If you think you know somebody who resembles any of the characters here, congratulations, but you're wrong - any similarity between the characters in this story and any real person is purely coincidental, since all of these characters are figments of my imagination.

This is my story, not yours. Don't sell it or put it on a pay site. You can keep it and/or give it away with all of this information intact, but if you make money off of it without my permission, you're breaking the law and pissing me off.

Prototype Ten: Chapter 3 (no-sex)
(C)Copyright 2005 - Shakes Peer2B
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Having no one else to turn to, Will gave Katherine, the sister-in-law who had been so helpful during the funeral, power of attorney to handle his personal affairs. He paid off the balances on his outstanding bills, including the mortgage and equity loan on the house.

Since Katherine was pursuing a Master's Degree at Stanford, which was only a short drive away, she agreed to ‘house sit’ until he finished the program. He arranged to have the remainder of his money split between two accounts. He gave Katherine carte blanche on the first account so she could use the money to pay bills and maintain the place. The second account he put into a trust that, in the event of his death would revert to Karen’s sister.

Two days later, he returned to the place where he had applied to the program and was promptly whisked away to the San Jose airport, placed on a private jet, and flown about three hours away. There were no windows in the cabin and the only other person he saw was the guy with the bulge under his jacket who pretended to be a flight attendant.

Will couldn’t be sure, but he’d always had a pretty good sense of direction, and he got the impression that, while the flight path included several circling maneuvers, the plane flew mostly south and east.

His speculations were given further impetus by the view of a flat, desert landscape as he deplaned on what appeared to be a private airstrip in the middle of nowhere. The ‘flight attendant’ led him to a ramshackle building, away from the equally ramshackle control tower.

Will got more than a little worried when the guy led him, by an iron hand on his bicep, into what appeared to be a janitor’s closet. In the darkness, he couldn’t see what his guide was doing, but something gave a muffled click. The man in the suit stepped back out, closed the door, and the floor of the closet seemed to drop away from beneath his feet. The walls rapidly rose upward to reveal the stainless steel walls of an elevator, which seemed to be descending into the earth at an alarming rate.

Will’s knees almost buckled when the elevator decelerated as it approached its destination. When the car stopped, he tentatively opened the door, which still looked like the door to a janitor’s closet. He was amazed to find himself in a long, well lighted corridor.

“Ah, Number Ten, at last!” The same woman who had questioned him in San Jose, now stood before him, still clad in a lab coat, hand outstretched for shaking. “I’m Doctor Robinson. Before we meet the others, you should know that no one here is to know your name. You will be addressed as ‘Number Ten,’ or ‘Prototype Ten,’ or simply ‘Ten.’ If all goes well, and the experiments we conduct here are a success, this anonymity will help to protect your friends and relatives.”

Will shrugged. The relatives he would have wanted to protect most, he couldn’t, when they needed it most.

The corridor, or tunnel, extended almost a hundred yards straight ahead, then ended in a ‘T’ intersection. Dr. Robinson turned left, then almost immediately right. At a featureless door, she passed a card through a slot, then placed her hand on a flat steel plate beside the door. After a pause of about a second, the door whisked soundlessly into its frame, admitting them to a small chamber. There were video cameras at all four corners of the chamber, and will got the feeling that if whoever was monitoring the view from those cameras didn’t like what they saw, neither door would open until the chamber's occupants were dead or incapacitated.

“Look straight ahead.” Dr. Robinson told him, at least partially confirming his deduction.

“Dr. Robinson and Prototype Ten.” She told the empty chamber.

Apparently, that was sufficient, because the inner door opened a few seconds later, admitting them to another long, empty corridor.
Their footsteps echoed loudly on the stone flooring, and Will wondered if the small openings spaced along the sides of the tunnel were firing ports for weapons, or gas nozzles, and if so, were they there to keep people in or out...

At the end of this corridor, the good Doctor took two right turns in a row, then passed through another badge-and-palmprint operated portal.

“You will be issued a badge,” Robinson said as they passed into what appeared to be a busy office area, “that gives you access to those areas where you work, eat, sleep, and exercise. Unfortunately, it will not give you access to leave this facility until your part of the program is completed.”

Will shrugged again. “When do we get started?”

Robinson gave him an appraising look, then smiled.

“Since we’re not dependent on daylight here, we pretty much set our own schedule.” She replied. “Let’s take care of your paperwork, then I’ll have someone show you around and introduce you to your physical trainer. We’ll be taking blood samples for various tests throughout the program, so we’ll install a catheter on the back of your wrist to save time. After that, you’ll begin your physical conditioning.”

“When your trainer is satisfied, you will undergo several rounds of surgery to implant the various enhancements and sensors into your body. These include reinforcing your tendons and muscle tissue with electro-elastomers that will provide a ‘power assist’ to each of your muscles. In addition, a flexible mesh will be implanted under your skin. This mesh is composed of a very tough material that will make it difficult for you to sustain more than a superficial wound. The mesh is also designed to be capable as acting as a collector for various types of electro-magnetic frequencies, and will be configurable by the microprocessor we will implant in your brain to act as part of your communication system and/or your sensor arrays.

“Speaking of sensors, you will have, working in conjunction with your eyes, an array of optical sensors that can see well beyond the normal visual spectrum in both infrared and ultraviolet, and can enhance your vision for better distance viewing and greater peripheral vision. You will, literally, have eyes in back of your head, or, at least, optical sensors.”

Will’s mind was taking a little time to correlate all this information, and as it did, he raised a hand to get the doctor’s attention.

“You say all this will be done after the physical conditioning?”

“Yes, why?” Dr. Robinson replied.

“It seems bass ackwards to me, is all.” Will said. “I mean, with that kind of surgery, you’re talking weeks of convalescence, if not months. Unless I’m sorely mistaken, you’re pretty much going to have to skin me alive to put all that stuff in my body. During the recovery period, I’m pretty sure I won’t be getting much exercise, so all those muscles are bound to atrophy.”

Robinson smiled. “I’m glad to see that we have at least one in the group who can think! Not to worry though. We need your muscles developed to their operational level so that we can properly fit the implants and the mesh. True, the muscles will atrophy some, though that will be minimized through electro-stimulation therapy, but when you get finished with the procedures, and get back to physical training, things will fit properly. If we didn’t do it this way, the implants, which can’t grow and shrink as readily as flesh, would be too small.”

“Aren’t you worried about drug dependency?” Will asked.

The doctor looked puzzled. “Why would we be?”

“Doc, come on.” He answered. “You don’t remove someone’s skin and fuse a bunch of artificial parts all over a body without its owner having a great deal of pain during recovery. How are you going to deal with that?”

“Ah!” She said, “I see your point, but we have thought of that. First of all, we’re doing the implants in sections to minimize the risk of infection and shock to the body’s immune systems. This will also mean that the pain management problem is not quite as severe. For the first few weeks after each round of surgery, the patient will be kept in an artificial coma. This will ensure that the affected areas can be kept immobile to allow proper healing, and will insulate the mind and body against the pain. After that, the pain should be manageable with non-narcotic pain relievers until the body heals.”

“So I’m guessing five or six separate areas to be implanted,” Will mused aloud, “and at least six weeks per area for healing. That puts us out to eight or nine months, just for the implant process.”

Robinson smiled again. “It’s refreshing to not have to explain this in such detail. Actually, we’re allowing six weeks for the conditioning, and eleven months for implants and recovery, so you can expect to be ‘activated’ a little over a year from now. In point of fact, since this is all new, we’ve allowed a fifty percent cushion to deal with the unexpected. The activation, too, will be phased. We’ll activate two at a time, in sequence, and observe the results to see if any adjustments or changes need to be made before activating the next pair.”

Will spent the next hour or so filling out forms and submitting to the insertion of the catheter into one of the veins on the back of his wrist. A white-coated orderly gave him a quick tour of the parts of the facility to which his badge gave him access, ending up at the room that was to be his sleeping quarters.

The program people apparently had some strange notions about the facilities, because, while there were separate restrooms for men and women, the sleeping quarters were allocated to pairs of prototypes in numerical order. This meant that number Nine, a reasonably attractive, dark-haired woman in her late twenties, shared his sleeping quarters. Each had a separate bed, but no accommodations for privacy were made.

“I guess we’re roommates.” Will said, extending his hand. “I’m...”

“Prototype Ten.” She said, saving him from the faux pas of telling her his name as she returned his handshake with a firm grip that stopped just short of being painful. “Wondered when you’d get here. I’m Nine. Some set-up, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Will looked around the room, noting that there were no separate dressing or sleeping areas. “Look, uh, Nine, the, uh, only co-ed situation I’ve ever lived in was my marriage, and I’m not real sure about the, uh, etiquette, so, if I get out of line...”

“Don’t worry about it.” Nine interrupted, smiling. “I just got out of the Army, and there ain’t nothin’ you can do that those horny bastards haven’t already tried. If I don’t like it, I’ll knock you on your ass. If you keep coming, I’ll make it hurt so bad you’ll need help goin’ to the latrine, okay?”

“Well,” Will smiled, “Hopefully it won’t come to that. I’m not really looking for female companionship. I just want to get through this program and go kick some terrorist ass.”

“Suits me!” Nine laughed. “If I get horny, there’s at least six other guys in this program, and I’m sure I can catch one of ‘em in a moment of weakness! Which bed you want?”

“You got here first.” Will replied. “So I guess ‘first come, first served’ ought to apply. I’m not particular.”

"In that case," Nine grinned, "no offense, but if it's okay with you, I'll take the bed in the corner. It's a more defensible position."

"That works out well, then," Will replied, throwing what little stuff he had brought with him on the other bed, "since, if you get to feeling like you want to fight, I'm heading for the door, and this one's closer to the exit."

Nine laughed politely.

"Hey, I like you, Old Guy!" She clapped him on the back, almost sending him sprawling. "Maybe I should have taken this bed so I could trap you in the corner!"

"Wouldn't do you any good." Will replied, a smile cracking his face for the first time in months. "I'd just lay there. You wouldn't enjoy it, even if you could make me get it up!"

"Maybe I'll slip one of those little blue pills in your vitamins." Nine joked, then snorted in disgust. "As if they'd have anything like that down here. This place promises to be worse than boot camp!"

"Yeah, well, it's been a while since I did boot camp, and that was Navy." Will said as he reclined on the bed. "Guess I'll have some catching up to do."

Nine was about to make another remark when a perfunctory knock sounded at the door. Before either could respond, a dark head bearing tight, close-cropped curls, appeared around the edge of the opening door.

"Prototype Ten?" The head asked, glancing at Nine but settling on Will.

"I guess that'd be me." Will replied, getting to his feet. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm Carlos." The guy said, his muscular body following his head into the room. "I'm your trainer. Dr. Robinson said you were anxious to get started."

"Yeah, I guess I am." Will gave Nine a semi-apologetic look. Nobody likes a suck-up, and he could see in her eyes what she thought about his eagerness. "At my age, I guess I need all the help I can get if I'm going to keep up with these youngsters."

"Hey, you go right ahead." Nine said. "I'm gonna take it easy until I figure out what the hell's going on here."

"Suit yourself." Will followed Carlos from the room.

A couple of turns and a few doors later, he found himself traversing a well appointed workout room. Carlos led him to a locker room and showed him the locker that that had been designated as his. It already contained army regulation P/T clothes that were close enough to his size.

Five minutes later, Will emerged from the locker room and entered the first level of this particular hell. Carlos was determined that his charge not hold up the schedule set for getting the prototypes in shape, and Will thanked his lucky stars that he had been pushing himself pretty hard in his own workouts.

For the next six weeks, he and Prototype Nine saw each other only in passing. Carlos held Will to a rigid twenty four hour schedule that started the moment he had knocked on Will's door. Prototype Nine was on a different schedule, and Will was usually sound asleep when she came in for her own sleep period.

He met, at various times and places, the other eight prototypes, and got to know them about as well as he had his roommate, which was to say, hardly at all. They would chat over meals or in the communal shower, but it wasn't until the last two weeks or so that Will had energy to spare for such luxuries as watching TV or playing pool, chess, checkers or any of the other recreational activities provided for them.

Will was grateful for the busy schedule, as it kept his mind occupied and left fewer opportunities for Karen and Stacy to creep into his consciousness. Even his exhausted sleep was interrupted less frequently by the nightmare. It was a familiar one in which Will was forced to watch from some protected viewpoint as, over and over, the blast tore the flesh from the faces and bodies of the ones he loved.

All of the others were at least ten years younger than Will and he found he had little in common with them. Number five proved to be a passable chess player, but he couldn't stand losing and refused to play with Will after the older man beat him at the game twice in a row.

The poker games they played for toothpicks were a fair diversion for a while, but without money to put on the table, they couldn't hold the interest of most of the playersfor long. The few times he played, Will wound up with most of the tootpicks, mostly by virtue of being able to read the other players better than they could read him.

Will did his best to fit in with the others, but his age and his habit of morose introspection set him apart. As the time neared for the surgical procedures to begin, though, the others began seeking him out, one at a time.

"Hey, Ten." Seven said in a casual voice that belied the worry on her face. "What's happenin'?"

"Not much, Seven." Will answered, kicking a chair out from the table in invitation as he moved half a column of cards to another column. "Just playing solitaire. Want to kibbitz?"

"Never played that with real cards." Seven said, taking the offered seat. "Seems like it would take forever."

"That's kind of the point." Will replied, grinning. "These games were invented by bored people a long time ago as a way of killing time. There's about as many variations of Solitaire as there are of Poker."

"Damn!" Seven said, not really interested. "Did you invent a solitaire game?"

"Nah." He chuckled. "Not enough light in the cave I grew up in, and the damn sabertooth tigers kept interrupting me as I chipped the cards out of rock. Never did get a full deck made."

"Okay, okay!" Seven gave an appreciative laugh at having been beaten at her own game. "So you're not that old. There - four of spades can go up."

"Yeah, I'm holding off on that one. I might need that four for a red three later."

"Ah! No wonder you won all our toothpicks!" There was real admiration in Seven's voice. "You're pretty smart!"

"Nah." Will turned over a King and placed it at the top of an empty column. "I've just had more time for my mistakes to catch up with me than the rest of you."

Seven chuckled, then watched in silence for a few minutes.

Will could tell she had something on her mind, but felt that if he asked it could scare her off, so he waited.

Sure enough, as he gathered the cards to deal another hand, Seven asked, in a studiedly casual tone, "So what do you think's going to happen when they start cutting on us?"

Will placed the deck on the table and leaned back in his chair, studying the young lady, a former cop if he remembered right.

"Nobody knows for sure, Seven." He told her. "My guess is that it's going to be a learning process for all of us. They will have studied and planned as best they can, and they'll be learning as they go. You won't notice anything until you're mostly healed. You know they've split our bodies into quadrants, right? Left arm and upper left torso, right arm and upper right torso, and so forth. Once they've finished doing all this stuff to our bodies, they'll do our heads. That's when it will get interesting. You won't be awake for most of the time, because they're going to keep you knocked out while you're healing, otherwise you'd go crazy from the pain. When you are awake, there'll be some pain, but it should be manageable."

"I'm not worried about the pain, so much." She replied, picking up the discarded deck and shuffling with practiced ease. "The part that scares me is when they go messing around in my head, you know. I'd hate to end up as some kind of vegetable or something."

"Well," Will told her, "if you did, you be one of the strongest, fastest, and most aware vegetables on the planet. Hey, there's no guarantees, Seven. All any of us can do is trust these lab coats to know what they're doing. We knew it was a gamble when we signed on."

"Yeah, I guess."

"Look." He said, leaning forward. "You were a cop, right?"

"Uh huh."

"So, every day you went out, you never knew whether you were going to get shot or blown up by some terrorist's bomb. You faced those risks every day that you went to work, right?"

"Yeah." She nodded. "I see what you're getting at, and I guess this isn't too much different. I guess I have kind of a phobia about brain damage or something."

"It's a risk." He shrugged. "I don't know what else to tell you. If you believe in God or any other deity, then solicit whatever help seems appropriate. Whatever happens is going to happen, and worrying about it until it does only shortens the time you have left to enjoy. I'm no psychiatrist Seven. If this is really bothering you, maybe you should see Dr. Robinson and see what she has to say. Maybe they'll back you out of the program."

"Nah." She shook her head. "Already spent most of the money and gave the rest to relatives that needed it. Wouldn't be right not to follow through. Anyway, you're right. I can't help myself by worrying. Thanks, Ten!"

With that, she left. The next day, it was Four, just needing some reassurance. Nine 'accidentally' woke him up when she bumped his bed as she came in from her workout, and then wanted to talk, more excited than scared. Six didn't like the idea of having his skin peeled off in sections, and Two hoped the power of those extra abilities wouldn't corrupt her. He talked each of them through their fears and excitement as best he could, wondering why it fell to him to do so, and hoping he was saying the right things.

Then Prototype One went in for the first round of surgery, followed eight hours later by Two. By the time they got to him, they had apparently refined their technique considerably. Will entered the second level of hell only five hours after they wheeled Nine into the operating room.

When he regained consciousness seemingly only seconds after the anesthetic mask descended on his face, he was lying in a bed at one end of a double row of similar beds. At the far end of the room, three people were sitting upright in bed, while moans and groans came from some of the other beds, including Will's.

His entire left side, from shoulder to waist throbbed and ached, and he guessed he must be in the latter stages of recovery, which, despite his foreshortened time sense, must be about six weeks after they wheeled him into the operating room.

For the first time since the program began, all ten prototypes found themselves together for long periods of time, and for the next three weeks, when they weren't in physical therapy or undergoing some sort of test or treatment, they had nothing to do but talk. Will got to know more about his fellow prototypes during that period, especially Seven, Eight, and Nine, whose beds were near his.

Three weeks later, with the pain from the first round almost gone, they started again. The pattern repeated until their entire bodies had been implanted with the devices deemed necessary to make them into supermen and -women.

Will chafed under the forced waiting, partly because of boredom, and partly because it left more opportunities for the ghosts of his wife and daughter to visit his tortured mind. The pain, which, in real time, should have begun to fade, was still fresh and raw, since, to him, it had only been a few weeks.

The tension was palpable in the recovery room as the time approached for the final phase of surgery, and no one had much to say as Number One was wheeled out. Will slept as best he could, and tried not to think about what might or might not happen. He awoke a little while later when Seven climbed into bed with him.

"Please," she said in a small voice, "just hold me?"

Will made no comment, but, looking around, noticed the others nearby studiously ignoring them. He had not had his arms around a woman since Karen and Stacy had been killed, and despite the fact that Seven clearly wasn't after sex, he felt guilty as he comforted her.

When it came Seven's turn to be taken off to the operating room, Nine came to him and said quietly, "Thanks, Ten. She's really been worried about this part."

"Yeah, I know." Will replied, "Hope it helped some."

One by one, the others were taken out for the final round of modification, and Will was left alone for several hours. When they finally came for him, he was wearing a sad smile as he thought how, if things went wrong, he might be joining Stacy and Karen soon.

Things must not have gone that wrong. As he had four times before, Will awoke once again in the recovery room, this time with a splitting headache. He looked blearily around the room, noting that all the beds were still occupied. Eight, in the bed next to his, lay with his head propped on one hand, looking in Will's direction.

"You look like hell." Will croaked through parched lips. Bandaged head, yellow splotches from fading bruises, Will supposed he must look as bad or worse.

"You ain't exactly a beauty queen, yourself." Eight grinned. "Seven's been asking about you."

"She okay?" Will tried to raise his head to look across the aisle at Seven's bed, but couldn't quite muster the strength.

A nurse noticed the movement and came to him with pills in a little paper cup.

"This will help with the headache." She told him. She manipulated the controls on his bed to raise him up so he could take the pills.

After she took the cup away, Will looked across the aisle to notice Seven smiling at him. Thank you she mouthed, and he managed a weak grin in return. Nine was snoring away in the bed next to Seven.

Will turned to Eight and said, "So, you done anything super yet?"

"Nah." Eight shrugged, "They haven't turned us on yet. Guess they'll do that one or two at a time after we're fully recovered from these last procedures."

Sure enough, a couple of weeks later, Dr. Robinson walked into the middle of the recovery room.

"May I have your attention, please?" She said in a clear contralto. When the room had quieted, she continued. "Tomorrow, we will begin the activation procedures. As with the surgery, you will be taken by gurney, one at a time, to the laboratory we have set up for this purpose. In a break from the pattern to which you've become accustomed, however, once the activation is complete and your systems have been thoroughly tested, you will proceed directly to the training facility where you will begin training to use your new abilities. You will not return here. Are there any questions?"

They had been so thoroughly briefed on what was expected of them that no one had any questions other than a facetious "Will I be able to play the violin?" from Number Two.

"It will probably need to be made of steel if you do, Two," Robinson answered, going along with the joke, "but I didn't see anything in your history about you having played the violin before, so the answer is most likely 'no.' Now if there are no more questions, I suggest you each get a good night's sleep."

The next day was uneventful. They had gotten used to the gradual reduction in their number as each was taken out for the procedure and were somewhat relieved that this was to be the final round. The little 'gang of four' at Will's end of the ward talked casually and joked about what they would do with their super powers. Even Seven seemed more at ease, now that the surgical procedures were done, and cheerfully climbed aboard the gurney when it was her turn.

Will was in the middle of one of many ghost-haunted catnaps when they came for him. Unlike the others, he believed that the activation was the dangerous part of the journey, when currents from an electrical circuit started coursing through his brain. Because of this, he had found it more difficult to relax completely.

"Okay, Ten," a voice from behind a surgical mask told him, "we're going to activate each segment of your enhancements separately. We need to restrain you so that you don't hurt yourself or us, since experience has shown us that this stuff comes as a shock to the system."

Will had no complaint about that, though he got the feeling the speaker was holding something back. When they approached with a hypodermic, however, he wanted to know what it was for.

"We're going to sedate you beforehand," the person behind the mask said, as if it were routine, "to minimize the shock to your system."

"I'd really rather you didn't." Will told him. "The commands for the microprocessor come from the voice centers of the brain, as you guys have drilled into me, over and over. If this thing is going to come up in a mode that provides too much input, my best bet for managing it is to issue the proper commands immediately, before I get overwhelmed. To do that, I need to be alert, okay?"

The mask with the syringe exchanged glances with someone wearing another mask who shrugged and said, in Dr. Robinson's voice, "He's got a point. Maybe we should have done it that way with the others as well."

Will had no time to wonder what had happened with the others as someone rolled him on his side. "Believe it or not, Ten, we're going to start you off with a four-pack of C-cells for power. That will be enough to test out the systems and charge the internal battery that keeps the controller alive, even when there's no power pack attached. Once the pack is plugged in, this USB cable will be used to turn on your functions, one at a time. We'll go in order, testing as we go. First, muscles..."

Will felt a strange stirring throughout his body.

"Now, since your brain isn't yet connected to the controller, we're going to test muscle control remotely. You'll feel some movement, but don't try to fight it. Your own muscles aren't up to snuff yet and you might injure yourself."

Sure enough, his fingers, toes, arms and legs made a series of movements without Will's intervention. When they stopped, he was glad to move on.

"Okay, now we'll test the audio sensors..."

Will heard nothing, but the masked people around him were apparently satisfied with the result.

"Visual sensors..."

Lights flashed, and things moved in various parts of the room, but Will got the impression he was getting only part of the show.

"Okay, now we'll fire up your other sensors..."

Again, the masked onlookers seemed satisfied with what the computer told them.

"Okay, Ten," one mask leaned over to look into his face. "Your systems seem optimal, so brace yourself. It's time to tie the processor in to your brain."

Will hardly heard him. Mentally, he was going over the mantra he had memorized from his training: Sensors Off! Sensors Off!...

"Okay, connecting in three, two, one, now!"

Suddenly, Will's senses were bombarded with a cacophony of light, sound, smell, and sensation! Streams of light in pale pastel colors flooded his optical senses, while unrecognizable sounds bombarded his auditory centers. He wrinkled his nose at the strange scents that assaulted him, while odd textures and patterns of heat and cold, pain and pleasure seemed to blanket his body.

Sensors Off! he shouted mentally, and the level of the bedlam dropped dramatically, but never quite disappeared.

"Ten? Ten!" Someone was yelling at him.

"Yeah..." He managed to croak.

"Are you all right?" Dr. Robinson's voice seemed to carry genuine concern. Oddly, she seemed surrounded by a pastel aura in green and yellow, and there was a smell of cinnamon about her, sweet, but tangy and strong.

"Yeah." He answered. "This is gonna take a while, Doc. Like babies learning to recognize the light patterns their eyes see and interpret them as shapes and colors. These sensors - I need to learn how to recognize what they're telling me."

"But you can control them?" Robinson asked, relief in her voice. Her aura cooled toward blue and the scent of springtime filled his olfactory centers.

"Sort of." Will answered truthfully. "I can turn them on and off, but there's kind of a residual signal."

"That's a failsafe we put in." Robinson said. "So that you're never completely unaware. It's kind of like a dimmer switch that can't turn the light all the way off."

"Not bad, actually." Will said. "But this is going to take some getting used to. Better let me explore it for a while before you start sending me out with a weapon in my hands."

"We've got a special room set up for you to do just that, Ten." Robinson said, and Will smelled sewage as she turned away, her aura gone the color of muddy water.

Why did he get the impression that his answer disappointed her?