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Now he had a steel box with a bulletproof glass wall on one end looking out on glooray, shadowy distorted lab workers in white coats, private guards in unifor General DiMarco’s “bunker” was up to his left, just a ripple in the glass

A steel box containing a steel box containing Tolliver, for in addition to losing his freedom and his family and his place in the world, Tolliver had lost his body He was no longer made of flesh and bone and blood, he was a machine with a human head, a tank with a man’s head encased in an armored steel bell

I aeant Matthew Tolliver, United States Marine Corps Semper Fi

After he had suffered a training accident at the Marine base in Twentynine Pal him away to supposedly expert treatment They had sliced down his back and pulled out his spine, cutting away the veins and arteries, the tendons and nerves His spine and his head had been rele piece, and then, in a series of operations—he had lost count—the reical Tolliver was connected to a maze of wires and servers and battery packs

It had taken a month just for hiht side After that it had taken only days to , cleated wheels The weapons systeital controls, were the easiest Fully loaded, he was armed with a cluster of three MANPADS ( down renades; he had a six-barrel un that could fire up to six thousand rounds per o three hundred miles on a tank of diesel fuel at speeds of up to fifty miles an hour The tank body was s ten tons—about the weight of three cars

If there was a weak spot, it was clearly the rounded huen and nutrient baths That hump, with a slit for his eyes, sat where the turret would be on a real tank And that slit was his world now He was a sardine in a box atop a box inside a box inside a cave

Tolliver suspected he was losing hisat all, but sitting in his cell Naturally his weapons systehtest question, have tried to blast his way out, even if it meant the shock waves would kill him

He ht be a slave with a pain chip in his head, but still

I aeant Matthew Tolliver, United States Marine Corps

Semper Fi Always faithful, the Marine Corps motto

But faithful to what? he asked hiovernment that had done this to him?

And he kneasn’t the only one He was a careful observer, and on testing runs either out in the cave or even out in the open air, he had seen others similar to hie of development

At least, he told himself, he was better off than the new drones he’d heard referred to by the sickeningly cruel ters” These were drones piloted by the brains of infants The Ranch’s researchers had discovered that no co like the accuracy of a human brain So infants had beenobtainedand the unnecessary parts removed, so that as left was a baby’s head and eyes as the “pilot” of a small, quick drone that carried no weapons but its own speed and weight The brain was trained to respond to a photograph and, once launched, would search for that face, and upon spotting it, would accelerate and raet with a hardened steel nose cone The infant brain was not expected to survive He’d caught a glilass bubble nose, within which rested a slobes of two eyes connected to the brain by a tether of nerves and blood vessels

So htmares he’d seen here That was the worst

Se military officers like DiMarco—ould do that?