Rubik's cube
Dusk had come by the time they made it out to the forest and found something resembling a clear road. It left the sky bruised with heavy purples and slices of angry red, and maybe on any other day (and a few hundred years ago), Nicole would have thought it looked pretty. Today all it did was tell her they'd be out of light soon.
And still, she didn't feel like driving. Clear(er) road or not. Ghost didn't argue, and the girl they'd picked up? She hadn't said a word since they'd left the camp behind. Stared, yeah. Lots. Right at her. No shame or anything, and each time she'd wondered if she should say something, only to decide not to.
So silence it was and Nicole didn't want to think about what it'd take for a child to learn to hold still for so long. They were meant to move around. To be loud. Annoying. Lively.
Not hushed husks.
It was horrible, okay? And walking like that? With tension in her shoulders and a constant itch at the back of her neck? Nerve-wracking. Even the most innocent of bird calls kicked her heart into gear, every single one of them just waiting to warp into twisted laughter coming to chase her again. She shivered. God, she never wanted to see these things again. Ever.
When she'd stopped once, her knuckles white where they gripped the sparrow, Ghost had inched up next to her and thrown a look at the same shadows she'd been staring at because a leaf had rustled at her funny. He'd swung around to her, the blue glow of his eye giving a few hesitant flickers and reassured her that there weren't any Fallen around here. That he'd been keeping an eye out.
She'd pulled her shoulders up, kept pushing, and wondered why he'd been whispering if there wasn't anyone around. Besides, the sparrow made enough noise to ring any man-eater's dinner bell from ways off.
Wait, did the Fallen eat people?
... was there anything around that did?
That'd been a while ago, and it took until the shadows grew long enough to hide monsters in for Ghost to swing ahead of her and put himself in her way.
"I have a plan," he announced.
"Good for you."
His shell scooted forward in a frown. Yeah, that was definitely a frown.
"Fine, let's hear it. What's the plan?"
"The plan is we get off the road in another two-hundred meters and—" He paused and stared at her, a curious (and careful) chime dinging off him. "That's six-hundred-and-fifty—"
"Ghost," she interrupted him.
"Yeah?"
"I know how meters work."
"Oh. Okay. Good. So, in two-hundred meters we'll cut north. North-ish. There's an old brewery down that way, something the Fallen won't care for, but I bet there's still enough of it standing that we can stay there for the night."
Nicole rubbed at her nape. Squeezed. She'd like to rest, but... Her eyes cut to the girl.
"Will it be safe there?"
Ghost's shell twitched in a shrug. "I can't say. I hope so."
"Since when do computers hope? Don't you like, I don't know, calculate odds, get all specific."
"Hey," he went in a huff, his shell flaring out. "I'm not— I'm a Ghost, not a… a… handheld accessory."
"So what, you're not like, an AI?"
Ghost hesitated. "Not exactly. I hope and I guess. And I dream, too. Computers don't dream." He sounded almost smug when he said that, which did its part distracting her from how this was all still very odd.
Box of mad frogs odd.
She wondered if she'd ever get used to it.
"Fine. Brewery. I know what brewery you're talking about. So—" Nicole began pushing again and Ghost hovered ahead with his eye turned to her. "—we hide in the brewery. I get some sleep. She gets some sleep." She jerked her chin to the girl. "And then what?"
"Then," he started, "which'll be tomorrow, we head to a Vanguard emergency relay. There's one half a day from here, and once we get there I can call for someone to pick us up."
"Vanguard?"
The back of his shell gave a quick, albeit jerky, spin. "Yep! Okay, so the Vanguard—"
And off he went, eager and so quick Nicole could barely keep up with his explanation and history lesson while she led the sparrow, half her mind busy with being wary of the shadows stretching for them, ready to grow teeth.
They slunk into the brewery like a trio of thieving mice.
Not much of it was still standing, and what was had thrown in the towel after being put in the ring with time. And, fair was fair, it was all kind of pretty.
Nicole pushed the sparrow through a gaping hole in one of the brewery's bigger halls. A section of roof facing west had come down, torn a good chunk of wall with it, and left ample room for the sinking sun to come spill in after them as she inched carefully forward.
Not like all the sneaking was doing them any good, considering the sparrow whistle-hummed steadily on. A sound that grew louder in here, bouncing off the walls and wooden pillars — and the large brass bell things spaced out in front of them. Nicole had absolutely no idea what they were called, but that was where whiskey was made. Sort of. Kind of. Honestly, while she'd always liked drinking the stuff, she didn't have a lick of an idea how it was made.
Except it was supposed to be stored in barrels, right? There weren't any barrels. Just the brass bell things thickly covered in plants, the light of the fading sun gleaming off the exposed patches of it like molten gold.
Pretty.
Ghost darted up high, swirled on the spot once with a scan sweeping the place, and then darted back down to guide her through a maze of walkways and pillars.
She ended up parking the sparrow at the far end of the hall. Right under a tarnished wood and copper plaque with a whiskered fish lounging on the rim of a stout barrel. The writing under it had faded, but she knew what it'd been called: The Smoked Catfish Brewery.
Come to think of it, she could really do with a bottle right now. Forget the ice. She'd drink it straight. Or was that neat?
Sighing, Nicole dropped her hopes and dreams of whiskey burning down her throat, and hoisted the girl off the sparrow before dumbly staring at the buttons laid out on its centre console. None of them were labelled.
"How do you turn that thing off?"
"Oh. Just like that," Ghost supplied as he swung by and, with a flick of light from his eye, choked off the engine.
"Ta."
His Guardian opted not to sleep on the naked floor this time. That one night after she'd risen had been enough, he figured. She pulled the gear from the sparrow, laid out the lone thick bedroll they'd salvaged, and then tossed one of the normal blankets a little off to the side of it.
Then she pointed at the bedroll and then at the kid, before folding her hands next to her head and leaning it to the side in a You sleep here sort of gesture. While that didn't need translating, the kid didn't stay there for long.
The moment his Guardian started walking back the way they'd come (meaning: out into the falling night), the kid got up and made to follow. And so did he, except he was already up. Up in the air. Duh.
His Guardian turned around and threw them both a look that didn't need words to get the message across, either. They slunk back.
Turned out his Guardian knew how to build a campfire. Not just some wood thrown together in a pile, either. Slowly floating around the finished structure, Ghost eyed the neat stack, bobbing over his Guardian as she knelt on one end getting the fire started. Clink-sssslink the flintstone (also looted from the camp) went a few times before the first sparks flew — and by the time he'd rounded the pyramid thing three times he almost clipped her shoulder as she shot up to avoid getting burnt.
Then she raided the supplies for food. Well, they did. The kid and her. Not him. Ghosts don't eat. Sometimes he thought that was pretty tragic.
"What's your name?" his Guardian asked while exchanging rations, adding "I'm Nicole," at the tail end and tapping some plastic-wrapped dinner against her chest. He didn't need to help translate that.
"Bjarte," the girl blurted, putting on a toothy grin. She missed a bunch of teeth and the rest weren't looking too good either, but that didn't make the bright smile any less genuine.
His Guardian barely returned it though. She tried, sure, with the corners of her lips twitching briefly — but none of it touched her eyes. They were just tired. So tired, Ghost was surprised when she took her time to tuck the kid into the bedroll and then didn't just pass out herself.
Rather, she scooted over to the blanket she'd tossed down, sat on it with her legs crossed under her, her back all slouchy, and…. stared into the fire.
Pop.
Crackle.
Hoot. (That'd been owl. Not the fire.)
Her chin snapped up, eyes catching on the plaque on the wall and then darting to the blown out windows through which the owl had hooted at them.
She puffed air from her nose, leaned to the side— and still didn't fall over to sleep, pulling over one of the packs instead so she could sift through it with the same gusto Hunters attended mission briefings with.
"How do Guardians deal with it?" She didn't look up when she asked it. And for a while she let that open ended question hang there as if she expected him to be able to read her mind.
Well, he couldn't.
Not yet.
. . .
Wow. She was going to be thrilled about the neural link, wasn't she? Absolutely delighted. (And that was sarcasm.)
His Guardian placed something in front of her. Bright red electrical tape, to be exact. Then she went back to fishing and adding to her question.
"The dying. With being dead."
"I…" Have absolutely no idea. He paused and sunk an inch closer to the ground, just in time for her to throw him a look and wave him closer with a twitch of her fingers.
Wait. Wait.
She'd waved him closer. Closer. Ghost's shell tried to puff out cheerfully, the keyword there being tried, since he didn't let it. Though he did zip over in a hurry, fast enough to spin off a little too far before he managed to catch himself by her shoulder.
Right when she placed a squished tube of glue next to the tape — and only a moment before she dug the tip of his shell out of her coat pocket.
She'd kept it.
She'd kept it.
His Guardian had kept the bit of his shell that'd fallen off in the swamp, and it didn't take the processing power of a Ghost's core to analyse the situation and come to the conclusion that she wanted to put it back on.
He cleared his entirely conceptional throat, hoping that'd mask the startled chirp of his electronics not shutting the heck up.
"I thought you…" She held the piece pinched between her fingers, a small frown pulling down her mouth. "I don't know. Might want to have that fixed. So it doesn't— ah— rain in there? I guess?"
He swung himself in front of her. Slowly. Didn't want to spook her all of a sudden and lose another end rather than having that one put back.
"Does it hurt?" she added after a moment, a glance skipping between him and the piece of shell. Her brow furrowed. "I should have probably asked that a few hours ago."
"No, it doesn't. Hurt. There's no hurt."
"Oh. So you don't feel pain?"
Ghost hung back an inch in a show of a lazy sort of recoil. "No — I mean yes. Pain is a thing. I feel it when I get damaged, like when I get shot or jabbed." He leaned forward again and added, melodramatically, "Or when my Guardian hits me with a brick."
Her jaw jumped.
"But that's all just sensory data meant to tell me I'm in danger."
"So like— any sort of pain."
He paused. "Point. Except my shell is more like— uuh— imagine if you could feel it if someone cut a hole into your shirt and when they're done cutting the pain goes away again? It's like that."
Sort of.
She stared at him blankly for a while, until a look of sudden determination crept into her features and she held the chip off his theoretical shoulder up in front of his eye. "How do we do this then?"
Awkwardly, that was how.
See, no one'd ever touched his shell before.
Up until the moment he gently set down in his Guardian's right palm, anyway. What? Ghosts didn't generally make a habit of going around and rubbing up against people for a bout of scratches. Unless you were… what was her name again? That Ghost with the— the—
His Guardian's fingers carefully locked against two of the protruding tips of his shell at the back — and his thoughts locked in place with them.
Right. Okay. Cool. Here he was, briefly remembering the last time something'd grabbed him. It'd had talons. And it'd been mean and not gentle and why was he thinking about that damned eagle right now, this was really not the time or place.
Especially because the place was his Guardian's hand.
The bottom half of his shell just about fit into it, and even as she tightened her grip a little and restricted his movements to rotating his upper sections and core, she was gentle. Hesitant. And busy holding him at an angle that pointed him at the curve of her shoulder, from where he watched her animated shadow thrown against the old brick wall. The fire gave it a life of its own. Made it dance.
Bit like his core was trying to dance from its shell and wobble off to hide under a piece of heavy machinery. He didn't though. He got it together like the Ghost he was and not some wimpy quarter-servitor.
Yep. Totally got it together. Absolutely.
Ghost blinked his eye shut. Not for long, mind you. Just for a moment between moments, that space between two human heartbeats. The exact time it took for a thread to unravel. It was bright. Warm. Woven from a tangle of the Traveller's light and the promise of finding a thought at the end of it. One he'd dropped long ago and forgotten.
Like they all had when they'd been born.
"Huh," his Guardian said, cryptically. Yanked the thread away from him.
His eye snapped open and he blurted an entirely composed: "What?"
"You're… warm."
. . .
Then she made it worse. She set a finger against one of his shell sections. Nudged. It was a careful and soft nudge, but it was a nudge anyway. "And all wiggly."
"Sowhy'dyouaskaboutthedying?"
The wiggling stopped. "Bless you?"
He twisted around inside his shell, the pressure of it being held in place an odd combination of unfamiliar comfort and sensory confusion. Yep, it was a miracle he could still think straight, what with all those error codes getting in the way and needing dismissing. He'd just mute them all. Yep.
He'd managed to turn enough to look up at his Guardian having moved on from poking at his shell to squeezing the tube of glue.
"Earlier," he clarified. "You asked about how other Guardians deal with dying."
She squinted at the tube of glue and shrugged. Which jostled him a little, but that was fine. All of this was fine.
Honestly, he kind of liked it.
Okay, okay. He liked it.
"I'd just wondered how anyone copes with it? At all? Being dead." When she said that her voice took on an edge it hadn't had before. Least not for a while. The hint of a tremble waiting to happen, though it didn't translate into how steady her hand was as she started lining the edges of his shell with glue.
"Dead and trapped."
Ghost froze. Grew even stiller then he'd already been, sitting in her hand like that.
"What do you mean with… trapped?"
She set the broken piece of his shell down. "Uh. Trapped in the dark? And I mean really, really, dark. Like it's-got-eyes-and-it'll-eat-you-dark if you step into it. And the light." She paused. Realigned the shell to fit the break better. "Lights. The weird lights. Gosh, will you stop moving?"
"... sorry, I'm just—" Ghost squirmed awkwardly, tried to shift his shell so he could look at her better. She was pale and her eyes unfocused, even as she kept pressing down on the break. "—really not sure what you mean. I've heard a Guardian describe her death like nodding off while watching a vid and coming to again after having missed all the best bits. Something like that. Not anything like being trapped."
She exhaled slowly — and equally slowly fixed her eyes on him, as if refocusing them involved a lot of work. "I was stuck there for days. For forever. That's what it felt like, anyway. Started with being just dark everywhere. I couldn't see a thing except myself and there was a… a wolf?"
"Excuse me?" Ghost shuttered his eye in a confused blink.
"Mhm. Then, like halfway across the world, a light came on." His Guardian let go of the break. "I think it was singing? Calling for me? It wanted me to walk to it, so I did, until more lights appeared. They were all around me and much, much closer. Some were just a few steps away, but I couldn't actually get to them. As if I was only allowed one path and that was forward, to the big one and past all the other lights. They were whispering and laughing and they felt alive? Least until the darkness began… popping them like balloons. Breaking them. One by one."
A shudder ran through her, and Ghost found himself lifted to about eye level to be turned this way and that like he was a teacup she'd just fixed a broken handle on. Which was fair. A teacup was about as useful at processing what she was telling him.
"That's when I started running," his Guardian added and carefully perched him on her knee before pointing a finger at him. "Stay," she said, quietly.
Ghost did as told.
The tape came next, and while he still tried to put together the pieces of her story, she ripped strips off it and stuck them to the back of her hand.
Honestly? He'd almost dismissed right from the start, what with there being reasonable explanations for seeing a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. Seizures, for one. Oxygen deprived brains liked to seize. And sometimes its cells refused to go quietly and made a show of it instead. Hallucinations. That's what they were. Didn't matter how desperately people wanted to find a more profound meaning in them, at the end they were no more than wild misfirings of a dying mind.
And time? Seconds. Minutes. Hours. Years. They had no meaning between neurones.
You could live a lifetime in the blink of an eye.
His Guardian hunched over him, her hair cascading around him like a curtain. Good thing he wasn't ticklish, yeah? Then she grabbed the damaged piece of shell and started slapping bright red electrical tape over the glued together break.
. . .
So. Yeah. Anyway. He'd have liked to dismiss it. Tell her it'd been nothing more than a bad dream, that there wasn't such a thing as the Darkness eating at the Light. But then she'd had to start walking right at the Traveller the moment she'd put herself back together earlier today.
It hadn't been a dream. While he'd went looking for her the second time around, she'd lived a nightmare. That wasn't how this was supposed to work…
"I think," he said, carefully, "that was the Traveller."
She paused mid-tape-application. But didn't make a sound.
"The Light. The one calling for you. You kept following it even after I brought you back."
The tape went on, though her fingers were shaking now. Enough to have her abandon the rest of the tape and lean back.
She nodded.
Ghost kept sitting on her knee for maybe a moment longer than he really had to before pushing off. Flexing out each section of his shell and then giving it all a testing twirl, he never took his eye off her staring at him like she waited for the answer to something as complicated as the meaning of life.
Well.
Theoretically he could tell her exactly that. She was a Guardian, after all. And like him, she had a meaning. A destiny, if you will. It just wasn't the one she wanted.
And maybe it wasn't even the one he'd expected either.
"Try not to worry," he said, and okay it was about the worst advice next to Don't worry, but he wasn't about to add fuel to the fire with another history lesson. The one about the Darkness and the Collapse and whatnot. "Our first stop when we reach the City will be the Speaker. If there's anyone who can help it'll be him. He'll know what to do. What it all means."
"The Speaker," she echoed, sounding about as convinced as he'd admit to if anyone pressed. "You keep mentioning him."
"He talks to the Traveller. He has to have answers," he argued, though probably more for his own sake than hers if he was going to be honest with himself there for a second.
"If you say so."
"Yeah. Yeah, I do." C'mon, sound a little like you mean it, champ.
"Right."
"Great," he blurted and allowed himself a moment to sweep their campsite with a halfway critical eye. Most of him was busy getting overwhelmed by all those unknown variables his Guardian had come with. And it bugged him. Immensely. And the rest of him wasn't happy about how the light from the fire was going to be visible through the ruin's windows, but he wasn't about to ask to have it put out. If he was going to get her and their little surprise cargo (who slept like a log) to the City, then his Guardian needed rest. She wasn't going to get any resting done while freezing.
"We'll have this sorted out in no time, you just wait and see. Now roll over and sleep, I'll keep an eye out."
Her brow furrowed and she stiffened.
"Just in case," he clarified hurriedly. "Nothing is going to find us here." I hope. Oh for… fingers would be nice. Could cross those. "And, ah… thanks."
"What for?" she asked while tossing the glue and tape back into the pack before finally huddling up inside her oversized coat.
He tilted his shell and flexed out the recently remodelled tip. "Patching me up."
"Oh. You're welcome," her tousled hair replied — since she'd good as vanished into the coat, with nothing but the top of her her head poking out. Also, she'd said it all ye'r welcome and he really couldn't wait to introduce everyone else at the Tower to his Scottish Guardian. They'd love her.
"I guess you don't sleep?" she added after a while of huffing and turning this way and that in a probably futile attempt on getting comfortable on the blanket between her and the concrete. She'd stuck her head out again though and was eyeing him. "You're not just going to… nod off?"
"I do sleep, but I am not going to nod off, no. I have a good few hours left before I'll need to recharge."
"Recharge? Like… are you going to plug yourself in somewhere? Or—" She yawned. "— fold out secret solar panels?"
"No." He curbed the urge to groan. Kinderguardians. Seriously. "I nap. Just like you. Well, sort of."
"Hm," she stated, staring at him. Ghost puffed his shell out a little. Preemptively. "Sooo I don't need to wind you up?"
"What- no. I'm not a windup toy."
The corners of her lips kicked up hard enough to nudge the smile all the way up to her eyes. "Are you sure?"
"Ha-ha. Very funny. Go sleep."
The night sky holds little to no secrets any more. Not to him anyway, the Ghost circling the soft glow of a fire leaking from dead stone. He's flown under that same sky for almost all of his life. Searching. Dreaming. And what little time he's not spent under it, he's spent beyond it. Past the satellites. Past the debris. Past the cracked open ships and stations that wink back at him in poor imitation of the stars they sit with. It's their purgatory. A thin line between the depth of a cold forever and an end in fire.
He's watched a lot of them fall.
And he can name them. The ones that have come down and the ones still up there, from the satellites to the wreckages and the constellations and planets. With the right charts, he knows where all of it is at any given time.
But he doesn't know his Guardian.
Doesn't know her fate. Their fate.
There's no map. No instructions.
But he'll get there.
Taffer Notes: If you want to see some art of Nicole and Ghost, go hop over to my Tumblr, tafferfield. I got some there!