Minerva headed back to the usual spot by rote. She'd learned that there were quite a few more places to get food besides the somewhat cobbled together little cafeteria, but habit pulled her always back to this particular place.

Not only this place, she thought as she sat down with her tray. But also this seat.

Apparently, she was very much a creature of routine. One thing about awakening in a new time with what amounted to total amnesia- you discovered the most interesting things about yourself.

For example, she had discovered that she was right handed. Not that unusual, most people seemed to be (though the Exos were fairly ambidextrous). She'd also discovered that as far as flavor and textures went, she liked crunchy and savory, not so much mushy and bland. She didn't seem to have much of a sweet tooth. Wasn't a big fan of bitter, though spicy was definitely her thing. Unfortunately, spicy seemed to be hard to get here.

She liked green, not so much red, though a nice burgundy was great. Yellow made things look jaundiced.

She also knew words like 'jaundiced' and what they meant in a medical sense. She seemed to know a fair amount of medical and chemical linguistics that the average person would probably be less than passingly familiar. And it wasn't just that she knew the definition of words like 'jaundiced' and 'linguistics' but that she naturally thought in them.

She wondered if she had some kind of scientific background. Anatomy as well seemed a bit of her strong suit (she knew without being told, for example, that shooting someone in a particular spot of the thigh would hit a major artery- and honestly the bleed-out had been fairly spectacular) so maybe a medical doctor? A nurse?

It seemed completely out of sorts with her new reality. If she had been a doctor, for example, why was she brought back with the gifts of a Titan? The gifts were reliant on your very DNA after all, your natural inclinations, strengths, talents. Your class wasn't supposed to alter who you intrinsically were- it was supposed to be 'you', plus.

And here she was, a Titan who tossed out words like 'intrinsically' in her own internal monologue.

Maybe she was just being a slave to stereotypes. Nothing at all said that a Titan had to be dumb just because they were physical powerhouses. She'd only talked to a handful thus far, and briefly, but none of them struck her as dumb- certainly not Shaxx or Zavala.

So what was it then? Was she a doctor who liked to box or lift weights as a hobby? A soldier who secretly read Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn and had a thing for medical texts?

She paused as she lifted a final spoonful from her tray toward her mouth. Dostoyevsky. Tolstoy. Solzhenitsyn. In her idle thoughts of just a moment ago she knew without thinking who those people were, what they had written. As she focused on the names in surprise, they darted like startled fish, back out of sight into the dark waters of her memory. Now they were meaningless syllables, the names of strangers.

Why am I even thinking about this? It doesn't matter, and I don't want to know it anyway.

She finished eating and cleared her tray, but as she went to leave the little cafeteria she realized she had no idea where else to go. Her whole life thus far had been the Crucible, the cafeteria, her bed, and for a few short minutes, the docking bay and 'infirmary'.

For the briefest of moments she considered going to the dock and checking out that strange ship. For an even briefer moment, she considered finding the infirmary again and seeing its even stranger pilot. Then she decided wandering aimlessly in a place she barely knew, at high risk of getting totally lost, was far more appealing.

Crossing the corridors she was familiar with, she turned deliberately into one she wasn't, and set off. Her Ghost offered to download a map schematic of the tower but for the first hour she refused. When she didn't manage to get anywhere interesting she finally agreed. It took him nanoseconds, and he projected the image on one of the walls. Something immediately caught her eye, and in moments again she was off.

The Plaza- or so it was labelled on the image- was near the very top of the Tower. Taking the lift up, she stepped outside into morning sunshine and immediately caught her breath.

A wide open vista greeted her, an expanse of concrete softened by sections of parklike grass and rustling trees. Shops and stalls flanked three sides of this open space but they were demure, manufactured so as not to be ostentatious or out of place given their surroundings.

The day was still cool with morning but the promise of a hot afternoon lingered in the faint breeze. The light was golden and spilled everywhere. The air was so fresh it almost hurt her lungs.

The one side of the Plaza that was not ringed by shops, or backed by the walls of the tower itself, was open to the world save for what looked like a cursory railing. One or two small ships were actually 'parked' on the other side of this railing, and as she walked closer she could see the long beams that acted as anchors. It took no questioning or imagination to figure out the small ships belonged to Guardians. The Plaza was dotted with them.

Some were at the shops, bartering items they'd found in the field for gear they could use when they went back to it. A few were lounging around the grassy areas, alone or in pairs. More than a handful stood at what looked like a bar front in one of the Tower walls. Whatever morality judgement Minerva might have made in her 'old life' regarding drinking at this hour of the day, the new 'her' didn't even register. An hour in the Crucible alone justified drinking any fucking time of the day a Guardian pleased, in her opinion.

Along the middle of the Plaza, six Guardians in full armor were kicking around a black and white ball in what looked like some kind of a game. Laughs and friendly taunts filled the air around them.

Min spared them a curious glance as she walked past, but they were immersed in what they were doing and none looked her way.

Since almost the moment she had been 'born', Min had heard about the last City of mankind, and the Traveler. Until she stepped up to the railing of the Plaza that morning, however, she had never seen either of them.

The view took her breath away.

The Tower on which she stood soared to dizzying heights. At least eight thousand feet below, a valley spread out in the morning sunshine. Mountains loomed to her left and right as far as she could see, craggy faces crusted with bright glints of snow.

The valley was ringed in by foothills and a great wall that itself had to stand five hundred or more feet tall. It was a thick bulwark of iron, a marvel of engineering-the only front between the valley and the rest of the world.

The valley itself was green, littered with buildings, roadways, bridges. The wide band of a river meandered through it, reflecting the light of the morning sun in liquid gold.

On its own, the view would have been breathtaking, but it was completely overshadowed by what she could only assume was the Traveler.

It was as if the moon itself had come from the sky to rest over the city, the broken base of it only a couple of hundred feet above the tops of the tallest spires of the City. And broken it was- the bottom of the softly gray sphere appeared gouged, fractured. From this distance Min could not be sure, but it seemed she could see within the gouges to metal structures that formed the interior, a girder-like framework.

As her eyes boggled at the sheer beauty and wonder of the scene, her mind was similarly boggling at the implications of it.

Something that large would have its own gravity- how is it that it can sustain such a precise distance above the City without either tearing it or itself apart? The gravitational shifts in the planet's crust should be immense. Not to mention the amount of power it would take to hold itself just so…

Aloud she said, "Is that the Traveler?" though she already knew the answer.

"Yes," her Ghost replied in an almost reverential tone.

"I…thought it was dead?"

"You're wondering how something so 'dead' still has so much power, aren't you?"

This voice was unfamiliar. She looked over to see she was not alone as she had thought. A man, an Exo, was sitting on the railing not ten feet away from her. His legs were dangling over thousands of feet of open air but he sat as casually as if he were on a picnic bench.

He wore a heavy coat cinched at the waist. The faintly glowing blue armband on his left arm marked him as a Warlock. A dark gray Ghost hovered almost morosely nearby. As Min saw it she realized she hadn't heard the Exo speak and then his Ghost's Russian translation. It seemed the Exo spoke Russian himself.

"I was curious," she said as he looked at him. "To hold such a position indefinitely, to be able to power whatever technology it is that allows it to do so without gravity being a factor, to be able to create the Ghosts for that matter-"

"Seems very active for a 'dead' creature," the Exo said with a faint nod. "Yet dead it seems to be, for all of that."

He measured her with a glance of his yellow eyes. "My name is Gen, by the way," he said, pronouncing the name with a hard G like the one in 'game'. "Gen-11."

"Minerva Anosova," she said.

"Both names," he said wonderingly. "You're not wearing a mark, but I don't think you're a Warlock…"

"I'm not, I'm a Titan," she said. "I get that a lot. You speak Russian?"

"I speak seventy-six different languages," he said. "I prefer to talk to my fellow Guardians in their own tongues rather than having my friend here repeat everything. So. You're a clever Titan."

He looked back out toward the Traveler. "I don't know why people keep being surprised over clever Titans, bullish Hunters, or straight-speaking Warlocks. We're not caricatures. Any sentient creature is a combination of many complex traits, not just a shallow one dimensional thing. Yet, the surprise keeps coming…even from me."

Min eyed him a little. He was the first warlock, besides Ikora Rey, she'd spent any amount of time talking with. He was odd to say the least. Whether that oddness was one of his 'complex traits' or a usual expectation of warlocks, she didn't know.

"Why don't you have a mark?" he asked after a moment, and looked back at her.

"I haven't gotten one yet," she said. "I was only born a few weeks ago. I am still working the Crucible."

"I see," he said. "Is this your first view of the City and the Traveler?"

"Yes," she said, and looked outward again herself. "It is beautiful."

"It is that," he said. "I suppose it goes without saying that you haven't actually been down in the City yet either, have you?"

"No, I haven't."

"Well, then. Would you like to? I tend to wander through it quite often. I'm happy to show you."

She looked at him, then back out at the buildings glittering in the sunlight below.

Well, what else were you going to do today?

"I would love to see it. Thank you."

He nodded, then pulled himself up from his perch. He didn't clamber back over the railing as she expected him to. Instead, he stood up on the railing itself, nothing between him and the ground far below save an easy teeter of balance. He looked at her again.

"Well? Come on then."

"What are you doing?" she asked, though she was pretty sure she knew the answer already.

"Taking the fastest way down to the City. Unless you want to spend nearly half an hour wandering through halls, going down stairs and lifts, then clearing three security points."

Min stared at him, then looked over the railing. The ground below was so distant no details but a soft gray green merled with white could be seen. It was still in the Tower's shadow and the cool had prevented the morning ground mists from burning off completely yet.

She felt very aware of every single foot, every inch of space between her and the ground below.

"Have you not died by falling yet?" the warlock asked.

"No," she said softly, still looking down.

"Every choice is taken away from you," he said. "You are perfectly aware until the moment of impact. You know what is happening, what is going to happen, and nothing whatsoever you do can stop it. No choice you make, no effort, no frantic struggle does a single thing to halt it. Human, Exo, Awoken…sentient beings are capable of moving mountains, destroying planets, shaping entire oceans. Gravity seems so benign in comparison but in a single heartbeat it can completely erase the strongest sentient will and reduce it to nothing more than a grain of sand tossed in a torrential river. You can do nothing but be consumed in it until you hit the ground. All power is stripped from you."

"Then why do it?" she asked.

He chuckled. "Well, for one, there's freedom in surrendering control. It seems like an oxymoron perhaps, but it is true. For another, only by allowing our power to be stripped by something so mighty-and then walking away with our power regained-do we become even more powerful. Lastly…it's the fastest way down."

Their eyes met for a moment and she could see amusement sparking in his before he gave a small gesture, and hopped off the railing into open air as casually as someone would step off a curb.

Min's throat clenched and her chest knotted as he plummeted downward with a sharp, crisp flap of his overcoat. His Ghost darted down after him.

Her eyes felt locked on him as he grew swiftly smaller, and smaller. It was so far down that she could no longer see the black speck of his form some moments before he would have hit the ground.

"He's mad," her own Ghost said softly. Then, "What are you doing?"

Min had grabbed the railing with shaking hands, and pulled herself upward. Her stomach was a riot of dancing insects as she balanced carefully on the top rail, straightening to her full height. Her mouth was dry, her eyes stung and watered, and an exquisite fear seemed to be melting into her soul like hot iron sinking into flesh.

"It's the fastest way down," she said in a low dry voice.

Spreading her arms, heart thundering, she jumped after him.