I - The Thing in the Water
He awoke in the dark, to the sound of dripping water and a blinding pain in what was left of his legs. A small, glowing light bobbed up and down around him. Where the light went, the pain went away.
He grabbed the light, clutching it firmly in his hands. It felt good to grab something. Feeling spread from the tips of his fingers down his wrist and up his arm and into his bones. He squeezed the light, and it felt good to squeeze. Harder and harder he went, until the light protested:
"Ow, fuck!" It said, "You're hurting me!"
He dropped the light in surprise. He forced a question out of his dry throat, the first words he had spoken in millennia.
"What the hell are you? What's going on?" He pondered for a moment, and then, "Who am I?"
His brain was blank. He didn't have a single semblance of a memory of who he was or who he used to be.
"Slow down, now. First of all, I'm your Ghost, and you're my guardian. You've been dead for a really, really long time. I haven't been paying attention to the signs, but I think we're somewhere in North America. I assume you don't know what that means, but I barely know more than you anyway." The light receded from the bobbing shape. It was a multi-faceted sphere, with a blue, hopeful, glowing eye in the center of it. It was about the size of an orange.
The Guardian tried to sit up, but there was no strength in his arms, no breath in his chest. No light in his eyes.
"I can't see." said the Guardian, "you said I was dead? Are we in a mausoleum?
The Ghost laughed: a short, robotic snuff. "We're in a dam. I was traveling with some others, but I broke from them. I had a good feeling about this place." The Ghost cast his light across the room, revealing their surroundings. "It looks like it fell out of use a few centuries ago."
The Guardian looked around the room in a daze. The two seemed to be in some manner of underground canal. Stagnant, black water surrounded the pair on all sides, casting eerie glimmers on the bare concrete walls that surrounded them, blocking out all light. The Guardian looked down. They were sitting upon a small island of metal debris. A skeletal corpse clutched the Guardian's weakened arm. Inexplicably, he would now find his strength.
"Ugh, what the hell?" He would shake off the corpse, ending an ancient and quite romantic thousand-year embrace.
"I'm done repairing your legs, Guardian. See if you can stand up."
The Guardian, splaying out his arms for balance, tentatively bent his knees and stood up, wobbling a bit on his stiff legs. The small motion caused the metal debris to shift, slowly sinking into the water.
"Uh, Ghost?" His left leg was shin-deep beneath the cool, dark, tide. "How are we getting out of this?"
"Don't you know how to swim?"
"Uhm, I'm not sure. Remind me of how you do that again?"
"Maybe you haven't noticed." said the Ghost with derision, "but I don't exactly have any appendages. Just jump over to that lip over there." The Ghost cast his light onto a small concrete shelf that ran along the far wall. Cracked with age, it looked quite precarious.
"How am I supposed to get over there if I can't swim?" Panic was filling the Guardian; his left leg was almost completely submerged.
"Just wade along the bottom. Look, there's a ladder." About 15 feet away, a decrepit ladder, set into the concrete wall, was barely visible above the pool.
"But I don't know how deep this is? What if I can't see? How am I supposed to get there?" His torso was in the water now.
"You'll be fine. If you drown, I can just revive you again!" The Ghost seemed to think this was comforting.
"That's a horrible plan. I guess I was just dead, but I don't want to fucking drown!"
"Well," said the Ghost, "uh, I'm sorry then."
The Guardian's head went under. He was immersed in a dark place, a quiet place. The Guardian flailed his arms and legs, churning waves in the thick black water. A thing watched him in the water. An unknown thing that had not been seen or witnessed by humanity for eons. It watched him fight and flail his way along the bottom of the concrete pool, feeling along the walls for any protrusive metal rungs. The thing wept when the figure found the rungs. The thing had grown fond of the human figure.
The Guardian's head broke a film of scum along the top of the water. He breathed in the putrid air, tasting sweet in comparison to the water. His hands gripped the metal rungs and he pulled themselves up to the metal walkway.
"Shit, ugh, shit! That was horrible *eghck*, some of it got in my mouth." The Guardian spat a scummy wad of spit against the concrete wall.
"Look, you made it alright. Now, I'm pretty sure this is the direction I came from. Follow me!" said the Ghost. The Guardian looked at the retreating Ghost, and then along the concrete lip. A large metal pipeline opened up in the wall at the end.
On they went, through the passage and away from the metal debris, away from the black water and the thing within it.
"So uh, Ghost, do you, uhm, have a… a name? Is that a thing?" The Guardian was curious. He had woken up with no name, no memories, no nothing. Where were they? Where was North Camerica? Why had he died in a dam? What had he been doing there?
The Ghost stared at him for a long time before answering. "Yeah, it's not like we're created with names or anything, you just kind of get one after you've been around a while."
"Do you have a name?" The Guardian repeated.
"... no." lied Junebug.
"Huh." The Guardian looked down at himself. He wore a tattered gray protective suit and heavy work boots. The black water had completely soaked him and his clothes. He could feel water sloshing around in his boots, a memento from the frightful plunge.
"Do I have a name? Do I have a purpose?"
Junebug scanned them over with a beam of light. "I guess you get to pick? I certainly didn't."
"What?"
"Nothing. I guess you get to pick your name and stuff."
"How would I pick my name?" The Guardian looked down at himself. Maybe he would have some sort of indicator on the suit.
"Just pick what you feel like."
"Hmmmm. I don't know." The Guardian had not looked up from his suit yet. He was still looking for some sort of name tag or any other indicator. Gray was pretty gender-neutral.
The pair emerged into a pale-blue, topless silo, with brown scum sticking to the walls. It seemed to have originally been an interior structure, but time and wear had opened a hole in the exterior of the dam, and dull light poured in from the crack. Billowing gray clouds filled the sky, filtering the yellow rays of the sun into a bleak vagueness that blanketed the world. There were no distinctions of shadow underfoot. The light and dark had met and mingled, mixing into something entirely new.
They had emerged out of the large pipe, and were met with an identical orifice on the other side of the silo. A pale-blue ladder, matching the walls of the silo, climbed up the side and over the top, appearing to lead right into the vastness of the rolling clouds.
"Here we are. I flew in from the top of this thing. It looks like it used to hold water, but time tends to mess up this old-world stuff. Let's clear out of here, this place sucks."
The Guardian trudged through muck in the basin of the silo. His boots squelched and stuck to the viscous black sludge. It smelled of aged saliva and unfulfilled wishes. As Junebug began to float up and out of the cesspit, the Guardian felt a pull. Not the pull of the sludge on his boots, but an entropic pull. A call from deep within the dam. He turned away from the ladder and moved towards the opposite pipe, and looked in.
It sloped down into the darkness, but the bottom was obscured by yet another film of black water. The call became stronger. He stepped into the threshold of the pipe, unblinkingly analyzing the sludge. As he looked into the sludge, he knew. Something was looking back. Tears began to well in his eyes and his throat tightened. Simultaneously he wanted to dive in and run away, the call of the pipe was beckoning to him.
Junebug came back to him. "What are you looking at, Guardian? Are you alright?" He cast his light into the pipe. "Is there something in there?"
The pipe was quiet.
"I guess I'm fine. I just kinda felt… off, about the pipe." The Guardian stepped back out into the sludge and turned toward the ladder. "I guess it was nothing." He began climbing the ladder.
The pair stood above the silo, looking over a metal railing across the surrounding area. The gray, billowing clouds cast quiet light over the landscape. They were in a rolling flatland, dotted by trees and small buildings. A road cut through the landscape, the asphalt cracked and the markings completely worn off. Telephone poles ran along the road, swathes of wires hanging from each one like a wilting willow tree.
"Didn't you say you were with somebody before? Where are they?" The Guardian had turned to Junebug, both still taking in the scenery.
"That's what I said. Maybe if we follow the road, we can catch up to them. She's a risen like you, so maybe she has a weapon or something for you."
"Why do I need a weapon? Shouldn't I get special powers?" The Guardian threw a few weak, noncommittal punches in the air
"Not a great idea. Risen like you are certainly strong, but a bullet to the head is all it takes."
"So, uh, what can I do?"
"Well, you should have supernatural strength and dexterity. Once you live long enough, you might learn how to control the Light inside of you, and fight with that. Micah can do this thing where she conjures knives made out of fire, so maybe she can teach you, or something."
"Who's Micah again?"
"She's the risen I mentioned earlier. I'm pretty sure I said her name."
The Guardian was skeptical, but he kept quiet. He looked over the edge of the railing, taking in the 30-foot drop to the dry grass below.
"Uhm, could I survive that?"
"Even if you don't, I'll just bring you back."
The Guardian raised his eyebrows in appreciation, "Nothing to lose, then."
With that, the Guardian vaulted over the railing and plummeted to the ground below. He attempted to land on his feet, and heard a sickening crunch when he hit the ground. Agony shot up his leg, bringing him to his knees. He let out a guttural yell.
Junebug drifted down and began to work on the Guardian's injury. His healing light realigned the bone, repaired the flesh, and removed the pain.
"Usually risen can stop a fall by using the Light." said Junebug. "I've seen Micah do it before, just as she's about to hit the ground, she kicks hard off the air, and it launches her up."
The Guardian laughed through gritted teeth, "Boy, I guess I should have tried that then. Thanks for the heads-up, stupid."
"Maybe you're stupid for just jumping without a plan. Now I have to heal you again."
"Eh. Maybe." The Guardian wasn't preoccupied with who was at fault right now. He was in a lot of pain.
After the injury was healed, the two set off down the sloping hill, towards the road. The grass was knee-length and dry. It irritated his skin, made it itch, as it brushed past the Guardian's exposed flesh through the tattered suit. The gray clouds still rolled overhead, a patchwork pattern of desolate plumage. When they reached the road, the Guardian looked back at the dam. He felt it. The call.
The pipe. The thing in the water.
The man at the railing.
A man stared back at the Guardian. Upon the very same railing he had been perched upon, taking in the windswept land around them, a man stood still, staring at him. The man was ageless, the sort who could be far older or younger than you might guess. His hair was wet, as was his whole body. His brow was furrowed, his eyebrows nearly meeting in the middle. He had a split lip, and red blood ran down his teeth, dying them crimson. He was smiling
The man and the Guardian looked at each other, before the man turned and began to climb down the ladder, back into the facility. The call subsided.
"What do you keep staring at?" Junebug asked. The Guardian had been acting weird.
"There was a guy over there. Up at the railing. He was staring at me." The Guardian's breath was short, his suit was drenched in sweat. His eyes were tearing up.
"There was nothing else in that facility, I scanned it myself. You're seeing things. I'm not sure how often Guardians see things after they come back, but maybe we can ask Micah, she knows a lot." The Ghost continued to float down the road, and the Guardian reluctantly followed him. He felt the lingering resonance of the call all around him. It swept through the trees. It clung to the grass like morning dew. It had charged the air itself. It was there, it was tangible, it was right outside his periphery when he turned his head.
As the two retreated, the thing watched them go down the road.
