Ghost Stories (AKA Marie Explains How Nothing Ever Goes Wrong Experimenting With Alien Technology)

Approximately two weeks have passed since Fayth, AJ and Sgt. Rathbone rescued Marie from the clutches of her Muton captor and gotten some vengeance for Corporal Rabbit. The time seemed to pass in a bit of a blur for AJ and Fayth. For starters, it was an eventful couple of weeks for them, and secondly, they agreed to assist Marie with a tech project that initially leaves them in a bit of a daze regarding their short term memories.

AJ and Fayth awake in a blank, featureless white void. Before they can panic, they hear Marie's familiar voice coming from nowhere and everywhere, urging them to remain calm. She explains that a bit of disorientation is likely upon them entering "the Construct." She goes on to explain what is going on and how they have arrived at their current situation: Marie has been using alien technology that she recovered from the captured base to create a training simulation that will allow people to safely experience combat with their alien foes, and improve the effectiveness and readiness of X-Com's soldiery. She goes on to ensure them that it is perfectly safe as the systems running the sim are air-gapped and all that. She fills in the blank void with multiple "overlays," which are veneers of scenery. Ground, objects, actors and sky. In a flash, the two are in the midst of a beautifully rendered and realistic--if generic--simulation of a sparse forest setting.

Next, she explains that while the simulation might fool their senses, she has to run some calibrations to ensure that the simulation elicits proper emotional response to their perceptions, and due to Marie's legendary lack of personal boundaries, she automatically summons objects that trigger AJ and Fayth's well known phobias. A wooden crate drops from the sky on top of AJ to encase him and trigger his claustrophobia, while a swarm of Westport spider-crabs start crawling out from under and behind every bush to close in on Fayth. Neither of them enjoy the experience at all, and Marie, who appears to be observing some kind of readings from her side of things, mercifully ends the calibration when she is satisfied with the results. She explains that the simulation may periodically trigger flashbacks to recent memories to conduct on-the-fly recalibrations, then she asks the two how realistic they want certain things like pain to be in the sim.

Both participants quickly arrive at the conclusion that feeling psychologically traumatic levels of pain doesn't sound very cool, so they ask her to dial it back to something more reasonable. This requires a test input for Marie, who asks Fayth to shoot AJ to see if she's got the setting right. Fayth doesn't want to shoot AJ; what if Marie doesn't have it set right?! AJ pulls out his pistol and shoots himself in the foot, WHICH HURTS ABOMINABLY, IT DOESN'T APPEAR THAT MARIE HAS MODIFIED ANYTHING AT ALL AND THAT THIS IS SOME KIND OF SICK JOKE! After just a few seconds, though, the pain dies away to a much more tolerable level to mere discomfort. Fayth takes her knife and tries to slice her hand, but finds that the sim is detailed enough to recognize that she has nano-armor which renders her skin cut-resistant, and the blade just slides across her skin. She enlists the aid of AJ to shoot her. He obliges, and she, too, goes through the awful experience he just did with a gut wound of her own. With this calibration taken care of, Marie refreshes the sim, and their wounds are "magically" healed.

Marie then asks them if they are ready to engage in the full combat sim (Oh, progress! Marie asked for consent before doing something potentially awful!) They agree, if for no other reason than to get the show on the road and be done with Marie's experiment. With a flick of a switch on her end, the scenery IS randomized and the two lab rats are plopped behind various bits of cover as a Muton emerges from nearby to engage them.

Without the aid of an ambush to help them, this foe turns out to be a bit more challenging than the last one they faced a couple weeks ago. It sets its sights primarily on Fayth, since she is closer, and manages to knock her out with a combination of fire from its plasma rifle and a stun grenade. As it bores down on AJ in an attempt to engage him in close combat, AJ's sustained and deadly rifle fire prove sufficient to bring the simulated beast down. With the sounds of gunshots still ringing in his ears, AJ swears he can hear the sound of a distant voice saying "Pew-pew!" and figures it is nothing more than Marie getting into the action from her God-like observer's spot. However, as Marie hits the player refresh again and AJ brings Fayth up to speed on how the fight turned out, he hears the noise again, and sees someone peeking out from behind a distant tree pointing finger guns at them. "Pew! Pew!" and the cloaked head ducks back. AJ and Fayth share "WTF" looks with each other as they close on the suspect tree. AJ circles around one side and Fayth the other. Their quarry childishly skirts around to avoid AJ, only to come face-to-face with Fayth.

The interloper turns out to be a CRSE unit. Specifically, CRSE-04, who members of X-Com first (and last) encountered several months ago in their first direct encounter with the forces of the Think Tank. CRSE-04 was the unit that had formed an instant battlefield friendship with young Harry Anderson, and was subsequently deactivated after the fight by CRSE-13. At the time, Harry had stashed 04's body in one of his equipment caches, waiting for the right time when Marie, Janice or some other X-Com egghead could study him and maybe figure out how to wake him up. Inexplicably, something about the sim summoned CRSE-04's "consciousness" here, and is allowing him to interact with Fayth and AJ. He is a bit spastic and overly friendly and cheerful, but seems pretty harmless. This segues into some unexpected complications, as Marie cannot perceive CRSE-04, and furthermore, she finds she is unable to drop the test subjects out of the sim. While Marie promises to track down and resolve the issue, AJ and Fayth are subjected to flashbacks of recent events.

AJ recalls a conversation with his father, Alton, where the elder discusses the complications regarding AJ's mother. Her status as an employee of the FBI instantly puts her at odds with him as a lifelong X-Com operative, and he warns AJ that she may still be out there and that she may try to interfere with his plans. Alton confesses that it was the pursuit of his goal (namely, to flip a member of the FBI) that led to him marrying Cherise and siring AJ, all to essentially manipulate her. He admits, though, that he had no regrets being a father, and that if he had to do it all over again, he wouldn't hesitate if he knew having a son like AJ would be the reward. AJ seems to accept his father's apology, and includes him in the family barbecue he dropped in on, because he is part of the family. Fayth has a flashback to Marie giving her good news: that an old research project AJ had tasked her with regarding her litter of construction drones spurred her to record a lot of data and take lots of readings of their organic parts. While she never completed the project due to her overabundance of squirrel, she still has the data, and it will most likely be sufficient to restore Alamo to his full glory soon.

AJ and Fayth quickly learn an odd feature of the sim: When it performs these periodic calibrations, each one can experience the other's memory as if recalling a vivid lucid dream. The same goes for CRSE-04, who immediately begins asking AJ questions about his family. The two humans decide that now might be a good time to get out of the sim and consider just shooting each other to "jack out," to which Marie suddenly and emphatically booms in...

"DO NOT KILL EACH OTHER TO TRY AND GET OUT!"

CRSE-04 approves of this, because he enjoys their company, and if they leave, he doesn't know what will happen to him. Will he just be here all alone, or will he return to his shut-down state? Whatever the answer, at least he has this time with them, and while they are stuck here, he wants to make the most of it, engaging them in conversation and attempting to pass the time. Eventually, this wears thin, and while his audience grows frustrated with Marie's lack of progress, CRSE-04 suggests they hit the trail and see what, if anything lay ahead. For lack of any better suggestions, Fayth and AJ follow.

Another series of flashbacks ensue. AJ recalls a recent tense encounter with his wife. While she constantly frets over him putting himself in harm's way, she can see that he seems more at ease being in the action rather than sitting on the sidelines. She raises her concerns about the alien augments that were applied to him, though, and how he has never learned how he came to possess them. An argument nearly ensues, but just the right words from AJ manages to calm Naomi down as she finds a compromise both of them can accept. Fayth recalls a recent meeting with her mother, who had scheduled a medical appointment with her daughter. Fayth is the only one who knows that her "mother" is actually a clone, planted into her life by Vladimir Gurov as a gift of sorts, since her biological mother was in a long-term vegetative state due to the early attack on Elma's water supply. Shortly after her miraculous recover, clone-mom's girly parts seemed to start working again (since her clone body is actually young and healthy and only doctored to artificially appear more elderly). Lorelei passed this off as a side effect of the alien nano-stuff, and regularly checks in with Fayth to monitor it. This time, though, she is concerned because it has stopped, and she wants to know if something else is wrong, or if her insides are merely going back to normal. Fayth runs some tests (leaning toward pregnancy tests), but nothing appears out of the ordinary, and she sends her mother on her way with a clean bill of health. Afterward, CRSE-04 mentions that Fayth's mom is pretty, and he sees where she gets it from. Fayth usually doesn't think of herself as being very pretty, and isn't quite sure how to feel about an imaginary AI trying to flatter her, so she deflects by saying that most people say she reminds them of her dad. One thing is for certain in Fayth's mind, though: The numbers of secrets she is keeping from people is beginning to mount. She is keeping huge bombshells from her family, and now she has been reminded that she is even keeping AJ in the dark, though ostensibly it is because he knows there is information to be had, but has not chosen to pursue it. Even still, she sees that it has threatened to affect his marriage.

Marie offers to bring Collier in on the problem, since she was the one running the sim they were trapped in after the aliens captured them in Brazil. Meanwhile, the trio's meandering in the sim-scape continues, and they each experience another flashback.

AJ has a heartwarming father-son moment with Trevor, who idolizes him. The young man admits that while he has enjoyed having dad around a lot more for the last few months, he also likes the idea of his dad going out and being a hero. AJ gently refuses to accept the title of "hero," trying to play up duty and responsibility for his kid. AJ learns that Trevor has gotten a good rep among his school chums for his dad's exploits, and he even has a superhero-esque nick name: "'Dine-o-mite' Kamastafall." Trevor also admits that some of the other kids look up to him to follow in his dad's footsteps, and recently he has had to stand up to some bullies at school, trying to use things his dad has taught him regarding bravery, wisdom and restraint. While the kid may be in trouble soon with mom, he wanted to tell his side of the story to dad before she drops the hammer, maybe to inspire some parental clemency. Fayth recalls a recent training session with Lieutenant Spiers, after which he sends her to meet up with Carville to discuss recruitment. There is an awkward stop in the showers (where Fayth realizes with horror and embarrassment that AJ and CRSE-04 are essentially watching her freshen up), Fayth meets Feargus in the bunker's lounge, where he begins a serious proposal about how to replenish the ranks of the Rangers, only to escalate to a literal proposal where he asks for Fayth's hand in marriage, so she can be "his Ranger." He then implies with a wink that sometime down the road, if the aliens give them a breather, perhaps they can find the time to have some "little Rangers" of their own to swell the ranks. This momentarily stops Fayth dead in her tracks, as she realize yet another secret she has kept from someone she loves. After being captured in Brazil, the aliens harvested all her eggs, and she can no longer have children. She never told Carville, and she worries that he may feel differently about her if he knows the truth. But she can't dump that on him right now, so she manages to find a smile and requests champagne to celebrate. When brought out of her reverie, she finds CRSE-04 cupping his chin in his robotic hands to gush, "That's so SWEEEET!" like a fluttery schoolgirl.

Because no happy moments should remain unmolested in this apocalypse, Marie somberly chimes in to deliver more bad news. They are not used to hearing her sound so grave and serious, as she is coming to grips with the gravity of the situation she has unwittingly put them in. After conferring with Collier, and establishing the safety of doing so, Marie had attempted to simply physically disconnect AJ and Fayth from the sim. Now, their bodies are alive and comatose while their consciousnesses are active in the sim, and that there is unknown outside interference. She warns them that she doesn't know what will happen if they die in there, but she fears the worst. She tells them to just sit tight, stay alive, and she will do whatever it takes to make things right.

Far down the trail, a massive, dark figure emerges. "Stay alive?" it growls in a deep menacing voice. "We'll have to see about that." as it turns to leave, AJ defiantly takes a shot, but does not connect. With some horror, Fayth saw something in the brief flash from the report of AJ's rifle. A tiny detail is brought to life as it reflects the suppressed fire of the muzzle flash: Three jagged lightning bolt-like clawmarks across the figure's armored faceplate. That was the emblem of the Muton Elite that lead the attack against them in Brazil. The one who tortured and mutilated her and her friends. The one who captured them, and was never held to account for his crimes. He has returned to haunt them again.