The quarantine room was a plastic box with a bed in it. Outside that was another room made of flexible plastic sheeting, assembled hastily by medical staff, equipped with an airlock. A stack of scrubs and sterile gloves stood on a table inside. Doctors dressed and undressed inside the clean room. No gear left the quarantine space once it had entered.
I floated in the corner of the inner plastic box, silent, impotent, useless. Doctors injected countless drugs into Kari's hand and arm, trying to gain ground on the infection swirling through her bloodstream.
But the infection was stronger than their drugs. Day after day it crept up Kari's arm to her elbow, then toward her shoulder. Her hand curled, the skin hardening. It pulled inward on itself, the inner layers of the skin compressing, until all that remained was a hardened outline of muscle and bone.
It was the arm of a Hive thrall.
I watched in anguished silence as they amputated the monstrous limb. My poor Kari lay in bed, mutilated and changed, her poisoned arm now only a bandaged stump at the shoulder.
She faced the ordeal with the silent bravery reserved for battlefields. But when we were alone, she confided to me that it was only a matter of time before she joined her husband in the Light.
Our hope that the amputation had ended the infection faded as more black patches appeared across her neck and chest. The skin withered, each patch spreading by the day. The doctors grew desperate. Some whispered of attempting to capture a SIVA nanite swarm and reprogramming it.
"Don't let me turn," Kari begged Dr. Von. "Put a bullet in my head before I become a thrall. Please."
Dr. Von said heavily, "It may yet come to that."
When he left, Kari looked at me, her eyes still bright despite the blackness creeping up her cheeks. "That's an idea. When you resurrect me, you recreate my body from scratch, right? Wouldn't that remove this infection?"
"I tried," I said in a low voice. "The arm they removed - I tried to regrow it. Resurrection works by re-polarizing the quantum data ..." Seeing her eyes glaze, I hurried on. "The point is, your flesh is corrupted to the quantum level. I couldn't regenerate you as anything other than a thrall. I deconstructed and revived that infected arm three times, Kari. It stayed the same."
She turned her face away from me and stared at the wall.
My heart had broken so many times already. It broke again in that moment. I was her ghost, and I could do nothing. I was failing her again.
That night, the voices began.
Kari had nightmares - terrible nightmares that she awoke from, screaming. As the Hive infection progressed, the voices of the evil aliens grew in her mind. She repeated the things they said to me and to the doctors. They called to her, promising power and immortality. In between, they gloated at having infected a Guardian, and promised to teach her the Sword Logic to use against her fellow Guardians.
As the infection spread across her face and into her limbs, the doctors began to whisper of the best methods to put her down humanely.
That was when I snapped.
The thought had been growing in my mind that only the Traveler could help Kari now. The Traveler - the mysterious moon-like entity that floated in the sky above the Last City, source of Light for all ghosts and Guardians, and my birthplace.
Kari was slipping away, and none of us could help her. I had to do something, and that night, I did.
I phased through the walls of the medical wing in a series a short teleports. Once I gained the free air above the City, I flew straight toward the Traveler, teleporting to gain speed. The pain inside me drove me on.
Only ghosts who had lost their Guardians ever returned to the Traveler. They were never seen again. It was supposed that they merged back into the Great Consciousness, into the Light from whence they came. There was every chance that by going to the Traveler, I, too, might be assimilated before I ever said a word. And oh, how part of me yearned for that: to rejoin the Light and never see Darkness again.
But Kari was my anchor. I was doing this for her and I would not assimilate. Not unless I utterly failed her, watched her die, and became a severed ghost.
It took me an hour to reach the Traveler. I paused a few feet from its gleaming white hull and steadied myself. "Kari," I told myself. "Think of Kari." And I phased inside.
The awakened Traveler was a seething, swirling ball of living Light. Inside was the metal structure that formed the sphere itself - yet the structure only gave shape to the Light, just as a living brain is only the medium that the consciousness flies through.
The Light recognized me, reached out to me, curled around me. Its touch was warm and welcoming, and within it I heard the joyful voices of thousands of other ghosts, long since passed on. So it wasn't complete assimilation. They lived on inside the mind of the Traveler.
The Light tugged at my spark, inviting me to join them. But I resisted. "No! My Guardian still lives. She needs your help, Traveler! Please, I beg you!"
My voice echoed into the Light. The chattering ghost voices hushed, their attention turned to me. I felt as if I had stepped onto a stage, addressing an audience I hadn't known existed.
The Light shrank and solidified into the shape of another ghost. But this one had a golden glowing eye. Streamers of white light radiated off in all directions from between its facets.
The Traveler, itself, had come to speak with me.
I bowed, as well as a ghost can bow. "Thank you for speaking with me, Great One."
"Child Ghost," the Traveler said. Its voice was as warm and kind as its own Light. "You are heavily burdened by fear for your Guardian. Tell us your troubles."
I launched into the story, explaining my many failures that had led to Kari's impending doom. It was lovely to address the Traveler in such a familiar form. But it was dreadful to know that a vast audience was listening in, sometimes murmuring to each other.
When I finished my tale, there was a brief silence. The Traveler turned and gazed into the Light. There, almost lost in it, were the outlines of the dead ghosts who had been listening. They made a vast crowd, pressed close together to better listen to me.
"Well?" the Traveler asked them. "All of you had Guardians once. Is this plea just?"
What followed was overwhelming and humiliating. Those ghosts picked my story apart, analyzing every action, every bad decision I'd made, suggesting alternate courses of action that hadn't occurred to me at the time.
"Why didn't you insist she see a doctor upon your return?"
"Why did you let the war distract you from the health of your Guardian?"
"You had months of opportunity during the rebuilding. Did you never once inspect her wound?"
"Shrapnel? You let yourself be knocked out by shrapnel?"
"She had a healing rift nearby and didn't use it?"
I pulled my facets together so tightly that they grated together. The Traveler said nothing, merely floated regally there among its streamers of Light, allowing the discussion to continue. Every word, each new argument, made me want to phase away and never return. I knew I had failed - I didn't need a vast assembly of my peers to define exactly how much.
"Well ..." I murmured to the Traveler, "I guess I'll just ... go back to Kari now."
The Traveler instantly gave me its attention and the other ghosts fell silent. "Why?"
"Well ..." Embarrassment burned inside me, on top of the guilt and grief. "I'm already a failure of a ghost ... so I might as well just ... just return and see Kari through to the end." I choked on the last few words. I turned to depart, but one of the Traveler's light streamers wrapped around me. Slowly it turned me back around to face the Traveler and my brethren.
"You see, children," the Traveler said, "this child of the Light carries a burden greater than most. He loves his Guardian with a devotion greater than any I ever intended. Only once in a very great while do I see love like this."
The other ghosts remained silent. I looked and realized they were gone. The Traveler and I were alone.
"They have had their lesson," the Traveler murmured. "Now. I am willing to assist you, Child Ghost, if only because of the love you bear. But the price will be costly."
"Tell me plainly," I begged. "What will it take to heal her?"
The Traveler made a sound like a sigh. The Light streamers drooped and disappeared. "I must not only break down her body. I must take it back in time to before the infection began. Only from an earlier point can I spin out a fresh, untainted body for your Guardian. However, such a thing will destroy her spark."
I held back a cry of despair. Her spark was her spirit, the life force that persisted through resurrections. To destroy the spark was to truly end her life.
"However," the Traveler went on, "you may attempt a thing which no ghost has ever yet tried. You may take her spark into your core. You must hold it there as I rebuild her body, and you must not let it go out. But doing such a thing may cost you your own spark."
"Would I join you here?" I asked timidly. "If I ... if I died."
The Traveler had no real face, but its Light touched me with the warmth of a smile. "You would receive a hero's welcome."
Here was a way to save Kari. It might possibly kill me, but as I had seen, ghosts didn't really die. I had hope upon hope.
"Yes," I said at last. "I'll do it. And both of us will live."