Chapter 3

For the next two weeks, Luke lived in nonstop pain mixed with a fake sense of honor.

Ned visited him every day. He stood outside the observation window, saluted him, and updated him on the progress outside.

"Luke, the first energy pipeline is online now," said Ned. "The entire northwest base is running on the power you helped create."

Luke weakly opened his eyes and looked at the rapidly flashing data on the monitors. The intense neural connection had already started damaging his vision. Sometimes he couldn't even tell what was real anymore.

Then one night, during a late data…