The nearest building was connected to the communications tower. The metal door swung open at Ferral's touch, not even locked. It was completely dark inside. He gestured and his ghost appeared, igniting his headlight. The light illuminated tables lying on their sides, the floor littered with broken computers and communications equipment.
Ferral took two steps. Something crunched underfoot. He looked down, Banner's headlight following his gaze.
He'd just trodden on the shattered remains of a dead ghost. His heart lurched. "That's bad."
Banner flew down and scanned the remains. "It's too damaged - I can't access the data to find out what happened." He returned to Ferral's shoulder. "Did the Guardian make it out?"
Ferral ventured a few steps further. Banner's light illuminated a huge smear of blood on the wall. "Probably not."
Lethia followed behind them in silence, her eyes glowing brightly with alarm. Light raced beneath her skin.
Ferral moved deeper into the building. "Hello?" he called. "Is anyone still here? We're Guardians."
In a side room they found a dead Guardian. A warlock, by the robes, he lay in the middle of the room, still clutching a bloodstained auto rifle.
Ferral moved closer to examine the body, while Lethia took one look and waited in the hall, hands over her mouth.
The warlock had sustained four bullet wounds to the torso, but the cause of death was a knife embedded in his skull.
Banner scanned the handle. "Hive chitin."
"How could the Hive kill Guardians like this?" Ferral said, trying to keep his voice steady despite his rising anger. "We're trained to destroy them. We do it all the time. How did this happen?"
"Ferral," came Lethia's voice from outside the door. "You might want to look at this."
She was staring into the next room down the hall, gripping her rock as if prepared to bludgeon someone with it. Ferral moved up beside her.
The room's furniture had been broken and piled against the walls. In the middle of the floor was a huge crystal, four feet tall, burning with purple light that hurt Ferral's eyes. It was anchored with piles of the black, barnacle-like filth that the Hive spread wherever they went.
Lethia ran forward and hit the crystal with her rock.
The crystal shattered like glass. The purple light flashed and went out, smoke rising from the remains. It smelled strangely of vanilla.
"What did you do?" Ferral exclaimed, backing out of the room.
Lethia followed him, shivering. "It was evil. I can't ... really explain how I knew."
The warlock thing again. Ferral didn't question it, but he was beginning to be very curious about what kind of warlock she'd be, once she had proper training.
They found two more dead Guardians, each with a dead ghost. The last ghost was intact enough that Banner read its memories.
"This doesn't make sense," Banner muttered. "According to this ghost, they were attacked by Cabal."
"Cabal?" Ferral said. "There's Hive crap everywhere. Maybe the Hive showed up later?"
"Maybe," Banner said doubtfully. "But this ghost was killed by a Cabal gladiator with one of those cleavers they use."
"Can we leave? Please?" Lethia begged. She was hugging herself again, constantly looking over her shoulders. "I can't stand the way this place feels. It's dragging at me."
Now that she mentioned it, Ferral knew what she meant. His own Light wavered inside him, while his other senses told him they were being watched.
"Yes, let's leave," he agreed.
They stepped outside and found a Taken wizard waiting for them.
It had once been Hive - a humanoid creature with three eyes and a tough chitin body. Wizards floated off the ground using their so-called magic, cast spells that imprisoned and tortured, and threw bolts of energy that wrecked Guardians. But this one had been consumed by Darkness, turning it into a black shape with burning white edges. It made a tearing, screeching sound that hurt their ears, and flung searing energy bolts.
Ferral pushed Lethia back inside the building and caught a bolt in the leg. It burned through the armored plating that protected his shin. Cursing in pain, he crouched in the doorway and fired at the wizard. His bullets sparked off a bubble shield that encircled it.
Banner disappeared and healed him from phase. Lethia huddled against the wall, a fist pressed to her mouth to hold back her own cry of terror.
Ferral summoned a grenade made of Light and hurled it. It struck the wizard's shield and detonated, blasting away the shield and punching a hole in the wizard, too. It screamed and hurled white fire at Ferral's face. He dodged back inside the doorway as the fire blackened the concrete wall.
"Incoming," Banner said suddenly.
Black portals peeled open in the walls and Taken crawled out, screaming as they came.
Lethia screamed, too. Ferral grabbed her and they ran for the open gate, dodging around black patches of emptiness on the ground. The wizard had stopped attacking and floated with both arms upraised, summoning its minions.
The Guardians reached the sparrow, leaped on, and shot into the desert, leaving the overrun base behind. Lethia clung to Ferral, half-panting, half-sobbing.
Ferral was shaken, himself. They'd found evidence of Hive and Cabal, then been attacked by Taken. What was going on? Three Guardians had been killed, but surely there had been others. Where had they gone?
They were far out in the desert before Ferral slowed. He stopped the sparrow in the shelter of a rock outcropping and turned to Lethia. "Are you all right?"
Her eyelashes were wet with tears, and she hunched her shoulders, as if trying to hide. "It was my fault. I broke the crystal and told them where we were."
Ferral wanted to put his arms around her, but didn't know how she'd take it. Reefborn Awoken rarely demonstrated affection.
"They'd have found us anyway," he assured her. "They track us by our Light."
She met his eyes. "Then they'll follow us wherever we go. I don't want to be Taken!"
Her ghost, Niki, phased into being beside her. "They can't take Guardians, remember? I saved you."
"I didn't ask you!" Lethia exclaimed. She backhanded the ghost in the eye. Niki flipped over in midair and vanished. "I didn't want to be a Guardian, you idiot ghost!"
Ferral's temper flared. "You hit your own ghost? What's the matter with you?"
Lethia jumped off the sparrow. "I'm sick of monsters and Guardians and ghosts! Just leave me alone!" She stomped off a little way and sat down with her back to a boulder, drawing in her knees and wrapping her arms around her head.
Ferral ignited his sparrow's engine, squeezed the throttle, and shot away into the desert, leaving her behind. He was scared and disgusted and angry - and didn't trust himself not to simply empty a magazine into Lethia's ignorant skull.
Lethia hadn't hit Niki hard enough to hurt him. But the implications of the blow crushed his heart. Guardians didn't treat their ghosts that way. She didn't want him.
Niki hid in phase, humiliated and sad. He watched as Lethia ran off, and watched as Ferral abandoned them.
Niki floated in place, hurting. His Guardian rejected him. Maybe this was why most ghosts chose their Guardians from among the dead. They awoke without memories, making a fresh start, and quickly bonded to their ghost during the first few days.
But Lethia had been alive and swamped in trauma when he found her. She hadn't even noticed when she became a Guardian. Her memories of life before she became a Guardian had made her despise Niki. There had been no bonding.
Niki flew in a helpless circle. He'd chosen poorly, and he was stuck with the consequences. There was no way to unbond from a Guardian. He could fly away and leave her, but he'd be forever conscious of her spark, its location and condition.
For better or worse, she was his Guardian. He'd chosen her, and by the Light, he would do his duty by her, even if they never exchanged another word. He'd remain invisible, healing and resurrecting from phase. The idea of living years and years without a relationship with his Guardian sickened him - Niki craved companionship and conversation. But Lethia didn't want him. So he'd try to make it easy for her to forget him.
Invisible, he crept to where Lethia huddled against a boulder. He took his place at her shoulder and resigned himself to silence and loneliness.
Lethia watched Ferral shrink into the distance until he vanished over the horizon.
Ferral was gone. Her ghost hadn't reappeared since she'd hit him. Lethia was vastly alone in the emptiness of the Martian desert.
In a way, she welcomed it. When she had broken that crystal, its energy had flooded her, alien and yet empowering. It felt similar to when she had gathered the power to raise Ferral's ghost - right and natural. But it had come from a Hive crystal.
Maybe the Taken were right to track her. Something was wrong. She wasn't a real Guardian. Guardians had powers of the Light. She was defective, somehow. She should have nothing in common with evil Hive magic, and yet the power from that crystal still hummed within her.
Could she get rid of it? Burn it off, somehow? She rose to her feet, drawing deep breaths. The power built within her, dark and tainted with death. She gathered up every scrap, rolled it into a ball, and threw it at the ground.
A huge purple ball of energy exploded from her fingertips. She hadn't expected it to actually manifest that way. For a split second, she watched the energy leave her. Then the ball hit the ground and exploded.
The concussion knocked Lethia backward. She hit the boulder and her spine cracked. Purple fire burned her face and arms. Winded, unable to make a sound despite the pain, she slumped to the ground.
As the dust and smoke cleared, Niki appeared. He silently played his healing beam over her, mending the burns and her damaged back. Then he vanished again.
"Niki," Lethia said, sitting up. "What happened just now?"
He didn't answer.
"Niki, come on," Lethia begged. "Look, I'm sorry I hit you. I shouldn't have done that."
No response. But she did feel sadness coming from outside herself. Was it possible to feel a ghost's feelings? They were robots, weren't they?
She climbed to her feet and stared at the crater she had blasted in the ground. Hive energy? Or her own? Maybe being an Awoken had corrupted her contact with the Light, mixing it with Darkness. Maybe she really was Taken, no matter what her ghost said.
As she stood there, confused and conflicted, a low rumble reached her ears. An engine, but not a sparrow. She climbed a rock to look around.
A Cabal drop ship was flying low over the desert. It was about thirty feet long, shaped like a tuning fork, with two arms built into a central engine. It was following the exact course Ferral had taken on his sparrow. As it drew even with Lethia, it slowed to hover in midair, it's engines shaking the ground beneath her feet. Then the rear hatch opened, and eight Cabal legionnaires dropped to the ground. They rushed to take cover behind various rocks, and fired at Lethia. Bullets zinged past her face and one hit her in the chest.
It had happened so fast that it hadn't occurred to her to hide. Why were the aliens after her? She was nothing special. Then the bullet hit her, piercing her heart. As her body crumpled and pain exploded inside her, she thought in amazement, "They are after me! But why? Am I a threat?"
Niki healed her again, easing the pain, restarting her heart as he mended it. With the healing came another sense of his feelings - sadness and despair.
"Niki," Lethia exclaimed. "What's happening? Talk to me!"
The ghost gave her a mournful look and vanished.
"Niki!" Lethia yelled. But there was no time to figure out why he'd gone silent. A legionnaire leaped up on a nearby rock, aiming his machine gun at her. He was two feet taller than her and three times as wide. The spike on his helmet made him look like a rhinoceros in armor.
Lethia was about to be shot again. She had no weapons or armor. Her ghost would continue to heal and resurrect her, never allowing her to die. She'd suffer and suffer and suffer.
Terrified of this, Lethia doubled her fists, ran straight at the alien, and punched his helmet.
She wasn't particularly strong, especially not compared to one of the Cabal. He barely felt the blow. But as her fist made contact, in that split second, Lethia ripped energy out of the alien's body.
The alien reeled backward. Lethia backed away, staring at her hand. She had just sucked power out of that alien like some kind of vampire. And already she felt it inside her, ready to be rolled up and hurled as another bomb.
The alien regrouped and fired at her. Lethia dove behind a boulder. When the legionnaire stopped shooting, she dashed out of hiding, ran at the alien, and grabbed the arm holding his gun.
The alien tried to throw her off, but her touch drained the strength from his muscles. Lethia pulled every ounce of vitality from him until the alien pitched forward and hit the ground, dead.
"I stole his life energy," she said aloud. Power raced inside her - the power of death. "I'm a monster." She ran toward the other aliens, exhilarated and yet moving through a miasma of horror. "Niki, you've made me into a monster!"
She hurled her energy bomb into the middle of the aliens, killing two and sending the rest scrambling for cover. Lethia ran after them, hunting, draining life with a touch. She drained another alien and used his energy to bomb the hiding place of the others. As they fell, wounded, she finished them off by taking their energy. Then she threw another bomb at their ship.
The purple sphere slammed into the ship, tearing off the left fork. The ship lurched in midair, off balance, then spun in a circle and crashed into the ground, engines first.
Lethia watched the destruction, tears pouring down her face. "Niki, what have I done?"
No answer.
She sank to the ground and curled up, moaning. She'd just destroyed a squadron of alien soldiers and their ship, but she'd done it by stealing their life force. What Guardian did that? How did such a power have anything to do with the Light? It must have been that Hive crystal. She was corrupt now. Some kind of Hive Guardian. No wonder her ghost wouldn't speak to her.
"Niki, I'm sorry," she whispered. "I shouldn't have touched the crystal. It made me into this. You should get away while you still can. I'm turning into a Hive wizard or something. I threw magic just like they do. I'm not a Guardian. I don't know what I am." She buried her face in her arms.
"Guardian ..." Niki's voice said nearby. He sounded pained.
She lifted her head. The ghost floated a few feet away, his shell bent from the ship wreck, his eye somehow so sad.
"Get away, quick," Lethia told him, sitting up and folding her arms, keeping her hands tucked against her. "If I touch you, I might kill you. I can't control it."
"You're not a monster," he told her. "You're a warlock. Specifically, a Voidwalker."
"What does that mean?" Lethia said, wiping her eyes with one elbow. "Guardians can rip the life out of people?"
"Hush," Niki said. "I know you hate me, but listen for one minute, all right?"
He thought she hated him? Lethia gulped.
Niki spoke in a resigned way. "All living things have energy inside them. Voidwalkers tap into that energy and use it to fight. It's neither good nor evil, any more than using electricity or fire. The Hive crystal was full of Void Light, and it energized you. You brought Banner back with Void Light. You're a Guardian, and you've tapped a certain aspect of your power. Now I'll ... I'll shut up and let you get on with your life." He vanished.
"Voidwalker," Lethia murmured, relieved. "There's a name for it. But ... I still feel like a monster. And I don't hate you, Niki."
No response.
Light, she had screwed up so badly. Ferral hated her. Niki thought she hated him. And she was a kind of Guardian that killed people by stealing their life energy.
Lethia climbed to her feet and began walking. She didn't care what direction, although subconsciously she traveled the same direction Ferral had gone. But she had to move. Get away from the bodies and wreckage she had created. Get away from Niki's hurt silence. Get away from this power inside her. Maybe if she died of exposure, Niki would leave her dead. It would serve her right.