"Excellent. You are doing an amazing job so far, William."

"Am I doing an amazing job, or are you just blowing smoke up my ass?" I asked, arching an eyebrow as I looked up at the digital representation of Arvie standing in front of me in the digital world.

I didn't want to call it virtual reality. That seemed a little too on the nose.

"I wouldn't ever blow smoke up your ass, William, even if you were into that sort of thing."

"Why, Arvie," I said, "You almost made a joke."

His lips turned down in a frown of distaste.

"I know. I don't like that I'm starting to make jokes like that."

"Whatever," I said, waving a hand and looking between him standing in front of me in the computer world and the darkness of the Undercity in front of me in the real world.

"I think I can almost keep my attention between reality and the computer, and it isn't giving me a headache, or double vision, or anything like that anymore," I said.

"Very good," Arvie said. "I think this is doing what we intended."

"What exactly did we intend?" I asked. "Because it seems to me like the intention here is for you to treat me like a lab rat."

"Well, that is part of the intention, certainly," Arvie said, smiling at me. "But I also wanted to make sure you would be in fighting shape. If you die then I'm not going to be able to take any more notes about the link between a livisk and a human after all."

"Yes, I'm sure you only have my best interests at heart."

"I always only have your best interests at heart, William. We are friends, after all."

I looked up at him from my sitting position, though I was standing in the computer and I was sitting in the Undercity. I smiled at him regardless.

"Yeah, we are friends, buddy," I said, reaching out to take his hand. He grasped the offered hand and pulled me up, smiling as well. The two of us stared at one another for a moment, and then finally I cleared my throat.

"Well, anyway, I appreciate the assistance."

"I believe we might be able to do more than what we've just done, William," he said.

I couldn't help but roll my eyes.

"What?" he said.

"Of course there's more you want to do," I said, grinning. "I don't think you're going to be happy until you've managed to pick apart every little bit of my brain and figure out exactly what makes me tick."

"Well, of course, William," he said. "The two of us might be friends, but at the same time, I do have to figure out exactly how all of this works. For the general, and for you."

"Yeah, for the general and for me. So what's the next experiment you want to run?"

"I would like to see if it is possible for you to control the slowing and speeding up of time."

"Wait, are you saying that I'm actually able to slow down and speed up time?" I asked.

"Well, you aren't actually able to slow down and speed up time," he said. "But you are able to slow down and speed up your perception of time to some degree. Similar to what happened when you were flying those ships over the city. But it seems to be a natural thing that you experience as a side effect of the link as well. If I can figure out how that works and how you can control it, then I think it will give you a definite advantage over other people who are part of a battle pair."

"Yeah, because nobody in any of those battle pairs ever had a crazy Combat Intelligence who was willing to push the envelope of what was possible with a battle pair," I said, grinning up at him.

"But of course, William," he said, grinning right back at me.

Looking back into the real world for a moment, I blinked and I looked around. There wasn't any sign of glowing flashes going on either up above us or down below where we were moving to.

"What's going on here?" I said. "Is the fighting over?"

"The fighting has been over for quite some time now," Varis said, looking both up and down in the same direction I'd looked just a moment ago.

"Well shit," I said. "Did everybody leave us behind or something?"

I figured it was too much to hope that the livisk would just leave us behind and we could go about trying to rescue everybody. Though they had been hitting us with enough nervous glances that I figured our guards might decide it was worth it to just say something happened to us and leave us behind.

Though it would be their lives when the Spider eventually figured out they'd lied to her, so maybe not.

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And when I looked around, I saw the same old guards standing there. Though, if anything, they looked even more bored than before. At least until they realized I'd come back to the world of the living. As soon as they saw that, their eyes went wide and they were suddenly standing at attention and looking like they wanted to be anywhere but here.

"How long have I been out?"

"A few hours now judging by my watch," Rachel said. "And it's still set to Earth standard time, so I know it's a few hours."

"I told you that an hour on Livisqa isn't that much longer than an hour on Earth," Varis said.

"Yeah, they have a thirty-hour day, with every hour being just a little longer than what we're used to on Earth," I said, getting up and looking around.

It looked like everything was pretty much the same as it'd been when I went under and Arvie started doing the whole meditation exercise thing with me. Though everyone looked a whole hell of a lot more bored now than they did when I first went under.

It turns out the whole thing was sort of similar to turning it off and turning it back on again, only in this case it was slowly ramping my mind up to the point I was perceiving time as happening much slower than I would if I was in my old meat space brain, and then moving back to normal time, and then back to slowing everything down again. And he'd done that over and over again until my brain got used to the idea and I was no longer wobbly on my feet.

I did a little dance just to be sure I could move around okay. Varis arched an eyebrow and looked at me like she was worried I was going to fall, and I grabbed her hands and swept her into a dance move we'd practiced in between sparring sessions sometimes.

No, not a horizontal dance move. Mind out of the gutter. Just a little twirl and a dip. She laughed in delight when I dipped her and hit her with a kiss.

Yeah, I was definitely doing better now than before. Though I still wondered what fresh experimental hell Arvie was going to work up for me next.

"Why didn't we get a move on?" I asked. "Why didn't any of you wake me up?"

"I wouldn't allow them to wake you up," Varis said.

"That's not entirely true," Rachel said. "The computer said you were in the middle of something very important, and it hinted it would be detrimental to your health if we woke you up in the middle of it."

"You didn't say anything about my life being at risk, Arvie," I said, a hint of accusation coming to me as I looked both at the probe hovering in the air in front of me and at the representation of him back in the computer.

Splitting my attention between digital and meatspace wasn't bothering me nearly as much as it had before either. This was going to open up all sorts of interesting possibilities.

He smiled in the computer, and the probe in front of me bobbed up and down just a little.

"I never said that your life was in danger, William. I merely told them we were in the middle of an important process trying to get you back in fighting shape and it would be troublesome if that process was interrupted. Whether they inferred that involved a danger to you if it was interrupted is entirely on them."

"I assumed as much," Varis said with a shrug. "But it was also nice to take a rest, and I figured our people would need a little bit of a breather after all the fighting they've gone through."

"You called my crew 'our people,'" I said with a grin.

"Of course I did," she said. "Your people are my people. The same as my people are your people. We fight together, and we work with each other."

"Well, that's good to know," I said, hitting her with a grin.

"We probably can get a move on now, though," Varis said.

"Actually, there was something Arvie was going to test if we have the time," I said.

Varis looked over to the guards watching over us. They were looking at us with a little more interest now. Like they wondered if whatever we were doing was finally coming to an end.

"I don't know if we have that time," she said. "The guards were getting antsy before you came out of your trance."

"Damn. Well I guess that can wait then," I said.

I could only imagine it from the guards' point of view. They had to strike a balance between not coming close enough to either of us to draw the attention of a battle pair, or draw the attention of Jeraj and his sister who seemed like they could be just as dangerous.

But at the same time, their boss was out there somewhere waiting on us to get back to her lair. If they delayed for too long, then she might get pissed off as well.

And either way could end with them dead, which was something they probably wanted to avoid. Even if they were in a damned if you do, damned if you don't sort of situation.

"Are you boys ready to get a move on?" I said, calling out to them.

They both jumped as they turned to look at me, and then they glanced at one another. Oh yeah, they definitely weren't sure what to do right now.

"Come on," I said. "Is there a reason why we're hanging around here? Like, do you enjoy spending time with me or something? I'm flattered, but I don't know that we have time for making new friends right now."

Both of them exchanged a look with each other, and then they started looking around. Though I wasn't sure who they were looking for. Finally, one of them pulled out what I'd been hoping they were carrying with them. It was a comm unit. It looked like the sort of thing that had been scrounged from the ruins down here rather than being the latest and greatest in livisk technology, but the thing about a comm unit was there were only so many frequencies that were available.

Sure you could do fancy stuff like encrypting what you sent out over those frequencies, but at the end of the day it was something that allowed you to communicate with the rest of the world. I didn't necessarily need one because I had Arvie to run interference, but it would be helpful if we could get some of those to give to Olsen's people and make their job easier.

Not that I had any idea where any of them were, or even if any of them were still alive. It was entirely possible we were still down here because Olsen lost and now we were the only ones left, but I didn't want to believe that.

"By the way," I said, figuring I might as well ask since I had these assholes standing around with their thumbs up their collective asses. "Who won that fight?"

The one who was talking into the comm paused for a moment and turned to glare at me. I figured that glare was all the answer I needed. That told me that, at the very least, Olsen had given as good as he got.

"We engaged in glorious combat with the Terran Fox," the other one said.

"Yes, but did you win that glorious combat?" I asked.

Again, they exchanged glances. I grinned and shook my head.

"Say no more, boys," I said. "Are we moving any time soon?"

"You will…"

The livisk paused and swallowed. He seemed to realize a moment too late who he was talking to. Or at the very least he remembered that he needed a lighter touch with us.

"We will let you know when we are ready to move out," he finally said. "But we are not ready at this time."

I looked over to the probe, and then to Arvie in the computer side of my vision

"Looks like we might have a little while longer before we get moving. Do you want to try whatever the hell experiment you wanted to run?"

"Certainly, William. If you're willing, it should be a pleasing diversion."

"I could use a pleasing diversion right about now," I said, looking over at those guards and wondering what the holdup was.

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