"So uh… you can bring corpses and jumpships to life?"

"For the last time, I'm not doing this!"

"Right, right. Then what the hell is that thing?"

His partner's would-be reply was interrupted as a challenging roar crackled through the room. He and the metallic entity turned to look in practical unison as the massive Fallen at the opposite end of the room rose to its full height. Standing at least twelve feet tall, it would have looked extremely intimidating in any other circumstance. However, given the competition, it didn't seem all that impressive. The Fallen seemed undeterred, however. It raised a bulky, greyish weapon, and barked out something in a language he didn't understand. Then it fired.

A spray of molten-hot projectiles launched out of the Fallen's weapon, slamming into the robotic warrior's feet and shins. The entity stumbled back a step or two, a torrent of synthetic sounds shrieking out from it in what could only be pain and anger. As soon as their leader fired, the rest of the Fallen made themselves known. A cloud of blue shots, straight and coiled alike, burst from a swarm of the aliens as they peeked out of a number of nooks and crannies, all of which bombarded the walking jumpship. Raising its arm and letting off more incoherent noises, it tramped back behind a nearby pillar, trying to take advantage of whatever small amount of cover the structure could provide.

Unfortunately, the Fallen were persistent. At least a half dozen of them quickly pushed their way forward, following the machine and continuing to press their fire. Their leader was one of the ones who held back, seemingly eyeing the situation from afar. Evidently, it had forgotten about his presence.

"They're distracted, now's our chance to bail," the voice in his head whispered, seemingly sensing his train of thought. He thought for a moment before responding.

"No. You said yourself that that ship's our only hope of getting the hell out of here. Doesn't matter if it's got dreams of being a real boy, we can't afford to let the Fallen tear it apart." The voice sighed.

"You're right. ...that feels wrong. I think I'm supposed to be the right one."

"We can hash that out later. For now…" He stood, raising his rifle and centering the Fallen leader in its sights. "...we've got bugs to squash." He pulled the trigger, and a spray of bullets ripped across the room, peppering the massive alien's torso and head. It snarled, and turned to stare at him, its swarm of red eyes blazing.

He was already regretting his decision. The Fallen lunged onto all fours and began skittering straight towards him, its weapon stowed on its back.

"So uh, what's this guy's deal, anyway?" he asked as he ran backwards, firing at the ever-approaching alien as he did.

"His name's Riksis. He's an Archon, basically a Fallen high priest, and is a member of the Devils, one of the Fallen Houses, or clans. Oh, and he has a nasty habit of killing Guardians, collecting their skulls, and offering them to the giant metal ball he worships."

That… was a lot.

"Guardians… as in, people like me?"

"Yup."

"...oh. Joy."

"Yup."

Riksis had practically closed the distance between them by this time, despite him constantly laying down fire on the hulking beast. When it got close enough, the Archon smoothly rose back onto its hind legs, drawing two long swords as it did. It then activated some sort of switch on each of the blades' hilts, and they suddenly sparked to life with crackling blue energy.

He dimly wondered if those were the implements Riksis used to relieve Guardians of their heads. Not curious enough to find out, he scrambled backwards as the Archon swung the two blades down simultaneously, slamming them into the floor and causing them to spark and crackle with power. He launched another pulse of force from his fingertips, shoving the Fallen back a pace or two. However, the alien would not be deterred, and continued to press him, swinging stroke after stroke, each one coming closer to its mark. He became more and more desperate. Fortunately, he could feel another grenade coalescing in his palm. He fired a quick round into Riksis' face, distracting it just long enough for the recharge to complete. Then he tossed the grenade.

The wave of violet energy thrust him backwards as it washed over the Fallen. The Archon howled as the purple light hungrily gnawed at its form, its body shaking and its blades fizzling. He took the opportunity to run around to more cover, reloading as he sat down behind it. He checked his gun over and let out a small sigh of relief.

The tiny victory was rather short lived, however, as he felt a clawed hand close over his shoulder and yank him out into the open again. He looked up, and though its face was alien and largely hidden by the excessively red visor, he could tell that Riksis was pissed.

The Archon's body and equipment were covered in dark, eerie burns, some of which still glowed with purple embers. It hoisted him into the air by his neck, and he could feel its hot, rancid breath blasting over his face as it snarled a string of low words that he felt probably would've made a grizzly bear run and hide had they been translated. The general meaning was conveyed, however: 'You die now.'

Riksis raised one of its blades, evidently the only one still functioning, as the other had been cast to the ground, dark and lifeless. The sword flickered angrily as the Archon held it aloft mere inches from his face, the Fallen leader's metal visor glinting with malice and pleasure. Then, it thrust the blade down.

His entire body exploded in pain. The lightning racing through him was excruciating. It felt like a trillion microscopic shards of glass were tearing through his nervous system. Despite this extremity, it could not entirely eclipse the sharp and throbbing pain caused by the blade itself as it sunk deep into his abdomen, shattering ribs and tearing entrails. He let out a horrific scream that died as quickly as it began. His senses were overloaded, such that the only sensation he knew besides the pain was Riksis' booming yet cackling laughter filling his ears.

For a moment it felt as though he would spend all eternity in this state, tormented eternally by sparks of vengeful energy. It made him miss the sweet embrace of oblivion, which he had only just escaped less than an hour prior.

However, the pain did not last forever. In fact, the worst of it cut off rather suddenly as Riksis' laughter ceased and he felt the blade being ripped out of his body. He fell to the ground, barely maintaining his grip on consciousness. He could faintly see the Archon getting dragged away, clambering and screaming. A blue light started to shine next to the Fallen, and a moment later it bloomed out and filled his vision.

Everything went black.

He awoke some time later, with the same sensation as when he had first risen from the dead earlier. He sat up, groaning with residual pain, to see the small white hovering above him, looking almost concerned. Ghost, he reminded himself. She was a Ghost. His Ghost.

"That's a pretty good trick," he mumbled, twisting his neck and rolling his shoulders. "Got any others, or is that your whole act?"

Whatever semblance of worry present in the Ghost's single glowing eye vanished instantly.

"I think the resurrection left you delirious," the voice replied, as cold as ever. "You seem to believe that you're funny."

"Hardy-har," he replied. He slowly pulled himself to his feet, despite his legs' myriad of objections. "So where's the-"

He froze, his entire body tensing up as if it was being shocked again. Seated across the room from him, barely moving, was the giant metal warrior. As he stood stock still in the middle of the hangar, the entity's eyes slowly rolled over in his direction. When it spotted him, however, it quickly tensed up, letting out a smattering of rousing beeps and whirs. It raised a fist and pointed it at him, knuckles first. An instant later, and the fist shattered, with the shards quickly coiling back together in the shape of a glowing blue cylinder.

"That's the cannon it used to blast Riksis," his Ghost warned him cautiously inside his mind. His eyes wandered to the giant's feet, where he spotted Riksis.

The Archon's visor was dim and dead, and its blade was lying shattered and sparking next to it. Riksis wasn't moving, which he presumed was due to the gaping hole in the Fallen leader's chest.

Coming to the difficult conclusion that he'd rather not meet the same fate, he returned his gaze to the living jumpship, who was still holding its weapon at the ready but had otherwise not made a move.

He slowly raised his hands to demonstrate his lack of weapons, and took a few careful steps back. The giant relaxed by a micron and slumped more against the wall, its body shaking. The creature was entirely alien to him, but even he could tell it was injured. Its body was covered in dozens of holes and burns, and it was leaking a glowing blue substance in a few places.

"The big guy's looking pretty beat up. Think it'll still be able to fly us out of here?" he asked softly.

"You're assuming we'll be able to figure out how to communicate with it, not to mention convince it to chauffeur us around."

"I mean, how hard can it be? It looks like a robot; does it have some sort of computer you can access?"

His Ghost grumbled, but nonetheless she released a subtle pulse of energy that washed over the foreign machine. She idled for a moment, analyzing, then spoke again.

"There is some sort of processor. It's not quite like anything I've ever seen, but I think I might be able to access it…"

There was a small flash of light, and she appeared in the air next to him. She slowly started hovering towards the machine. It seemed to spot her, but simply kept its canon at the ready, either unafraid or too worn out to care. She floated up in front of its head, which cocked slightly to the side as it got a better look at her. After a moment, a beam of white light shone from her face and made contact with the entity's forehead.

The robot surged to its feet, crying out in its strange symphony of beeps and shrieks. His Ghost dodged out of the way, trying to keep the beam on the giant's head while simultaneously avoiding the frantic swatting of its hands as it tried to get her away. Her voice suddenly came across his commlink.

"Come on, come on… got it!"

She immediately cut off the beam and bolted back towards him, vanishing in a flash once she got close. He could feel her anxious presence inside his head again. The robot seemed to recognize that she had left and collected itself. Then, it turned to look at him and glared.

"What did you do?" he asked tensely inside his mind.

"I hacked into its brain and implanted a language datapack."

The giant raised its fist, which once again reformatted into the cannon and began to hum and glow.

Recognizing what was about to happen, he raised his hands and shouted.

"WAIT!"

The machine froze. He didn't know its expressions either, but the look in its eyes was unmistakable:

Comprehension.

"I'm sorry," he continued, taking advantage of the entity's hesitation. "We just needed to put something in your head so you could understand us," he explained. Then, "...you can understand us, can't you?"

For a moment, the robot just stared. Then, slowly but surely, it nodded.

He was taken aback by the humanness of the motion. He wondered if the data pack had included body language. Shaking the distracting thought from his mind, he continued.

"We aren't going to hurt you. We just wanted to find a ship to get out of here, we had no idea you were alive."

The creature's expression didn't change, but its cannon did lower slightly.

"Look, we're all pretty tense right now, so how about we try and calm down, ok? Here, I should introduce myself. I'm-"

His thoughts froze. He'd been so caught up in all the action and peril since he'd awakened that he'd missed a crucial detail of his new life: he didn't remember his name. He desperately scrounged through his shadow-memories, searching for anything. He found plenty of names, but none of them felt in any way familiar. Ultimately, he decided that he'd have to just pick one. He felt that normally he would've spent hours agonizing over every little detail of his choice, to ensure his new moniker was exactly what he wanted from a new identity. But given the circumstances, he couldn't afford to kick ideas around. So picked one that sounded nice and went with it.

"...Kendrix," he finished, somewhat hesitantly. Then, with more confidence. "My name is Kendrix." There was a pause as he let the name hang in the air, testing how it sounded. Then he forced himself back to the task at hand. "Do you have a name?"

The metal giant stared at him for a moment, then looked away, evidently confused.

"When I was hacking into its head, I saw a massive amount of corrupted files." the voice of the Ghost whispered into his mind. "I don't think it remembers… I think, whatever its kind's equivalent of amnesia is, it's got that."

"You don't remember?" Kendrix called out, recapturing the machine's attention. It slowly shook its head. That realization seemed to really agitate the entity, as it started beeping and whirring all over again.

"I'm also detecting extensive damage to some sort of audio device in its face," the Ghost helpfully supplied. "I don't think it can speak."

Wanting to avert whatever sort of mental breakdown the creature was preparing to experience, Kendrix spoke up again.

"Hey, it's ok! We can worry about your name later. I don't remember much either, so I know how you feel."

The robot turned to look at him again, somewhat quizzical.

"The most important thing to worry about right now is getting out of here. This area is crawling with those Fallen things, and it's only a matter of time before more of them show up and start giving us trouble. We know a place that's safe and has plenty of resources. Hopefully they'll have the right stuff to feed you or fix you or whatever. We just can't get there without your help."

"You really think the City will have the tech to fix this thing?" his Ghost inquired mentally.

"You'd know about that better than me. Besides, it doesn't matter. If it doesn't take us there, then we're all screwed." he replied.

The giant seemed somewhat uncertain, glancing around the hangar as if hoping an alternative would suddenly materialize.

"Look, I know that you're scared, that you don't know if you can trust us. I'm scared too. But right now, we don't have any other options, and we're running out of time. So please. Will you take us to the City?"

The robot glanced around once more. Then its cannon shifted back into a hand, and it nodded half-heartedly. Kendrix let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. The machine knelt on the ground, seemingly collecting itself for a moment. Then, its body shattered.

The change was so intricate and complex and moved so fast that Kendrix barely had time to process the fact that it was occurring before it was completed. Once again, the orange and grey jumpship sat idling in the center of the hangar. After giving it a moment to settle, Kendrix slowly climbed up onto the disguised robot and opened the hatch leading into its cockpit before climbing inside.

He sat in the pilot's seat, trying not to think about the several tons of living metal encapsulating him that could collapse in and crush him at any moment. The Ghost appeared over Kendrix's shoulder, and a brief beam of light shot from her eye into the control console. The ship rumbled angrily for a moment.

"Sorry, sorry!" the Ghost cried. "I was just giving you the coordinates."

The ship rumbled again, but seeing as they weren't being compressed into diamonds it probably wasn't too unhappy. For a moment, nothing changed.

"So, what happens-" Kendrix started to ask.

Before he could finish, however, the jumpship's engines roared to life. It hovered up and off the ground somewhat, orienting itself towards the open roof of the hangar and the twilight beyond. Then, Kendrix was slammed back against his seat as the thrusters kicked in and sent them rocketing off into the sky.