenario to be fairly high.
I stepped back out into the hallway and crossed over to the room further down the hall. Someone jumped out at me as I entered and I almost fired, but it turned out to be a small child running to hide behind his mother in a kitchen. Deeper into the apartment were two more civilians sitting on a couch. I turned to leave, but then a gang member burst out of hiding from the bedroom and opened fire on me. I shot him in the head, and he dropped right in front of me, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d been too slow.
When I went back out in the hallway, I nearly took a shot at a woman carrying a bag of groceries as she entered the building. I thought the timing of her entrance was suspect, and sure enough, I turned to see three gang members taking aim from a doorway behind me. They each fired. I took one of them in the chest, but the other two both hit me. The words TEST SUSPENDED appeared in the air in front of my face.
The AR environment faded until I once again saw the plasticrete barriers of the room. I walked back toward the beginning and found Veraldi looking for me.
“What happened,” I asked.
“I stopped the test. You died.”
“It wasn’t nearly that hard when I did it in training here.”
“Which test did you take?”
“It was a hostage scenario, and everyone in the building was either a hostage or a terrorist. I passed with no problem.”
Veraldi held up two fingers. “Two things are different. First, that was before you had your prosthetics. Second, the difficulty level would have been set at standard. This one was set to advanced.”
I paused for a moment and just took that in, trying to figure out if Veraldi was deliberately setting me up for failure. I didn’t come up with anything, so I decided to ask outright.
“Why are you fucking with me, Vincenzo?”
He gave me a look, then sighed. “I’m not fucking with you, Tycho. I’m trying to save your life, and mine.”
“Are you telling me you could have passed that test?”
“I don’t know that I could. It’s difficult, as it would be in the real scenario. Clearing a gang-controlled apartment building without any backup is an impossible task. But that isn’t the point.”
“So, what is then? If you threw me into a test you knew I couldn’t pass, what did you expect to happen?”
“It’s more about your reaction speed, and I don’t just mean that in the physical sense.”
I just stared at him until he continued. He looked a little exasperated, like he didn’t think he should have to explain any of this.
“In this exercise, you have to think quickly. Gang member or civilian, hostile or not hostile. It’s overwhelming, but the purpose of the test is to see how quickly you make the right decision. Even if you get overwhelmed and killed, you pass this test if you make the right decision quickly enough. And you did technically pass, Tycho.”
I was a bit taken aback by that. “Technically?”
“You got a passing score, a score that clears you for field work. You didn’t shoot any civilians, you didn’t shoot anyone who wasn’t trying to shoot at you, and you made your decisions within the required timeframe. You passed the tests.”
That should have pleased me, but something told me he hadn’t told me everything. “I passed the tests,” I echoed.
“Technically, yes, you passed. But it’s up to me who gets cleared for field work, and I’m not clearing you. Not yet.”
“What is that? If I met the requirements—”
“You came within one point of failing the room-clearing test, and your marksmanship score was lower than average. The composite score clears you for field duty, but only just. I’m not comfortable putting you back on the roster until you’ve had more time to acclimate to the prosthetics.”
“Vincenzo, that doesn’t even make sense. Why categorize something as a passing score if it isn’t really a passing score? Why not just raise the standards to the level you’d actually be satisfied with?”
He shook his head.
“If you’d earned the same scores as a new recruit, I would have cleared you. We expect new recruits to improve over time, and the field is the best way to do it.”
“So those same standards don’t apply to me because I’m not a new recruit.”
“Exactly. You could die, and you could get others killed. Are you really willing to take that risk?”
I handed him the rifle. “No. You’re making the right call.”
“You just need more time. Once you meet those targets, I’ll clear you for the field again.”
14
I fell into a routine of going to bed early and sleeping in late. Sleep didn’t come easy, and when it finally did, I’d wake up throughout the night. The pleximesh skin over the prosthetics—my prosthetics, I reminded myself—was pins and needles at night. The first few days with the graft over my limbs were fine, but an intermittent sensation of equal measures pain and irritation had set in whenever I tried to sleep. Samara assured me it was normal and explained it as something to do with acetylcholine and deep rest, but she could offer nothing except encouragement as treatment.
Waking for the fifth time since going to bed, I glanced at the clock and saw that it was half past ten in the morning. I felt more tired than I had when I lay down a dozen hours prior, and closed my eyes again. Then I heard the door, followed by Raven’s voice.
“Tycho, she’s back!”
I opened my eyes and rolled over. “What?”
“Andrea just got back. Come on, get up.”
With eyes wide open, I threw off my blankets and got dressed. Raven was waiting for me just outside the room and grabbed my arm as soon as I walked out. “I’m glad she’s back,” she said. “I was starting to get really worried.”
“So was I. What was she doing?”
“I don’t know, I haven’t seen her yet.”
“So you haven’t heard anything?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I was going to the range and ran into Andrew. He told me that Andrea was back, and she’d called for a meeting. I came up here to get you.”
We entered the briefing room and my jaw dropped when I finally saw Andrea. Her face was pale, her cheeks mottled with bruising, her right eye ringed in black and purple. She had an open cut on her forehead, and her lower lip was spilt. She was sitting on the edge of the center table, dressed in uncharacteristically subdued military fatigues. She’d tied the jacket around her waist. Her undershirt was torn from one shoulder, and after a moment I realized she no longer had a left arm.
I didn’t know what question to ask. “Andrea, are you okay?”
Her voice was hoarse at first. “Far from, but I’ll deal with it after I get my prisoner where she belongs.” Andrew Jones looked absolutely stunned. His mouth was hanging open, and he just kept shaking his head.
Andrea turned to face him. “Didn’t you think I could do it, Andrew?”
“I didn’t think anyone could do it. Andrea, this is goddamn incredible.”