Rehabilitation

Mark stared at the paperwork in front of him, realising he hadn't taken any of it in for several minutes. Piles of training requirements for the Team 7 security officers, lists of available courses. Most important, though few people knew it, were those pertaining to a sixteen year old security officer named Dylan North. As Welsh as his name; he was newly graduated from the Academy, even more newly implanted, and in need of some plausible assignments which wouldn't take up too much of his time, or reveal implant-enhanced abilities which he hadn't yet learnt to hide.

Keeping an eye on Dylan was about the last formal link he had with black section, the only part of his job which couldn't have been done by any one of a hundred medium rank security officers. The trashed lower implant in the back of his neck, most of its functionality deliberately disabled as a last resort when the experts had been unable to repair it, was the cause of him needing a desk job at all. The most obvious result of it was the wheelchair, legacy of a vicious fate which seemed never to have given up kicking him down even lower every time he thought things couldn't get any worse. Anyone else would have waltzed out after waking up from the operation to disable the misfiring implant which had him convulsing uncontrollably on the floor. He'd been implanted aged four, and every neural impulse he had used the implant as a short-cut. Most had rerouted right back the way they had worked before the implant. Not all. He'd woken up from the operation with no movement in his legs, and, despite ISO calling in every neural specialist they could find, nothing had made the slightest difference.

It wasn't hopeless, his physio kept telling him, and he kept telling himself. He had sensation. That meant the nerves were active. Movement could return at any time. Well, it had been over four months now since the operation, and it hadn't happened yet. It might not be hopeless, but he'd given up daring to hope. He'd been told everything was going to be fine too many times to believe it. He'd even stopped counting the days.

Right now, he'd rather not have had sensation, thank you very much. The rehab therapist's latest idea was neural stimulation - as far as he could tell, this involved the sort of torture which he wouldn't have inflicted on his worst enemies. It was supposed to stimulate his body into moving away. It worked as far as making him want to move. That was the problem. He wanted to move. Needed to, desperately. And couldn't, not so much as a twitch.

Three days ago, the therapy session had been. Tariq had warned him there might be some discomfort from the tiny subdermal implants in his feet, and he'd nodded. Yeah, right, go on, I was the Eagle, I can take anything you can do to me.

Who had he been kidding? He was in hell, had been for three days, couldn't relax, couldn't sleep, couldn't hide from it. His concentration was good enough that work got him away from it temporarily - but he couldn't work twenty-four hours a day. He was on eighteen for today, so far, and he knew he had to go back to his quarters, eat, rest, sleep. All he wanted to do was howl. Well, no, all he wanted to do was throw himself on the floor and convulse from head to foot until his wretchedly overstimulated nervous system was satisfied.

Ten minutes, he promised himself. Ten more minutes to sort out how to make it plausible that young North yet again wasn't taking any of the communal martial arts courses which were easily available, and instead had to take private one-to-one lessons so he didn't 'fall behind'. Then he'd go back to his room and have himself a long, hot bath, something warm to drink, and then he'd be relaxed and tired enough to sleep. It would work. It hadn't last night, or the night before, but this time would be different.

Languages were the answer, he decided. Put the kid on the same type of Spectran course that Jason and Rick were both taking on paper, and a couple of the other operatives were doing for real. That could swallow up huge chunks of time, and he could pencil it in any time he liked to overlap with the courses he needed to block. Mark filled in the proposed timetable, forwarded it to the Commander Nykinnen for approval, and shut the computer terminal down for the night. That done, he shifted himself back into his wheelchair, manoeuvred through the narrow gap between the end of his desk and the wall, and headed out.

Executive assistant to the commander of Team Seven, even given Mark's relatively high official rank of Lieutenant Commander, didn't rate an office with a window, and night and day were interchangeable for someone sleeping as badly as he was at the moment. Out in the common room it was dark, the blinds still open over the long windows on the one external wall, except that the room was illuminated by flashes of coloured light coming from around the corner. Mark frowned in confusion as he locked his office door behind him, then wheeled his chair forward, avoiding tables and cursing those who left chairs in thoroughfares. Only once he was beyond the end of the wall of lockers could he see the source of the lights, and then he stopped. And smiled.

The light show came from the display screen of the neural interface flight simulator. Someone was working hard on it, since they'd presumably started out back when it was actually daylight several hours ago, or they'd have had the main lights on in here. And the screen above showed the long, slim, tapering white nose of a craft that Mark had loved dearly, weaving in and out of the sort of artificial obstacle course that he remembered all too well.

Not an easy one, either. Too hard for this pilot. As Mark watched, the G-1 overcorrected for one turn, wavered back just barely making the next, and missed the following gate by miles. There was a bout of what he presumed was swearing, in a language he didn't recognise, and the pilot stripped the helmet off to reveal straggly black hair, swung round, and jumped a mile when he realised he was being watched.

"Commander Jarrald! I'm sorry, sir. I didn't know you were there."

"I thought Commander Nykinnen had banned that particular aircraft simulation." The G-1 had been getting far too much attention, mostly from people who badly needed the flight time on more prosaic aircraft. Besides, while Mark knew exactly what North's real status was, the kid had no idea who he had been. He'd also been asked to keep an eye on just how good Dylan was at dissimulating.

"Sir, I have full flight clearances on the other available aircraft. Commander Nykinnen gave me permission to use it in my own time."

"After the real thing, are you, Lieutenant?"

Dylan shrugged ruefully. "It would be nice. She's hard work though, sir."

"That she is," he agreed, and promptly bit his tongue. He was supposed to be testing North's abilities to hide his real status, not the other way round.

Dylan was frowning. "I didn't know you were a pilot, sir?"

"I'm not." In his Team Seven persona he had, of course, passed basic flight, but he'd not been a pilot. Not someone who flew for fun, who lived for it, who fought over the simulators and argued over them the rest of the time. He'd steered clear in order to preserve his cover, pretending to be someone for whom a basic flight qualification was just another necessary evil. But it was truth, now, however much he hated it. He'd not been in a plane since he'd darn nearly crashed the G-1, the day he'd admitted to his problem. Ten very long months ago.

"Would you like a ride?" Dylan proffered the second, observer's, helmet, and Mark froze.

He should say no. Really, really should, not just because staying far away from everything he'd been able to do before kept him sane, but because he'd been warned off neural interfaces of any kind. He was supposed to be persuading his neural pathways back to where they should have been all along, and the neural interface would intercept them and sweep them off down its own path, sending back its own images instead. Its own sensations. Normality. A pilot's body, athletic and toned, that worked, that moved when instructed, instead of screaming useless instructions louder and louder to muscles that just weren't listening.

Five minutes in a slave helmet. It couldn't be any worse for him than what he knew he was going to have to do very soon, probably within the next couple of hours: go to the medics and tell them he couldn't handle the neural stimulation any longer.

"Commander?"

Oh, to hell with it. The lure of five minutes of feeling human again, after three days of continuous hell, was too strong for him. He deserved something like this. Mark manoeuvred his chair to within slave cable range of the console with a skill he hated needing, and put his hand out for the helmet. "Just five minutes, Lieutenant."

"Understood, sir."

He settled the helmet on his head and, with a deep breath, flipped the switch that would put him into the simulation as observer. He'd see everything Dylan saw, feel everything he felt. He couldn't do anything to affect the simulation, which was why he felt this was probably safe. He was reasonably sure he could fly the simulator as well as he ever had, give or take months without practice. He was also quite sure that he'd very rapidly be unable to face the real world if he did so. Just sitting here, his body knowing it was in the pilot's seat of the G-1, hands and feet on the controls, feeling the vibration through the pedals, the slight give of the rubber handgrips of the control yokes, was bliss. A million times better than what real life contained for him these days. Five minutes experiencing someone else's piloting, though, was by definition limited. No possibility of losing himself in there for a dangerous length of time, his brain contentedly ignoring the demands of his body for food or liquid or warmth. And no need for him to be the one to decide when it was over and to face the real world again.

He listened with half an ear to Dylan explaining the controls, and warning him that there would be the simulation of high g. Mark resisted the urge to correct some of his numbers - it was perfectly possible to launch the G-1 at only three g, provided you were careful. More difficult, though. Three and a half was easier on the piloting, harder on the pilot. Maybe he should suggest to the Kite that the kid could use some extra help. Maybe he should do it himself? But that would involve telling Dylan who he had been. It was bad enough getting the pitying half-stares on the few occasions he went into black section these days. He could do without someone else carrying it on out here too.

"Ready, Commander?"

"Hit it," Mark responded, and leant back and enjoyed a power takeoff which, while not a patch on what he'd been able to do himself, was quite passable. The obstacles were missing this time. Dylan took the G-1 high enough that the ground wasn't an issue, and then swung into the standard set of ISO aerobatics tests. Nothing fancy, nothing too taxing, nothing that would pull more than five gs or so at any point. Simple weaving turns and loops, blue sky above, green ground far below. Pure heaven.

It was over way too soon. Dylan brought the G-1 down in a long swooping turn directly into a runway approach, something he'd never have been allowed to do in real life, touched with only the shadow of a jolt, and brought her to a standstill.

"What do you think, sir?"

I think your right turns are considerably smoother than your left ones, your attitude control isn't all it might be, and you were a little heavy on the throttle going into the third loop. Mark took the helmet off, said simply, "Thank you," and stood up to put it back on the shelf above the console.

He'd half turned back into the room before he saw the chair, and reality hit like a sledgehammer. All movement and control was gone as if it had never been there, and he felt himself fall straight down with no way to stop it.

Dylan caught him before he hit the floor, obviously using implant-enhanced reflexes and speed, but Mark wasn't going to complain. He was too busy trying to stay in control. A desperate compulsion to move had exploded inside his head the moment he'd simultaneously realised that he'd stood up and that the ability had gone again, and this time it was so intense he could barely breathe. He was vaguely aware of being lowered to the floor, of Dylan's confused comment switching to alarm, to an insistent question about who his doctor was and who he should call.

"Chris Johnson," he managed to gasp. I shouldn't have said that - he's black section... But it was done, and besides, Chris was who he needed, there was no question about it. This was unbearably awful. Mark curled on his side as best he could and counted seconds, hanging on with everything he had. This wasn't fair! All he'd wanted was five lousy minutes of respite and it did this to him! What the hell was happening to him now? What more could conceivably go wrong? I moved, dammit!

"Talk to me, Mark." That was Chris, simultaneously sooner than he'd expected and having taken forever to get here. "What happened?"

"I stood up," he forced out. Chris had to know this, mustn't do anything to jeopardise the neural connection that had, however briefly, been there.

"Did he fall?" he heard Chris ask, and Dylan replied that yes, he'd fallen, but he hadn't hit the floor, and he certainly had stood up first.

"Mark, can you move your legs now?"

"No." Despite his best efforts, it came out as a sob.

"Okay, son. Don't worry. We'll get you back to Medical and take a good look at what those nerves are doing. Where do you hurt?"

"Don't hurt." He gritted his teeth, rode out another wave of torture, and ground out, "I need to move and I can't."

"Did Tariq try that compulsion treatment?"

"Yes." He knows - he understands. Please let him know how to make this stop!

"Can you sit in the chair?"

"No," he was forced to admit. For a minute or two, maybe. Not all the way to black section.

"Okay. Hang in there. I don't want to give you any neurosuppressants, not if things have finally starting working."

Mark managed a nod, and then just tucked his head in and tried to hold on. It had worked. It would work again, if he could only get through this. Hang on. Just hang on. One minute, and another, and another. He was barely aware of the gurney, or arriving in black section. He had the impression that people around him had expressed concern, but had no idea who they were. The next thing he knew properly was a blank whiteness everywhere as the compulsion faded.

"Mark, can you hear me?" Chris's voice.

He couldn't resist a choked half-laugh. "You always say that."

"I probably do. How do you feel?"

"Better. What did you do?"

"This is a very basic neural interface - like the simulators, but with nothing programmed. Just to take you out of the loop for a few minutes so you can tell us exactly what happened."

Even inside the interface, Mark felt himself flush scarlet. "I took a ride with young North in the G-1 flight simulator. I know I shouldn't have, but dammit, Chris, I needed a break so bad!"

"A break?"

Please don't make me spell this out. "I've had a rough few days."

"You went in the simulator to get away from the compulsion, and when you came out everything worked, just briefly."

Mark looked down, even though there was nothing to see but white. "That's about it."

"Interesting. Mark, I need to speak to a few people. Shall I leave the interface on so you can get some rest?"

God, that's so tempting... "You said it was a bad idea."

"Using it as a way of escaping from real life is a lousy idea. Ten minutes now won't hurt you."

It wouldn't have to. Right now if Chris had suggested taking him out of it, he wasn't at all sure he could have handled it. As Chris's voice faded from the simulation, Mark shut his eyes and relaxed. He knew exactly why he'd been told not to use these things. He was fully aware that he would never leave again of his own volition.

He had no idea how long he was in there alone. Only that it was warm and comfortable, and he could relax. That was enough. Right now Chris could take as long as he wanted. Twelve hours sounded good.

"Okay, Mark, I'm going to turn the interface down."

No! "Down? Chris, wait..."

"Trust me for five minutes more? If it's bad, you can go back in while we switch off the stimulation permanently."

"Okay," he managed through gritted teeth. What choice did he have, really?

"Tell me when you start sensing reality. I'm merging the two."

Mark would have stared if he'd had anything to stare at. You didn't do that. Merging the virtual world and the real one was downright dangerous, since it was supposed to be near impossible to tell the difference between them. Interact with the wrong one, and you could have yourself an appalling accident in the real world. Not that he could, of course, not lying on a gurney, but he'd never heard of this being done.

Chris continued, "I spoke to a neurologist who's worked extensively with VR, and he suggested your nervous system might be responding to the stimulation, but in such a way that it's overloaded. You gave it a five minute complete break in the simulator, and then we suspect it coped just briefly before it overloaded again."

"So if there's just a bit of real world in there, only a bit of stimulation..."

"Exactly. It may do nothing - it's not like there's any precedent for your condition, we're all in the dark here. It won't hurt to try. Relax for me, and push against my hand when you feel it."

Mark shut his eyes and concentrated as hard as he ever had. All this time, all this work, and then out of the blue a possible solution he'd never even considered. Was he starting to feel something? He thought so, and then decided not.

And then, even before he'd felt anything he was sure was reality, both legs twitched. Not hard, but enough for him to be completely sure that it had happened, even before Chris's "There. Feel that?"

He still didn't believe it, sure or not. One involuntary twitch wouldn't get him back on his feet. He could feel Chris's hands against his ankles now, though, and hoping beyond all reason that this would work, he took a deep breath and pushed against the pressure.