THE BOT HAD ONLY one synthed voice. The one he knew as teachbot. But it had a number of ways to inflect and to add expression. It didn’t use any of them as it instructed him now.

“Joel Tristan. You are required to accompany USSecure mission X-C-22-505-1101-1010-1000-1101. Please extend your arms and prepare yourself for voluntary detention.”

Joel didn’t move. The bots arm extended and grabbed his arm with the claw. An electric shock made everything turn white and it felled him. He was conscious but helpless as the bot spread the end of its arm out and hooked him under his shoulders. It dragged him into the transport. He was dropped into one of the chests in the back and the lid slid over to secure him in darkness inside.

The vehicle bumped along, he had no idea of the direction. It seemed like hours, but he guessed he was driven for about an hour and a half. Maybe two. Much of it seemed to be uphill. When it came to a halt, the chest he was lying in tilted and the cover opened.

He was on a concrete apron high on the flattened top of a mountain. The air was thin and a cold wind blustered, making his clothes flap and snap hard against his skin. The transport had pulled up by one end of a long gantry. The single arm tilted to the ground and on the end next to him was an open pod.

Still unable to move or speak, the arms in the container hooked him under the shoulders and out of the transport. They transferred him into the firm, molded couch inside the pod. Joel had heard stories about catapods.

Virtus and vids were all over the supernet. Shots of people’s pale and wide-eyed faces as they were sealed in. And then how wrecked they looked when they came out. Joel always believed they were faked. It was one of those things that defied belief.

He shivered hard in the cold as he looked around the wide rusty sweep of the brown and jagged landscape through the thick mist

Straps strung out and bound him into the pod. He looked along the length of the long, swinging catapult arm. The top half of the pod swung shut. He was snapped into total darkness as it sealed. Then he felt the pod lifted, it swung and was fastened onto something.

The pod swung back. It leaned, farther and farther. He was head down, feet up. Blood pumped into his head. It felt like a long time that he was hung upside down like that. A grinding vibration ran along the gantry and made the pod shake.

A cocoon inflated rapidly around him. It snapped, fast and firm. Then the pod pulled back further. It held for a moment. Blood drained into his head as he swung, head down toward the ground.

Then the was slung forward. The force was like an explosion at his back. The skin of his face was dragged toward he ears. He tumbled end over end. G-force lashed him front to back, head to foot. He felt like he was going through a blender. It seemed impossible to feel sick in so many directions at the same time. He spun and tumbled, telling himself it would all be fine, there was nothing to worry about and it would be over soon.

The kick from a rocket blast on the back of the pod shot him through one wall of G-force after another. The pod leaped and arced upward into mid air. Breathing was tough. Staying conscious seemed impossible but at the same time, while he felt like he was about to pass out at any second, he never did. Maybe he’d been given a drug.

There was a point where the extreme nausea peaked. How he didn’t lose his lunch inside the tightly snapped inflatable pressure blanket he had no idea. He was pretty well certain that if he did he’d have choked and suffocated.

After the pod accelerated in a second downward tumble, Joel fell out of consciousness.