In which Ghost gets to sign theoretical paperwork and Nicole never actually touches her garlic.

Hollow Harbour

Ragged, dirty clouds were most of what Nicole saw as she sat with her hands folded in her lap, her fingers pressed together tight. She'd have liked to pretend that she found some peace in the quiet up here. In that no-mans-land between the land rushing by underneath and the sky occasionally peeking in through the dense cloud cover.

But, no. Instead, the song in her bones sung on and her mind walked itself silly in her head. Didn't take much and her left knee started bouncing.

The clouds rolled on.

"Sooo... got anything new for me?" John asked Ghost eventually, breaking a silence that'd gone on so long it was probably old enough to vote by now. He also threw Ghost a look, one that hung on to her briefly and got the hairs at the back of her neck to stand at rapt attention.

But anyway. Voting.

Was that still a thing?

She frowned. What about book clubs? Yoga classes? To be fair, she'd never gone to a single book club or yoga class her entire life. Helen had. Always swore they were amazing. The yoga, anyway. Suddenly, Nicole wanted nothing more than to do that, too.

While she rummaged about in her head about things she'd have liked to do and hadn't, Ghost tumbled his way by her (no, really — he did two lazy flips in the air). She watched, quietly, as a flimsy burst of light licked from his eye. It connected with a section of the ship's cockpit console and all of a sudden there was music.

Very loud music. Guitar riffs. Drums. Bass. The whole shebang. It was one part familiar and one part alien — like something new coming together with something old — as it poured out of speakers set somewhere around her and Nicole thought for a moment her heart was going to give up. Just. Stop. Right there.

"Easy there, buddy." John flicked a hand over some controls to settle the volume. He cocked his head to the side a little, and while his eyebrow shot up, his lips pulled down in an appraising sort of frown. "Not bad though."

"And do you ever think about looking for anything else?" Darrow threw in, the sections of his round shell unevenly pushed out. "Golden Age technology? Research Data? Anything useful?"

"Useful? You mean like a Guardian?" Ghost shot back. "Oh, wait, she's sitting right here—"

Darrow made an exasperated sigh. It was convincing for coming from such a small ball.

And then the music shifted. On the inside. Not the outside. That tune that'd played for her ever since she'd fallen into the Dark and then fallen back out of it.

It called her forward, and Nicole leaned into its direction, her seatbelt digging into her shoulders. But she had to get closer to the cockpit window. Had to see. Except there wasn't anything there when she looked to the left. Just more clouds. Thick and dark. Except then the ship angled down sharply, sliced through them, and when they pulled out underneath a spell of vertigo almost popped her head right off her shoulders. That was uncomfortable and she hated it.

The clouds opened to mountains and wide planes of ice.

"I swear," Darrow said, "the Traveler must have dropped you when you were made. This isn't a—"

"Darrow."

She heard John snap his name. Heard, faintly, how an argument flared, but all she could do was stare out the window. Which was infuriating, because she didn't know why. Not really.

Nicole had never been very good at imagining the impossible.

Ghost had been looking forward to this. A whole lot. Ghosts always said it was a special moment; that second when their Guardian first saw the Last City. The Traveler.

When they'd come home.

But rather than shimmying about excitedly and blurting See, I promised I'd get you here, all he could think of was that, if Darrow had a neck and he had hands, he would have very much liked to squeeze said neck. But alas; no hands. No neck. No happy shimmying. Plenty of guilt though, since Darrow was right.

"Give me a break. I know I messed up," he said, his eye cutting from Darrow to Shephard and back. The latter wasn't looking at him though, kept eyeing his Guardian instead. Ghost honestly didn't know how to feel about that. "It's not like I ever said I didn't."

What? It was true. He'd admitted to it from the start. And it stings being told out loud, okay? More than he cared to admit.

Darrow got right up into his lens again, his eye pulsing all squinty like, but when Shephard flicked the ship's coms on, the rant he'd probably been about to launch into spluttered out.

"Tower, this is City Hawk six-three-seven," Shephard said. Loudly. Darrow huffed, his shell clicking noisily, and rolled himself off to the side. "We're making our approach and are looking for a dock."

It didn't take a second before the coms clicked and he had a reply.

"City Hawk six-three-seven, Tower is receiving," one of the operators came back cheerfully. "Good hearing from you again."

"Miah, hey. Good being back." Shephard's focus shifted to the controls. The ship subtly adjusted its bearings, heading steadily down into its approach trajectory. "Now, about that dock." His lips kicked up into a coy grin. "You have a free spot to park myself in?"

"Oh please," Darrow muttered from the sideline.

The operator snorted and her voice jittered slightly. Yeah. Most humans were horrible at being subtle. And this was all about as forward as it got. Even Ghosts could tell. "For you, always. Codes transmitted. You're cleared for approach, City Hawk six-three-seven." A pause. "And my shift ends at six."

"Mhmmm," he hummed. "Codes received."

And then he glanced up at Ghost and gave a nod towards his Guardian. A pointed and very effective go, look motion that made Ghost spin on the spot.

There, dipped in clouds and surrounded by ranges of snowcapped mountains as far as her eye could see, was the Impossible.

A massive sphere that, for a moment, made her think someone had plucked the moon from the night sky. Then they'd polished it, painted it a silvery-white, and pinned it above a city. A large city, with tall bleached walls, its buildings sprawling out underneath the sphere like a lake.

The impossible sphere. Because it floated. Nothing that big floated, hence impossible.

And familiar.

Nicole chewed on the inside of her cheek. It was a movie playing out, frame by frame, every second of it a deja-vu wanting to convince her she'd seen it before. Except she hadn't. Couldn't have.

Or a stranger who insisted they were more. And, maybe, if she closed her eyes and focused, she'd remembered the scent of their hair, but not their name. The sound of their laugh, but not their voice.

It drove her mad.

It took a flick of red on white dancing into her vision to jostle her back into order. Ghost. He rolled once — a tight, merry motion — and said, proudly: "The Traveler."

Nicole clenched her jaw and leaned back into the seat, her heart going fast enough to beat a tattoo out against her ribcage if it'd been so inclined. It'd probably be a real messy one though.

"It looks a lot more impressive in person, doesn't it?"

She nodded faintly.

"And the Last City," he continued, still chipper. "Isn't it amazing? It started with a bunch of shacks right under the Traveler when it first arrived here on Earth to protect you."

Off to the side, John puffed out a barely audible scoff.

Ghost doubled down. "When it made us. The Ghosts. The Guardians. And ever since then the City has been growing bigger. From village to town to metropolis, all watched over by the Vanguard. And the Traveler, of course.

"It's not only last of its kind though. The City, I mean. It's also the first. Humanity's hope for a future where you've taken back the solar system and the walls can finally come down."

"Rousing," John said.

Ghost twisted his shell around to look at him. "Thank you."

Though when Nicole glanced at John, she couldn't tell how he'd meant that. Mocking. Genuine. A little bit of both. The quiet, minuscule smile he had on didn't tell her a thing — except then it kicked up when he caught her looking and he fixed his eyes on her. Probably to reassure her, really.

Because that was what people did, wasn't it. They smiled at you when they were trying to get you to calm the fogging hell down. It was the polite thing to do.

And it didn't work. No. All it ended up achieving was that she wanted to not be on the ship any more. Rather, she'd have preferred solid ground under her feet if it wasn't too much of a bother. And for that ever-present pressure in her chest to stop. The pressure that'd gone from pulling to squeezing as they'd drawn closer to the City. To the Traveler.

To the impossible.

The ship's engines rumbled, picked up speed, and suddenly the entire thing banked hard to the side. Nicole, her fingers grabbing at her trousers like that was going to help, was squished into her seat — and out there, the sky flipped sideways and the City opened up to her eyes, its buildings grasping for the Traveler hovering just out of reach.

Grasping like her heart did.

Nicole stood by the ship's hatch and stared morosely down at her feet. Her shoes had gotten cold during the flight. But the damp? That'd stayed. So now her feet weren't just wet but also chilled. Fantastic.

What was large scale tragedy without its small discomforts?

"Here you go," John said from over where he was kneeling in front of Bjarte, unclipping her harness — while the girl fumbled with the wrapping on a lollipop he'd given her.

Nicole curled her miserable toes. She watched a quiet exchange in Scandi, her mind limping along numbly, and tried to have thoughts of one form or the other that made sense.

Honestly? It was bizarre. Well, everything was, but that was beside the point. This was.

This. Right here. Right now.

Standing here, watching a man who'd pulled an alien creature through the air with nothing but freak space magic, only to smack it dead with his fist a beat later, be… a person. Hand out lollipops to kids. Talk in a low, soft tone. Muss up a little girl's already messy hair and get a big grin back in turn. Get up. Swipe his hands on his trousers. Trousers that were padded. Armoured. And had a wide, embroiled red sash clipped to the belt to fall down over his right hip which swung about lazily.

He smiled. Like an ordinary person. Walked like one, too. Right up to her, that smile never wavering, because everything was in perfect order.

"Ready to get off the ship?"

Horse-shite. Nothing was in order.

John stopped, his head cocking to the side while the smile fell away. And then he snapped his fingers in front of her nose. Two sharp cracks that made her nerves jump sideways.

"Hey, you in there?"

Was she? Or was she standing a foot off to the right of herself? An echo that'd gotten lost. She couldn't tell.

Ghost swung around between them, his shell ticking slowly. "Guardian? Sorry, she does that sometimes. Guuuaaardian?"

Nicole's eyes fixed on him, catching on his rear-fins ticking left and right and left and right — mimicking the long hand on an analogue clock jumping forward a second and then jumping right back.

Somehow, that managed to reel her in.

"What— ah. Yes. Yes, I'm ready. I think." She pushed at the bridge of her nose. Which was pointless, she didn't have any glasses to shove up, so she bunched her hands into the wide pockets of the too wide trousers instead. "I'm not sure. I think I need sleep."

"Mhm." John indicated the hatch with a nod. It began lowering as if on cue, the shift of air pressure tugging at her trouser-legs and sending a shiver up and down her arms. "At least you know you need sleep, that's a much better start than a lot of us get. I had no idea."

The hatch — now a ramp — set down with a quiet thump.

"Yes," Darrow threw in, angling himself to hover by John's left shoulder. So that was just a thing Ghosts did, was it? "Spite is not a sufficient sleep replacement, Shephard."

He shrugged. "It worked out okay. For a bit, anyway. But don't worry, you we'll get to a bed ASAP."

. . .

What bed? She didn't even have clothes that were hers, let alone a bed. She did, in fact, not have a single bloody thing to her name. Nicole flexed her fingers inside the pockets of her borrowed trousers, squeezed her elbows to her side, and reluctantly trudged after the man in his wolf armour as he walked down the ramp.

The hangar buzzed with excited energy.

Infectious, almost. Enough to tickle Ghost's circuits with a cautiously giddy jitter.

It was busy here. Loud. Full of life and noise and purpose.

Mechanics called for tools. An engine spooled up in one corner while another one spooled down. Machinery clinked and thumped and in-between all of it shuffled a bunch of frames, carrying everything from ammunition to spare parts meant for patching up banged up jumpships.

Which there wasn't ever a shortage of, because Guardians liked to bang up their ships almost as much as they liked painting them the most garish of colours once the scratches had been buffed out.

He shot his Guardian a quick look. What ship was she going to get assigned to? An Arcadian Class? A Kestrel? He tilted himself to the side and watched her stand in the shadow of the City Hawk's nose. She had her eyes turned down. Her hands hidden.

He shrunk a little.

In contrast, Bjarte was wide-eyed, her mouth half-open, and couldn't decide what to look at first. The ships? The people? The Guardians and their Ghosts? Then she saw a frame walking right by and immediately yanked on Shephard's Titan Mark, tugging the red sash as if to ring a bell, and pointed at it with her mouth going off at hundred miles per Scandi.

It hadn't occurred to him that she'd probably never seen robotics like that before, even though frames weren't exactly high tech. But out where she'd grown up you wanted tech to be as simple as possible. Helped with staying off Fallen scanners — and you couldn't keep the buggers charged anyway.

Though neither had his Guardian, he figured. And all she did was glance at it, go very still, and promptly return her gaze to the floor.

This just kept on getting better, didn't it?

Guilt nudging him on, Ghost swung closer to her, trying to keep quiet at least until he modulated a soft ha-hum to get her attention. She looked up.

"Welcome to the Tower," he said. "A lot of Guardians live here, close to the Vanguard operations and all that. Well. Not here here. This is the Tower hangar, obviously. No one lives inside the hangar, that'd be odd. Except maybe Amanda Holliday, she's always here and—"

His Guardian blinked at him and straightened her spine out a little. She looked almost ashen in the industrial shade. Her eyes were a bit puffy, too, with a shadow under them like she hadn't slept in years. "I get it. Hangar. Tower. What now? Do we go talk to your— ah—"

"To the Speaker," he added when her words trailed off. "Yes. We'll do that."

"Fantastic. I can't wait."

Sarcasm. Yeah. That.

Except then Shephard cleared his throat and there went not only her attention but also the hint of an attitude. Ghost's eye narrowed without his explicit permission to do so and he shook out his shell.

"I've got an idea," Shephard said and come up next to her, an arm extended like he was about to set it against her back to herd her along with him. To wherever that idea was.

His Guardian's posture stiffened as she shuffled to the side.

Shephard's arm got the message and he resumed the same collected, disarming gestures he'd shown around her through the entire trip. Palms up. Disarming smile. Polite distance. And yet he terrified her. Ghost could tell. Shaking his shell out just a little he swung in to hover between them.

"How about we get you settled in first?"

"Settled in," she echoed.

"Mhmm. Get you registered. Moved in. To a bed and a shower, in whatever order you prefer. And if your Little Light puts together a report, Darrow and I can take that to the Speaker while you rest up and get your bearings."

Ghost's shell clicked together, but it was already too late to protest. His Guardian had heard it. And knowing his luck? How absolutely rotten it had been? She'd never un-hear it.

"Little… Light?" Her brow rocked up. Shephard, unhelpfully, pointed at him.

"Don't," he muttered. "Don't call me that. Ever."

Somehow, leaving the hangar made Nicole feel even smaller. Maybe it was the overbearing presence of the Traveler looming over the City — hanging there to her left like that stranger whose name she couldn't remember waiting for her to shake their hand.

Or the din of voices. The colours. The people milling about, a lot of who were trailed by what she could only imagine were their Ghosts. Not one looked quite like the other.

And not all the people were… people.

"You're making this up," Darrow said sharply, pulling her attention away from two men having an animated discussion. They had metal masks for faces. With horns on them. And their mouths were… flashing. One orange. One purple.

"Am not," Ghost protested.

"Then that leaves the only other possible conclusion: You're inept at taking readings and all this data is useless. I don't know why I'm even trying."

"It's not useless. It just— doesn't make much sense right now. I mean, look at this! Have you seen a Guardian's Light do this before? Ever? I haven't."

Nicole's steps slowed as she watched the two Ghosts float side by side, rounding at each other like bickering birds. They were talking about her. Obviously.

"Hey, you two," John said. He landed a hand on her elbow at the same time, tugging her away from them and ever onwards. "How about using your inside voices, huh?"

The Ghosts snapped their eyes at him, wiggled their shells, and fell silent. Their eyes kept pulsing though. Like mouths moving without words coming out.

Nicole huffed, pulled her elbow out from John's soft grip, and threw him a look of her own. A cautious one.

"Exos," he said. "Those are Exos." He jutted his head into the direction of the two men with their metal faces. "Some time during the Golden Age we got crazy enough and figured out how to upload a human conscience into artificial bodies."

We what.

Since John kept walking, she tried to keep pace. And not to stare, though that wasn't working out too well, least until she felt a tug on her elbow. John pulled her aside, correcting her course just in time before she walked right into a woman.

A woman with grey-blue skin. Galaxies pulled underneath it, swirling like they were being spun into cotton candy. Her hair was long and a dark purple and there was a glow in her pale eyes.

When they'd passed her, Nicole snapped her eyes to John. "Her skin is blue," she stated dumbly. Least she felt dumb for saying it. It'd been a lot more than blue.

"Mhm. She's an Awoken. They're — ah — okay this is a little more complicated. Let's say they used to be human and aren't quite any more."

"Awoken."

"Awoken," he repeated.

Her head spun. Spun all the way the rest of their way until he led her through an automatic sliding door, out from under the Traveler's stare and the din of voices, and into a quiet, cool hallway. A worn-down carpet muffled their footsteps here and paintings lined grey walls, some of fantastic alien landscapes, others of more familiar features, and others yet of people — and Exos and Awoken. Most were accompanied by Ghosts, not one of them with an identical design. Ghosts and paintings alike. Like a collage of children's drawings hung in a hospital ward, except not by, well, children.

Speaking of Ghosts.

One zipped down the hall into their direction. A white one, just like… ah… hers. Except without the scratch marks, the dents, and the tape. It dove between them, making both John and her lean to the side, and headed for the door at the end of the hall. Though before it left, it twirled around, paused, and looked at them. Its eye blew out like a cat's, flicked from John to her, then Ghost — until eventually landing back on her, where the eye stayed long enough to make her neck itch.

So she lifted a hand and scratched at it.

The Ghost's shell gave a twirl and it left, vanishing in a puff of light a second before it hit the door.

The room Shephard took them to was at the end of a journey so long, Ghost hadn't thought he'd ever get there.

The Guardian register. How amazingly fantastic and cool and wonderful was that?

He almost forgot how impossibly annoyed he was with Darrow through all the anticipation wanting to overload his circuits. A sentiment the lone registrar sitting behind one of the three counters at the back of the room didn't share. He was asleep. Had his legs up on the counter, ankles crossed, and… snored.

Ghost bristled. John cleared his throat.

The registrar jolted awake. His legs flew off the counter while he spluttered a few apologies and looked between them. He even leaned forward and around the counter to get a look at Bjarte, who stared back at him with a stoic little frown.

"Good morning," Shephard said and nudged his Guardian forward, placing her in front of the registrar. "I found you a Kinderguardian."

His Guardian's eyes widened briefly. But aside of that she resembled a lone bucket floating upside down in the sea somewhere. Adrift and very lost.

The registrar sat straighter though and adjusted his City uniform.

"Right on. One Guardian registration. Of course." Then he sat there and quietly glanced between Darrow and Ghost.

"Your turn, buddy," Shephard said and suddenly Ghost realised he had absolutely no idea how this entire thing went down.

He shimmied forward carefully and fixed himself by his Guardian's left shoulder.

"I see, hello." The registrar grabbed a screen hanging off to the side on an extendable arm and pulled it over to himself so he could tap at it with quick fingers. "Name?"

Ghost exchanged a look with his Guardian.

"Hers," the registrar clarified when neither answered. "And if you haven't found one yet we have some inspirational material available should you need it."

"Nicole Brennan," she said. "That's Brennan with two ns in the middle. One at the end." Almost like she'd had to say that a lot back in her old life.

The registrar squinted at her and then threw Shephard a chiding sort of glance. "Has your Ghost been handing out real names again, Sir?"

Shephard threw his hands up in mock surrender. "Don't look at me. We're innocent."

Ghost's core wanted to shrivel. Mercifully enough, Darrow remained quiet.

"Of course." The registrar didn't sound convinced but returned to work.

So Ghost leaned closer to his Guardian and whispered: "This'll only take a moment. I think."

Her lips twitched and she pulled her elbows closer to herself.

"It does only take a moment," the registrar said maybe a little too loudly as he caught a data chip ejecting from a console with enough force to propel it into the air. He pushed it over the counter and fixed him with a stare.

"These are your keys. You know; vault codes, decryption code libraries, transmat permissions. We're also including startup funds for arms and armour. And rent. Speaking of accommodations…"

He turned back to the screen while his Guardian stared blankly at the data chip.

"You don't need to worry about any of that," Ghost said quickly and flicked a data hook over the chip to download everything he needed. And while his processes were busy installing all the new routines, Shephard leaned over the counter and snatched the corner of the registrar's screen. He flipped it to him, and Ghost saw a bunch of tables with the data in their rows and columns either red or green.

Shephard hummed and then tapped his fingers on one of the green ones. It pulsed briefly.

"This one," he said and flipped the screen back to the registrar, who, much to Ghost's surprise, looked only mildly put off by having his work interrupted like this.

Then he shrugged. "Sure thing, Sir."

And that was that.

His Guardian was all set. She got her keys, too, a slim data card with a sector and door number printed at the top, which she picked up gingerly and vanished into her pants pockets — along with her hand.

This. Was. It.

Ghost almost blew his shell off his core as it flared out and spun wildly at the back. He was now an officially bonded Ghost. Had a Guardian. A Guardian. Officially. Records and all.

He chittered excitedly and rolled once around her shoulders, earning himself a quizzical look.

Oh yeah. She wasn't as excited about this as he was. And when the registrar said: "Welcome to the Last City, Guardian," her face managed to fall even more.

Though she did manage a quiet "Thank you."

Baby steps. Kinderguardian steps? Hm.

And while he pondered that, Shephard clapped his hands together. "Alright," he said. "I've got it from here. You hungry?"

His Guardian shuffled away from the counter, seemingly deep in thought about the complexity of the question she'd just been asked and at a loss on how to tackle it.

Which was okay. "Starving," Ghost said for her.

A guess. Really. An educated one. Probably. Or maybe more of a downward dragging sensation? Ghost leaned a precise five degrees left. So yeah, about that neural link? How was he going to break that to her again?

Shephard threw him a look. "Oh, so that's how it's going to be with you two. That's cool, I can work with that. Come on then, let's pick up some grub on the way."

He gestured them to follow and headed back out.

His Guardian sighed but trudged after him.

Takeout was still a thing.

So was ramen and fried rice and garlic peas, all served out of a shop in a narrow alley overhung by neon billboards, long strips of colourful cloth, and thick-leaved vines.

Under it all, the air was heavy with heady spices layered over the scents of roasted meats and fresh baked goods. And it convinced Nicole's stomach to threaten her with devouring itself if she didn't throw anything in there soon. So she stood there off to the side and stared at John chucking glinting blue dice cubes onto the counter. She blinked. The things rolled like dice ought to and were promptly scooped up by the cook — who readily traded him two large paper bags.

"Glimmer," he said when he'd rejoined her. Hopefully not by reading her mind and more so reading her blatant staring. Like Ghost has probably just known she hadn't eaten for too long and guessed, right?

John offered one of the bags. She took it. Slowly.

"Glimmer," Nicole echoed. "Exo. Awoken. Frames?"

Her eyes flicked to a skeletal robot standing by the ramen and rice shop. It held a broom and was herding a pile of shrivelled up leaves off the path.

"Yep. See, you'll get a hang of this in no time."

Nicole's stomach sidestepped the comment. Even dodged thoughts of the food, suddenly losing all interest in it while it fretted over how to pay him back for the food and if she had glimmer and if not how was she going to get it?

She chewed on that thought for a while and followed him through the rest of the alley, staying right behind him to avoid any and all possible collisions. Why was that glimmer stuff shaped like cubes anyway? And why was it glimmering. And how did you tell how much it was worth? Did it come in different sizes?

When had coins gone out of fashion?

Or credit cards.

Was this her first debt?

She hated being in debt. Debts were stupid.

"What do I owe you for the, ah. Food?" And the rescue, do I owe you anything for the rescue?

John threw a look over his shoulder. "Nothing."

Nothing. Nothing wasn't ever really nothing though, was it? Nothing was an expectation that you figured out what you owed yourself and if you didn't you weren't paying enough attention.

"Though I'll probably want to reclaim my shirt and pants at some point," he added after he'd turned forward again.

. . .

Nicole's neck promptly melted off her shoulders. That was to say everything from her neck to her cheeks got really, really hot. To the point where she choked a noise, tightened her grip on the handle of her paper bag, and glanced away. Anywhere but at his back or his shoulders or anything attached to him, really.

Right at three white Ghosts.

Did that make them a flock? A flock of Ghosts? You know, like birds. Or was it a school? A school of Ghosts because they didn't have wings and kind of had fins, so were they flying or swimming in the air?

Either way, they came darting down from between the gently wafting banners and the thick leaves, their shells a flurry of movement. Curious movement. Deliberate. And they followed them, inching closer and closer while John led them out of the alley.

They only stopped once he'd marched them through a large metal gate sitting between walls covered in a delicate, white mosaic. And even then they hung by the gate until it fell shut.

Staring.

"And here we are."

John stopped by one of the doors lining a quiet hallway smelling oddly of roses. Or maybe not so oddly. They'd climbed down a winding staircase to get here, one built into an open shaft that let in plenty of fresh air from above. It'd felt old. Reclaimed, almost. Especially with the wild roses crawling all over the iron-wrought railing.

She'd almost gotten pricked.

"Go on," he said. "Open it up."

For a while, Nicole stood there, dumbfounded, and didn't know what to do. She couldn't think of roses and glimmer and Guardians and Ghosts at the same time as considering locked doors. John didn't seem bothered though. The small smile he carried certainly didn't fall off.

Then she remembered. Key. Keycard. Pocket.

"Right. That. I got it." She fished it out, frowned at it, and tentatively waved the thing over what looked like a keypad without buttons worked into the wall next to the door. Green lights flashed briefly and the door made a soft but satisfying CLACK.

And that was when John's smile gave way to a curious frown.

Nicole cleared her throat. "Electronic keycards aren't that fancy," she said and carefully nudged the door open. "We already had them for a while."

"Huh," was all he had to say to that.

And then Bjarte hugged her. It was really very sudden and almost made her drop her paper bag. It was also very tight. If anything, Nicole worried she'd never let go and how'd either of them ever get on with her life like that?

"I think she likes you," John said, the smile back in full force.

"What'll happen to her?" Nicole asked, both her arms awkwardly held up and keeping the paper bag from knocking into Bjarte's head. "I mean, now that she's here."

"I'll take her to someone who'll be able to look after her. The City is used to handling orphans and getting them settled in." He frowned. "Unfortunately."

"Ah. Okay."

"But she'll be fine." There it was again. The smile. Like flipping a switch, not missing a beat. "Thanks to you she'll get another chance at this. You should be proud, you know."

Nicole's mouth twisted down. Funny that. She wasn't. But she nodded anyway, which seemed to be enough — whether he bought it or not.

A few words in Scandi later and the vice grip around her hips lifted, leaving behind a wash of cold.

"Ghost," John said, and her Ghost practically sprang to attention, his banged-up shell sorting itself into perfectly straight angles. "You know where to find me if you two need anything."

Ghost bobbed up and down in a brief nod.

"Great."

And before she could finally say the words she ought to have said hours ago — Thank you? — he'd already walked off.

Nicole fidgeted on the spot and stared. No. She was definitely not going to shout them.

The door clicked shut. The lights came on. And Nicole stood in a stubby hallway barely long enough for a single step, surrounded by a stifling silence.

Not the sort of silence you had out in the wild — where owls hooted, gnats buzzed, leaves whistled, and Fallen shot up the air. Or the one in an aircraft. Airship. Ship. Tomato. Tomahto. No, not that either. Actual silence.

Suddenly, and awfully, she expected the click-clack-click-clack of dog paws coming around a corner to greet her. They didn't. All she had were the occasional clicks and whirrs of Ghost's shell.

Puffing out a shaky sigh like venting a puff of steam from a burst of anger boiling up in her guts, she walked herself forward and out into a wide but narrow room.

She let it sink in.

On the right was a low bed with simple grey covers on it and a pillow so flat it almost blended into the mattress. At its foot stood a metal crate, the latches on it flipped open. And there were shelves. Empty ones. And a desk that'd lost its chair.

Everything was barren. Like life had occupied this space once and then moved on. Leaving nothing. Which, really, was probably exactly what'd happened here so the poetry was unnecessary.

She looked left. At the… kitchen? Kitchenette? The plating on one of the two counters there looked like a stovetop anyway and the box standing in a corner gave off distinct fridge vibes.

For a dinner table, she had a stubby board mounted high on a wall with two high chairs tucked under it. That was what she walked up to and put the paper bag on before gingerly opening it up and peering inside.

When the smell of savoury food hit her, her stomach decided it'd rather not. It shrivelled up, turned violently, and then tried to crawl up her throat.

She swallowed it back down. No way she could eat now. Or ever again. If she did, she'd throw up, and so she stuffed the bag into the fridge and tried to forget about it.

"This is— ah— it's a nice place, yeah?" Ghost said. He was tumbling up and down the room, eyeballing everything a lot more closely than she had.

Nicole slipped the tip of her tongue between her teeth and bit down on it.

"It's a lot bigger than I expected," he continued. "Oh, look, there's a bathroom." He went up in light and vanished through a brick-red curtain in the corner between the kitchen and the outside wall — a wall that was all curtain, too. A thick army green blackout curtain.

"It has a shower." He kept on going, his voice muffled as he described it in its entirety, while Nicole grabbed the blackout curtain by the end and began pulling it to the side.

The moment light fell into the room, the ceiling-mounted bulbs went out. And there was a lot of light, because the entire wall was one large window overlooking the city. Which meant she got a face-full of Traveler.

For a moment, she thought she stood at that stranger's grave. The one she ought to know. The one she couldn't remember in life and hadn't known had ever died.

Nicole held on to the curtain, thinking if she didn't, she'd fall to her knees and never again rise. She stood like that. Felt her heart labour.

Tha-thump. The-thump. Tha-tha-thump.

It didn't quit.

"So this is real," she said.

Click. Whirr. Her left ear itched and she glanced that way. Ghost was back.

"You are real."

His top fin, the one with the tape on, fell forward a little. "Yes, I am," he said, his voice subdued. "Very real."

"I don't want it to be real." The words came out choked.

His shell ticked and he looked away.

"Can't you undo it?"

His eye snapped back to her.

"Can't you just leave me dead?" She shivered. A single, cold note— no more than a slice of the song that'd haunted her —rang against her spine.

"I— I—" He looked down. Then left. Then right. When he finally fixed his eye on her again, every section of his shell drooped. Like they'd gotten heavier. "I could. If you really want me to, I could. But please, please give it a few days before you throw this away."

He inched closer. Nicole's heart laboured on.

"That's all I'm asking. A few days here in the City. No heroics. No God slaying. No slaying of any kind. There's — ah — there's more to being a Guardian than that. Yes. More. Way more. Please. Just a few days."

"Why is this so important to you?"

He recoiled an inch. "Your being a Guardian aside, what you're asking me to do is to let you die."

"Because I'm supposed to be dead. Like everyone I know."

"You're not any more," he said, his tone pleading.

"You don't even know me," she shot back. "Why would you care? Just go find someone else." She gestured vaguely out across the city. "Someone who wants this or doesn't remember they don't."

"I care because you're here. You're here and you're alive and you are why I'm here. You. No one else. Finding you is all I've been doing ever since I've come to.

"I care because I was made for you. Because of you. A Ghost is nothing alone. Without you, without my Guardian, I'm a bucket that's made for water but never gets to carry any. Or paper that never sees a pen. Or a… a… key without a lock. A… sock without a foot."

His shell puffed out and his words dimmed, along with the steady pulse of his eye as he talked.

"And it doesn't matter how you chose to live your second life. Whatever you decide, I'll never abandon you. I'll stay with you, whether you want to pick up gardening in the City, join a Fireteam, or sort books at a library. I won't. Ever. Leave. You."

A hard knot had lodged itself in her throat. She'd have liked to cough it up, but all it did was grow and grow and grow until she barely managed to squeeze some words around it.

"A few days," she said.

Ghost bobbed up and down. "Just a few days."

End

Book 1: Eyes Up, Guardian

Next up

Book 2: Rubik's Cube