3. Or That Time He Humiliated Nicole, Then Laughed About It.

Nicole disengaged the warp and the jump ship shuddered as it fell out of slipspace. The inky blackness of space chased out the light of the warp, dropping her into darkness and silence. The secondary engines cycled on, filling the cabin with the familiar rumble. She reached up and opened the view screen filter. Earth-light filled the cabin, shining off the controls and making her pale skin glow even more than it usually did.

She sighed heavily and sank back into the chair. Her ghost could pilot from here, so she let go of the controls completely and closed her eyes. That mission had taken more out of her than she had thought it would. Not so much the Cabal, but the warlock. She just couldn't shake how weird he made her feel. And it wasn't all good feelings, either.

There was something seriously off about him. He seemed so artificial but she wasn't about to say she knew him all that well, either. In fact, she knew nearly nothing about him. He was a sunsinger. He had to be young, but she never thought to ask him how young. His ghost was so protective of him he couldn't be much older than a year. Whatever they were hiding, the ghost was in on it too, was even all aboard on protecting and hiding whatever it was. So at the very least it couldn't be all that treasonous.

He was an idiot, that much was clear. A babbling idiot, so it couldn't have been anything so bad. He might have already told her what it was but she couldn't keep his rants in focus long enough to know. And man, could he talk. In just the fifteen minute trek up the hill, he had told her three different stories about the titan that he had been working with last, all the while still trying to only tell her one. He had the attention span of thrall at best.

And for all that talking, she couldn't actually remember finding any meaningful information in it. She wasn't sure if that was just empty headed hot air spewing from him, or a carefully calculated distraction.

She sat up straighter, scrubbing her hair and face in frustration. She didn't know what to think. He seemed so empty and dumb. Just an idiot, who happened to be a warlock. Warlocks were always a little weird. She never really liked working with them. Even the dumb ones were too smart for their own pants. And maybe that was it. He was an idiot in the end, a dumb guy who ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the only thing that was really tripping her out was whenever his weird warlock nature came out and made him look less dumb for more than two seconds.

The only reason she was suspicious of him at all was because the vanguard was. All over a single titan's accusation, and the warlock's apparent want to be a recluse. Which she did think was a bit strange. Usually reclusiveness was a hunter thing. But she also supposed it wasn't completely unheard of for warlocks to like their loneliness. She figured it might make it easier for them to do whatever they did when they weren't pretending to be smartasses.

She sighed again, louder this time, and flopped back in the chair hard enough to make it creak. She didn't want to be thinking about this. She would rather be thinking about Venus, or that pretty dagger that Eva had been toting the other day. It had a wonderful balance and a beautiful violet ribbon around the hilt. It had been so expensive that she wasn't sure she wanted to spend so much glimmer on something practically useless.

And Venus this time of year was so pleasant. The warm breezes made sunbathing glorious and comfortable. And she could just sit in safe silence and listen to the wildlife stir. No pressing missions to do. No newborns to save. No dumb warlock that made her think of-

She jolted, opening her eyes and staring up at the top of the cockpit. That was why she hated him. Why she found she kind of liked him. He made her think of them. Her old fireteam. Her friends. He was confusing and odd and made her pay attention. He captured her gaze, and not just because the vanguard told her to watch him. Because he was the first person in a long time she couldn't just look at and have all figured out. Just like…

The name fell silent from her lips, gliding away from her and lost to the emptiness. She made no noise, but she could still feel his name there, on her tongue, on the edge of her hearing. She couldn't remember what her own voice sounded like, so lost in the silence, trapped behind the stone in her throat.

She blinked away the tears in her eyes, looking over to where her ghost was floating between her and the heavenly view of the Earth. He clicked at her, a quiet question that needed no words. He knew the answer, and it was more a way of him telling her he was there for her. She thought about them all the time but it had been so long since they felt so close.

She sat up a little more, giving her ghost a shaken smile. I'm alright. And she was. Or she would be soon enough.

"Well, that's good…" he replied, sounding distracted. His optic slid from her face, moving down and away until he was staring at the floor between them. "Because we have a problem."

She tilted her head, reaching up to wipe her face clean. It would be a welcome distraction, even if it was a problem. She flicked her hand at him, feeling his guilt at giving her bad news when she was already so tired. What's wrong? She asked gently, beckoning him closer.

"Well. You see. Rest. He never dropped out of the warp."

She sat up straighter suddenly, launching forward to open the view screen wider. She couldn't see his ship, changing the screen in front of her to get a full scan of the observable darkness from the cameras on different points of the hull. No ship. It wasn't that she hadn't believed her ghost, but she had still wanted to make sure he wasn't wrong before she potentially went on a rampage. What the hell is he doing then? Where did he go?

"I don't know!" Her ghost said, a little too loud for the small space. "But he didn't dro-" He cut off, his shell expanding in a flash of light.

What is it? Is he going to Venus? Wasn't there rumors that Osiris lived on Mercury or something? Maybe he was going there? Can you find him, track his ghost, something?

"I'm trying." The ship lurched, the engines rumbling louder in the cockpit as the ghost piloted. "He's dropped out of warp now. Closer to Earth than we did. He landed practically in the atmosphere."

Nicole had very distinct memories of getting lectured by Holliday, the vanguard, occasionally Dead Orbit reps, and just about every civilian engineer in the hangar bay, that if you can't hit the warp drop point accurately for whatever reason, you should always drop before, never after. Or you could potentially end up in a place where you shouldn't. Like inside the Earth, for example.

Are they responding to hails? Is his ship malfunctioning? It was a piece of shit. At least that was what she thought of it when she saw him prep it in the hangar that morning. It was astounding it was even capable of hitting warp.

"No, and no. No response from them. And I can't actually tell from here but it doesn't look like it's crashing, persay."

Persay…?

"Well, it isn't exactly graceful."

She couldn't see him out the viewscreen, but she could almost imagine the hasty drop through the atmosphere he was attempting. Post warp speeds were usually so high, you had to give yourself room to slow down. He had more than inertia dragging him in, but gravity too. His ship could very well burn up from the atmospheric friction. Most ships were made to withstand high heat and friction, but then again that thing really was a piece of shit. She wouldn't be surprised if he had found it in an old junk yard and somehow bribed Holliday to put a warp engine on it.

Can you follow him?

Her ship lurched again seemingly in response, the ghost changing their direction just enough to follow the warlock's path. "I've lost track of him, blipped out under a cloud cover. I will try."

Nicole sat back in her chair and buckled the harness. What was this stupid warlock doing? The vanguard had warned him against such behavior, so why was he doing this? Wasn't he in enough trouble? Why did he have to make her life so much harder than it had to be?

They flew in the upper atmosphere for a long time after that, her ghost silent in its attempt to track the warlock down. Nicole couldn't even get her mind around it. Why do something this stupid not even a day after the vanguard told him not to.

"Ah!" Her ghost exclaimed beside her, then stopped again. "Oh hmm. Damn."

Did you find him?

"For a second then he was gone again. He must be using some kind of cloaking technology."

She made a face. To be honest, she kind of wanted to scream. But why?!

Her ghost glanced at her, spinning its shell in a way that was somehow reminiscent of a shrug. "Where would a warlock even get cloaking tech? I don't know but that's what it looks like." It paused for a second, buzzing again. "But he does seem to be going over the North American Dead Zone, eastern seaboard region."

What's there? Nothing of any note that she could think of. The Manhattan Nuclear Zone, but that was still a hotbed of poison that even the Fallen steered clear of. Minimal Fallen activity overall, there wasn't much there after the bombs fell. Nothing safe to scavenge, anyway.

The ghost took her ship low suddenly, dipping below the clouds they were using for cover from the ground. Nicole sat up a little straighter to try and get a look at the ground slipping past beneath them. Clusters of building barely visible in the snowy landscape, interlaced with patches of black and white forest. In the far distance she could see a crashed Ketch, its nose buried deep in the earth and its engines long dead. It looked like it had been there for centuries. To the east, the water was littered with boats half sunk and groups of building still tall enough to peek out over the risen ocean waves.

She still couldn't see his ship anywhere, or really any place someone would even think to land a ship. Just before she could ask what they were doing, something large and suspiciously orange zipped past the viewscreen, close enough that the whole ship rumbled in the slipstream.

What the heck was that? It had been painted the same obnoxious shade that Rest's piece of junk had been, so really, she knew the answer. Her ghost didn't reply verbally, instead turning the nose of her ship skyward to follow. What is going on? He came down here, then is going back to orbit?

That's what it looked like he was doing, anyway. She could see the little bastard now, following the flying orange scrap heap was even easier once they broke above the clouds. He shot straight up through the atmosphere, breaking into low orbit faster than she thought that thing possible. Not that her ship had to struggle to keep up.

She only realized something was up when her ghost gave a great big sigh that sounded so incredibly annoyed. She finally took her eyes from the ship out her viewscreen to look at the orb at her shoulder. What…?

She didn't get to finish her question before it blew to pieces before her eyes. She looked back in time to watch the light fade in a snap of the vacuum, the pieces already beginning to drift down into the atmosphere to be burned away to nothing.

The scrap heap was gone. What just…? She sat back in the seat a little more, gaping open mouthed and wide-eyed at the darkness above them. Where…?

The holoscreen above the control panel flickered to life, an obnoxious laugh coming through the speakers in her ship as the transmission cleared up, filling the silence of space with a voice Nicole never wanted to hear again. Her ghost was spinning his shell rapidly in obvious irritation, the sound of the electronic whirring the only thing keeping the hunter from punching the face on the holoscreen.

"Looks like this dumb warlock just outsmarted a hunter." Rest's voice filtered through the ship, smug arrogance dripping from every word. If he was there with her, she would have definitely slapped him a new face. As it were, he smiled inanely from behind the screen, cheeky and sly. His ghost floated behind him, managing to look triumphant with the way it seemed to stare down at her.

The message was pre-recorded and started to loop immediately. Her ghost shut it down before Rest had even finished his second round of laughter. Nicole's face felt hot, her whole body thrumming with rage. Her vision warbled and she felt herself clenching her hands around the armrests of her chair.

"Nicole…" Her ghost called softly, grounding her in the present.

She took a calming breath and tried to sink into her chair as much as she could make herself. She glanced at him a moment later and tried to conjure a coherent question but all that she could seemed to come up with was, what what what what what…?

"I'm… I'm not sure. To be honest, I'm just as confused by his actions as you are."

But… where did this come from? Who was he acting out against, her or the vanguard? And why? Why was he being so childish and petty? Sure, she'd known warlocks to be both of those things plenty of times before, but they usually sobered in the face of a direct order from the vanguard. But it was as if direct orders had brought this whole thing on.

"What do we do now?"

They couldn't go back to the vanguard. While the temptation to dig him into as much trouble as absolutely possible was strong, she wanted to know why he had done all of this. And if she ratted him out, she would never get that answer. Furthermore, she couldn't imagine having the vanguard punish him would be very helpful. Also, as a small note to herself, that she would probably never admit to anyone. Ever. She didn't want them knowing that she had actually managed to lose track of him. How were they supposed to trust her to keep track of Fallen vandal packs if she couldn't even keep an eye on one dumb warlock.

Keep an eye out for him. He can't stay hidden forever. And the moment he reappears, we hunt him down.


Afterword: Sorry it's shorter, but I hoped you enjoyed anyway.

Again a great big thank you to forrestfire21 for leaving a review. I'm glad you are enjoying it. :D