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Armo was a D-plus student, but he was not an idiot. He knew the dream wasn’t his—that it was coming from elsewhere.
In the dream there was a Yoda-like figure—not in the sense of being a small green troll, but rather someone meant to seem wise. Someone you definitely wanted to obey. And that person and the person who sometimes stroked his face as he dreamed were almost certainly the same person. The same woman. The woman in green with a heavy brass ring with raised letters around a red stone.
The woman with the steely southern accent.
The dream version of the person kept whispering that if he obeyed her in all things, he would have all his heart’s desires. It was she, the dream woman, who sent him out to battle demons and trolls and mutants, all to save gorgeous women and be rewarded with the most astonishing sexual favors.
This, the dream woman said, this is your future when you obey me. You will be a hero! A warrior! And you will have many, many women!
When you obey!
It certainly sounded good to Armo’s hallucinating consciousness. All except one part: that whole “obey” thing.
Even lucid-dreaming Armo didn’t like that word. It was instinctive, automatic. Since childhood, when Armo heard the word “obey” or a phrase like “just do what you’re told,” these things happened: his lips would thin into a horizontal line that curled just slightly up on the right side; his jaw muscles would flex and his nostrils flare; he would fill his lungs; his heart would slow; and there would come slight, almost unnoticeable movements of shoulders and hands, a shifting of weight, and his gaze would narrow to a tunnel.
Like the school counselor and two psychologists had said: Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Armo knew the term, and he had never disputed it. Armo didn’t see himself as a bad person, not even a rude or unkind person. He didn’t use his size to beat people up or bully anyone. He loved dogs and anything with fur. He was, in his own estimation, a decent dude.
He just didn’t like doing what he was told. In fact, anytime Armo did something bad, it was almost always because someone had ordered him not to.
Of course, none of the physical manifestations of Armo’s disorder occurred at this moment, because Armo was drugged out of his mind and practically paralyzed. And yet the woman, the real-world woman, evidently sensed something . . . off . . . about him. He could tell.
From a million miles away, Armo heard her say, “Doctor, are you sure the conditioning is effective?”
Armo did not hear the answer, just the unease in the woman’s voice.
Yeah, dream lady, you feel it, don’t you?
He slept for a while then, probably a long while, deep, deep sleep, and this time with no dreams, lucid or otherwise.
When he woke again, he was alone on a cot. He blinked. He took silent inventory: hands, legs, shoulders, all seemed to be working. Eyes left: a steel wall. Eyes right: a small cell with a desk bolted to the floor, and a steel toilet and sink combo thing.
Am I in jail?
He sat up and had to fight the urge to throw up as a wave of drug after-effect nausea passed through him, followed swiftly by a crashing headache.
He now saw that he was naked, and he felt a bit chilly, not to mention a bit exposed. He sat there a while, blinking uncomprehendingly at a transparent wall, at what appeared to be a single sheet of obviously very thick glass. He had the impression of large, open spaces beyond, but it was gloomily lit and the glass distorted everything. Had to be a distortion, because otherwise he was looking out at a sort of prison, or zoo, with murky figures in similar cells.
And that couldn’t possibly be real. Could it?
There was an itch on the back of his neck. He reached to scratch it, and his fingers touched something small, cool, and metallic. The flesh around it was puffy and swollen, tender to the touch. Despite the headache, despite the nausea, despite his utter bewilderment at his location or condition, where he was, why he was there, what was going on . . . he was sure the cold object on the back of his neck was some type of control device.
His mouth pressed into a flat line, slightly curled up on the right; his nose flared; his—
And then, there she was, again: the woman. The one who stroked his face when she thought he was unconscious and called him her “perfect warrior.” She tapped a keypad beside his cell door and he heard her speak in the voice of the woman from the dream.
“
Good morning, Armo. I’m Colonel DiMarco. I am your direct superior. From this point forward you will obey me, and follow my orders to the letter.”
“Cold in here,” he said.
“It won’t be for long.” A slight smile there. A confident, even cocky smirk.
There’s ODD, and then there’s stupid—Armo tried not be stupid, so he said, “Yes, ma’am,” and looked down for a moment, signaling submission and concealing from her the defiance in his eyes.
“Good. Now, we’re going to do a small experiment. You will feel some . . . what do they say? Discomfort? But through it all you will obey the sound of my voice.”
There was a second person, a man, standing a little back, his face hard to see through the thick glass. And farther back still, ghostly figures in white lab coats.
