Chapter 8: Adaptations

  Three days after watching a doctor drive a knife through a dying soldier's eye socket, I was standing in the briefing area being told I'd been selected for patrol.

  "Smith, Webb, Rodriguez," Lieutenant Keller read from his tablet. It was strange what ARIA allowed from a technology standpoint and what it didn't. No comms, but we had tablets?

  "Chase, Morrison, Park. You're on patrol route Charlie. We need eyes on the eastern sector, see if there's any goblin activity near the river crossing."

  I looked at Marcus. He looked at me. Neither of us said anything, but I could see the same thought reflected in his expression: this time we could be the ones fighting, bleeding, dying.

  "Gear up," Keller continued. "Standard loadout. Spears, shields, short swords as backup. We're not looking for a fight, but if you find one, don't be stupid about it. Scout and report. If you're outnumbered, fall back. Clear?"

  "Clear, sir," we chorused.

  Twenty minutes later I was standing at the gate with a spear in one hand, a shield strapped to my left arm, and a short sword hanging from my belt. The sword was new. I'd never even held one before today. The armorer had shown me how to draw it without cutting my own leg off, which seemed like useful information.

  "You good?" Marcus asked.

  "Define good," I said. "A week ago I couldn't walk. Now I'm going on a combat patrol. I'm having some trouble calibrating my expectations."

  Rodriguez snorted. "Fair point."

  Chase, a quiet guy from Texas with sandy blonde hair and a capable air about him, checked his spear tip. Morrison and Park, both Army, were doing the same nervous equipment checks everyone does before walking into potential danger.

  The gate opened. We walked through.

  The forest beyond FOB Alpha was dense, the kind of old-growth wilderness that didn't exist much anymore in the real world. Thick trunks, heavy canopy, undergrowth that grabbed at your boots. The path we followed was barely a path, more like a game trail that someone had widened slightly.

  "Stay alert," Keller had said. "Goblins are cowards, but they're not stupid. They'll ambush if they think they can win."

  Great. Comforting.

  We moved in a loose formation, Chase on point because he'd done this before, the rest of us spread out enough that one attack couldn't take us all. The logic made sense. The execution felt terrifying.

  Every sound made my heart jump. A bird taking flight. Branches creaking in the wind. Something small scurrying through the underbrush. My hands were sweating on the spear shaft, and I kept having to adjust my grip.

  "You're breathing too loud," Rodriguez whispered from behind me.

  "Sorry," I whispered back. "I'll try to be quieter while having a panic attack."

  "First patrol?"

  "First everything."

  She grunted. "You did fine in the fight."

  "I stood in the back and watched people die."

  "You helped in the hospital. That counts."

  I wasn't sure it did, but I didn't argue. "At least Bambi's learning to stab things," someone said from up ahead. A couple soldiers chuckled. We kept moving.

  Marcus was ahead of me, moving with more confidence than I felt. He'd been a helicopter pilot, used to dangerous situations, used to keeping his head when things went wrong. Rodriguez had been a Ranger. Even Morrison and Park had combat experience, real combat, before The Forge.

  I had Pediatric Onset Multiple Sclerosis and a hospital room with water-stained ceiling tiles.

  The forest pressed in around us. Thirty minutes out from the base. Then forty-five. The path wound through the trees, following the terrain down toward what Keller had called the river crossing. I could hear water now, distant but growing closer.

  My heart was hammering. I could feel my pulse in my throat, in my temples, in my fingertips where they gripped the spear. The simulation was incredibly accurate. Adrenaline made everything hyper-sharp, hyper-real. I could smell the forest, the damp earth, my own sweat. Could feel the weight of the shield on my arm, the way the straps dug into my forearm.

  It was exhilarating.

  It was terrifying.

  It was both at once, and I couldn't separate them.

  Chase held up a fist. We stopped.

  He pointed ahead, then made a series of hand signals I didn't understand. Marcus did though. He moved up, crouched low, looked where Chase was pointing.

  Then he looked back at us and mouthed one word: "Goblins."

  My heart rate, already elevated, kicked into overdrive.

  Chase signaled again. Morrison and Park moved left. Rodriguez moved right. Marcus stayed with Chase. That left me in the middle, which seemed appropriate given that I had no idea what I was doing.

  We crept forward. Through the trees I could see them now. Six goblins, maybe seven, clustered around something near the riverbank. They were making those chittering sounds, arguing or celebrating, I couldn't tell which.

  Chase looked at the goblins, then at us. He made a decision. We were scouting, not engaging. Time to fall back, report what we'd seen.

  We started backing up, slow and quiet.

  That's when Morrison stepped on a branch.

  The crack echoed through the forest like a gunshot.

  The goblins' heads snapped toward us. For one frozen moment, nobody moved.

  Then they screamed and charged.

  "Shields!" Chase shouted, and training took over.

  I got my shield up. Got my spear ready. The goblins were fast, faster than they'd seemed during the first battle, and they were angry. One of them, larger than the others, was already ahead of the pack, its crude spear leveled at Chase.

  Chase caught it on his shield, thrust back, missed. The goblin dodged, and suddenly they were everywhere.

  Time did something strange. Slowed down and sped up simultaneously. I saw Marcus drive his spear through a goblin's chest. Saw Rodriguez block a strike and counter. Saw Park go down, a goblin on top of him, before Morrison hauled it off and killed it.

  A goblin came at me. Small, maybe four feet tall, with yellow eyes and too many teeth. It thrust its spear at my shield. I blocked, the impact jarring up my arm, and thrust back without thinking.

  My spear caught it in the shoulder. It screamed, stumbled back, and I thrust again. This time I hit center mass. The spear punched through leather armor and flesh, and the goblin made a wet choking sound before collapsing. Unfortunately it took my spear with it, the tip catching on what might have been a rib, gross.

  I'd just killed something.

  No time to process that. Another goblin was coming, this one with a crude axe. It swung at my legs. I got the shield down, barely, felt the impact shudder through the wood. Thrust at its face. Missed. It swung again.

  Then something hit me from the side.

  I didn't see it coming. Didn't have time to react. Just felt the impact, the shock of it, and looked down to see a spear shaft protruding from my left side, just below my ribs.

  A goblin I hadn't seen. A flanking attack while I was focused on the one with the axe.

  The world went very quiet.

  I could see the spear shaft. Could see where it entered my body, the leather armor torn, blood already soaking through my shirt. Could feel the weight of it, the foreign object inside me, the wrongness of it.

  The goblin was still holding the other end, its face twisted in a snarl of triumph.

  Then Marcus was there. His spear took the goblin in the throat, and it fell, releasing its weapon. The spear stayed in me, bobbing slightly with my breathing.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  "Adam!" Marcus grabbed my shoulder. "Don't pull it out!"

  "Wasn't planning on it," I heard myself say. My voice sounded distant, clinical. Interesting.

  The fight was ending. The goblins were breaking, fleeing back toward the river. Chase let them go. We had wounded.

  "Headcount!" Chase shouted. "Sound off!"

  Everyone was alive. Park had a gash across his arm. Morrison was limping. Rodriguez had taken a hit to her shield that had splintered the wood but hadn't gotten through.

  And I had a spear sticking out of my torso.

  "Jesus Christ," Rodriguez said, staring at me. "You're not screaming."

  I looked down at the spear again. "Should I be?"

  "Most people would be."

  The pain was there. I could feel it, a deep ache radiating from the wound, sharp spikes when I moved wrong. But it was distant, muted, like it was happening to someone else and I was just observing.

  My brain had been dealing with pain signals for years. Constant low-level agony from muscles that were slowly destroying themselves. Nerve damage that sent confused messages about sensation and temperature and pressure. At some point, my neural pathways had adapted, learned to filter, learned to deprioritize.

  This was just another signal in the noise.

  "We need to get back," Chase said. He was looking at the spear, calculating. "That's barbed. If we pull it out here, you'll bleed out before we reach base."

  "So we leave it in," I said.

  "Yeah. Can you walk?"

  I tested it. Took a step. The spear shaft moved with me, twinging pain through my side. Manageable.

  "I can walk."

  "Then let's move. Fast as we can without making it worse."

  The walk back was surreal. Every step sent a jolt through the wound. The spear shaft bobbed and swayed, catching on branches, pulling at the torn flesh. I had to hold it steady with one hand, my shield abandoned because I couldn't carry both.

  Marcus stayed close, ready to catch me if I fell. Rodriguez kept looking back, her expression somewhere between impressed and disturbed.

  "You're really okay?" she asked after the third time I stumbled and caught myself.

  "Define okay."

  "Not passing out. Not screaming. Not begging us to pull it out."

  "It hurts," I said. "But it's manageable. I've had worse."

  "Worse than a spear through your gut?"

  "Worse than a spear through my side," I corrected. "And yeah. Muscle cramps that felt like my legs were tearing themselves apart. Nerve pain that made me want to claw my own skin off. This is just... sharp. Localized. I can work with that."

  She shook her head. "You're fucking weird, Bambi."

  "So I've been told."

  We made it back to the gate in forty minutes. The guards saw us coming, saw the spear, and immediately called for medical.

  By the time we reached the medical tent, there was a doctor waiting. The same one who'd performed the mercy killing three days ago. He took one look at me and swore.

  "Get him on a table. Carefully."

  They helped me up onto the examination table. I lay back awkwardly, the spear pointing toward the ceiling like some kind of grotesque flagpole.

  The doctor cut away my shirt, examined the entry wound. "Went in at an angle. Probably missed your kidney, but I can't tell what else it hit without pulling it out." He looked at me. "This is going to hurt. A lot. We have three options."

  "I'm listening," I said.

  "Option one: we pull it out now. The head is barbed, so it'll cause massive additional damage coming back through. You'll heal, but it'll take the full twelve hours and you'll be in agony the entire time."

  "Pass."

  "Option two: we leave it in longer, let your body stabilize, then pull it out later. Same problems, just delayed."

  "Also pass."

  "Option three: we push it through the rest of the way, saw off the haft, and pull the smooth shaft out your back. It'll take longer and cause some additional damage going through, but less than pulling the barbed head back out."

  I thought about it. The logic was sound. "Option three."

  The doctor blinked. "You sure? This is going to be-"

  "I'm sure. Let's do it."

  He looked at the nurse, a woman whose name I didn't know. She looked back at him. Some unspoken communication passed between them.

  "All right," the doctor said. "Hold still."

  He gripped the spear shaft with both hands, positioned himself for leverage. "On three. One, two-"

  The jerk pushed on two.

  The spear punched through the rest of my torso in one smooth motion. I felt it moving through me, felt tissue tearing, felt the barbed head emerge from my back and punch through skin. It hurt. Sharp, bright pain that made me grunt and grip the edges of the table.

  But I didn't scream.

  The nurse was staring at me. "How are you not screaming?"

  "Long story," I managed.

  The doctor grabbed a saw from his instrument tray. "This is going to be loud. And jarring. Try not to move."

  The saw bit into the wooden haft. The vibration traveled through the spear into my body, a horrible sensation that made my teeth ache. I focused on breathing, on keeping still, on analyzing the sensation rather than reacting to it.

  The haft came free. The doctor tossed it aside, then moved to my back. "Last part. Ready?"

  "Do it."

  He pulled the smooth shaft out through the exit wound. That hurt worse than the push-through, a sliding, tearing sensation that made me gasp and arch my back. Blood followed it, more than I expected, soaking into the table.

  Then it was out. The foreign object was gone. Just two holes in my body, front and back, bleeding but already starting to slow.

  The doctor pressed bandages to both wounds, his movements efficient. "That should have been agony. Absolute agony. How are you so calm, or even still conscious?"

  "My nerves don't work like yours," I said. "Long-term adaptation. My brain learned to filter pain differently."

  He stared at me for a long moment. "That's... actually that's fascinating. And terrifying. Do you have any idea what an advantage that is here?"

  "Not feeling like one right now, I wouldn't have minded being passed out for that."

  "Twelve hours," he said, taping the bandages in place. "You'll be fully healed in twelve hours. Until then, try not to move too much. The system will handle the rest."

  They moved me to the recovery area, a section of the medical tent lined with cots. Other soldiers were there, dealing with their own injuries. I could hear moaning, crying, someone begging for painkillers that didn't exist.

  I lay on my cot and stared at the tent ceiling. This one was taupe but mercifully stain free.

  The pain was there, constant now, a deep ache that radiated through my entire torso. But it was background noise. Manageable. My brain had been managing worse for years.

  I thought about the fight. About the moment the spear had punched into me. About how I'd looked down at it with clinical interest rather than panic.

  About how I'd walked back to base with a spear sticking out of my body while others winced in sympathy.

  About how I'd let them push it through me without screaming.

  This was an advantage. A massive advantage. In a world where pain was supposed to make combat feel real, make consequences matter, I had a built-in buffer that nobody else had.

  There was a medical supply cart near my cot. I could see scalpels in a tray, sterile and gleaming.

  I looked around. The doctor was busy with another patient. The nurse was at the far end of the tent. Nobody was watching me.

  I reached over and took a scalpel.

  Held it up to the light, examined the blade. Sharp. Surgical steel. Designed to cut cleanly.

  I pressed it against the back of my right hand. Not deep, just enough to break skin. Drew it across in a short line, maybe an inch long.

  Blood welled up. I watched it, felt the sensation. It was weird. Pressure, a sense of something wrong, but not pain. Not really. Just information. My hand had been cut. My brain noted it and moved on.

  I went a little deeper. Same result. Weird feeling, but not urgent. Not something my brain flagged as requiring immediate attention.

  Then I twisted the blade slightly, let it dig into the wound.

  That hurt. Not terribly, but more than the cutting. A deeper ache, tissue damage that registered differently. My brain paid attention to that.

  I pulled the scalpel out, watched blood run down my hand. The wound was already starting to close, the simulation's healing kicking in even for minor injuries.

  I understood now. Cutting, slicing, surface damage, my brain had learned to ignore that. Years of muscle biopsies, blood draws, IVs, injections. Thousands of needle sticks and scalpel cuts. My neural pathways had adapted, learned that surface pain wasn't important.

  But deep tissue damage, twisting, pressure, that still registered. Not as much as it should, but enough.

  I thought about a movie I'd seen once. Or maybe Marcus had told me about it. A hockey goalie, tied to the net in full pads, pucks being shot at him. First few shots, he flinches, terrified. Then he realizes they don't hurt through the padding. The fear disappears. He gets comfortable. Eventually bored.

  That was me now. I was wearing permanent padding my brain had developed over years of chronic pain. The pucks were still coming, but they didn't hurt the same way.

  I wrapped my hand in a piece of gauze from the supply cart, pressed it until the bleeding stopped. The wound would be gone in an hour, maybe less.

  This was why I hadn't panicked when the spear hit me. Why I could thrust without flinching, commit fully to movements that others pulled back from. Why "Bambi" could become something other than a joke.

  I wondered if ARIA knew. If the system could detect that its pain simulation wasn't working properly on me. If there was some flag in my neural profile that said "warning: subject's pain response abnormal."

  But my brain had been dealing with consequences for twenty-two years. It had learned to cope in ways that gave me an edge nobody else had.

  I lay back on the cot and watched the wound in my side. I could see it healing, flesh knitting together in ways that would have taken weeks in the real world. The pain was fading, slowly but noticeably. In twelve hours I'd be whole again.

  In twelve hours I'd be ready to go back out.

  The thought should have terrified me. Instead, I felt something else. Something I hadn't felt in years.

  Anticipation.

  I closed my eyes and let the healing work. Let my body repair itself while my mind catalogued everything I'd learned.

  I had an advantage. A significant one. And in a world where everyone else was learning to fear pain, learning to hesitate, learning to hold back, I was learning something different.

  I was learning that I could take damage and keep moving. That I could commit fully without my body betraying me with instinctive fear. That the thing that had been destroying me in the real world had given me armor in this one.

  Twelve hours passed in a haze of half-sleep and observation. I watched other soldiers cycle through recovery, watched them struggle with pain that I barely felt. Watched the wounds close, the flesh knit, the system doing its work.

  When I finally sat up, the wounds were gone. Not even scars. Just smooth skin where the spear had punched through.

  I flexed, tested my range of motion. Perfect. Like it had never happened.

  The doctor came by, checked me over, shook his head in amazement. "You're clear. Try not to get stabbed again too soon."

  "I'll do my best."

  I walked out of the medical tent into the afternoon sun. Marcus and Rodriguez were waiting, sitting on a bench near the barracks.

  "Bambi lives," Rodriguez said.

  "Apparently."

  Marcus stood up. "How do you feel?"

  I thought about it. About the spear, the pain, the healing. About what I'd learned lying on that cot with a scalpel in my hand.

  "Ready," I said.

  And I was.