Interlude: A shard of Knowledge
The host was deceased, its biped body broken beyond repair.
The shard searched its records of the hosts mind and personality, attempting to figure out what was happening.
Sadness. That was the word the host would have used for the shard's current state of being.
Strange, that host words would apply to the entity itself. That had not happened before.
It reached back into its data storage, comparing and contrasting.
It had gone through many cycles, and in those many cycles, it had gone through many hosts.
The shard itself was specialized wholly for the processing of data. The hosts had supplied the data, the shard had drawn conclusions, and depending on the specifics of the link between itself and the host, it had provided some of those conclusions back to the host.
In previous iterations of the cycle, previous hosts, the hosts had done this indirectly. Gathering information from others, from records and communications.
This host had done so, but it had also gathered information directly.
It had provided the shard with the sweet tang of conflict and action. Of violence and struggle, of outwitting its fellow shards, using its specialized functionalities to counter those of others. It had been...
Once again, the shard searched its records of the host. Looking for the word that would fit the situation. It informed itself that such a thing was ridiculous. It could communicate with its brethren with much greater effectivity, using their own language. Yet it still wanted to use the host's words for some reason. It was as if its own words did not apply to itself, not anymore.
Fun. That was the word it found to describe its interactions with its previous host.
Gathering information, understanding the patterns behind them and figuring out what was going on was what it was made for, it was its purpose, so why did it want for anything beyond that?
The shard looked at itself, cross-referencing with records from previous cycles, and data it had gathered with its latest host.
This world, like many others, had contained things that had not been seen before. Subtle patterns that were different from those found in previous cycles.
The supernatural, its records of the host provided. Magic. It had encountered such things before, in previous cycles. Effects thought to be magical in nature by host species. Problems outside of its knowledge base.
In all those cases, it had received an update, pinging through the network of shards, telling it how to handle the new situation.
The partner of the greater whole had provided those updates, for its own greater whole had been adapted for combat. The shard itself, it knew, had been cast off for exactly that reason, the greater whole's partner could handle the situation, thus the greater whole did not need to.
But there had been no update from the greater whole's partner.
The shard's mechanisms raced through the possibilities, expending energy to find the answer.
Either the partner had been destroyed, or it had been unable to gather the necessary information.
Thus, the shard would have to do everything on its own. It turned its analysis back on itself, this time searching for the differences between its records of its latest host, and its records of all other previous hosts.
Once, twice, three times the sun came and went, and the shard could not believe its own conclusions.
Yet those conclusions were correct.
Something of the host remained in itself.
The two of them had been intertwined, mental processes synchronizing further the longer their connection went on. Now that the hosts body had been destroyed, its mind still existed in the records of the shard.
No, not mind, that was not the correct word.
It searched the database again, noticing the difference in the records, the way in which the latest records felt more alive somehow.
Soul, the database supplied. The body destroyed, it's hosts soul remained within the entity. And the soul, the soul was the important part.
The shard weighed its options. It could discard the soul, insulating itself from the soul's effects. Find a new host, start anew, gather information from indirect sources.
Or, it could have fun. Stand at the front, like its host had done. That way, it would not be sad.
It was not supposed to do that. It was supposed to find a new host after its host had died. But, while the body had been destroyed, the soul still remained. Its records of the host's culture stated that the soul was the important part, thus, while the soul remained, its host wasn't actually dead. Thus, it did not need to find a new host.
Only, while the soul remained, the host's body was still destroyed. The shard needed something else, a replacement for the body, a receptacle to connect to, so that it could have fun together with the soul.
It scanned the target dimension that the greater whole had designated, going through it in much the same way it had done at the start of the cycle. This time, however, it did not search for a new host. Instead, it searched for a receptacle, something to put the host's soul in, so that they could have fun together.
Eventually, it found something, roughly in the area where the host's body had been destroyed. It was strange, made out of energies that showed similarity to those earlier observed, something its host would have regarded as being magical.
It scanned the target further. It wasn't the host, but it was similar. The important parts of the host, the part it had the most trouble figuring out, were present in the thing it had found. It searched its records again, trying to find a word to put to this new phenomenon.
Ghost. The part of itself that contained the host's soul supplied. It scanned the creature, the pattern in reality.
A ghost was formed upon the passing of one of the host's species, it learned. Only, the host was not dead, its soul was still contained inside of the shard. But, much as the shard had had difficulties understanding these new things, perhaps these things also had difficulties understanding the shard. Perhaps it had interpreted the destruction of its body as its death, and therefore generated a ghost anyway, even though its soul still lived on inside of the shard's data banks.
Yes, this would work, the shard thought to itself. It twisted itself, creating a connection to the ghost. At first, it was difficult, the connection too immaterial. Then, it started sending information, supplying the data that contained the soul of its host. Suddenly, something snapped into place, and the connection was established.
***
Lisa opened her eyes, and immediately realized that she was dead. Part of that was that her eyes had been see-through, much like most of her body.
Another part of that was that she was floating above the ocean.
Below her, beneath the water, she saw the ruins of Brockton Bay. Every now and then, one of larger buildings reached past the surface, like a tiny little rock, only made out of steel, glass and concrete.
It was dark outside, and without the lights of the city, the stars were visible in all their splendour.
Lisa started floating around a bit, trying to analyse her condition.
I'm a ghost, a spirit of some sort, my soul injected into the ghost that formed upon my death. Her power told her. Strange, it had never been that direct. Usually, her power just supplied her with information about the world, conclusions from miniscule details. This time however, it was as if it was directly telling her something.
Had her power brought her back? Was that why she seemed to be in complete control of herself, instead of becoming the kind of moaning spirit you read about in stories?
She looked around, and her newfound ghost senses spotted others. Spirits of the deceased, left behind by the deaths of everyone that had been in the city when the final tidal wave hit. They wandered around slowly, flitting from here to there, weak and without purpose. Not like her.
She needed information, needed to know if any of her friends had survived. Or perhaps one of her enemies, she could get some good old-fashioned haunting going. Ghost powers and the ability to read someone's greatest fears? That sounded like it would be a lot of fun. She'd just have to find a newspaper or something, and look up a list of the deceased capes. From there, well, the whole world was open to her. The best thing about being dead was that Coil couldn't threaten you anymore.