The ghost floated outside the city wall in the sunlight, mentally wiping his forehead. "She almost had me, there. Have to be more careful."
He logged into the ghost network and drifted toward the top of the wall. "Reporting in, everybody," he announced. "I've spoken to Charon."
He instantly had the attention of the whole network.
"What's she like?"
"Why'd the battle-axe hire her?"
"How's her spark?"
"Did you ask how her ghost died?"
"I didn't get to ask anything," the ghost replied. "She hit me in the eye with a door."
The other ghosts burst into laughter.
"Maybe we should have sent somebody else."
"What kind of a stalker are you?"
"I'm not stalking her," the ghost protested. He reached the top of the wall, saw Charon walking toward the administration building, and quickly pretended to float beside a Hunter's left ear.
"Did you get a look at her spark?" another ghost repeated.
"I saw it," the ghost said, watching Charon's progress. He didn't want to talk about it, actually.
"Well?" the other ghosts pressed.
"Pretty shredded," the ghost admitted.
The network gave a collective sigh of disappointment.
The ghost flew carefully after Charon, darting from Guardian to Guardian. Several had their ghosts out, who glared at the stranger until he zipped away.
As she entered the administration building, the ghost flew through the door after her and lurked behind furniture and light fixtures until Charon entered the tiny ghost network office with Matilda.
"Ever see where McNasty works?" the ghost said. "It's a room the size of a dumpster. No wonder she's so cranky."
The other ghosts were instantly interested. "Really? Send pictures!"
The ghost snapped a few clandestine pictures of the office through the glass window in the door, trying to keep his glowing eye from being seen. While Charon was bent over a computer, hard at work, Matilda glanced up and saw him.
"Help! The battle-axe noticed!" he exclaimed. The network shrieked in delighted horror.
The ghost took a picture of Matilda as she advanced to the door. He wasn't frightened of her - getting caught was thrilling. This was way more fun than scanning skeleton after skeleton in a ruined town somewhere.
Matilda opened the door and glared at him over her glasses. "May I help you?" she said in a tone that said the opposite.
"No, I, I was only-"
Charon looked up. "Oh, he's an unattached ghost who's been snooping around. He was in my hallway this morning."
Matilda pointed a finger in the ghost's eye. "Your mission is to find your Guardian. Not lurk around the Tower. Understand?"
"Yes sir," the ghost said cheekily. He phased through the door, zipped down the hall, and hid just around the corner.
"Slippery little devil," Matilda muttered, closing the door.
The ghost laughed to himself for a moment. "Matilda is definitely McNasty, everyone. She just told me off."
This delighted the network.
Thinking of spying, the ghost roamed around the building, hiding behind various objects whenever someone happened by. Did this area have video cameras? It didn't seem to - the whole place had been thrown together hastily when they vacated the old Tower. But it did have communications routers.
The ghost located the routers on a shelf in a central room. He sneaked over the head of a technician working at a desk below, hid at the back of the shelf, and scanned the routers with a hacking beam.
Within moment, he had cracked the basic security level, stolen the passwords, and logged into Matilda's computer.
Her hard drive was filled with neatly filed ghost reports. While it would have been fascinating to anyone else, to the ghost it was a pile of old news. He rummaged around until he found a personnel file on Charon.
She was a Titan, he learned with surprise. A Titan with a long pedigree of successful strikes, Crucible wins, and victories over the Traveler's enemies. Her ghost had been named Simon. Her report said that he'd been killed by a long-distance shot from a Minotaur while Simon had been healing her.
The ghost's jubilant mood faded. This was real pain and loss, here. All those wins and accolades ... and now, desk job. Why had she chosen to work with the ghost network? She had to know that she'd never find another. He mused on this for a while. All he could come up with was that she must be very lonely.
"Everybody," he said on the network. "I found Charon's file."
His sober tone was like ice water to the network's cheerful mood.
He read it aloud, and thousands of ghosts listened in. By the time he finished, the ghosts were pouring a wave of sympathy in Charon's direction.
"She's a Titan?"
"Poor thing. Poor ghost!"
"I'll make sure to be very nice to her."
"Me too!"
"No funny nicknames, then?"
"None," the ghost insisted. "She seems to be a nice person. I wish I could have seen her in battle. I'll bet she was magnificent."
He sneaked back to the ghost network office and phased just outside, watching the women work. It was quite boring, really, but he studied Charon with increasing fascination.
Her spark resembled the injured Traveler - huge chunks torn loose or missing, bleeding Light from inside. But when she had laughed at him, a tiny piece had mended.
He also didn't want to mention that her spark sang a discordant melody to his heart. The possibility existed, however small, that he could bond with her. But her spark had to be intact, first, and it was so awfully damaged.
So, instead of leaving, the ghost grew ever more determined to stick to her like glue. She could - possibly - be his Guardian someday. But he had a lot of time ahead of him, trying to help mend her. She had lost her ghost only a year ago, and the pain was still fresh. He'd have to proceed very cautiously indeed.
When Charon left work that evening, she looked around for her stalker ghost. He was nowhere in sight, but that meant nothing. Ghosts were called ghosts for a reason, with their ability to disappear, or phase through solid objects.
She went to a spicy ramen shop in the Tower's tiny commercial district, secured herself a bowl and a glass of water, and sat at a tiny table in the shadows of the shop's overhang. From there, she watched the dinner crowd, looking for a ghost in a basic shell. Most ghosts here wore custom shells, so he should stand out.
Charon was halfway through her noodles when she spotted him. The ghost worked his way toward her in a roundabout way, stopping to pretend to be this Guardian's ghost, or that one. Charon never would have noticed him if she hadn't been watching.
"Simon," she thought, "I wish you could see this."
He was a few tables away when the stalker ghost glanced at her furtively. Charon waved. The ghost jumped, his eye light blinking rapidly in surprise. Then he sheepishly flew to her table and hovered across it from her.
"Nice job, phantom," Charon said. "I never would have noticed you if I hadn't been looking."
The ghost brightened. "Really? I was hoping you wouldn't. I mean, uh ..." He managed to look embarrassed.
"Why are you following me?" Charon asked.
"I'm not!" the ghost exclaimed.
"Yes, you are," Charon said, pointing at him with her spoon. "You were outside my door this morning. Then you tracked me to work. Now, here you are. What're you up to?"
The ghost shifted in midair, as if deciding whether to tell the whole truth or half. Finally he said, "I'm hoping you'll help me find my Guardian."
"Shouldn't you find a Guardian who, I don't know, can leave the Tower?" Charon said. "The farthest I can go are patrols outside the City walls."
"There's always a chance," the ghost said defensively. "I mean, I came here to find out who was working with McNasty, but then-"
Charon had been taking a drink of water, which she spewed across the table. "McNasty?" she gasped, laughing. "Matilda?"
The ghost darted to one side, but droplets still splattered him. He spun his segments to flick them off. "Ew!"
"Is that what you ghosts call her?"
The ghost nodded. "McNasty, old Battle Axe, you know. The usual."
Charon laughed and laughed. "How do you keep her from finding out?"
The ghost shifted his eye-light into a cartoony smile. "We don't send every conversation to the logs."
Charon calmed down, wiping her eyes. "What do you call me?"
"That's why I came here," the ghost said. "To find out who you were. But we like you. We've decided not to call you names."
"Aw." Charon grinned at him. "I'll call you Phantom because of your sneaking around. Don't get attached. Your real Guardian will probably call you something else."
"Phantom," said the ghost, deadpan. "You're calling me another word for ghost?"
"Sure, but sneakier," Charon said. "Like I said, don't get used to it."
The ghost flew in a circle above her table. Something about this agitated him. He looked at her over and over, seemed to shake his head, and kept circling.
"What's wrong?" Charon asked.
"I shouldn't," he said, his blue eye glowing in the shadows. "Accept a name from you. You're not my Guardian. This is ... super personal."
"So don't call yourself that," Charon said. "But I'm going to call you Phantom as long as you're lurking around."
"What if I stop lurking?" said the ghost. "What if I just follow you around honestly?"
"Pretend to be my ghost?" Charon said. "You could, you know. Losing a ghost isn't something I'm proud of, so not everybody knows. They'll think you're Simon."
The ghost hung in the air, staring at her. Then he said, very softly, "Wouldn't that make you sad?"
The amount of care in this question made Charon sit a little straighter. No ghost but Simon had ever cared about her feelings. "What did you say?"
"I said, wouldn't it make you sad if I impersonated your dead ghost?" Phantom said. "It seems ... wrong. I'm not him, and you might think of me as him, and then you'd remember I'm not ..."
"You're over-thinking it," Charon said, touched nonetheless. "I wouldn't mistake you for Simon. You sound nothing like him, for one thing. And I can't ..." She gestured from herself, to Phantom, and back. "I can't feel you."
Without the soul bond, they shared no connection, and he was powerless to heal or resurrect her.
Phantom looked down for a moment. "Maybe I can't really be your ghost," he said. "But I could be your friend."
Charon gazed at him, smiling a little, her lower lip wobbling. The kindness of this went straight to her heart. "I'd like to be friends."
Charon walked back to her apartment, and Phantom followed, floating over her shoulder.
Phantom! She had named him. Blast, what was he supposed to do now? Did she sense the delicate compatibility between their sparks?
He had made her laugh again. Many tiny shards had fused back into her spark, but the big cracks remained. The music of her soul was slightly less discordant. It frightened him a little. No ghost had ever courted a severed Guardian before. He had no idea what he was doing, or if her soul would ever heal enough to bond to.
And she had named him. His thoughts kept circling back to that staggering fact. Unattached ghosts didn't accept names from strangers - often they named themselves. But ... Phantom ... he liked it so much.
They reached her apartment door, and Charon unlocked it. "Come on," she said, holding it open.
Phantom hesitated. "Do you think I should? I'm not really your ghost."
"It'll be more comfortable than hanging around outside," Charon said. "Besides, I'll worry that you might be getting hurt."
Worry? She might worry about him? Surely she must know what that meant. Phantom entered her apartment and hung in the air, looking around. They had entered a tiny living room with a massive armor rack dominating one wall.
"You're a Titan?" Phantom said.
"I was," Charon said. "I can still wear the armor and fire weapons. But it's harder and harder to call on my super moves. I'm just ... a poser, I guess."
That was one of the huge cracks in her soul. Phantom saw it as Charon touched her armor wistfully.
"The super Light powers go through your ghost," he said softly. "We call on the Traveler for you."
She nodded. "I figured it was something like that. I lost so much when Simon died." She spoke lightly, but Phantom sensed her pain.
Charon changed into pajamas, then sat at a little table with a computer on it. Phantom flew around her apartment, examining her weapons rack, framed Crucible awards, and a set of delicate watercolor paintings of landscapes.
"Did you paint these?" Phantom asked.
Charon looked up. "Oh, yes. I paint a little in my spare time."
Phantom admired them. "They're very good. They're not all Earth, are they?"
"No," she said, "there's some beautiful vistas on the other planets. I had to try to capture them."
Phantom's crush on her grew a little stronger. A hopeless crush, because those cracks in her soul might take years to heal. Did any ghost ever spend weeks and years with their future Guardian before bonding? Most Guardians had to be resurrected first, and the spark bond was part of that.
Phantom realized he was flying in restless circles only when Charon looked up. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing. Nothing at all." He forced himself to hover in place and gave her a smile emote. "Just ... not used to being indoors, I guess."
"Well, relax. You're making me nervous."
Relax? When his future Guardian was right there, oblivious, her beautiful spark so damaged?
Phantom phased, so she couldn't see him pacing. He needed a sounding board on this one. So he connected to the Ghost Gossip Network, which ran parallel, and separate from, the official spy network.
"Hey everybody, checking in from spying on Charon."
The ghosts greeted him cheerfully. "How's it going?"
"Did the Battle Axe catch you again?"
"Well," said Phantom, "I ... I have a few problems. I need your advice."
The ghosts gave him their attention.
"First," he said, "uh, I don't know how to say this. I'll just spit it out. Charon named me Phantom."
The entire network erupted into exclamations and shouts.
"What!"
"You let her do it?"
"Is she your Guardian?"
"If she's not, don't accept the name, dummy!"
Phantom let the shouting die down. When they were ready to listen again, he said, "That's why I need advice. She's my Guardian ... but her spark is damaged."
Silence greeted this announcement.
"How do you know she's your Guardian?" one ghost asked.
"Her spark sings to me," Phantom said. "But it's all ... off-key. She's been healing a little, and it helps, but I can't bond until she's intact again."
Further silence.
"What do I do?" Phantom pressed. "I can't abandon her now that I've found her."
"Have you told her?" a ghost asked hesitantly.
"No," Phantom said. "She's still grieving her dead ghost. I can't just crash in and say, hey, I could be your new ghost! But you have to get over that chump who died."
The network muttered to each other, discussing the situation and possible courses of action. Phantom waited, watching Charon click through City headlines.
The ghost network chatter confirmed his thoughts. No ghost had ever been in a situation like his - it was backward of every other Guardian and Ghost. Not to mention that severed Guardians didn't usually get a second ghost. A lot of bonded ghosts joined the conversation, exclaiming about how strange it was.
One ghost told him, "Be kindness itself. Make yourself indispensable. A soul isn't mended overnight. Be patient and let her heal, and be her constant friend. One day, when the time is right, you'll both know."
Phantom sighed. "Thanks. That's good advice, even if it's not what I wanted to hear."
The ghost chatter continued, but Charon's voice cut across it. "My fire team's going on City border patrol tomorrow and they're asking if I'll go."
Phantom phased into sight, since this statement seemed directed at him. "Um, yes? Is that a good thing?"
Charon gazed at him, biting her lip. "I'm sure Matilda will let me off. That's no problem. But what do I do about you?"
Phantom blinked. "What about me?"
"Well ... you're not my ghost. I don't want to take you into danger."
"I'll stay phased," Phantom said cheerfully. "If anybody notices me, just tell them I'm following you in hopes of finding my Guardian. That's the truth, isn't it?"
"Yes," Charon said, stretching the word out. "But Ashton - a guy on my team - is very judgmental. He'll think I'm lugging you around as some kind of emotional prop."
"So what?" Phantom replied. "I'm following you and you can't get rid of me. Sounds like my problem, not yours."
She smiled. Traveler's Light, he was such a sucker for seeing her smile.
"You're a brat, Phantom." Charon swiveled back to her computer and began typing a reply to the fireteam query.
Phantom watched her type. How did she not feel this connection between them? Or, maybe she did feel it. She didn't want him hurt. Maybe such things weren't as obvious to Guardians as they were to ghosts.