The caravan began to move again at dawn, but the sun had not yet reached its zenith before they arrived at their destination. Kalina offered to let Min ride digital again back to the City, and after a flash of that inscrutable gray, she found herself standing on the hangar gantry.

Kalina appeared a moment later, and as Min looked over at her, she had the strongest sense of déjà vu. This could have been identical to her first arrival at the Tower as a newborn, were it not for the fact she was wearing full armor and was quite alert on her feet.

"Holliday has got to be puttering around somewhere," Kalina said as she headed further into the hangar. Minerva followed, her eyes landing for a long moment on that creepy ship Eris Morn had arrived in. Min had heard nothing more regarding the strange Guardian since delivering her to the infirmary, and -remembering how the woman had smelled and the odd feeling of her- she was more than content with that. Just seeing the ship was enough to raise goosebumps on her arms, and leave a crawling sensation on the back of her neck.

They spotted Holliday's blonde hair over by her workstation, a tiny pair of headphones in her ears as she hummed and tinkered with some small gadget or other. As they approached, she glanced up and then tapped the buds with a finger.

"Hey, good morning," she said with an easy grin. "Kalina, I know. You're…Minerva, if I remember right?"

Min nodded and offered her hand. Holliday shook it without hesitation. "Good to meet you."

"Minerva just had her first day in the field," Kalina said. "As luck would have it, a bunch of Fallen led us right to an old jumpship."

Minerva took her engram out of her pouch and offered it to the mechanic. "I would appreciate it if you would look it over?"

"Sure! Let's see what we got. Hanger nine is open." She set the engram down on a small pad near her workstation, and hit a few commands on a greasy little keypad. The engram shimmered a moment, then a larger shimmer began in the open hangar. In moments, the rusty, battered old jumpship appeared in the stall.

Holliday looked over at it and gave a low whistle. "You weren't kiddin'," she said. She handed Minerva back her engram then walked forward, planting her hands on her hips as she regarded the heap. "This baby looks Collapse. Arcadia-Class. Old school, I like it."

She eyed Minerva with a half-smile and a wink. "You planning on joining the Vanguard?"

Taken aback Min said, "I hadn't…no. Why would you think that?"

"Oh, it's kind of a joke with them," Holliday said, pulling over a wheeled console and powering it up. "Ikora, Cayde, Zavala- they all have Arcadia-Classers. Don't think we've had another one found in a good two decades. Maybe longer. Let's see…looks like she's got a partial NLS. She's going to need some major retrofitting but her guts look passable. Gonna take me time to find the parts to finish that NLS, get her spit-shiny again- but I think we can get her toned up for you. You keeping or trading?"

"I don't have a jumpship yet. I was thinking of keeping this one if you can get it running again."

"Honey, I could get the old Columbia shuttle running again. And dancing circles around anything the Fallen can throw at you. Finding the rest of the NLS parts will be the hardest, but even that I don't expect will take more than a couple weeks. If you two can keep an eye out for parts when you're out and about, that'll help shave some time off."

"I don't yet know if Zavala will allow me to do more fieldwork," Minerva said to Kalina, as they started out of the hanger.

"Course he will. You've got four Guardians to vouch for that, including two who saw you tackle a Captain like he was going for an end game touchdown at the Super Bowl."

Minerva looked over at her warily, and Kalina grinned. "What?"

"You say the oddest things," she said. "What is a 'Super Bowl'? For that matter, I still don't get what a 'nerd' or an 'egghead' is."

Kalina beamed, then suddenly caught Minerva's hand and pulled her over to one side of the corridor where they were less likely to be heard. "I have a secret," she said.

"What's that?"

"Ten tonight," Kalina said in a half-whisper. "Meet me down on level 119. Take the main lift. Two rights, then a left. When you see the unicorn you'll know you've got the right place."

Her voice dropped even more and she leaned in closer still, almost standing on her tiptoes. "Tell no one, or I'll have to kill you."

"Uh…"

Kalina beamed a grin again, and stepped back. "I'll see you then! Don't be late."

Minerva, flabbergasted, watched as the Hunter headed off down the corridor, whistling a bright tune.

It was well past dark. Minerva stood in the same plaza she had the day before, staring out over the City. Yesterday morning had been the first time she'd seen it, but seeing it at night inspired an entirely new level of wonder.

The Traveler was lit up from the bottom with the glow of the City. Sparkles like a field of fireflies glimmered in every conceivable color in a blanket below, making it appear the night sky had fallen and now lay below them. Shuttles and jumpships darted here and there, and the cool air smelled like roasts and beer and summer.

"Something on your mind?" her Ghost said after she'd been silent a long while. She looked over at him, as if she'd forgotten he was there, then shook her head slightly.

"Just thinking, is all," she said. "Trying to imagine it before it was a City, when it was just some rag-tag tents and dirty refugees, gathering to hide in the shade of the Traveler. Do you really think Zavala was there to see it? It had to be centuries ago."

"We Ghosts can heal you Guardians of most everything, including the normal ravages of the aging process."

"So, we're functionally immortal?"

"So long as you don't get blown into your component pieces, and I can't get to you- yes. I suppose you are."

"That's going to take some adjusting to, I think."

"Isn't that what the Crucible is for?" he asked.

"The Crucible can prepare you for what it feels like to be badly hurt and die, sure," she said. "It can help you learn to get over your fear, learn how to fight, but trying to wrap your head around the idea of being immortal…I don't think that the Crucible can help with something like that."

She looked over at him thoughtfully. "I mean, how does it make you feel to know that you likely won't ever die? At least not from time going by."

"I don't know," he said. "But we Ghosts aren't like you- humans, Exo, Awoken, I mean. You may have no memories of what came before but you still have an ingrained sense of your own mortality, an instinct maybe. I don't think Ghosts ever had that."

"You're not afraid of dying?"

"I don't suppose that's the same, either," he said. "I certainly don't want to die. I guess the Traveler did give us a 'survival instinct' in that regard. But we were never created with a…what would you call it?"

"An expiration date?"

"Yes. We never had an expiration date. You have. It's been put on hold, but it's still part of your intrinsic biology. Without interference by me, that expiration date would start marching closer again. I just keep hitting pause."

She folded her arms, now fully contemplating her Ghost. "So, you can heal us from deadly wounds, bring us back from death itself. You reassembled me from just a strand of DNA- though, I understand that you can't do that again. But can you make other changes?"

"Other changes? How do you mean?"

"Well, genetics are a tricky thing. Even in identical twins, genes can be different: certain parts of them can be switched on in one twin or off in another. On a very basic level, could you…say…make a recessive gene dominant?"

"You mean something like switch someone's eye color from brown to blue, for example?"

"Yes, exactly that."

"I can't change the genetics that develop from the DNA sample I revive," he said. "I can't make a recessive gene dominant. I can correct mutations that develop after reconstitution however, and I can easily speed up certain biological processes. I can even change some chromosomal attributes."

"Speed up biological processes? Which biological processes?"

"Well, for example, if you wanted your hair to grow faster, I can do that. Nails too. It's actually part of the healing process when you're injured-I can already regrow hair that is burnt off, or skin that has been seared or lacerated."

"So, if I wanted longer hair, you'd just- "

"Tell you to look in a mirror and let me know when to stop," he said.

"Huh." She reached up and toyed with her hair a moment, eyes distant for a beat or two before they cleared. "All right, how much time do we have before ten?"

"Just under an hour."

"Let's find a mirror."

She headed back to her small room, the only place she could be guaranteed of finding a reflective surface. The image in the polished bit of metal in her tiny bathroom hadn't changed overmuch in the last several weeks. She was no longer gaunt, her face and muscles having filled out with steady food and exercise, but her perfunctory hair cut was only a centimeter or so less perfunctory.

While she was still unsure if she wanted to know about her past before being Lightborn, Minerva had found herself staring into this mirror on occasion, trying to get to know and understand the still odd image that stared back. Her reflection had given up few secrets but one thing that had always seemed a bit out of place for her was her hair.

Her Ghost peered into the mirror with her now. "This will be fun," he said. "I haven't been a barber before."

"You can only grow it, yes? You can't cut it?"

"I can still cut it, it's just a matter of a directed energy beam," he said. "What would you like?"

"Make it longer, first. It's…not right, this short."

"All right, let me know when you think it's long enough."

A sparkling blue light emerged from him as he turned his oculus toward her head, the same kind of light that he emitted when healing her. She felt a funny, static sort of tingle over her scalp, and after a moment her hair started to grow.

It was like watching a time lapse, as the yellow locks drifted downward. She told him to stop as they reached her shoulders, swept a handful of her hair back again, and looked at herself critically.

"Good?" He asked.

"No…no, it's still not quite…a little longer, maybe?"

That itchy tingle again, and another few inches sprouted, bringing her hair to just past her shoulders. She told him to stop, and again fussed with it, a frustrated grimace on her face.

"It's just not right."

"I can go longer."

"I don't think that's it, exactly," she said. Picking up the brush from her sink, she combed it one way, then another, pulled it down around her face and then back from it, and then finally started to knot bits with her fingers. As she worked, she met her Ghost's oculus in the mirror.

"So, I know you said that you didn't want me to call you Binky, like Kalina calls her Ghost," she said.

"Yes, please don't."

"I won't, but I did notice…everyone else's Ghosts seem to have a name. Even Gen calls his 'Poet'. Did you want a name?"

"I…hadn't thought about it," he said. "I suppose it would not hurt to be called something besides Ghost. What did you have in mind?"

"I thought maybe you'd have your own idea about that," she said, still knotting and twisting and tying. "It's your name, after all."

"I really don't," he said. "Besides, even among humans, you don't generally get to pick your name, it's given to you by others, yes?"

"A lot of Guardians pick their own."

"True, but they're the exception more than the rule. I'd…I think I'd like it if you picked one for me."

She pursed her lips, still knotting and twisting at her hair, for a long moment before she finally lowered her hands.

"Lev," she said. The Ghost shifted thoughtfully a moment.

"Lion," he said. "That means Lion."

"Well, it makes sense," Minerva told him. "The symbol for Titans is a lion. Lions are brave, and you were very brave when you were looking for me. You kept me safe until I got into the cosmodrome, you're running into battle every time right with me, yes?"

"Well, I-I mean, I-I'm pretty safe, riding in your tag. I wouldn't say I was necessarily running into battle- "

"And when I'm dead on the ground, explosions and guns firing everywhere, any one of which might hit you as you try and bring me back?"

"The Guardians in the Crucible wouldn't- "

She gave him a glance under her lifted brow. "Fieldwork isn't going to be like the Crucible. You'd still do it then, yes?"

"I'd be a pretty poor Ghost if I didn't."

"Then, do you not like the name?"

"I didn't say that!"

"Then, Lev it is." she said, with a tone that put the discussion to bed. "So, Lev. What do you think?"

She nodded toward the mirror and he turned to look at her reflection. She'd done several loose Dutch braids of varying sizes, tying them all together over one shoulder to keep the hair out of her face. It had a somewhat hurried quality about it, but it wasn't sloppy; it was the practiced swiftness of someone who had done it a thousand times before.

"I think it looks like you," he said.

When she continued to frown at it, playing with the end of the largest braid and turning her head this way and that, he added, "You look nice, Minerva. And it's about time to head down to meet Kalina. It isn't a short trip, and we can't cut time off by jumping off the Tower again. That only works when you want to get to the ground floor."

She gave him a half smile, then headed out of her little room and toward the lifts, Lev hovering at her shoulder.

"What is it, do you suppose, that Kalina wants to show us?"

"I have no idea, but it makes me a little nervous. I don't really know what to think when it comes to her, to be honest. Though, she's never given us reason to be on guard. She'd better not keep to her promise to kill you."

"She said she'd only do that if I told where I was going, and I don't plan on doing that. You'd just bring me back anyway."

"I'd rather not have to," he said.

Though the halls and corridors of the Tower were never empty, at this hour there were notably fewer people. Any Guardians that weren't out in the field would more than likely be found in one of the bars, out on patrol, meeting friends, or crashed out. They passed only the occasional cat or Frame- what Minerva had learned those non-sentient robots were called. As they neared the lift, however, they passed a stairwell, and from the landing below them, she heard voices.

At first, she gave them no thought, her mind still on what might be waiting for her when she got down to level 119. Then one of the voices said Kalina's name, and Min halted mid-stride, listening.

"…she has done nothing wrong. You know as well as I that we cannot act on mere supposition. Besides, you yourself have said that Kalina has shed no tears on being banned from the Crucible." This voice sounded like that trim, no-nonsense woman that had been in the hangar when Eris Morn had arrived; the warlock vanguard, Ikora Rey.

"This isn't about Kalina," said the second voice; Cayde-6. "No one understands better than I do that sometimes you have to be a little unorthodox to get things done."

"I would hardly describe you as a little unorthodox, Cayde," Ikora said. "Unorthodox seems to be your default setting."

"Exactly my point. I just don't want another Dredgen Yor. "

"None of us do," Ikora replied. Their voices were getting fainter; they were heading downward. "But this is all still guesswork. She's…"

They had gone down far enough now that Min couldn't hear them anymore. Lev turned toward her as she started walking again. "That sounded serious."

"What's a Dredgen Yor, I wonder?" Minerva asked as she paused outside the lift and called it.

"I have no idea. It may be in that library Gen mentioned. Or maybe Kalina knows. Either way, I don't think I like that name. It sounds…ominous."

Minerva stepped into the lift with a thoughtful frown. It had sounded ominous, and though Kalina's name had been mentioned she thought that the two vanguard had really been talking about the nastily sadistic half of the Twins duo.

They'd been talking about Nara.