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Chapter Text

Sorrel Atkin stood on the receiving dock behind a grocery store, tablet in hand. The staff were unloading pallet after pallet of goods, and Sorrel was marking each one as it came in. Each bundle was emblazoned with the New Monarchy symbol, a triangle with three rectangles cut out.

It had been two years since the Red War. The first winter after the war, the Last City had nearly frozen and starved to death simultaneously. Sorrel's memory was a long tunnel of misery, having to check ration cards, dealing out meager amounts of food to hungry people, until there was no more.

A second winter approached, and the summer's crop yield meant that wheat and barley were no longer the rare products they had once been. The soy vats were producing meat substitutes again, and there was actually food on the shelves. With each new pallet she checked in, Sorrel relaxed a little more. The entire order had come in. There would be no shortfall this week.

She sighed and tucked a lock of indigo-blue hair behind one ear. She was Awoken, but with such fair skin, she often passed for a human-until someone commented on her glowing green eyes. Like every member of her race, she had an unearthly beauty to the curves of her face and body. But Sorrel disliked the attention this brought, so she wore baggy clothes and a huge apron to conceal her figure. She did her makeup in stark black and white, making herself look more at home at a rock concert. Since she worked stocking shelves and didn't interact with customers, her manager let it slide.

But Sorrel wasn't thinking about her looks. There was work to be done. As she finished the last inventory item, she looked up to see the New Monarchy representative circle the truck and drift toward her, also working on a tablet.

He was a Guardian. Sorrel bristled. Then she recognized him and relaxed a little. That fair complexion and untidy mop of blond hair could only belong to Maximilian Ross, even if he was done up like a Hunter, with a cloak and body armor. A ghost floated at his shoulder.

"Hey, Max," Sorrel said. "Long time no see."

Max looked up and grinned. "Still here, Sorrel? Too tough for the Red Legion, I see."

She squinted at him, confused. Last time she had seen him, he had lost weight and had been too pale. Now he looked healthier, had put on flesh, and his eyes sparkled again. "I thought you died of cancer. You stopped doing deliveries after your diagnosis. Oh! Is that why ...?" She motioned to the ghost.

Max stood on one foot and looked sheepishly at his ghost. "Uh, no, I actually chose to become a Guardian without dying. This is Zero, and she completely healed me." He cleared his throat and seemed to remember his manners. "I'm sorry! Zero, this is Sorrel Atkin. Sorrel, meet Zero."

The ghost bobbed politely in midair. "Pleased to meet you."

Max smiled at his ghost in the soppy, besotted way most people looked at kittens. Sorrel wanted to gag.

She forced a smile, instead. "Nice to meet you, Zero. Anyway, Max, if you'd just back check my records ..."

They traded tablets and checked each other's work. The tallies matched. They returned each other's tablets, then stood there awkwardly for a second. Sorrel had always got along with Max, but now that he was a Guardian, he was a social class above her. She hardly knew what to say. "So," she said, just to break the silence, "if you're a Guardian, how come you're working for New Monarchy? Shouldn't you be out wantonly murdering aliens across the system?"

Max turned red to the roots of his hair. He opened his mouth, closed it again, then wheeled and walked away a few paces. He stood there with his back to Sorrel, fists clenched.

"You screwed that up," remarked the feminine voice in her head.

"Shut up, Voice," Sorrel thought. She had put her foot in her mouth big time. Max would either walk away, or kill her with Light. Guardians were unpredictable like that.

But Max turned back around and forced a smile, having reined himself in. His cheeks were still flushed as he said, "I'm not a murderer, Sorrel. I'm actually working for New Monarchy as I put myself through the City Police Academy. I'm going to be a detective."

Sorrel smiled, trying to hide her embarrassment. "That's ... that's great, Max. I thought you'd be forced to join the Vanguard."

He proudly displayed the clasp on his cloak, which displayed the insignia of a howling wolf. "I'm under the Iron Lords. Lord Saladin is my superior officer, not Commander Zavala. When I told him that I wanted to serve the City as a detective, he gave me permission. So here I am."

Sorrel had no idea that was how these things worked. She nodded as if she knew all about it. "What's Erica think of this?"

"Oh, uh." Max looked down, but not before she'd seen the pain flit across his face. "We're not together anymore."

"Oh, I didn't know that," Sorrel said. Open mouth, insert foot, chew thoroughly. "I'm sorry."

Max gazed across the parking lot instead of looking at her. "She left after my diagnosis. But it's fine. I understand."

Sorrel's gaze settled on the ghost in a pretty blue shell, floating quietly at his shoulder. No wonder he was so attached to her. Erica had been a firebrand, and losing her must have left Max emotionally crippled.

"Voice," Sorrel thought, "remind me to spit in Erica's lettuce next time she comes in."

"That's disgusting," Voice replied. "Why would you do that?"

Sorrel Looked at Max, especially his expression.

"Oh," said Voice, very softly. "Now I understand."

Sorrel wasn't the touchy-feely type, so instead of the hug she thought she ought to offer, she slapped Max on the back. "You're a Guardian now, Ross. Your ghost loves you, probably. Gotta move on."

He winced. "Yeah, it's fine. So that's why I'm working deliveries again. Speaking of, I need to head back. Nice seeing you, Sorrel."

"You too." Sorrel watched him climb into the truck's cab and pull away from the loading dock. Then she jumped into a nearby forklift and began moving pallets herself.

"I remember Max," Voice mused in her head. "You always treated him like a kid brother."

"He always was such a kid, though," Sorrel thought. "Damn Erica. I knew she'd mess him up. Dumping him for having cancer? That is so low. I'll bet she thinks he's hot stuff now that he's a Guardian."

"Erica doesn't need to know," Voice said sharply. "We'll shield him all we can. But if he's with the Iron Lords and the City Police, we don't need to do much."

"Just because he can fight," Sorrel thought, "doesn't mean he understands manipulative women. Men don't."

"Good thing you do," Voice said.

Sorrel snorted. "I am a manipulative woman. So I know it when I see it. And before you ask, I have no intention of going after Max. Guy has enough problems."

"I wasn't going to ask," Voice laughed.

Sorrel's shift ended at six, just as the sun was setting behind a bank of clouds in the west. She had stopped by the store's deli on her way out, and carried a massive sandwich wrapped in brown paper. She glanced at the sunset and thought, "Voice, you've got to see this sky."

"Indulge me," Voice replied.

Down in the commercial block of the Tower District, the buildings blocked the view of the horizon. But Sorrel had found a tall apartment building with a fire escape. She often climbed it for a breath of fresh air - the City stifled her sometimes, especially in the summer.

She tucked her sandwich in her shoulder bag and climbed the ladder to the fire escape. Then she jogged up eight flights to the flat roof, which was studded with air vents and atmospheric units like strange fungal growths. She went to her favorite spot in the far corner, where a large vent hid her from the view of anyone using the access stairs. She sat down and Looked at the sunset.

The sun was sinking behind the clouds, sunbeams lancing across the sky. The clouds were deep blue edged with molten fire, too bright to look at for long. Sorrel turned her gaze upward, instead, to the Traveler, its vast sphere highlighted in a curve of gold and orange. The debris field around it glittered and sparkled.

Voice sighed in bliss. "Thank you. I needed this sunset tonight."

Sorrel unwrapped her sandwich and ate it slowly, taking time to Look again and again as the light changed from hot gold to mellow pink. She could do this for Voice - become her senses for a time. Voice had none of her own, and needed Sorrel to act as a surrogate.

Sorrel often wondered what Voice was. Some kind of AI? A Ghost? Symptoms of schizophrenia? She'd heard the cheerful little Voice for as far back as she could remember. When she'd asked her mother about it, her mother told her it was because she was Awoken.

"Many messages come to the Awoken," her mother had said, brushing her long, glossy sea-green hair. "I sometimes hear your father's voice, even though he left us long ago. It's how I know he's still alive."

Sorrel's father was a Guardian - another Awoken she barely remembered. He had walked out on her mother when Sorrel had been a year old. It had given Sorrel a deep resentment of Guardians in general. Someday, she'd track him down and demand to know why.

In the meantime, Sorrel carried a secret friend in her head that she constantly talked to. Voice had told her years ago to never ask her about herself, so Sorrel never did.

As Sorrel finished her sandwich, she heard the squeak of the roof access door opening. Blast. The manager came up here sometimes, and she'd be in trouble if she was caught. She crouched behind the vent, scarcely breathing, and peered out.

A warlock in a white robe stood there, looking around with a dismayed expression. He had dark skin and hair that contrasted with his robes. In his hands was a black globe - a globe crisscrossed with gold in geometric shapes. The warlock gazed at the globe a moment, then jerked his head away, as if it hurt him.

After a moment, he crossed the roof to an air unit, peeled off the cover, and hid the globe inside it. Then he replaced the cover, looked around one more time without seeing Sorrel, and departed back down the stairs.

"That was weird," Sorrel thought. "Some Guardian just hid a thing up here."

"What kind of thing?"

"Let me make sure he's gone and I'll find out."

Sorrel waited for a few minutes, watching the access door. When nothing happened, she dashed out of hiding, opened the unit, snatched the globe, and ran back to her hiding place. Then she sat and Looked at it with Voice.

"I have no idea what it is," Voice said. "Turn it over. Look at the engravings."

Sorrel obeyed, turning it around and around. It was heavy and cold, like polished obsidian. The gold engravings might have been actual gold - or they might have been some other yellow metal. As she ran her fingers across them, the Light under Sorrel's skin quickened, glowing brighter through the backs of her hands. A feeling came to her that she ought to understand the lines, the shapes they created.

"It looks like a Reef artifact," Voice said. "Beyond that, I don't know. The Reefborn Awoken keep their devices hidden from Cityfolk. I wonder how this one came to be on Earth?"

"It's stolen," Sorrel said with conviction. "That warlock did it. You saw how nervous he looked."

"I didn't," Voice muttered. "You didn't Look for me."

"Sorry, I forgot. Trust me, though. The guy was nervous. Twitchy."

"Why would he hide it on the roof of an apartment building? It's hardly secure."

Sorrel gazed around at the flat roof, the way this building towered above the others. She had a clear vista of the whole Tower district and the neighboring districts besides. The Tower, itself, loomed in the distance like a skyscraper among skyscrapers, the hammerhead crown outlined against the pink clouds.

"I think the Guardian means to come back later," Sorrel thought. "Or he left it for a contact to find. What do you think? Keep it or put it back?"

"Keep it," Voice said at once. "You're Awoken. It belongs to your people. Find a way to return it to the Reefborn."

"Not many of those in the City," Sorrel sighed. She slid the heavy sphere into her shoulder bag and finished eating her sandwich. She Looked at the sunset for Voice again, but the colors were fading, the sky banded by dark clouds. A chilly wind touched her bare arms. After summer's heat, the first breath of autumn was welcome, but Sorrel wasn't ready for it. She shivered. Or was it the knowledge of the mysterious object in her bag that raised the goose flesh on her arms?

She crept down the fire escape, past lighted windows where people were talking, eating dinner, or watching TV with the volume up. Nobody on this end of the building sounded upset, as if they'd been robbed.

When she reached the sidewalk in front of the building, she did notice a black car parked at the curb across the street. It had one tiny logo on the door - a pair of crossed blades against a white shield. The silhouettes of two figures occupied the front seats.

The Cormorant Blade was watching the building.

Trying to move casually, Sorrel walked along with her bag, hoping the extra bulge didn't show. She pulled out her cellphone and pretended to stare into it, like everyone else on the sidewalk was doing. Instead of turning on the screen, she held it up so the reflective glass showed her a view of the street behind her.

The Cormorant Blade car hadn't moved. Maybe they hadn't marked her emergence from the alley. Or maybe they were waiting for a warlock in a white robe.

She lost herself in evening foot traffic and took a winding route back to her own apartment, watching for pursuit over her shoulder. She saw nothing obvious, but then, what did pursuit look like?

She was glad to reach her front door, hidden behind a staircase to higher levels in the building, unlock the deadbolt, and slip inside. Sliding the deadbolt home behind her was comforting.

"I made it, Voice. No tail."

"You had a narrow shave, Sorrel," Voice said. She sounded frightened. "I wish I hadn't told you to keep that globe. Hide it somewhere."

Sorrel stashed it under her sink, behind the cleaning supplies. She thought maybe it ought to go under her bed, instead, but something about the engravings gnawed at her mind. She didn't want the thing coming to life while she was asleep and turning out to be a bomb.

She stayed up for a while, trying to read the eighth book in a popular adventure series, but she had a hard time focusing on the story. The globe's semi-transparent black surface kept flashing through her mind, followed by the Cormorant Blade logo. At last she turned out the light and went to sleep.

But even there, her mind refused to rest.

Chapter Text

Sorrel dreamed about the spider.

It was a common nightmare that visited her often. She was standing in a dimly-lit place. Around and above her arched the spider's legs - thousands of them. She was never sure if the legs were made of web or if the web was made of legs. Either way, she didn't dare move for fear of touching one.

The legs converged in the center into a single bulbous body, like two spheres mashed together, a black shape in the shadows of the legs. And always, after a while, the white eye blinked open and stared at her. She stared back, watching the pupil dilate and contract as it focused. If she moved, one of those legs would descend, pierce her through, and grasp her heart within her chest. It happened in other dreams. She stood still, gasping with panic, trying to calm her racing heart. Be quiet, or it'll hear you-

Sorrel flung herself out of bed and hit the floor. Pain shot through her knees, waking her up. She sat there in a snarl of blankets, panting, and angry that she'd had the spider dream again.

"What's wrong, Sorrel?" Voice said sleepily.

"Spider dream," Sorrel thought, climbing to her feet and rubbing her knees. "I'm up to three times a week, now."

Voice made a sound like a sigh.

"Why does this happen?" Sorrel burst out, flinging her blankets and pillow back on her bed. "No other Awoken dream about spiders! They dream about weird space stuff. And I'm stuck with the same nightmare over and over!"

"Maybe it was the globe," Voice suggested. "Or maybe you're stressed. You've worked long hours these past few weeks."

"And I'm scheduled for more next week," Sorrel grumbled, punching her pillow into shape. "Wake me up at three, will you?"

"All right, Sorrel."

It took a long time for Sorrel to calm down enough to drift off to sleep. She'd just reached a comfortable deep sleep when Voice began singing in her head to wake her up again.

"You know," Sorrel thought groggily, "waking me up with a lullaby probably isn't the best choice." She didn't mention that Voice sounded very robotic when she sang - like an auto tuned AI. Pleasant, but not human.

"I didn't want to alarm you with something louder," Voice said. "Not after your nightmare."

Touched by her friend's consideration, Sorrel climbed out of bed and went to shower. She powdered her face white, hiding the Light that marked her cheek, and painted black patches over her eyes. They glowed startlingly green from within the black.

Sorrel Looked at her reflection for Voice's benefit.

Voice said, "Why must you be ugly? You look so much nicer without the paint."

"Maybe it's because I wish I wasn't Awoken," Sorrel thought. "Maybe I'm trying to be something else instead. Like an Exo."

Voice didn't say anything, but her silence was disapproving.

Sorrel walked the four blocks to work in the pre-dawn darkness. This part of town was safe enough at night, owing to Guardian patrols this close to the Tower. Nothing discouraged muggers more than a hammer made of fire flying toward their heads.

Sorrel saw two Titans standing on a street corner with cups of tea, helmet visors pushed back, a couple of guys nearing the end of their shift. They nodded to her. Sorrel nodded back. Neither were Awoken, or she might have detoured to ask their names and if either of them had been married before.

And if one of them was her father, she'd break his nose.

The grocery store was brightly lit as the night shift stocked shelves and tidied up. The floor buffer roared as one of the janitors polished the linoleum. Sorrel pulled on her huge apron, clocked in, and went to work.

The store opened a few hours later, the shelves organized and ready for the day's shoppers. The bread delivery was late, so Sorrel wound up stocking that section with customers around. And there were lots of customers hunting for donuts and bagels for breakfast, snatching them up as fast as Sorrel could place them.

She was already slightly frustrated at this when a voice behind her said, "Nice makeup."

Sorrel turned, grinding her teeth to hold back a retort. "May I help you?"

A young woman stood there, her jet-black hair in a pixie cut that made her face look angular and hard. Erica West, Max's ex-girlfriend. Sorrel wanted to punch her.

Erica smirked. "What're the eye patches for? Somebody beat you up?"

"It's a style," Sorrel said stiffly.

"An ugly style," Erica said. "I've seen you in here before, but never got a good look. My friends say you're Awoken, but I don't see it."

Sorrel didn't dare reply, because only rage would come out. She turned back to the racks of bread and resumed stocking shelves. Erica insolently reached in front of her, grabbed a loaf that hadn't yet been shelved, and walked off with it. Sorrel counted to ten twice inside her head.

What had Max ever seen in that girl? Erica must put on a nice face when she wanted. Sorrel had always thought that the only reason Erica liked him was because he worked for New Monarchy in Tower North. Good career path with lots of money at the top. But cancer had wrecked that future, so Erica dumped him and hunted some other promising guy.

"But what do I know?" Sorrel thought to Voice. "I don't exactly talk to Max much anymore. And now he's a Guardian."

"He's still the same person," Voice pointed out. "Just a change of position."

"And life expectancy," Sorrel replied. "Erica would be crazy to go after him again. He'll outlive her ten times over."

Voice was silent a long moment. Then she said, "Why do you care?"

Sorrel didn't answer, because at that moment, Max himself walked around the end of the nearest aisle. His blond hair hung in his eyes, and he looked tired. Odd for a Guardian.

"Sorrel!" he exclaimed. "There you are. Do you have a minute? I need to talk to you."

Sorrel glanced at her wrist watch. "I go on break in ten minutes. Wait that long?"

"Sure," Max said. He stood back and watched her stock, not saying anything.

It made Sorrel nervous. What was he thinking? Why was he watching her? She wanted to talk to him - ask him how he became a Guardian without dying, find out if he liked it or not. So many questions, and she didn't know how to ask them. Plus, she wasn't supposed to stand around and chat while she was on the clock. From his silence, maybe he didn't know how to start a conversation, either.

"Sorry," Sorrel said with an apologetic smile after a few minutes. "This is taking a while."

"It's fine," Max said, returning her smile. "I'm doing detective stuff, and I just need to ask you a few questions. Can we go someplace where we won't be overheard?"

"Sure," Sorrel said. Inside, she cringed and thought of the black globe. Detective questions! Does he know I have it? Is he investigating that warlock? Was Max in that Cormorant Blade car?

By the time she went on break, Sorrel was sweating. She led Max to the break room, which was empty at the moment, and had to sit down before her knees gave way.

"Tired, huh?" Max said, sitting on a stool. "Don't worry, you're not in trouble. Do you see a lot of customers come through this store?"

"Yeah," Sorrel said, confused. "But I'm a stocker. I don't wait on customers, usually."

Max held out a hand and his Ghost appeared. She displayed a holographic photo of the warlock in the white robe. Sorrel tried to keep her face blank.

"This is Guardian Jayesh," Max said. "He was mugged last night."

"A Guardian was mugged?" Sorrel said incredulously.

Max nodded. "Weird as it sounds, it can happen. Jayesh had got wind of an artifact from the Reef that's loose here in the City. He actually laid hands on it and was trying to move it to a safe location. But he was attacked by people unknown using weapons that harm Guardians. When he looked for the artifact, it was gone. He thinks that it might still be in the neighborhood, though. So I wondered if you could keep an eye out for Awoken for me. Three Earthborn, medium-blue skin, all males about six feet tall. Two with yellow eyes, one with blue."

Sorrel nodded and wracked her brain, trying to remember if she'd seen any Awoken customers lately. She'd seen several women in the past week, but no men. She also now knew why that warlock had looked nervous. The muggers must have been following him, so he'd dumped the globe to get it off his person.

She pulled the spinning pieces of her brain back into focus. Max was watching her, waiting with a hopeful expression.

"I haven't seen any Awoken men in the past week," she said. "But I don't watch customers very closely, either. What makes you think they shop here?"

"This is the only grocery store in the Tower district," Max said. "Criminals have to eat, too. You're sure you don't know anything that might help?"

"Like where the artifact is?" Voice chimed in, inside Sorrel's head. "Hiding behind the dish soap and scrubbing brushes?"

"Shush," Sorrel thought. Aloud, she said, "I'm afraid not, Max. Although ... I should probably warn you that Erica's loose in the store right now. She's in full-on bitch-mode, too."

Max's eyes lit up with a hopeful, yet hurt expression, like a puppy that had been kicked. He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced at the door. "I wonder if she'd talk to me."

"She dumped you," Sorrel pointed out. "She doesn't deserve the time of day from you, let alone a conversation."

But Max didn't seem to hear. He got up and walked out with an absent-minded, "Thanks for your help, Sorrel."

Sorrel trailed him. She took the long way back to the bread department, watching Max as he peered down each aisle. Then he darted down one and greeted Erica.

Sorrel watched from a distance, too far away to overhear. Erica looked Max up and down, taking in his Guardian gear. Then she smiled, tucked her hair behind one ear, and her posture became very flirty. Max's stance was eager, gesturing, smiling, leaning forward a little. After a few minutes, they walked off together toward the checkout.

Sorrel returned to stocking shelves, feeling out of sorts and worried. "She'll hurt him again, Voice. I know she will."

"Max is an adult," Voice replied. "He has to make mistakes if he's going to grow up. Besides, maybe they'll work it out this time."

"I doubt it," Sorrel thought. She continued working and carefully didn't think of that black globe hidden in her cabinet at home.

"Want to grab lunch?" Max asked, as he helped Erica load groceries into her tiny car.

"Sure!" she replied. "It's pretty chilly today, so these should be okay for an hour or so." She batted her eyelashes in a way Max found irresistible. "I can't wait to hear all about how you became a Guardian."

"I'll tell you the whole story," Max said eagerly.

They decided on a nearby cafe for lunch. Erica drove her car and Max rode his sparrow.

"I think she's single," he told Zero as he drove. "No mention of that other guy she was dating."

"She seems to go through men awfully fast," Zero said in his head. "I don't know, Max. Something about Erica seems off. I don't know what it is."

Max told himself that he was glad to see Erica again, that any awkwardness was because he was a Guardian now. But deep down, he had sensed that something was off, too. Perhaps it was his developing detective instincts, which came from watching people's body language for tells. Erica's tells had been aggressively friendly. He had time during the drive to remember how they had broken up.

"The diagnosis isn't good," he had told her, tired and worn from hours at the hospital. "Lymphoma. Cancer."

She had looked up at him from the sofa where she was reading her phone. Shock had passed over her face. "Cancer! Do they think you'll survive?"

"It's stage three," Max had said, sitting beside her. "So there's a chance we caught it in time. But I have to go through a lot of treatments. I may have to quit work."

He'd needed a hug so badly at that moment - he'd been so frightened and lost. Instead, Erica slid away from him, as if afraid he was contagious. Her shocked expression changed to disgust. "Well. I guess I'm out of here, then."

She stood up and put on her shoes. Max stared in disbelief. "You're leaving?"

"I'm breaking up with you," Erica said. "I can't handle this. Good luck and all that."

She had walked out without another word, leaving Max's life in tatters.

And now, here she was, friendly as a hungry cat. She hadn't spoken a word to him since the breakup - never sent a card, nothing. When he saw her around the City, she pretended he didn't exist.

Yet, now she was going out to lunch with him, amiable as you please.

They arrived at the cafe and secured a table by a window. Max ordered a burger and fries, but Erica only ordered a drink. They sat there at the table, waiting for their food, smiling but not sure what to say.

"So," Erica said at last. "Guardian and all that. Do you have a Ghost?"

"Oh yes!" Max held up a hand. Zero appeared above his palm and nodded politely. "This is Zero. Zero, this is Erica West."

"Nice to meet you," Zero said.

Erica's smile grew stiff. "It has a girl voice."

"Yeah, Zero's a girl," Max said. "Ghosts come in both genders."

Erica flicked a strand of hair off her cheek. "Shows how much I know. So, did she resurrect you after the cancer got you?"

"No, I became a Guardian without dying." It was almost the same conversation he'd had with Sorrel, but somehow more unpleasant. Erica seemed to be saying a lot of things under her words that he couldn't catch.

Max ventured on, "So, how'd you make it through the Red War?"

Erica launched into a story of evacuating to a bunker on Mars. It lasted through most of lunch, and all Max had to do was listen. She didn't seem interested in how he had survived. And really, there wasn't much to tell - spending most of the Red War lost in the lower floors of the Tower didn't make a good story. Zero disappeared again and said nothing, but Max sensed she was observing everything.

Erica reached the end of her story and helped herself to the last of Max's fries. "So that's all, until we came back to the City. The plague winter was awful. I had to go in for healing three different times."

"That's awful," Max said sympathetically.

"I know, right?" Erica said, smiling. "Let me tell you!" And she launched into a long account of it.

Max listened, patient and polite. As he did, he hemmed and hawed to himself about whether to ask her to be his girlfriend again. He'd missed her so much after she left. Maybe she just couldn't cope with the cancer thing - he'd lost a lot of friends around that time for the same reason. Maybe she'd matured a bit more since the war.

But he was working long hours - for New Monarchy, at his City Police training, and on the side, as a rookie investigator alongside the Cormorant Blade. He left his dorm room in the Tower early and didn't return until late. He had no room for a social life, and it would hurt Erica's feelings if he was too busy for her. He couldn't ask her for a relationship right now. He probably shouldn't have approached her at all - but the attraction was still there.

Erica's second story ran out of steam. She gazed at him expectantly. "So, are we together again?"

"Erica," Max said, taking her hand across the table. "I'm working really hard right now. Once I'm through Police training, I'll have time again. I don't want to neglect you, and right now, that's what would happen. So ... do you think you could wait until I finish spring semester? Then we can date again."

Her frown was almost a pout. "Well, that's no good. Why did you ask me out if you're just stringing me along?"

"I'm not stringing you along," Max said. "I'm trying to be considerate."

Erica gazed at his hand on hers for a moment. Then she smiled and raised her gaze to his. "Of course I will, Max. You'll be a good Guardian cop. The forces of evil will run in fear." She pulled her hand away and rose from the table, leaving Max wondering if he'd been snubbed.

He walked her out to her car, gave her an awkward side-hug goodbye, and watched her drive away. Then he summoned his sparrow and drove the other way, toward the police academy.

"Zero," he thought, "what do you think of her?"

Zero took her time about answering. "I think ... I don't know what I think, Guardian. I've never seen someone behave the way she does. I think she likes you, but ... not in the usual way."

"What do you mean, not in the usual way?"

Zero hesitated. "Well ... I don't know. I'm not sure. It feels like she's being dishonest somehow, but I can't tell exactly how. I don't know her very well. Maybe we should just wait and see how things go?"

"Maybe you're right." Max didn't want Erica to be dishonest, didn't want Zero to be right. He also didn't want to ask the question of why Erica had walked out on him in the first place. He buried all these thoughts and headed back to school.

Chapter Text

Sorrel spent the next few days secretly watching customers.

She contrived to take a later shift, so she was always bumping elbows with customers who were edging past, trying to reach items that her stack of pallets was blocking. Lots of humans, some Awoken, and a few Exos came through. The Awoken men she saw matched Max's description because the whole race tended toward the tall side. She needed more details if she was to spot anyone.

Her face paint began to receive complaints. Her manager pulled her aside and asked her to tone it down a bit. "You don't have to look like an evil clown, Sorrel," she said. "Try a Goth look. People tell me they're afraid you're going to pull a machete as soon as their backs are turned."

"A machete!" Sorrel exclaimed. "I should get one."

She grudgingly redid her makeup to stark white with heavily outlined eyes and black lipstick. Some days she added a huge teardrop under one eye, but her manager complained about that, too. But she liked her job and wanted to keep it, so she toed the line - barely.

"I think you look very nice," Voice told her, when she Looked in the mirror. "Much better than the punk rocker. You have pretty eyes."

Sorrel didn't want to be pretty. She wanted to blend in and go unnoticed. But being Awoken meant that she stood out among the sea of humans. Maybe someday she'd go live in the Reef, if she could escape notice as an Earthborn. Everybody looked like her out there.

She was working one afternoon, listening to music on one earbud, when a voice said, "Excuse me."

Sorrel turned and found herself face to face with the warlock in the white robe.

She stared at him, frozen, music blaring in her ear that she no longer heard. She was back on that roof, watching the warlock hiding the black globe. Now here he was, standing in front of her, looking as if he'd rather run away than force himself to talk to her. His smile wavered. Her first impression was that he was a new Guardian, like Max, and he was a wimp.

"Uh, yes?" Sorrel said, scrambling to remember that he had no idea she had taken the globe. "Can I help you?"

"Max Ross said to talk to you," said the warlock. "I'm Jayesh Khatri. Warlock, you know." He plucked the front of his robe. "He said you'd been looking for the guys who beat me up?"

Sorrel took a closer look at him. Jayesh had no bruises or obvious injuries. His Ghost would have healed him, of course. But he was fidgeting with nerves, so maybe the damage had been psychological.

"I've been looking," she said, pulling out her earbud and tucking it in her apron pocket. "But Max's description covers every Awoken guy out there. I don't know what else to look for, beyond tall blue guys with yellow eyes."

Her friendly tone seemed to reassure Jayesh. He relaxed a little, his fidgeting subsiding. "Sorry about that, I guess I should have written it down. Here, Phoenix, show her." He held out a hand and his Ghost appeared. He wore a bright red and yellow shell that matched his name.

Phoenix projected a hologram into the air and cycled through several snapshots. They made Sorrel slightly sick - images of three men, all bigger than Jayesh, shoving him around, stabbing him with black knives, their faces ugly with hate. The Ghost had only been able to help by taking clear images of their faces.

"Go back to the first one," Sorrel said. The Ghost obliged. "I've seen him," she said, pointing to one of the men with a combover haircut and glowing markings under his eyes. "He was in here a few days ago, buying bread and yeast stuff."

Jayesh nodded, studying the image. "He's the one who stabbed me when I didn't have the artifact. They knew I had taken it. Look." He pushed back the sleeve of the undershirt below his robe. His brown arm had a red slash across it, barely healed. "That's what those knives do - they're poisonous to Guardians."

"How did they jump you?" Sorrel asked, returning to putting things on shelves. "Guardians patrol this district all the time. We're supposed to be the safest one."

"I was the Guardian on patrol," Jayesh said. "My partner got called away for an emergency briefing that night, so I was alone."

Sorrel nodded and wondered how much she dared ask. "So ... this artifact. What did it look like?"

"This black sphere thing," Jayesh replied. "With gold lines across it. I've seen pictures of similar things from out in the Reef. Those three guys were huddled around it, working it somehow. Then they all just ... collapsed. Fainted. They dropped the sphere and it threatened to roll into traffic, so I grabbed it and hid it. But someone stole it before I could get back to it." He peered at her earnestly. "You - you're Awoken, right?"

"How could you tell?" Sorrel said flatly.

"Your eyes glow," Jayesh said. "I just wanted to say, I think the thing affects Awoken really strongly. If you happen across it, try not to touch it with your bare hands."

She remembered watching Jayesh look into the globe, then jerk his head back as if it had hurt him.

"Why?" she asked. "What's it do?"

Jayesh stroked his Ghost's shell. The Ghost closed his eye, enjoying this. "Well, it ... I think it's psychic. Kind of gets into your mind. I'm not Awoken, and it messed with me a little. Just saying. And somebody wants it bad enough to cut up Guardians for it. Be careful."

"I will," Sorrel said. It was too easy to imagine being jumped by three thugs and being stabbed to death.

"I'll let you get back to work," Jayesh said. "Thanks for keeping an eye out."

"You're welcome," Sorrel said, and watched him walk away.

"Nice guy," she thought to Voice. "But weak."

"What makes you think he's weak?" Voice asked.

Sorrel shrugged. "He's too nice. And he's a Guardian - he should have killed those guys."

"They attacked his Light," Voice replied. "Black knives? They used Weapons of Sorrow on him. You don't understand how deadly they are to Guardians. Read up on Dredgen Yor sometime, and how many Guardians he killed."

"I still think he's weak," Sorrel replied. "And why does everyone instantly peg me as Awoken? Can't I just be normal?"

"Your heritage is nothing to be ashamed of," Voice replied gently. "But it also doesn't define your character. Only you and your choices can do that."

Sorrel grumped inside her head. "People don't see my character."

"Maybe not at first," Voice replied. "But they'll judge you for your manners, and your tastes, and your decisions, good and bad. In the end, your race doesn't matter any more than the color of your shirt. What matters is who you are. That's what people remember."

Sorrel thought about this as she finished unloading her pallet. Then she wheeled it into the back and took out another. "So, that Jayesh guy. Once I started talking to him, I didn't care that his skin was brown. Just that he was a Guardian who actually got beat up. That's why I think he's weak. He's a warlock. He should have blown those guys sky high. Am I judging him by his character?"

"You're looking at a limited number of facts and making a snap decision," Voice replied. "You don't know why he didn't instantly kill them. Guardians take oaths of office when they join the Vanguard. One of them is to protect Cityfolk. He may have been trying to abide by his oath as far as possible."

"Well." Sorrel ripped paper wrappings off a box of cans. "I'm glad Max isn't in the Vanguard, then. Max needs to be strong."

"The Iron Lords have their own code of conduct," Voice replied. "Adhering to a set of laws isn't weakness, Sorrel. It's civilized."

Sorrel snorted and didn't reply. Instead, her thoughts turned to the black globe that could affect people's minds to the point of making three Awoken guys faint. Her race may not matter to other people, but when it came to a Reefborn artifact, race became a critical question. She was particularly vulnerable to its power, and she didn't like it.

That night, when she returned home, Sorrel made herself a quick dinner. Then she fetched the black globe out of its hiding place and took it to her armchair.

She and Voice Looked at it together. The surface had glints and swirls in its depths, as if the black glass obscured its mysterious inner workings. The gold bands turned out to shift when Sorrel pressed on them a certain way. Each one of the six slid along their tracks with a crisp click, a centimeter at a time.

"It's like a clock, sort of," Sorrel thought. "Or an analog computer."

"I fear that it's much more than that," Voice said. "This is a Reefborn artifact. You may not be aware of what Techeuns are capable of, but I've heard stories."

Sorrel lifted her head and stared into space. Voice was so close to talking about herself. How did she know so much about the Reef, even using the proper name for the Queen's tech witches? For a moment, Sorrel almost asked if Voice was another Awoken - a lost sister, maybe. Then she remembered the robotic way Voice sang and bit her mental tongue. Maybe Voice was a computer simulation of an Awoken.

Sorrel returned her attention to the globe. She rotated it this way and that, trying to see down inside it. "What do you think it's for, then?"

"I don't know," Voice replied. "But it'll be something powerful and dangerous beyond our reckoning. Something we can't even imagine. They brought this tech with them from their homeworld, and -"

Voice suddenly faded into the distance. Sorrel had found a spot where she could see into the sphere - or maybe a spot had turned transparent, like a window. Deep within the sphere was a spiral within a spiral, etched in blue light. It was beautiful and strange. The hairs on Sorrel's arms stood up, as if suddenly charged with static. She bent her head closer to the globe, trying to see better -

Something snatched at her mind.

It happened quicker than a breath, quicker than a heartbeat, quicker than an electron orbiting the nucleus of an atom. Something grasped at the surface of her mind, seeking a purchase, sharp as a scalpel, poisonous as arsenic. In that nanosecond, she sensed the power contained in the globe - a power trapped and rolled into its own dimension, angry, hungry, and intent on stealing her mind.

She jerked backward and dropped the globe. It hit the floor with a thunk and rolled across the living room, coming to rest against the wall.

It was a long moment before Voice came through again, sounding distant and anxious. "Sorrel? Sorrel! What happened? Sorrel, your mind is closed off. What did it do to you? Can you hear me?"

"I hear you," Sorrel thought at last. She watched that globe, waiting for it to open, or glow, or otherwise allow that thing inside it to escape and come after her. Her heart pounded against her ribs. Her mouth tasted of dry rubber.

"Thank the Light," Voice exclaimed. "What did that globe do to you?"

"There's something in it," Sorrel whispered inside her head. "It tried to snatch me away."

Voice made a whimpering, gasping sound and said nothing for a long moment. They both Looked at the black globe, which lay on the floor, seemingly innocent. But now Sorrel knew why Jayesh had flinched, and why three Awoken men had fainted.

"Do ... do you think," Sorrel ventured, "those men fainted because it got them?"

"Light preserve us," Voice whispered. "Imagine what would happen if they were - if they were Taken, somehow. Do you think it would have Taken you?"

"I don't know anything about it," Sorrel thought, her heart pounding harder. "Are Taken blue? I thought they burned black and white."

Voice didn't answer for a moment. Then she said, "Blue. No, that's not Taken. It's not anything else I can find out about. Is it just - sitting inside that sphere?"

"It's rolled up," Sorrel thought. "Like a jelly roll, but smaller and tighter. Tighter than air." She struggled to explain her sense of it. "Like - like someone took a bit of space and rolled it up until it was its own dimension."

Again, Voice didn't speak for a moment. When she did, her voice shook, as if holding back tears. "Cover the globe, Sorrel. Cover it and hide it. It must not see you again."

Sorrel jumped up, fetched a towel from the bathroom, and wrapped the globe in it, blinding the eye that looked and snatched. Then she crammed it back into the cabinet, in the dark, where it could see nothing.

Then she went to her room and sat in the corner, behind her bed, watching the doorway, expecting some otherworldly shape to come creeping after her. She sat there for a long time.

After a while, Voice ventured, "What will you do?"

"I'm getting rid of the globe," Sorrel thought. "I need to find some Reefborn Awoken who can take it off my hands. So ... how would I do that?"

"You could take it to the Vanguard," Voice suggested. "Give it to Jayesh and Max."

"But they'll think I stole it," Sorrel thought miserably. "I did steal it. And Jayesh got stabbed for it. What do you think they'd do to me if I turned up and said, oh yeah, sorry for lying, here's the globe, don't let it kill you?"

Voice said nothing for a while. Then she ventured, "They probably wouldn't prosecute. Max is your friend."

"I barely know him," Sorrel pointed out, even more miserably. "He's an Iron Lord and a Guardian and a detective. He'd be triple obliged to arrest me."

Voice sighed. After a while, she said, "You should probably get some sleep. Barricade your door."

Sorrel closed her door and dragged her dresser in front of it. Then she crawled into bed, but lay awake for a long time, listening for any sounds of movement in the hallway.

Sorrel dragged in to work the following day, tired from losing so much sleep. She barely had the energy to do her makeup, dabbing it on any old way to hide the Light under her skin. Yawning, she walked to work, clocked in, and began stocking the morning's shipment.

She was so groggy, she had stocked an entire aisle before she had any idea what time it was. She was supposed to look out for the angry-looking men who had attacked Jayesh, right? She tried to wake up and look around a little. But it was a slow Wednesday morning, and there weren't many customers at all.

She lapsed back into a near-stupor and mechanically put items on shelves. She had worked alone for some time when once more, something snatched at her brain.

It was fainter and weaker this time, but it was the same hunger and poison, the same touch of razor blades. Sorrel snapped wide awake in an instant.

One of the Awoken who had stabbed Jayesh stood at the far end of the aisle, staring at her. She recognized him - square jaw, hair shaved on both sides and long on top, yellow eyes like a wolf's.

"Voice," she thought, and Looked.

The man strode toward her, his gaze locked on Sorrel's. She backed away until she bumped into her pallet. Her mind was a whirling blank of panic. He had snatched at her the way the globe had! Should she scream and run? But he hadn't done anything, had he?

The stranger halted in front of her, eyes wide, pupils dilated. "You felt it," he murmured. "The call. You've touched the artifact. Where is it?"

Sorrel opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

The man shifted his weight, not exactly moving closer, but settling himself at her. His hands twitched at his sides, as if thinking of grabbing her. He had thick, muscular hands. "The artifact," he repeated. "I know you have it. The Guardian hid it, but we couldn't find it. It must have been you. Where is it?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Sorrel said, drawing herself up and willing her voice to come out rock steady. "But if you come any closer, I'll call security."

The man smiled and seemed to reconsider. "Well. Since you put it that way." He jerked his head at her. "Love the makeup." He turned and walked away.

Sorrel stood there until he turned the corner at the end of the aisle. Her heart was pounding and adrenaline heat raced through her veins.

"The globe marked you," Voice said, very softly. "All of you. You can sense anyone else who's touched it."

"But why?" Sorrel thought. "Oh Voice, I don't like this at all. What's it done to me?"

"I don't know," Voice whispered. "I wish I could -" She broke off and said nothing else.

Sorrel returned to her work, but her day had only begun to go downhill. When she took her lunch break, her manager called her into the office.

"I've had another customer complaining about the makeup, Sorrel," her manager said. "I'm afraid I either have to ask you to leave it off, or dismiss you from your position."

Sorrel's breath caught. No job meant no rent, no food, begging her mother to take her back in. But giving up the makeup meant dealing with her Awoken looks, and that was its own punch in the gut.

"I'll leave the makeup off," she stammered. "Please don't fire me."

"I don't want to," her manager replied. "But taking the day shift means you interact with more customers, and I have to put customers first."

Sorrel tried to swallow down the dryness in her mouth. "Could I go back on graveyard, then?"

"I'll look at next week's schedule," her manager replied. "But you're on the day shift the rest of this week."

Sorrel nodded. "I'll wash the makeup off right now."

She went to the restroom and soaked the paint off in hot water. Her ordinary face emerged, the green eyes ringed by thick lashes, the Light rippling in a crescent across her left cheek. She rubbed it with a paper towel, but the crescent remained.

Moonface, the children at school had called her. Glowing Moonface. Instead of fading as she had grown older, the crescent had only become more pronounced. Without the makeup to conceal it, the whole world would see her for what she was - an Awoken with an embarrassing Lightmark.

She hastily crammed her lunch, then crept back to work, hoping nobody would look at her. And of course, that was the afternoon that every customer in the store needed her help. She spent more time giving people the location of items, information about prices, and listening to them talk, than she did working.

By the end of the day, she was exhausted from stress and lack of sleep. She dragged home and found her apartment door standing open.

Every cabinet and drawer in her apartment had been opened and rifled through. The cabinet under the sink was wide open, the black globe gone. It was the only thing missing.

Sorrel stood in the middle of the wreckage and cried. She cried as she tidied up, and she cried as she crawled into bed. Her self-identity had been stripped from her and the sanctity of her home had been violated in the same day. She couldn't call the police, because she'd have to admit that she'd stolen the globe from a Guardian in the first place. The man in the store must have complained about her makeup in order to find out her name. From there, it was a simple matter of looking up her address. The men who had used Weapons of Sorrow on a Guardian knew where she lived.

"Well, the globe is gone," Voice said in her head. "So they can't prosecute you for theft now."

"No evidence," Sorrel thought. "It's not much comfort, though, Voice. Now it's at large, and there's some horrible thing inside it. And it's marked me, whatever that means."

"You need to tell Max and Jayesh," Voice said firmly. "There's no point in hiding it anymore. You're all on the same side. And you need to warn them what they're dealing with."

Jayesh had flinched ... maybe he was marked, too, and didn't know it. And poor Max needed to know so he did don't go looking into the globe, too. Sorrel gazed at the ceiling, realizing she had skipped dinner, but too sick to eat. She had to tell someone. If those men came back, she wouldn't stand a chance. She didn't even have a weapon. What good would a gun be against people under control of the intelligence inside the globe, anyway? They might become attack zombies and feel no pain.

"I'll send Max a message," Voice said. "I can do that much for you. Maybe he can meet us on your lunch break tomorrow."

Sorrel frowned. "You can send messages? How?"

Voice hesitated before answering. "I'm connected to a computer mainframe. I can do a limited number of things through it."

Sorrel couldn't resist asking. "Are you an artificial intelligence, then?"

"Please, don't ask," Voice said, sounding - wounded? Sad? Frustrated? Maybe all three. "I told you never to ask."

"I'm sorry," Sorrel thought. "Send a message, then. I can't keep this to myself anymore. I've put too many lives in danger ... maybe the whole City."

"Maybe you were meant to know Max for just such a time as this," Voice replied.

"Meant?" Sorrel said. "By who?"

"The Light," Voice replied. "It does more than empower Guardians, you know. It's engaged in a vast chess match against the Darkness at all times, and we are its pawns. Perhaps it positioned you where you are now in order to put a stop to the intents of the creature in that globe."

Sorrel thought about this for a while. It was both frightening and reassuring. But she was driven to ask, "Does the Light know about you?"

Voice made a faint noise, almost a sob. "The Light has discarded me," she whispered. "Don't ask any more."

And Sorrel didn't. But she wondered.

Chapter Text

That same evening, up in the Tower dormitories, Max was studying a thick book of City laws and ordinances, taking page after page of notes. His tiny room held a bed, a sofa, a table with a laptop computer, and a stack of video games. His small collection of two rifles and three handguns hung on the wall, easily accessible. His Hunter armor was scattered around the floor, and he sat at the table in a t-shirt and cutoff shorts. Despite the cool breeze flowing in the tiny window, his room was hot from the sun beating in all day.

His Ghost, Zero, was snuggled into a pillow on the table a few inches from his notebook. She alternately dozed and opened her blue eye to check on him, for all the world like a friendly pet. Every so often, he reached over and ran his fingers over her blue shell. It was a simple, wordless gesture of the deep friendship between them.

But now, Zero opened her eye and floated a few inches into the air. "I'm receiving a very strange transmission."

Max looked up from his book, his blue eyes slightly glazed. "What?"

"It's a message." Zero's shell ticked back and forth, as if it helped her think. "This is ... unusual. It says that Sorrel Atkin would like to meet us for lunch at one o'clock tomorrow ... but the message originates from Owl Sector."

Max sat up straighter, rubbing the haze from his eyes, pushing back his mop of blond hair. "Owl Sector? Aren't they that City research facility with all the secret tech?"

"They are," Zero said. "But it's a message on Sorrel's behalf. What in the Traveler's shadow ...?"

"Can you reply?" Max said. "I mean, one o'clock is right in the middle of class, but I can turn in my assignment early."

"I'll try." Zero floated there a moment, gazing into the distance. Max watched her and waited, his mind filling with questions.

"I replied that the time worked for us," Zero said at last. "They sent back a ping to acknowledge. This is so strange. The header doesn't match any AI type I'm familiar with, but the format is similar to what we Ghosts use. Yet it came through the City network and not the Light channel."

"Huh." Max raked his hair out of his eyes. "I wonder if Sorrel knows this entity is arranging this on her behalf?"

"We won't know until tomorrow," Zero said.

Max sighed and looked at his notes. "I'm going to turn in for the night, I think. Any other messages?"

Zero didn't answer.

He looked up. "Zero?"

She looked away. "You have a ... few."

"Messages? Come on, you're supposed to let me know as soon as something arrives."

"Well ..." Zero flew in a small circle. "They're from Erica."

"Erica?" Max exclaimed. "Why didn't you tell me? What do they say? Display interface."

Zero unwillingly displayed a holographic interface of buttons and a screen. Max touched buttons and called up Erica's messages. Four of them, all extremely long. Max settled in to read them.

Erica had written each letter several days apart, talking about herself, their old relationship, and how she wanted to start over with something new and fresh. "After all, you're a Guardian now. You're not the awkward teenager you were when we met."

The first two letters were very warm and friendly, and made Max's heart pound in a not-unpleasant way. But when he hadn't replied after two days, her third message was full of hurt and questions. The fourth message was full of veiled threats of how she would walk out of his life altogether if he didn't respond.

"Invite her to lunch tomorrow, too," Max said, as soon as he finished reading.

"Do you think that's wise?" Zero asked. "She's kind of mean, Max."

"Only because you hid her letters from me!" Max said. "If I'd replied right away, she wouldn't have gotten mad."

Guardian and Ghost glared at one another.

Zero caved first. "I'm sorry, Max," she said softly. "I'll notify you of any further communications as soon as they arrive. I shouldn't have kept these from you."

"That's better," Max muttered, opening his laptop. "I'm not sure I want you filtering my email anymore. Any other messages I should know about?"

"That was all," Zero said.

Max checked his messages manually, and found that Erica's messages had been mixed with a load of spam that Zero had moved to a Junk folder. Maybe she had been doing her job, after all.

Max wrote Erica an apologetic letter, agreeing that they ought to get back together, but pleading for patience because of his full schedule. He also invited her to a working lunch the following day.

He sent that message, stared at his screen for a while, then sent an invite to Jayesh. "Might as well bring him along. I can touch base with him about the artifact investigation on the way."

Zero nodded, but didn't say anything. She landed on her pillow, chastised, and was quietly trying not to offend him any further. If he concentrated, he could sense her shamed feelings. Their mental bond wasn't strong yet, and feeling her in his brain still took effort. He reached over and stroked her shell again. "No harm done, little girl Ghost. I'm sorting things out."

"Thanks," she whispered.

The four of them met for lunch at a sandwich shop not far from Sorrel's grocery store. Max and Jayesh rode down together on Max's sparrow - Jayesh didn't have one, yet.

As they secured a table and waited for the women to arrive, Max asked Jayesh about the investigation.

"Haven't heard much," Jayesh said, combing his fingers through his wavy hair until it stood up in spikes. "I've been working patrols down here almost every night, and it's been quiet. The Cormorant Blade are waiting for any news from their contacts. Even the Hidden haven't seen anything on the markets. Wherever that artifact is, it's buried deep."

"Or it's been smuggled out of the City," Max said.

Jayesh shook his head. "I don't think so. The artifact gives off a strong delta signal. It couldn't make it through the checkpoints. And it can't be transmatted. My Ghost tried."

"How're your cuts?"

Jayesh pulled back his sleeve and displayed a healing scab. "Getting better, slowly. Medical warlocks have been treating me with this spirit bloom salve. Amplifies a Ghost's healing beam by a thousand percent. Phoenix has completely healed some of the other wounds."

"Glad to hear it," Max said. "Too bad about the artifact, though. That worries me. We don't know why it's here or what they plan to do with it."

"All I know is that border patrol asked for Guardians to please look out for an object giving off a delta signal," Jayesh said. "And I was the chump who picked up the signal and tracked it down. I don't know how it got into the City in the first place."

"Too many questions," Max muttered, watching the street through the front windows. "I don't like having this many questions."

Erica pulled in and parked her tiny car outside, took a moment to arrange her sleek black hair just so, then climbed out and entered the restaurant. She wore a brief black dress with a plunging neckline, and high heels that shaped her legs into perfect S-curves. Jayesh and Max both stared as she approached, and so did every other male in the place.

"Hello, Maxy," she said, smoothing her dress and sitting at their table. "Who's your friend?"

"Uh," Max stammered, "uh, this is Jayesh Khatri. He's a warlock. I mentioned this is a working lunch?"

"This is what I wear to work," Erica laughed. She extended a hand to Jayesh, adorned with beautifully manicured nails. "Erica West, Max's ex-girlfriend, but not for much longer."

Jayesh shook her hand, his dark skin blushing raspberry.

"Now, Max," Erica said, turning in her chair so he had full view of her cleavage, "you'll make sure to answer my emails right away next time, won't you?"

Max tried to only look her in the face, but failed several times in succession. "Y-yes, of course I will. I only missed those because of my Ghost."

Erica tilted her head to one side. Her smile showed a few too many teeth. "Your Ghost?"

"She, uh, made a mistake over my messages. She's still learning how to filter them."

"Ah." Erica folded her hands on the tabletop, smiled at Jayesh, then at Max. "Well, I'm sure it won't happen again. Maxy and I are trying to get back together," she added to Jayesh. "He's so busy, it's a little difficult, so we're writing to each other. Isn't it romantic?"

Jayesh nodded, already intimidated into silence.

Erica returned her attention to Max. "Do you like this dress? I bought it yesterday at that new fashion shop in the Core District. Do you like it? It was only five thousand glimmer."

Max choked a little. "Five - thousand?"

"Oh yes," Erica said. "I'll expect lots more like it once we're together again. I'm sure a working Guardian like you has plenty of glimmer lying around. Enough to buy a girl a few trinkets to assure her of your affection."

Max was horrified, but tried to nod and smile. "Oh - right. We'll have to talk about that. Later." He glanced at Jayesh for support, but the warlock was gazing out the front windows. Max followed his gaze and realized why.

An Awoken girl was walking to the restaurant doors. She had fair skin and indigo hair that fell in ringlets around her face, her features smooth and perfect in the way only an Awoken could be. She wore a t-shirt tucked into jeans, but because of the way she carried herself, her feminine beauty somehow stood out more than Erica's obvious attempts. As she opened the door and walked in, every eye was drawn to her. But this time it was less about ogling too much skin and more like admiring a painting.

For a moment, Max had no idea why this amazing-looking girl was approaching their table. It wasn't until she hesitated and said, "Oh, I didn't expect a crowd," that he recognized her as Sorrel. He'd never seen her without the black and white makeup.

He glanced at the expression on Erica's face and suddenly realized he'd made an awful mistake, inviting her to this meeting. But his neck was already in the noose, and he had no choice but to go through with this. He smiled and pushed out a chair for Sorrel. "It's fine! You already know Jayesh. And this is Erica West."

"We've met," Erica said, making no move to shake hands. "Forget your raccoon face today, Atkin?"

"Yeah," Sorrel said vaguely. As she sat down, Max realized that Sorrel was so absorbed in some inner turmoil, she barely registered Erica's jibes. Her movements were too controlled, her face still, her mouth set in a downward curve of unhappiness.

Sorrel glanced around the restaurant, as if checking for eavesdroppers. "Max, have they found the artifact?"

Max awoke from the hypnosis of watching her hair curl against her neck. "Unfortunately, no. Jayesh and I were talking about it before we got here. Not a word."

Sorrel gazed at Jayesh, her green eyes suddenly brightening. Max had time to study the glowing crescent mark on her cheek, the way it traveled from the corner of her eye to nearly her chin. At first it looked like a scar - then he realized it pulsed faintly with her heartbeat. It fascinated him.

"Jayesh," Sorrel blurted, "I'm so sorry. I'm the one who took the artifact after you hid it."

She might as well have dashed ice water in all their faces. Max caught his breath. Jayesh leaned back, his mouth falling open. Only Erica shook her head slightly and said, "I'm sorry, what? What artifact?"

Sorrel ignored her, her attention fixed on Jayesh.

"Why?" he asked. "Why did you take it?"

"Because I thought you stole it," Sorrel replied. She turned to Max. "I was sitting on the roof, watching the sun go down, and here comes this super nervous Guardian with an Awoken artifact. And he hides it. I took it to keep it safe."

"Wait a minute," Jayesh said. "My Ghost scanned that rooftop. There was nobody there."

"I was behind a big vent," Sorrel said. "I suppose it blocked his signal."

"No," Jayesh said, brows drawing together in a worried expression. "He can scan cluttered areas fine. There was nobody there."

He held out a hand and summoned his Ghost in his red and yellow shell. Phoenix scanned Sorrel and gave the Ghost equivalent of a shrug. "She's here now. Maybe I just missed her."

"Setting that aside," Max broke in, leaning an elbow on the table, "Sorrel, where's the artifact now?"

Max hated to see the look of panic that crossed Sorrel's shapely face. She bit her lower lip and hunched her shoulders. "Someone broke into my apartment last night. They tore the place up looking for it. It's gone."

"Likely story," Erica broke in with a sharp laugh. "She probably handed it off to a buyer. I know her kind."

Sorrel slowly turned until she met Erica's gaze. "Why are you even here?"

"Maxy invited me," Erica said with a smile. "Because I'm his girlfriend. Don't forget that little fact, miss Awoken."

Sorrel abruptly rose to her feet. "I'm sorry. I have to go."

She was halfway to the door when Max caught up to her. He had to call on his Hunter swiftness to do it - Sorrel was almost running. "Hey," he said, touching her arm. "Wait, don't take off."

Sorrel pushed through the restaurant doors, but halted on the sidewalk outside, arms folded and head bowed. "I need to talk to you," she said so softly that Max had to bend close to hear. "But not in front of her. Or Jayesh."

Max summoned Zero with a thought. "Where can you transmat us where we can have some privacy?"

Zero emoted a smile. Then she transmatted them onto the roof of the eight-story apartment building, which was only a few blocks away.

Sorrel sat down on a long air vent that formed a sort of bench. Max sat beside her. A fresh autumn breeze lifted his hair. It fluttered in Sorrel's curls, somehow making the desperation on her face that much worse. They gazed across the rooftops to the Traveler in the distance, the sky a clear blue feathered with clouds.

"What do you need to say?" he asked as gently as he could.

Those green eyes turned to him, framed by long lashes that made his heart catch in his chest.

"Jayesh said he saw those men faint from looking into the artifact," she said. "And I know why. I looked into it, and ... and there's something inside it. Something that tries to get into your mind."

Max blinked. This was so unexpectedly horrible, he had to look at the horizon and process it for a moment.

"There's more," Sorrel went on. "It didn't take my mind, but it left a mark. I was working yesterday, and I felt the ... the intelligence touch me. But it wasn't the artifact. It was one of the muggers. He sensed me because he was marked, too. He knew I'd looked into the globe. He complained to my manager about my makeup in order to learn my name. And I think he robbed my apartment."

"So, wait," Max said. "Traveler's Light. That artifact is some kind of evil space magic?"

"It's not magic," Sorrel said. "It's a being, all rolled up and locked inside that globe. I think it could escape if it could get access to the right mind. And those men have it back."

Max tried to grasp the implications of this. As he did, Zero flew forward and scanned Sorrel's forehead. "I do detect signs of recent tampering," she said. "If you were a computer network, I'd say that it opened a proxy that should be closed. Your mental defenses are down. You need to put them back up - think about prime numbers, or poetry, or anything with a rhythm you can focus on. Practice that until you can block out the search function of that being."

Sorrel nodded, looking from Zero, to Max, and back. "I'll do it. But ... what do we do? Will you send me to jail, Max? Or will the Vanguard prosecute me?"

Max had been studying the laws for this sort of thing as part of his police academy training. "Based on what you've told me, yes, I probably could. But you're also fully cooperating with the police and Vanguard now. Right?"

Sorrel nodded violently.

"So," Max went on, "since no record was made of your confession, and the artifact is no longer in your possession, any case would be dismissed as hearsay. I'd rather not arrest you ... unless you want me to? Would you feel safer in a cell at the police station overnight?"

Sorrel blinked at him, then laughed a little and looked down, knotting her fingers in her lap. "No, I ... I don't want to go to jail. I wanted to give you the artifact before this, but I thought you'd arrest me."

"I might have," Max said. "Mind you, I'm not a real detective yet, and I don't have that authority. But ... thanks for coming clean. Nobody has seen a trace of that artifact, and there's a lot of people looking. If it's at large, I can spread the word. We have descriptions of the suspects and tools for tracking the artifact. We'll find it, probably in the next few days."

Sorrel let out a long breath and wrapped her arms around herself. "Thanks," she whispered. "I've been so scared. And that thing went for my mind." She turned to him so suddenly that he flinched. "Don't look into the globe, understand? Cover it. Don't let it see you."

Max found himself gazing into her earnest green eyes, her gorgeous face and full lips only inches from his own. It took every ounce of self control to lean away from her and say, "Of course I will. I probably won't even see it once they find it."

Light, he wanted to kiss her. On her best day, Erica had never made him feel this way before. He mentally shook himself and tried to snap out of it. He barely knew Sorrel. All Awoken girls were pretty - he was just being stupid.

Sorrel abruptly stood and gazed across the cityscape, arms folded. "I wish this had never happened," she muttered. "Anyway, can you send us back? I need to get back to work."

"Right, sure." Max nodded to Zero, who transmatted them back into the sidewalk outside the restaurant. Sorrel immediately hurried away without a backward glance. Max reentered the restaurant.

He'd left Jayesh alone with Erica, and Jayesh was looking frazzled. His hair stood up where he'd been fidgeting with it. Erica was leaning toward him, telling him some story he didn't want to hear, as Max walked up.

Erica broke off with an angry smile and turned to him as he sat down. "Miss Awoken sure has your attention, doesn't she? Where'd you go?"

"Not far," Max said. Erica's presence distressed him, now. Why didn't he feel the same way about her that he did about Sorrel? He should want to spend time with her - they'd been together once already. And a week ago, he'd been eager to renew the relationship. But now he was confused, and upset, and had tons of work to do. And he didn't really want to deal with Erica at the moment.

Jayesh straightened. "What'd she say?"

"The trail is hot," Max said. "We can catch them if I can get enough people looking."

"You just went off with a dumb Awoken girl," Erica snapped, "and you come back and all you want to talk about is business?"

Anger began to build inside Max, and this distressed him even more. "You don't understand," he said, turning to Erica. "This is about tracking down dangerous criminals. It has nothing to do with our relationship. All right?"

Erica pouted. "All right. I'll believe it when I see it." She rose to her feet. "I'm not hungry anymore, Maxy. I'll see you later." She sashayed out of the restaurant.

Max didn't breathe properly until Erica was safely gone. Then he turned to Jayesh. "Did you look into the artifact?" he asked in a low voice.

Jayesh nodded.

Max explained about the entity inside that tried to steal minds.

"I felt that," Jayesh said. "But my Ghost blocked it. He ... fought it, kind of, with my Light."

His Ghost appeared in a flash of Light. "I did, and Jayesh is unhurt. But that thing tried. It's strong. I've never felt anything like it."

"Well, it damaged Sorrel," Max said. "Zero detected gaps in her mental defenses. We have to be careful."

Jayesh studied Max a moment. "I think you should be careful."

"What? Why?" Max sank back in his chair.

Jayesh glanced toward the door, in the direction Erica had gone. "I don't want to knock your choice in women ... but Erica's not good for you. The things she was saying while you were gone? If I were you, I'd duck and cover."

"Well, you're not me," Max said in a flash of rage. He leaped to his feet. "Let's go."

They rode back to the Tower in silence, and parted ways in silence. Max needed to sort out the Erica problem alone, when it was quiet, and now wasn't the time. Right now, he had a manhunt to begin.

Chapter Text

While Max was busy talking to people, Zero quietly contacted Jayesh's Ghost, Phoenix. The Light communication network was instantaneous and let Ghosts communicate all over the system, with varying amounts of delay, depending on distance.

"Hello, Zero," Phoenix replied to her query. "What's up?"

"Did you scan Sorrel Atkin?" Zero asked.

"I did," Phoenix replied.

"What did you think of her Light profile?"

Phoenix didn't answer for a long second. "Well ... the fact that she has a Light profile baffles me. She should be a Guardian. But she's not."

"I saw that, too," Zero said. "So it's not just my scanner breaking down. Do you think it's because she's Awoken?"

"No," Phoenix replied. "Other civilian Awoken don't have Light like that. Do you think a Ghost found her at some point, but she drove it off? Or it was killed somehow?"

"That's all I can think of," Zero said. "And ... I think there's some connection with Owl Sector. Messages from her are relayed through their network."

"Owl Sector!" Phoenix exclaimed. "Do you think Sorrel is some kind of walking experiment?"

"I'm starting to wonder," Zero replied. "Was she really on that roof the night the artifact was stolen?"

Phoenix said, "Well. Um. You see." He stopped, then went on, "She could have been there. When a Hunter uses Void Light to cloak themselves, I can't pick them up. So, if she was hiding ... and she was using Light like a Guardian ..."

"But without a Ghost?" Zero exclaimed. "She might use Light without anyone to guide her and seriously hurt someone."

"The only proof we have is our scans of her Light," Phoenix warned. "We'd better be very careful before we start spreading rumors. The girl's already been compromised by the artifact."

"Max is crushing on her something terrible," Zero sighed. "I'm afraid none of this will end well."

"Traveler's Light," Phoenix muttered. "That Erica woman is a Dreg in a dress. She was telling Jayesh about the other men she's dated and dumped, but only after she cleaned out their bank accounts. You'd better watch out for him."

Zero chirped in dismay. "So that's her game. I didn't think she really liked Max, as a person. You don't abandon a friend when they find out they have cancer, for instance."

"Erica is nobody's friend except her own," Phoenix said. "I'm worried Max will dump her and she'll go after Jay, next. And he's engaged."

Zero brightened. "Really? To who?"

Phoenix told her the long tale of Jayesh and Kari, members of the same fireteam who had been secretly sweet on each other for years. "And I'm not letting some gold digger wreck that," he concluded.

"Me neither," Zero agreed. "But I think Max will handle it. He's matured a lot over the last few years. Lord Saladin was good for him. Acted like the father Max never really had. When Max makes up his mind to get rid of Erica, she'd better watch out."

"I hope he gets rid of her sooner rather than later," Phoenix muttered. "My Guardian has enough worries right now without that, too."

Sorrel dreamed about the spider again.

She was standing beneath the thousands of legs in the dimness, hearing the echoes of footsteps in the distance. The spider's black body was motionless, the eye still closed. But soon it would open and notice her - as soon as it heard her heartbeat.

She peered around in the gloom, trying to understand the dream. Why was she here? What was this place? But the spider's legs enfolded her like a forest, blocking her view.

She stared at the black body, trying to stay calm, but beginning to panic, anyway. As if on cue, the eye slid open. But tonight, instead of white, the eye was burning ultraviolet that stung her eyes. An aura surrounded it, shimmering and rippling with power.

A leg stirred toward her, the claws open. It grabbed the top of her head. Poison blades slid across the surface of her mind. Cunning and hunger. It probed her subconscious, her memory, her secrets, the building blocks of her personality. Sorrel screamed inside herself, but her mouth made no sound. Any minute now, and it would begin devouring her mind.

Light flashed behind her eyes. Voice yelled strange words.

Sorrel awoke on the floor beside her bed. She had been tearing at her own head with her fingernails - her fingers were full of torn hair and spots of blood. Her first thought was that the being had escaped the artifact and was in the room with her. She struggled to her feet, staring wildly around, groping for the light switch.

Her apartment was boring and ordinary, doors and windows still locked. No intruders. No monsters. No more feelings in her head of blades and hunger. And her scalp was starting to hurt.

Sorrel washed her hands and applied a little salve to the scratches on her head. Still smarting, she climbed back in bed and stared at the ceiling, all the lights still on.

"That dream was worse, Voice," she thought.

"I know," Voice replied, sounding exhausted. "It came for you in your sleep. It took all my strength to hold it off."

"You - held it off?"

"Don't ask me anything," Voice said slowly. "I have to rest now." She said nothing else.

Sorrel lay there, heart still pounding, trying to think this through. Voice had some kind of psychic connection with her. And she could interfere with an enemy connection. Not only that, but she had beaten off an attack from the artifact monster.

What was Voice? There had to be a way to find out. But Sorrel couldn't figure out how.

She lay there and thought about anything but the dream. Her mind wandered back to that ill-fated lunch where nobody ate anything, and Erica had taunted her in front of Max and Jayesh. They had all seen Sorrel without her makeup. And Max -

Sorrel pressed her fists against her eyes. Max hadn't taken his eyes off her. He'd been far more kind and attentive than normal, and -

"No!" Sorrel said aloud. "No, no, no!" She pulled her other pillow over her face and screamed into it. "I don't want him as a boyfriend, I just want to be friends! I hate being Awoken! My stupid face ruins everything!"

She curled into a ball and gazed at her bedside lamp. She'd just avoid him, that was all. She'd carry makeup and if they had to meet up, she'd paint her face. If a mask was what was required to keep him at a distance, then a mask she would wear.

Her stupid face was the reason she'd had no friends since her teen years. Women envied her and men were physically attracted to the point where they no longer saw her as a person. After one young man had forcibly kissed her at school, Sorrel had taken to painting her face in fearsome black and white, hiding her looks. The unwanted attention stopped, but nobody wanted to go near her, either.

So she had grown up lonely and ashamed of her looks. Max had been the first guy to ever talk to her in a friendly way, as if she was a person with actual thoughts and feelings. He hadn't been too intimidated by the makeup - and they often worked together, because he managed the New Monarchy shipments. Even after becoming a Guardian, he'd still acted normal. She thought of him as a kid brother. But now, he'd seen her real face. Like all the rest, the physical attraction had kicked in. She was back to being an object, not a person, and Max would never treat her the same way again. One more friend lost.

Meanwhile, a monster was attacking her mind, Voice had gone silent, and the artifact was at large, in the hands of three shady Awoken. And Sorrel's looks had ruined her friendship with the one person who could have helped her. It was probably small and petty - but right now, it was a huge, suffocating weight of unbearable shame.

She cried herself to sleep, curled up beneath the blankets, too scared to turn off the lights.

The next morning, she was eating breakfast, tired and brain-fogged from having her sleep disrupted. Suddenly, Voice said in her head, "Sorrel, have you read the news today?"

With a sense of foreboding, Sorrel pulled out her phone and looked up City news.

Four people found dead in the Tower and Northwest Districts - dragged from their homes and murdered. Cause of death were burns in the shape of handprints on the victims's necks and bodies. Some burns had gone straight through bone and muscle. High amounts of radiation had been detected on all four corpses.

Sorrel read this, bewildered and unnerved. "Voice, what does this have to do with anything?"

"The men with the artifact did it," Voice said.

Sorrel frowned. "How do you know?"

"Because ..." Voice trailed off. "Don't ask me how I know, all right? But I've seen this sort of death before. Especially the radiation. The monster in the artifact figured out how to use people as vessels. Remember, it tried to take you over last night? I'll bet it got them in their sleep. Only there was no one to protect their minds."

Sorrel looked for other articles, found pictures of the corpses, and lost her appetite. She cleaned up her dishes and left for work. "Hey, Voice, send Max a message for me, will you? Just ... ask how close his team are to finding the artifact. Since people have started dying."

"All right," Voice replied. "I'll read you his reply."

Sorrel clocked in at work and was hauling in a pallet of goods to shelve, when Voice said, "Response from Max."

"Read it," Sorrel thought.

"Sorrel, no luck on finding the artifact yet. We're pretty sure those murders last night were connected with it. We're hunting hard for the suspects - that much radiation should be easy to locate. Any tips would be appreciated! Signed Max."

No mention of feelings or dates or anything. All business. Maybe Max wasn't as infatuated as she'd assumed. Sorrel set to work stocking an empty shelf and reminded herself to watch customers.

None of Jayesh's muggers appeared that day. But plenty of male customers stopped to chat with Sorrel, much to her chagrin. By the end of her shift, she was tempted to beg her manager for the graveyard shift again, just to escape. Moving to the Reef and blending in with the other Awoken sounded better and better all the time.

"Voice," she thought, "what would it take to move to the Reef?"

"The Reef?" Voice said in dismay. "Why would you want to go there?"

"Because I wouldn't stand out there. All the Awoken are blue and beautiful. I'd be normal."

"You're Earthborn," Voice replied. "The Reefborn view Earthborn as cousins, at best. They're not allowed permanent residence there. The most you could hope for is a bunk at the Vestian Outpost. They'd never let you into the Reef proper."

Sorrel groaned inwardly. "Where do I belong, then? Humans treat me differently, and there's not enough Earthborn Awoken around here to blend with. What do I do?"

"Become a Guardian?" Voice suggested.

"Be serious," Sorrel snapped. "I can't be a Guardian with no Ghost, and I don't want to be one, anyway. Besides, what makes you think it'd be any better in the Tower? A lot of Guardians are humans."

"Higher Awoken to human ratio," Voice replied. "I think you'd be more comfortable, socially. And you could find your dad."

"I could kill him a few times," Sorrel thought with an audible laugh. "But I can do that without being a Guardian." Her amusement faded. The Reef wasn't an option. She was stuck in the City, with her dreary, lonely life, doomed to have no friends, only eager lovers waiting in the wings. She'd have to do something drastic.

"I could run away," she thought. "Leave the City. Take my chances in the wilds."

"No," Voice said softly.

When she added nothing else, Sorrel thought, "No elaborate arguments this time? Just 'no'?"

"I couldn't communicate with you out there," Voice said.

Sorrel froze with her hand halfway to a shelf. "Wait. You can only communicate with me in the City?"

Silence.

"Are you using wireless signals to talk to me? Do I have a chip in my head?"

Further silence.

Sorrel pushed harder. "Voice ... I'm going to figure out what you are, eventually. Can't you just tell me?"

"No," Voice moaned. "I can't. It would break your mind. And maybe your heart."

In her voice was the same shame that tormented Sorrel. How could that be? What did Voice have to be ashamed of? Unless she was some evil computer designed to track Sorrel's every move. Maybe Sorrel's looks were part of some grand experiment, and she was under observation at all times. She glanced at the store's security cameras and shivered.

That first murder became a string of murders. Three or four people died every night after a home invader dragged them outdoors and killed with with a burning touch. Radiation lingered about the corpses. Night after night, more people died. And the murders seemed to be moving in a line toward the Core District, beneath the Traveler. People began to panic.

Max and Jayesh stood looking at a map in the Tower's Cormorant Blade office. Sitting at the desk was Max's friend, detective Paul Johansson. He was the only overweight Guardian in the Vanguard, because his Ghost resurrected him that way whenever he died. So he mostly worked at a desk, applying his Light-powered intellect to crimes involving Guardians and the paracausal.

The three Guardians studied the map, where Paul had marked the murders with red pins. They were moving in a crooked line toward the center of the City.

"I'm trying to understand the pattern," Paul said. "All serial killers have a pattern. So far it's been four, three, three, four. No distinction is made between men or women, although so far only adults have been targeted."

Jayesh tapped his tablet, which lay on the desk beside the map. "All but one of the victims was Awoken. Surely that means something."

"Yes," Paul mused. "I wonder if the killer is feeding on Light. Awoken have a greater amount of innate Light than humans. The one human killed may have carried enough Light for Guardian eligibility. Shame, that."

Max listened in silence, thinking of Sorrel's green eyes and her mention of how she had been marked. A sick feeling wormed through his gut. Just because the killer appeared to be moving away from her didn't mean they couldn't double back. He was filled with an irrational desire to beg her to move into the Tower.

"Now," Jayesh went on, "do we know if there's any connection to the artifact?"

Paul sat back in his chair with a long squeak of springs. "Only suspicions. I've sent word to the Vestian Outpost, requesting aid in this matter. I hate to admit to the Reef that we have one of their artifacts, but what else can I do? No reply as of this morning."

Jayesh made a face.

Paul tilted his head toward Max. "You've been awfully quiet, Maximilian. What're you chewing on?"

"It might be nothing," Max replied. "But then ... it might be everything."

Jayesh gave him a sideways look. He knew why Max was reluctant to talk about Sorrel.

Max's cheeks grew warm. "I can't shield her, Jay. People are dying."

Paul raised a bushy eyebrow.

Max haltingly told him about what Sorrel had told him, how she had taken the globe, but something inside it had tried to infiltrate her brain. When he added the detail about being marked, Paul slowly straightened in his chair.

When Max finished, Paul said, "But there's the answer. It's so simple."

"What?" Max said, baffled.

Jayesh was on Paul's wavelength. "Sorrel can track the killer for us."

"Right," Paul said. "If anyone touched by the artifact can sense others, then all she has to do is move close enough to sense the killer's hiding place. We haven't been able to determine where they hide during the day. But this ... the girl is a paracausal bloodhound. She can lead us straight to them."

"But they'll sense her, too," Max pointed out. "They'll kill her."

"That's why she won't go alone," said Jayesh, straightening. Sparks of sky-blue Light danced in his brown eyes. "We'll escort her every step of the way."

"And how do we stop this thing if it feeds on Light?" Max retorted. "The route the killer is taking is straight through residential blocks. It's illegal for a Guardian to use a supercharge in residential areas. We'll be limited to light and medium firearms only. And, I might add, the thing is radioactive."

"If this girl's report is true," said Paul, "then we're dealing with humans with their minds overthrown, not the creature itself. Use extreme force, if you deem it necessary. The citizens of our City must be protected. They certainly can't protect themselves against this thing."

"There's a reason we're called Guardians," Max agreed. "But I think we might need more than one fireteam for this. That way we can corral the killer, block potential avenues of escape and such."

"I'll invite Kari," Jayesh said, brightening. "She's a Stormcaller, does things with lightning I've never seen anyone else do."

For a fraction of a second, Max envied Jayesh the eagerness in his face, the way he spoke about his fiancé. Then he brushed it aside. Sorrel didn't need his stupid crush right now - in fact, he didn't need this stupid crush right now. He forced himself to think of Erica, but somehow, the thought of her didn't shine in his mind the way Sorrel did.

"Right," Paul was saying. "I'll arrange for the Cormorant Blade to run dispatch and support. Three fireteams should do it. Jayesh, do you have a full team?"

"Yes sir," Jayesh replied. "Kari, Madrid, and me are a crack squad."

"Good." Paul turned to Max. "What about you? Fireteam?"

Max was caught off guard. "Well, uh. Not really. I'm not technically with the Vanguard, so I haven't been assigned one."

Jayesh clapped him on the shoulder. "Run with us! Plenty of room for a fourth. Two Hunters, two Warlocks. What's your discipline?"

"Solar."

"Me too!" Jayesh beamed. "Fire brothers unite! What time you want to start the patrol? Eight?"

"Let me contact Sorrel and get back to you," Max said. "Plan on eight for now."

Their meeting broke up after that. Jayesh left to round up his team and debrief them. Max had an assignment to work on, but it wasn't due until the end of the week. He went to his tiny room and sat at his computer table.

"Zero," he said, "contact Sorrel and tell her the plan."

"I've been drafting a message," his Ghost replied. "Is this all right?" She displayed a holographic image of a short letter asking Sorrel to help track the killer.

"Looks good," Max said.

He watched Zero's shell spin as she sent it. Then she turned and met his gaze. "What?"

"Zero ..." He rested his elbows on his desk. "You're in my head, now, neural link and all that. Did you notice me embarrassing myself over Sorrel?"

Zero flew to hover above the table in front of him. "Well, I wasn't going to say anything. Those sorts of feelings are private."

"But you noticed."

Zero tilted from side to side. "Oh yes. I noticed."

Max clenched his fists and opened them again. "You know, I ... I always got along with Sorrel. I didn't know she was that pretty under the makeup. But now she's in trouble, and I feel like ... like I'm taking unfair advantage."

Zero nodded.

"So ..." Max didn't know what to say. "Zero, what do I do? I don't want to lust after her. She's Awoken, for crying out loud. They're all babes. It's just that Sorrel ..."

"It was the shock," Zero said. "She broke your expectations, and your instincts reacted first. But you have a will that can control those instincts. She doesn't need a lover right now, Max. She needs a friend. That monster out there will hunt her down eventually."

Max rubbed his hands across his face and into his hair. "That's what I'm afraid of. Felwinter's blade, I'm scared for her. If we run into the killer tonight, well, things get confusing in fights. In the dark. I'd hate to gun down the killer, only to turn around and find Sorrel dead, too."

"It's risky," Zero replied. "I'll keep an eye on her when you can't. If something goes wrong, I'll let you know."

Max sat there a moment, trying to process too many things at once. "Zero ... you told me once that getting ... romantically entangled ... wouldn't affect you and me. Is that still true?"

"Of course it is," Zero said, giving him a tender look. "I'm your Ghost. That means I'm your friend forever. Other relationships don't affect us, and I'm not the jealous kind. I want you to be happy." She looked down. "I think ... that's why Erica concerns me."

Max bristled a little. "Why should she concern you?"

"Because," Zero replied, meeting his gaze steadily, "she's not going to make you happy. She already doesn't."

Zero was right. Max knew she was right. But he didn't know what to do. He'd initiated this relationship with Erica, so how did he back out? Did he want to back out?

"Well," he snapped, "it's not really your business anyway, is it?"

Zero flinched away from him. "See? This isn't you. I don't like it. But I'll stand by you, whatever you decide."

Seeing his Ghost retreat from him, even a little, sent guilt stabbing through him. Max cupped his hands around her and drew her to his face, where he bumped his nose into her eye lens. "That means a lot, little girl Ghost. Please don't run away from me. I'm so confused right now, I keep lashing out. And it's not right."

"I forgive you." Zero shifted sideways a few inches and touched his cheek with her eye in a Ghost kiss. "I'm in this whole thing with you, relationships, killers, and all."

She turned away, staring into space. "Another weird reply from Sorrel, routed through Owl Sector. Max, she says, I'm willing to help however I can. But I'm worried about catching a bullet. Would it be possible to borrow some armor? And she's included her sizes."

Max grinned. He couldn't stop. The idea of Sorrel dressed like a Guardian amused him. He imagined her in the graceful robes and corset-like armor that female Warlocks sometimes wore. Or maybe a Titan, in form-fitting body armor, sleek and powerful. But mostly, he wanted to see her as a Hunter in reinforced leather armor and a long cloak. This last image pleased him immeasurably.

"Let's go shopping," Max replied.

Chapter Text

Late that evening, after dusk had fallen, three fireteams and several Cormorant Blade Guardians set out quietly into the City. They aimed to loosely circle the next spot on the map where the killer might strike, assuming the killer kept on their course toward the City's center.

"I wonder where they're headed?" Sorrel said as they walked along the sidewalk. They were patrolling a neighborhood, all quiet little houses with green lawns. Some of them even had shade trees that had survived the fires of the Red War. A pleasant aroma of damp grass reached them as they walked. In the distance, traffic was a subdued roar.

Max and Sorrel walked side by side, with Jayesh, Kari, and Madrid ranged behind them in a line, talking among themselves and joking back and forth. But Max and Sorrel walked in their own little bubble of quiet.

Sorrel had painted her face again, Max was disappointed to see. But now he knew what she looked like, he could see her beauty in her profile, and when a streetlight caught her just right. She had accepted a set of second-hand Hunter armor, and strode along in leather leggings, steel-plated boots, and a tunic that fitted her well. A Hunter's cloak billowed from her shoulders. Max fervently admired her with every glance.

Sorrel went on, "The killers are headed for the Core District. But why? And what will they do there?"

"Maybe they mean to just kill their way across the City," Max said. "We'll stop them before then, though."

"I hope so," Sorrel murmured. They paused at an intersection, then crossed. "I'm not picking anything up. Not sure I want to. I wish I could have brought my headphones. Music always calms me down."

"What do you listen to?" Max asked.

Sorrel smiled. "Oh ... I like the indie bands. There's this one synth band called Starvision that I listen to all the time."

"Dude," Max said, "I own every Starvision album ever released. I even have the limited edition EP they put out that one year for the Dawning."

Sorrel turned to him, green eyes shining. "You do? I've looked everywhere for that EP! Could I please have a copy?"

"I'll bring it to you tomorrow," Max assured her. "If you like Starvision, have you tried Fallen Kingdom?"

They enthusiastically talked music for the next twenty minutes. They had similar tastes, but each had found different bands to suit those tastes. Soon, they each had a list of music they couldn't wait to borrow from the other. Sorrel loosened up and walked more easily, where before she had carried herself rigid and anxious.

After a while, the conversation turned to their families.

"It's only my mom and me," Sorrel said. "Dad was a Titan, and he left when I was a baby. Mom had to work so hard to support us, I've carried a grudge against him ever since. He didn't even try to help us in the Red War."

"I'm sorry," Max said in a low voice. "Now I understand why you acted so weird when I turned up as a Hunter."

"Yeah," Sorrel said with an embarrassed smile. "No hard feelings."

"It's fine," Max said. "You should have heard the drama when I told my family I was a Guardian."

Sorrel's eyes widened. "What happened?"

"Well, it was right after the Red War. They'd come back on an evacuation shuttle. I was helping them salvage things from their house - the whole neighborhood had been bombed out - and I turn up dressed like this. My mom starts screaming that I was dead. Goes into hysterics. Dad tried to calm her down, finally had to hand her off to some paramedics and sedate her. Then he came after me with a broken piece of metal, trying to drive me off like I was a wild animal. I kept trying to explain that I hadn't died, and I still had my memory. He walloped me a few times before I disarmed him and knocked him down. Nothing like having to fight your old man. Hope I never have to do it again."

"That's terrible!" Sorrel exclaimed. "What happened? Did they ever accept you?"

Max shrugged, unwilling to go into the intricate relationship details. "Oh, they brag about me as long as I'm not there. Young Wolf of the Iron Lords and all that. But if I turn up, it's the silent treatment. I almost think they were counting on me dying of cancer. They're still mad that I didn't."

"Why?" Sorrel asked.

Max shook his head. "I don't know. Some kind of weird co-dependence thing. I just don't go around them anymore."

Sorrel patted his shoulder. "I'm sorry. That's awful."

"Oh, it's not so bad," Max said with a small smile. "I have Zero, so it's not like I'm alone. And I've been making friends in the Vanguard. And Lord Saladin has been a great surrogate dad."

"And there's Erica," Sorrel said, her tone perfectly neutral. "So you have a girl, too."

"Erica is ..." Max hesitated. "I don't know about Erica." He didn't want to say much more than that, since he hadn't figured out what to do about that particular relationship.

"Well," Sorrel said, "it sounds like being a Guardian has been good for you. You're moving on in life, finding your place, all that."

Was that wistfulness he heard in her voice? He glanced at her face, but they were in a dark spot between streetlights, and he couldn't see her expression.

"Yeah, I guess," Max said. "It's been hard, though. See ... Guardians are expected to be warriors and kill things. And I don't like killing. I ... I became a Guardian when the Traveler was caged, so I had no Light at first. And two other Guardians tried to kill me. So I killed them in self-defense. And I still wonder if I could have handled it differently. If I could have spared them, somehow. It's why I joined the Iron Lords instead of the Vanguard, and why I'm training to be a detective with City Police. I don't want to have to kill all the time."

He had kept his gaze on the sidewalk as he talked, watching their shadows swing ahead and behind as they passed each street light. Now he glanced at Sorrel to check her reaction. Her face held no expression beneath its paint. But she met his gaze and said quietly, "I respect that."

"You do?"

She nodded. "Guardians do come across as hardened fighters and killers sometimes. That was one reason it messed me up to see that you were one. You've always been such a nice boy, and the thought of you out slaughtering Fallen ... I don't know. It didn't fit. But from what you've told me, you've found a path that fits your morals, and I respect that so much."

A warm glow filled Max's chest. "Thanks."

He was going to say more, but Sorrel halted and clapped both hands to her head. "I feel it." She pointed. "There."

The next house in line had its front door standing silently open. Something moved just inside - something they couldn't quite see.

"Hide," Max whispered. He whirled to find Jayesh's fireteam had come up behind them, gripping their weapons. "They're inside that house. Hurry!"

Madrid, an Awoken Hunter who towered over the rest of them, said, "Stay close, team. Civilians in there. Don't shoot until they're clear. We're dealing with unknown powers. Ghosts, standby for healing."

The fireteam charged across the yard and into the house. Max drew his rifle and positioned himself to attack anything that came out of the house. His job was rearguard and to protect Sorrel. He glanced around for her, just in time to see her duck behind a tree and blend with the shadows. Good. A tree with a trunk that size might stop a bullet or two.

Yelling broke out inside the house. A woman screamed. Crashes and thumps. A flash of ultraviolet blue - then another. It scorched Max's eyes and left him with purple after-images.

"I'm detecting a delta signal," Zero reported in his head. "Headed this way."

She'd barely gotten the words out when a human figure emerged from the house, carrying the black globe in the crook of one arm. It glowed with that same awful ultraviolet light. The figure holding it was wreathed in a blue nimbus of power.

"Stop right there!" Max ordered.

The figure made a hissing sound. Its face turned toward him, and the eyes burned ultraviolet. It charged at him.

Max fired at the center of mass. He got two shots off as it crossed the yard. Then it flung itself at him, one arm outstretched. Max ducked sideways with Hunter swiftness. The outstretched hand caught his cloak and jerked him to a halt. He staggered and turned, trying to rip his cloak out of his assailant's hand.

For a second, Max was face to face with the figure, and it had no face. His brain stumbled over this. How was there no face? The front of the head was a smooth blank, except for the burning eyes. It had to be a trick of the light.

He grasped his own cloak and jerked it away from his attacker. The cloak tore, leaving a half in the monster's hand. It made a hissing sound, like it was expelling air through a throat without a larynx. Then it seized the black globe in both hands and threw it at Max's head.

The heavy globe struck his forehead with an almighty cracking sound. The world exploded in spots of color that whirled away into nothing. Max sensed himself falling. Hit the ground. Shouting. Gunshots. He fought for consciousness, but it swam away from him.

Somewhere, Zero snarled, "You shall not have him!"

It was the last thing he remembered.

Sorrel saw the monster bounce the globe off Max's head, and saw Max drop like a fallen tree. That globe was the size and weight of a bowling ball - it probably shattered his skull.

Rage roared to life inside Sorrel - protective, fear-tinged rage. She drew the handgun the Guardians had given her and emptied it into the monster.

It had lunged after the globe as it rolled across the grass, snatching it up again with inhuman speed. It tucked it under one arm and was starting to kneel over Max's motionless body. But being shot six times in the chest distracted it. It staggered backward, making that strange hissing sound again, and dashed at Sorrel.

Sorrel acted by instinct. She gathered her rage in her free hand and lashed it at the monster.

Light exploded from her palm in a brilliant purple arc - different from the poisonous ultraviolet. For a second she saw the power filling the air between her and the monster, vibrant amethyst and filled with sparkles like the stars in the Milky Way. Then it struck the monster and knocked it down. It went down in a snarling heap, writhing and wallowing as if mortally injured.

Sorrel dashed to put herself between Max and the monster. Already she was gathering more of that power from inside herself, that gorgeous starry power that the monster hated. But at that point, Jayesh and Madrid emerged from the house and charged into the fray. Jayesh actually jumped twenty feet in the air and sailed over Sorrel's head like a bird, firing at the monster as he went.

The Guardians unloaded bullets and bursts of Light into the monster until it lay lifeless on the lawn, still clutching the glowing sphere. Jayesh picked up the torn piece of Max's cloak and covered the sphere with it, grimacing as if the light hurt him.

Then they turned to Sorrel, still standing guard over Max's body. "What happened?" Madrid asked.

Sorrel told them, surprised at how calm she sounded. She should be freaked out of her mind right now. Somehow, finding that starry power inside herself had steadied her, given her confidence. She had a weapon.

Jayesh knelt over Max and examined his head, then checked his pulse. "Yeah, he's dead, all right."

"Dead?" Sorrel pressed both hands to her mouth. There was the freaked-out feeling she had been missing. Max had died. Instant regret and grief filled her. He'd been alive and talking to her a minute ago. How could he be dead so suddenly?

Madrid rested a hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry, miss. He's a Guardian. His Ghost will have him up in a minute."

Zero appeared, her shell open, surrounded by a bubble of sky-blue Light. Sorrel suddenly felt foolish. Of course - Max was a Guardian. Death was rarely permanent. Humiliated at her grief of a second before, she covertly wiped her eyes and tried to appear as if this happened all the time.

The Ghost swept Max's head with a healing beam, rebuilding his damaged skull and brain. Then she released a pulse of Light that illuminated the houses like a flash of lightning. Max drew a deep breath and opened his eyes. He sat up, rubbing his head. "Zero? Guys? What happened?"

Sorrel turned away, folding her arms, upset and unsure how to react. She'd discovered that she had powers, she'd seen her friend die and be resurrected in the space of five minutes - and she could barely handle it all. She found herself looking at the dead monster, instead, curled on the lawn in an oddly inhuman pose.

The globe should have been next to it, wrapped in Max's cloak. But it wasn't there. Sorrel looked around, checking Jayesh and Madrid. Their hands were empty.

"Where's the globe?" she blurted.

Everyone wheeled around to look. A frantic search broke out as everyone hunted for it all over the dark yard. But the globe was gone. Their Ghosts no longer detected the delta signal.

Sorrel found herself standing beside Max, who had moved up beside her and was standing there with his rifle, like a bodyguard. "There were three," she said to him under cover of the hubbub. "Three Awoken men who had contact with the artifact."

"One must have been hidden nearby, watching this go down," Max muttered. "We're lucky we didn't get ambushed."

She studied Max's face in the glow of the streetlights. "Are you all right? You were dead."

He smiled ruefully. "Done in by an artifact to the head. What a stupid way to die. I'm fine, just ... embarrassed. I've never died before. I don't like it." He turned his head, as if listening to a voice nobody else could hear. "Yes, Zero, thanks. You're an excellent healer." He turned back to Sorrel. "Are you all right?"

She nodded. "Just ... shaken." She wanted to ask him about the power she had used, but wasn't sure how to describe it. Maybe she'd keep it secret for now.

At that point, Kari, the third member of the fireteam, emerged from the house. Behind her were an Awoken man and woman in nightclothes, nervous and clinging to each other.

"The Vanguard will pay for the damage," Kari was saying. She had her Ghost transmat a sheet of paper into her hands, which she passed to the man. "Fill that out with a list of monetary damages, and send it to that address. You'll be compensated within five to ten days."

"Traveler bless you," the woman said, shaking Kari's hand with both of hers. "You saved our lives from that blue thing."

"Just doing our jobs, ma'am," Kari said with a slight bow. "City Police is on the way to take your statements. We'll stay here until they arrive."

The civilians retreated back indoors. Kari approached them, glancing at the corpse. "What'd I miss?"

The team filled her in. Sorrel noticed that Jayesh stood very close to her, his body language conveying protective attraction. He also kept himself between her and the corpse, as if afraid that it might spring to life at any second. Sorrel realized that Max had defended her the same way ... and then she had defended him. She was behaving like a Guardian.

She was ready to go home for the night, but the team still needed her. They contacted the other fireteams and Cormorant Blade, and set up a perimeter, hunting the signal from that sphere. If the suspect was hiding, only Sorrel would be able to root them out.

The rest of the night passed, the group walking until Sorrel was stumbling with weariness. The fight had drained her physically and emotionally. She just wanted to go home, process everything, and go to sleep. Her only consolation was that she was off work tomorrow.

She didn't say much to Max, who talked to the other Guardians, instead. Jayesh and Kari were talking about their wedding plans, which interested Sorrel, despite her weariness. Max occasionally cut these discussions short with a dry remark about taking a detour to throw up, which made everyone laugh.

Dawn was brightening the eastern sky when the group finally gave up. Sorrel had detected nothing, and the Ghosts failed to pick up the smallest hint of delta signal. Max drove Sorrel home on his sparrow. When she peeked out her window before crawling into bed, he was leaning against the wall in the warm morning sun, talking to his Ghost, and obviously making no move to leave. He was standing guard, even after being awake all night and being killed.

Grateful and comforted, Sorrel sank into a dreamless sleep.

Chapter Text

The Cormorant Blade collected the monster's corpse and shipped it to the Tower morgue for a post-mortem analysis.

When Max returned to the Tower late that afternoon, having kept watch outside Sorrel's apartment until relieved by Jayesh, he found an urgent summons waiting for him from Commander Zavala. Tired and suddenly extremely nervous, Max grabbed a burger at the Tower canteen and scarfed it on his way to the command room.

The command room wasn't as fancy as the one in the old Tower. This was a set of smaller rooms with monitors and a conference table. Commander Zavala was there, his blue Awoken skin and glowing eyes made even more imposing by the polished parade armor he wore. On his right was Ikora Rey, Warlock vanguard, a dark-skinned human in elaborate violet robes. On the other side was Cayde-6, Hunter Vanguard and Exo. This was the Vanguard leadership, head of each order of Guardian. Zavala was also head of the Consensus, the City's governing political body. The amount of power in this room made Max's middle turn weak.

Paul Johansson sat at the conference table with them, a folder open on the tabletop. They all looked up as Max entered.

"Ah," said Commander Zavala without preamble. "Maximilian Ross, of the Iron Lords. We wish to speak with you about last night's encounter."

Max saluted. "Yes sir."

"At ease," Zavala said. "Please have a seat."

Everyone sat down. Max took a seat beside Paul, partly because he knew him, and partly to use him as a shield against the other three.

"Now, Maximilian," said Ikora in a clear, ringing voice. "I understand that you are here on loan from Felwinter Peak as you train to join the City Police force?"

"Yes ma'am," Max said. His armor felt hot and heavy, and he hadn't showered recently. He was suddenly terrified they might smell him.

"Interesting career choice," said Cayde-6, leaning back in his chair with one heel against the table's edge. "Defending the City from the inside. Is that how you got mixed up in all this?"

"I'm friends with Guardian Jayesh, sir," Max said, not sure how to take Cayde's unprofessional behavior. "He found the Awoken artifact in the first place. You should talk to him."

"We have," Zavala said in a low voice. "His report was most unusual. We wish for you to corroborate it."

Max gulped. "Yes sir."

He told them what he knew about the artifact and how it had glowed in the grasp of the monster. But Ikora halted his story. "Stop there. Tell us about this woman, Sorrel Atkin. How can she track these beings?"

Max hadn't wanted to drag Sorrel into this. He reluctantly told them what she had told him, about being marked. Ikora, Zavala, and Cayde exchanged rapid looks throughout his account. Paul Johansson said nothing, but took notes with a quick, precise hand.

Once they understood about Sorrel, they grilled him for details about the fight, including his embarrassing death by having his skull smashed by the artifact.

"Question," said Zavala, fingers steepled. "Did you, too, receive a mark?"

"No, sir," Max said. "My Ghost prevented it."

Zero appeared above his shoulder. "And it was a fight," she added. "The entity in that globe is incredibly strong. But I resisted until it gave up."

"Or lost interest, perhaps," Ikora said in a low voice. "He's human."

"I notice this thing doesn't target Exos," Cayde said. "Good thing. Did you read this post-mortem report? Ugly."

"Yes," Zavala said, tapping his forefingers against his chin. "Give him the report, Detective."

Paul removed a sheaf of paper from his folder and passed it to Max. Max read the first few paragraphs, blinked, and read them again. "Is this some kind of joke?"

"It's as real as you or me," Ikora said. "Read it all."

Max did, although he had trouble believing it.

The corpse had once been a human body, but had undergone substantial structural changes. Every blood vessel had been enlarged, and every drop of blood had been replaced by an oily substance full of radioactivity. The digestive tract had vanished, along with all supporting organs, such as the liver, pancreas, kidneys, and so forth. In their place, new structures had been growing - unidentifiable organs with no counterparts in any known life form. The nose and mouth had subsided into the skull, leaving only the eyes, which had been splitting into compound lenses, like an insect's. The brain had been in the process of dividing and splitting, as had the heart. The lungs had shrank and appeared to no longer process oxygen. But the whole corpse was breaking down rapidly under its own radioactivity, and further study was impossible. The mortician recommended removing it from the City and burying it far from human habitation, perhaps in one of the nuclear zones.

Max handed the report back to Paul and sat in silence. Zero had read it with him. She pressed her shell against his cheek and shivered. He patted her comfortingly.

"We are extremely concerned," Zavala said, watching his expression. "Today, the Cormorant Blade received communication from the Awoken of the Reef. They acknowledge that the artifact was stolen from them, and issued a strongly-worded request to return it at once." Zavala leaned forward. "You see the position the Vanguard is in. On one side, an unknown alien life form running amuck in our City. On the other side, veiled threats from the Reef."

"We'll keep searching," Max stammered. "I- I  mean, we prevented more murders last night. This thing only attacks at night, so as long as we keep hunting it -"

"Spoken like a true Hunter," said Cayde-6, rocking his chair precariously close to the tipping point. "See? Kid may not be Vanguard, but his heart's in the right place."

Zavala nodded. "I will debrief and dispatch other fireteams as needed. This girl Sorrel must be protected. Should she fall to whatever entity resides within that globe, we will have lost our only advantage."

"Yes sir," Max said. "Jayesh and I are taking turns standing guard outside her apartment."

"I'll assign a squad of Titans to do that," Zavala said. "You rest and prepare yourself for the hunt."

The door opened and a woman in a lab coat stepped in, ushered by one of the Tower service robots. "A Ms. West to see you, as requested," said the robot.

"Thank you," Ikora said. "Dismissed."

The robot retreated, closing the door behind it. The woman in the lab coat strode to the end of the table and set down an armful of binders and folders. Her sleek black hair in its pixie cut framed her familiar face.

"Erica?" Max breathed.

Erica ignored him. "Thank you for asking me to the Tower, Commanders. I've brought the research you requested."

"Thank you," said Zavala. "What do we know about radioactive life forms?"

Max squinted at Erica's lab coat. A logo decorated the breast pocket ... something like two circles with wings. Why was that so familiar?

Erica opened two binders and laid them side by side. "Not much, I'm afraid. We have transcripts from several strange encounters in the Reef. Reef space station Amestris reported an encounter with a blue radioactive creature shortly before every soul on board died. The Awoken set the station adrift beyond the Reef."

Max's mouth fell open. He checked the faces of the Vanguard to see similar grim expressions.

"Furthermore," Erica went on, turning a page, "an Awoken pilot in a jumpship reported seeing a similar creature on the exterior of his ship shortly before a jump. He was examined for mental stability and reported sound. However, these encounters all happened years before the Battle of Saturn. The blue anomaly hasn't been seen in decades."

"Until now," Zavala said.

"Until now," Erica agreed. "The Awoken call it the Aphelion, which is the furthest point in a planet's orbit from its star. In essence, this creature is the darkest of Darkness."

A short, heavy silence met these words. Nobody spoke the words and it's loose in our City.

Zavala turned to Max. "All the more reason for your team's success. Not being Awoken, yourself, you are perhaps less vulnerable than your companions."

Several responses flashed across Max's mind, ranging from, "Yay," to, "Lucky me." He opted for saying, "I hope so, sir."

Erica said, "The Vanguard has Owl Sector's full support in this matter."

Owl Sector! That was the logo on her lab coat. That was where Erica worked? Max's whole brain experienced a paradigm shift. She wasn't just a shallow, petty woman - she had brains and a powerful position at the City's most prestigious secret research facility.

It didn't exclude her from being petty, however. When Max glanced at her, she wiggled her fingers at him in greeting with a small, mocking smile. He nodded slightly in response.

Erica turned to the Vanguard Commanders. "Now, I wish to check on the status of my grant concerning the Guardian enhancement program."

Zavala turned to Ikora, who said, "The grant has been denied."

Erica's face flushed. She drew herself up, arms at her sides. "On what grounds?"

"Upon consulting with the Gensym Scribes and Cryptarchy," Ikora said, "we decided that the project is too dangerous and of little use to modern Guardians. We wish to remind you of the disaster that was Transmission."

"My project is nothing like Transmission," Erica said. Her tone was cold and dangerous. Max remembered it too well and fought the instinct to duck.

Ikora shook her head. "Unless you can provide better projected results of your study, I'm afraid we cannot devote Vanguard funding to a dubious project such as your own when so many other areas of research show more promise."

The color left Erica's face. She was white with rage, her eyes glittering.

Zavala turned to Max. "Dismissed, Guardian. We need to discuss certain matters in confidence."

As Max climbed the stairs back to the Tower Walk, he thought to Zero, "Do you think Erica will be mad if I don't hang around and wait for her?"

"Probably," Zero replied. "She was already livid and she'll take it out on you. But she might be in there for hours, and you need to rest. Your brain keeps trying to generate seratonin and force you to sleep."

"No wonder I'm wiped," Max thought. "I hope Erica doesn't know where my room is."

He went to his tiny room in the new high rise buildings further down the wall, closed the window, locked the door, and crashed on his bunk. Zero appeared and quietly flew to the door, where she hovered, keeping watch.

Max almost said something about how he didn't need her to stand guard, he wasn't afraid of Erica. But sleep claimed him before he could form the words.

Zero watched her Guardian sleep, and worried. Erica worked for Owl Sector and could make Max's life miserable - ruin his New Monarchy position with slander, or convince the police academy he was unfit for training, or anything.

Then there was the Aphelion. Max had already died to the blue monster once, and it had exhausted him. A more direct assault - for instance, if it touched him with a burning hand - might prove more than temporarily fatal.

On the other hand, there was Sorrel. Zero had no concerns about Sorrel harming Max, emotionally - the girl had an innocence that Zero admired. But while Max had been down, Sorrel had used Void Light in his defense. Her high Light profile was bearing out. She had used a burst of unfocused Light as a weapon. There was nobody nearby to take friendly fire, but if Sorrel used it in a crowd, or near other Guardians, she could seriously hurt them. Without a Ghost to train her, she might develop her power in any direction, maybe even becoming a walking bomb. Void Light was the most dangerous of all the Light disciplines. Of all things, Void had to be Sorrel's attunement without a Ghost.

But maybe she had a Ghost of some kind. Ghost-like communications kept coming through the Owl Sector servers. Was Sorrel some kind of experiment, kept secret and let loose to live a normal life while under observation? Something was in close enough communication with her to send messages on her behalf. But it didn't seem to be training her in the Light.

Zero shivered her shell. Sorrel had no idea that she was a Guardian. But how could she be? She mentioned having a mother and father, because her father was a Titan and left when she was small.

Zero looked up Sorrel Atkin's com numbers in the City database. Only one other Atkin was listed - Havila Atkin. That definitely sounded like an Awoken name. On a whim, Zero sent her a message introducing herself and asking if Havila might answer a few questions about her daughter, Sorrel. Zero expected no response, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Zero was still pondering this, listening to Max beginning to snore, when her passive scan registered movement in the hall outside. Erica was coming.

"I knew it," Zero muttered. She waited until Erica reached the door and was raising a hand to knock. Then Zero phased through the door, emerging a few inches from Erica's face. "Max is indisposed. He can't see you right now."

Erica jerked her head back by reflex, then retreated a step, tucking a strand of sleek black hair behind one ear. Zero floated in front of the door, guarding it.

"Oh," Erica said, "so he left you out as a watchdog."

"Ruff ruff," said Zero. "What do you want?" She didn't bother hiding the chill in her voice. Always in her mind was the deep hurt she felt in Max's soul when he had told Zero that Erica left him after the cancer diagnosis. Nobody hurt her Guardian like that.

"I want to talk to my boyfriend," said Erica through her teeth. "Is that so wrong?"

"Send him a letter," Zero said. "He's busy right now."

"What's he doing?"

"He's busy." Zero would not let Erica know that Max was asleep and vulnerable.

Erica tapped a foot. "I didn't come all the way to the top floor of these crap apartments to argue with a Ghost. You tell Max that I have something important to talk to him about. Tell him now."

Zero began to fantasize about transmatting a refrigerator on top of Erica's head. She phased back through the door and floated just inside the room in silence. Max was asleep with one arm tossed above his head, his untidy blond hair swept across his left eye. Zero gazed at him with a surge of fierce, protective love. Erica would not hurt him again.

She waited until Erica began to pace in the hallway. Then Zero phased back through the door. "I'm sorry, Max is seeing no visitors right now. He's preparing for the patrol tonight."

"What patrol?" Erica snapped. "You didn't mention he was doing Guardian things."

"Patrolling for that blue monster," Zero said. "He prevented a murder last night, and intends to prevent more until we can stop this monster entirely."

Erica opened her mouth, but a strange expression crossed her face - a cunning arch of an eyebrow. "Really, now. He was part of that team last night? No wonder he was in the debriefing earlier." She stared at Zero. Zero stared back, ticking her shell back and forth insolently.

"Well." Erica smiled. "I guess I'll talk to Max later, then. If I send him a letter, don't you dare filter it, you little slime."

"Takes one to know one," Zero said.

Erica's mouth twisted in a snarl. "You're going to wish you never challenged me, Ghost." She spun on her heel and walked off.

Zero thought, Go to the Darkness, hell spawn. She watched until Erica descended the staircase at the end of the hall, then phased back into Max's room.

There, Zero analyzed the conversation and wondered about it. Erica had known all about the monster fight of the previous night - that much was evident from her expression. Of course, the Vanguard had called her in to share her research, so she had to have known about it - read the reports or something.

Still, she worked at Owl Sector. Zero paced in slow circles in front of the door. Owl Sector was a civilian organization that researched advanced technology, reverse-engineered alien tech, and recovered Golden Age secrets from the likes of Clovis Bray. They were located in the exact center of Core District, beneath the Traveler. The ambient Light there enhanced human brains and bodies as it had back in the Golden Age, accelerating research by centuries. All recent breakthroughs in medical and weapons tech had come from Owl Sector. The Vanguard heavily funded them. In fact -

Zero's thoughts froze as something occurred to her. She pulled up a snapshot of Paul Johansson's map - the one showing the locations of murders. They formed an uneven line in the direction of Core District.

Zero drew her own lines.

The killer was headed almost directly for Owl Sector. The line of deaths would pass straight through it.

Zero resumed pacing, faster this time. Erica worked at Owl Sector. Sorrel had some kind of connection to Owl Sector, almost like she was an experiment on a long leash. The Aphelion was headed there. What did it all mean?

She looked at her log of transmitted messages. There was the number of the Ghost-like AI at Owl Sector. Zero should warn it of what was happening. But then, what if it was evil? What if it would immediately tell Erica?

Erica knew, already. That look on her face had said so. But Sorrel was in incredible danger on all fronts and probably had no idea. Warning the computer connected to her, however hostile it might be, couldn't hurt. It probably knew, anyway.

Zero sent a message to the AI. "Greetings from Zero, Ghost of Guardian Maximilian Ross. I am including snapshots of recent murders by an unknown monster bearing an Awoken artifact. It appears to be traveling toward your location. Please protect yourself and Sorrel Atkin by any means necessary."

She sent the message. While she waited for a response, Zero flew around the room, transmatting Max's discarded gear into her memory storage. When the room was tidy, she flew to the window to look out at the mountains beyond the City. For a moment, a longing to leave the City and explore the wilds touched her heart. Max may be a Hunter, but his tastes were urban. Even at Felwinter Peak, he had stayed close to civilization. But this mess with killers and girlfriends made Zero wish that they could get out on their own - just escape for a little while to the woods and hills.

As she floated there, gazing at the mountains with their tops gilded in red sunset light, a response arrived from the AI.

"Greetings, Zero. Thank you for informing me. I will prepare Sorrel as much as I can. Please ask your Guardian to protect her for me."

After a moment's hesitation, Zero sent another message. "Are you aware that Sorrel not only has the Light profile of a Guardian, but she used Void Light in combat last night?"

A three word response. "I am aware."

"Well ... why aren't you training her?"

No response. Zero waited an hour, then gave up. The AI refused to communicate.

The sun set and the room grew dark. Max slept on. Zero decided to let him sleep another hour before she woke him. He was so tired.

As she hung in the air beside his bed, watching his chest rise and fall, quietly adoring him, another message arrived. This one was from Havila Atkin, Sorrel's mother.

"I knew this call would come someday. Yes, I will talk to you, but it will have to be late tomorrow. Everything I tell you must be kept in strict confidence. Sorrel's sanity depends on it."

Chapter Text

Sorrel slept nearly the whole day. She awoke as the sun was going down, panicked, took a hasty shower and scarfed a scanty dinner.

As she ate, he thought constantly about that power she had found inside herself - that deep violet swirl of stars that had injured the blue monster. How did she have that power and why had she never noticed it before? It had to be the artifact. Maybe when it had marked her, it had rearranged her brain, putting her in touch with some Awoken power.

She might also be turning into a blue monster, herself. Maybe the monster had once been one of those Awoken thugs, but use of the star power had changed him.

The trouble was, the star power didn't feel evil or poisonous, the way the globe's occupant felt. It never touched her mind at all. She called the power out of her heart, instead - first with anger at seeing Max hurt, then with the desire to protect, and finally, just thinking about it.

Sorrel held up a hand and concentrated on summoning a tiny sparkle of the power. After a moment, she was delighted to see a wisp of stars, like a galaxy, appear above her palm and float there. She touched it with her other hand, sending the galaxy spinning around and around.

"Voice," she thought, "see what I can do!" She Looked at it.

Voice didn't reply for a long moment. When she did, her voice was hushed and slightly muffled. "That's ... that's great, Sorrel."

"What is it? Am I turning into a blue monster?"

"No, it's Void Light."

Sorrel played with the stars, pouring them from hand to hand. "Void Light. That's Light and Darkness mixed, right? Because I'm Awoken?"

"Y-yes," Voice said. "Because you're Awoken." Her voice broke.

Sorrel sat up straight, letting the stars fade. "Voice, what's wrong?"

"Nothing," Voice whispered. "I ... promised. Don't ask."

Sorrel was still sitting there, trying to grasp what Voice's grief meant, when there came a knock at the door. Her heart jolted and she looked at the clock. It was time to leave for patrol already? Blast, she wasn't prepared for this.

She jumped up and ran to the door in bare feet. The peephole showed her Max outside, wearing his Hunter gear with his blond hair nicely combed for once. He carried several data disks in his hands.

He'd remembered the music! Sorrel unlocked the door at once, beaming. "Hey!"

"Hey," Max said, returning her grin. "I copied those albums you asked for. I hope this format is all right."

"Oh, it's perfect!" Sorrel took the disks and looked through them, her delight mounting at the sight of each hand-written label. "Come on in for a minute. I need to put my gear on. You showed up earlier than I expected." She glanced at his face and glimpsed his shy pleasure at her excitement. They'd have so much to talk about on patrol.

She left Max standing awkwardly in her living room and dashed to her bedroom to change. It wasn't until she was tying her hair back that she realized she hadn't put on her face paint. Max had seen her bare face again.

She stared at herself in the mirror, at the glowing crescent on her cheek, and debated with herself. Max hadn't acted any different when she'd opened the door. But she hadn't given him a chance to say much, either. Was he falling for her because she'd forgotten her makeup? Better not risk it.

Sorrel did her makeup, but in a lighter layer than usual. Instead of dark patches over her eyes, she added too much eyeliner instead, like an Egyptian painting. It made her look like someone else, and she was satisfied.

When she returned to Max, fastening her cloak, he saw her coming and greeted her with a smile. "Hey, Sorrel. All set?"

"I'm ready," she replied, watching him for signs of unwanted attraction. But he was just Max, waiting politely while she locked her door, then escorting her to his waiting sparrow. Nothing creepy about Max, nothing that worried her. The only thing different she noticed was that he smelled good - some sort of aftershave or deodorant with a spicy smell. Maybe it was the combed hair.

"What do you think of my makeup?" she challenged as she climbed on the sparrow's rear seat.

"It's nice," he replied over his shoulder. "You look okay without it, too."

"Just ... okay?"

Max coughed. "Well, yes, I mean, you look normal. The way you do your eyes with makeup makes you look mean."

This was the last thing Sorrel expected to hear. She stared at the back of his head. "You think it makes me look mean?"

"Yeah. And you're nice. But we're hunting monsters, so, maybe it's a good idea to look mean." Max started his sparrow's engine. "I'm stupid nervous, if you don't mind me saying. I don't want to die again."

Sorrel realized that he was wearing the cloak that had been ripped in half the previous night. The ragged edge had been burned black by the monster's radioactive touch. Suddenly she felt bad. She'd been so worried about her face, she hadn't thought that maybe Max had his own problems. He was afraid to die again - and she didn't blame him a bit.

"Well," she said, as he guided the sparrow into traffic, "I can use Void Light. So maybe we can keep each other safe."

"What did you say?" Max said over traffic noise. "It sounded like you said you can use Void Light."

"That's what I said."

The traffic signal changed and the roar of engines and tires made further conversation impossible. Max threaded through the City streets in evening traffic for twenty minutes until they reached the next neighborhood they were to patrol. This area had been hard hit by the Red War. The houses had been destroyed and replaced by rows of boring prefabricated homes, little more than oblong boxes with doors and windows. But people had worked to make them liveable. Many had yards with lawns, and almost every one had a sapling planted nearby, looking forward to the day when the neighborhood would be shaded by mature trees. The cracked road had been patched with tar, and there was no sidewalk, only a strip of bare dirt.

Max pulled his sparrow alongside the fireteam's vehicles. Jayesh, Kari, and Madrid were waiting for them, leaning on their sparrows and talking, helmets under their arms.

"Hey, there you are," Jayesh said, slapping Max's back. "Ready to hunt?"

Max grunted.

Jayesh turned to Sorrel. His grin wavered a little at the sight of her makeup - but then, she'd intimidated him from the start. "How about you, Sorrel?"

"Ready as I'll ever be," she said. "You know. To have my mind assaulted."

"It assaults your mind?" Kari said, shaking back her short auburn hair. "What's it feel like?"

Sorrel described it as they walked along. Kari and Jayesh listened avidly and had their Ghosts take notes. Madrid, the tall Awoken hunter, strode along in silence. Max trailed a little behind, looking a little spacey as he communicated telepathically with his own Ghost. After that, he walked along with a deep frown, studying the neighborhood around them and clutching his rifle.

When Sorrel finished her account, the two warlocks fell to debating what the globe had done to her mind and whether it could be reversed.

"If she had a Ghost, sure," Jayesh said. "Max and I have both been attacked, and our Ghosts defended us. Maybe this monster targets Awoken for their greater Light ratio, because it can't get Guardians."

"There must be some way of fighting against it," Kari pointed out. "The Reefborn seem to know all about it. Petra Venj showed up in the Tower as we were leaving. She brought a contingent of Corsairs and a tech witch. Zavala was not happy to see them coming."

Madrid, who had said nothing until this point, remarked, "We'd better apprehend the monster tonight, then. Otherwise we'll have a serious intersolar incident on our hands."

Sorrel cleared her throat. She hadn't yet spoken to Madrid, fellow Awoken that he was. He was a head taller than she was, and with that ruggedly handsome look Awoken men developed after a few decades. "Excuse me, sir ..."

He smiled, which changed his looks from forbidding to welcoming in a flash. "Yes, miss?"

"Uh, I was just wondering ... can Awoken use the Light in combat?"

He shrugged. "They are capable of lots of things, but I'm a Guardian. It's not like the Reefborn talk to me."

Sorrel nodded and fell back in line as they walked. She found Max and walked with him in the rear, letting the warlocks continue their discussion a few yards ahead.

"Hey," he said with a quick smile. "What were you telling me about Void Light?"

"I can use it to fight," Sorrel said. "Look." She called the wisp of galaxy to her hand. In the dark, the stars glimmered and flashed. Sorrel had a passing wish for matching jewelry full of stars like that.

Max didn't say much beyond an appreciative, "Ooo nice." When Sorrel glanced at him, he was frowning at the ground, as if trying to figure out some puzzle.

"What's the matter?" Sorrel asked.

He looked up and shrugged. "It just seems weird to me that you can use Light like a Guardian, but you're not a Guardian. I need to read up on Awoken. Just not sure when I'll have time. I have two assignments due tomorrow."

"Oh," Sorrel exclaimed. "I'm sorry!"

"Don't worry," Max replied, waving a hand. "Zero is reading me the assigned stuff in my head, and I'm dictating my reports to her. If I act kind of absent, that's why." He gave her a brief smile. "Having something to focus on makes me not so nervous."

Sorrel thought this was pure genius. They walked in silence, and she watched expressions of concentration pass over his face as he talked inside his head.

"Just like you and me, Voice," she thought. "But I can't be a Guardian because I never died. Right?"

"You don't have to die to be a Guardian," Voice replied. "Max didn't."

Feeling playful, Sorrel thought, "If I'm a Guardian, then you're my Ghost. Come here." She held out one hand.

To her alarm, she felt a response inside her head - as if a string were attached to her, and something tugged on it. Then Voice made a small, agonized sound and whispered, "Don't ever do that again."

Sorrel whipped her hand behind her back as if she'd been burned. Voice had responded to a Ghost command. Horror and panic crept through her. Could she be a Guardian, somehow? And if Voice was a Ghost, where was she? Why couldn't she appear, and why did she insist on no questions asked?

Sorrel picked at that part of her mind where she had felt the tug. It was deep in her subconscious, in a place she could only reach while either falling asleep or meditating. But there was something there - a friendly connection she had never noticed before.

She recoiled from it and mentally curled into a tight ball. If Voice was a Ghost, then Sorrel was a Guardian ... a defective Guardian who was unprotected from blue monsters. A Guardian like her good-for-nothing father. This was something no amount of face paint could hide.

Sorrel was so distraught and so deep in her defenses, she almost didn't notice the faint touch of razor blades and venom trailing across the surface of her mind. Then she shuddered and realized what she'd just felt. "I've got a signal, everyone."

The group stopped and pulled out their Ghosts. The little robots opened their shells and sent out pulses of Light, scanning for the globe's delta signal.

"I'm picking it up," Jayesh's Ghost said, "but the signal is patchy. I can't get a lock on where it's coming from."

Kari's Ghost said, "It feels like we're standing on it. But where is it?"

Madrid's Ghost appeared and disappeared so quickly, Sorrel barely glimpsed her red rosebud shell. Madrid cocked his head for a moment, listening to her inside his head. Then he said, "It's coming from underground. I think it's in the sewer main."

The Ghosts and Guardians immediately looked at the road underfoot.

"How are you detecting that?" Zero asked from her spot at Max's shoulder. "All I'm picking up is static."

"Rose is equipped with an instrument-boosting shell," Madrid replied. "Spread out, everyone. Find a manhole."

The group spread up and down the cracked road, hunting for a manhole cover. Kari found a small one for the water mains, but there didn't seem to be any sewer access on this block.

"Hold up!" Madrid said, looking at the ground. "Target is moving. Follow me, everyone!" He took off running down the road, drawing a sidearm as he went. The fireteam and Sorrel chased after him.

Sorrel imagined the Awoken man down there, bent double to avoid the pipe's low ceiling, splashing through knee-deep sewage and slime. Maybe his body was beginning to glow blue, the burning radioactivity spreading through his blood.

"No wonder we couldn't find these jerks during the day," Jayesh remarked, panting. "They must have been using the sewer mains the whole time."

"I don't want to go in the sewer," Kari moaned. "Can you imagine a firefight in a sewer pipe? What if we hit a methane patch and blow ourselves sky-high?"

"You just don't want to get dirty," Madrid teased.

"No!" Kari yelped. "I don't! Cleaning out Hive lairs is bad enough!"

Madrid suddenly skidded to a halt, turning from side to side. "He's changing directions. This way!" He bolted off down a side street, and the team followed him.

Up ahead was a manhole cover, barely visible against the dark street. As they approached, the cover slid aside, and a burning ultraviolet shape crawled out. It carried the globe in the crook of one arm, its free hand playing over the smooth surface. The globe glowed, too, but not as brightly. Perhaps this man wasn't as far through the transformation as the first one had been.

The fireteam drew their weapons and halted in the middle of the road, aiming.

"You there!" Madrid called. "Drop the globe!"

"Seriously?" Max muttered. "You think it'll listen to you?"

"I have to take the chance that it's still human," Madrid replied.

The glowing figure's head jerked up, the ultraviolet eyes fixed on them. It still had the suggestion of a face. It made no sound, but turned, bolted across the street, and leaped up on the roof of a house with inhuman strength. It ran across the roof and dropped out of sight.

Madrid cursed and pursued, and the team followed.

Max ran after them a few steps, then changed his mind and returned to Sorrel. "I forgot, you can't jump like that. Come on, we'll take my sparrow."

Sorrel suddenly wondered if she could jump like that, as she watched the Guardians sail effortlessly over the roof. If she was some kind of half-Guardian, shouldn't that sort of Light power also belong to her?

Max had his Ghost transmat his sparrow to their location. It appeared in a shimmer of blue light and data. He climbed on, and Sorrel followed suit. Then he guided it back up the street and around the block, hunting for his team and the enemy.

Sorrel held onto his belt to keep from falling off. As she did, she realized that the tremors running through him weren't from the sparrow's engine. Max was shivering.

"Are you all right?" she called.

"Fine," he said.

Sorrel wished he'd give her a straight answer instead of always brushing her off. If he was fine, he wouldn't be shivering. But now wasn't the time to argue. The blue figure dashed across the road ahead of them. Max tried to follow it, but it jumped straight over the next row of houses. He had to spin his sparrow in a circle to keep from crashing into somebody's front windows. Sorrel hooked a foot under the sparrow's frame to keep from being thrown off.

The Guardians appeared, running with Light-powered speed. Max pointed in the direction the monster had gone. The team waved in thanks and leaped over the first house in pursuit. Max had to guide his sparrow around the next block.

"It's headed for Owl Sector," Sorrel blurted.

"How do you know?" Max replied, slowing to quiet the engine.

"Look at the direction," Sorrel said, pointing at the Traveler overhead and to their left. "He's running in a straight line toward the Core District. He has been since he got out of the sewer. Whatever the thing is inside the globe, it's strong, but it's not very smart. It's letting us know its goal. We can outthink it."

"Unless it's a trap," Max muttered. But he veered back onto the main road and headed downtown.

Sorrel held on to him and tried to focus. But inside of her mind felt as if an earthquake had struck, leaving her mental furniture tumbled and disorganized. She might be a Guardian - a half-Guardian with no proper Ghost. She had despised their species since she was old enough to despise anything, and now she might be one. This on top of not wanting to be Awoken, to blend in, to belong. Now she didn't belong in the grocery store, in the City - she seemed to belong to the Tower. To the Vanguard, who would make her kill things. Suddenly she understood Max's aversion to killing. He hadn't wanted to walk that path, either.

She didn't want any of the life choices before her. They all smelled of death and loneliness. But what else was there? A half-Guardian couldn't leave the City. She had no jumpship to roam the stars. All she had was Voice and her weekly paycheck. And dangerous, beautiful Light.

She needed to talk to someone about this - she wanted to talk to Max. He was going through this same sort of identity shift. Maybe he could help her sort things out. But there was no time. The sparrow's engine roared beneath them, running wide open. They veered between other vehicles on the road, earning honks and rude gestures.

Max turned left and entered a side street, slowing a bit. "Moving to intercept," he called into the wind in their faces. Sorrel tightened her grip on his belt.

The blue monster flashed through an intersection fifty feet ahead of them. Max opened the throttle with a triumphant laugh. They followed the monster, gaining on it with the sparrow's superior speed. Max drew a sidearm and rested it against the handlebars, ready to aim and shoot.

As they drew even with the monster, its head turned. It stared at the sparrow and its riders. Max lifted his gun and fired into its center of mass.

The monster's body jerked in pain. Then it lunged at the sparrow, caught the long balance bars that formed the nose section, and twisted the entire hovering bike upside down.

It must have been enormously strong to overcome the stabilizers. Sorrel felt them resisting the monster for a split second. Then the bike flipped at fifty miles an hour. Sorrel and Max hit the asphalt.

It hadn't occurred to Sorrel to wear a helmet. She struck the road face-first and bounced several times, bones cracking, until she rolled to a stop in the gutter. Max came to rest ten yards further on. The sparrow spun out of control and crashed into a parked car.

Sorrel wasn't quite unconscious, but she did lie there, staring up at the sky, without a thought in her head for some time. She didn't even feel any pain. The world had gone perfectly still.

Max stepped into her range of vision, his Ghost flying around him, healing him with pulses of Light. He gazed down at Sorrel, then abruptly covered his mouth with one hand. He knelt beside her, eyes wide. He took her hands. "Sorrel? Do you hear me?"

She forced her eyes to focus on him. They were blurry, and her left eye seemed darker than the other. She opened her mouth to respond, but tasted so much blood, she coughed, instead.

Running footsteps pounded up to them. The fireteam bent over them a moment. Jayesh waved Kari and Madrid on. "Go ahead! I'm a healer, it's fine!"

The other two ran after the monster. Jayesh knelt beside Sorrel. He made the same motion Max had - covering his mouth for a moment, then digging his fingers into his hair. "I can't heal her like this."

"What do we do?" Max muttered.

Jayesh pointed. "The Saint-14 Memorial Hospital is about a mile that way. Our Ghosts can transmat her." Jayesh forced a smile for Sorrel's benefit. "Don't worry, Sorrel. You're messed up bad, but I don't think you'll die. Hang on, we'll get you to the hospital."

All Sorrel wanted to know was why the healer warlock couldn't heal her. But her mouth felt so strange, like her lips were the size of sausages. Max slid his arms beneath her and lifted her from the pavement, careful to support her head. Pain burned through her left arm and side. Sorrel whimpered.

"I know," Max murmured. "Not much longer."

Chapter Text

Max's Ghost transmatted them to the hospital. Sorrel had never experienced it before and would have found it interesting any other time. But now, the flash of light and dragging sensation only hurt her wounded body worse. They arrived at the hospital with Sorrel making an animal cry of pain.

She sort of saw the hospital swirl by, sort of felt the bed they laid her on. Two doctors in masks bent over her with sharp tools in their hands, plucking at her face and the side of her neck. It wasn't until she heard the sharp plink of rocks on glass that she finally understood that they were pulling gravel out of her face. She had an awful case of road burn from her scalp to her chest.

It seemed to take hours for them to remove the gravel. Meanwhile, a nurse inserted an IV into Sorrel's wrist and dosed her with morphine. Sorrel wandered into a drug-induced haze. The pain was still there, she just didn't care about it anymore. Even when they scrubbed her wounds with brushes to remove the last of the gravel, she hardly whimpered at all, although somewhere in her head, she was screaming.

"It's all right," Voice kept saying. "I'm here. I'm still with you."

"Are you?" Sorrel whimpered. She turned in the haze and saw the spider waiting for her in its web of legs. "No!" she cried, stumbling away from it. "Not now!"

The spider's legs lifted and it crawled after her. "Don't shut me out," Voice said. "This isn't me. It never was."

"You're the spider?" Sorrel wailed.

"No!" Voice cried. The spider halted, swaying among its thousands of legs. "This is what I see. It's not me. This is my nightmare."

Sorrel didn't understand. They were bandaging her now, and somewhere she was crying. Someone was holding her hand.

Then she was wheeled somewhere dark and quiet. "Max," she said, "turn off the drugs. The spider is here. Turn it off!"

Max's voice spoke sharply to someone. Then he said softly, "They've shut off the drip. You have quite a bit in your system, though. You're really smashed up, and ..." His voice broke. "It's my fault. I gave you armor, but I didn't give you a helmet. I had one for you. The armor saved the rest of you, but your head ... I'm such an idiot."

Sorrel tried to open her eyes. One eye was bandaged shut, but the other managed to open a slit. The sharp odor of antiseptics filled her nose. Max sat beside her bed, elbows on his knees, holding her unhurt hand. Although his Ghost had healed him, his hair was full of dirt, his armor scuffed and torn. Zero floated at his shoulder, anxiously watching Sorrel, too.

The sight of him gave her a focal point, something to keep the spider at bay. It lurked nearby, and if she looked around the room, she'd see it. If only she could say something to ease the devastated look on his face. All she could do was squeeze his hand a little.

Max squeezed back. "We're waiting on Jayesh. The hospital hasn't had a warlock visit in a week, and they had a waiting list. He's having to heal a bunch of other patients, then he'll be here."

"He can ... heal me now?" Sorrel managed.

Max nodded. "He couldn't heal you when you were full of gravel. You don't want all that dirt sealed under your skin - infection would get you. But the doctors cleaned you up, and you're ready for the Light."

Sorrel had another question. She struggled to force the words past her swollen lips. "Did they ... catch ...?"

"The monster?" Max finished. "Not yet. Our Ghosts are staying in touch." He glanced at Zero, who moved as if shaking her head.

Sorrel closed her eye and rested for a while. Her left arm and side throbbed with constant, steady pain, as did her head, face, and neck. The tightness of the bandages felt good.

She must have dozed, because she awoke to find Jayesh standing beside Max, shoulders slumped, shadows under his eyes. "They weren't kidding about the waiting list," he was saying. "A bunch of premature babies in the Intensive Care Unit, a bunch of bad staph infections, and cancer. Cancer's so hard to heal. I hate it." He turned to Sorrel with a sigh. "Sorry to make you wait so long. You'll feel better in a jiffy." He stamped a foot, then collapsed in a second chair and closed his eyes.

A pool of Light appeared on the floor beneath Sorrel's bed. It welled upward into her body, mending bones, knitting torn flesh, soothing, restoring. Sorrel's vision cleared. The swelling in her eyelids and lips diminished. She drew a deep breath without pain. When she looked around the room, there was no spider.

Jayesh kept the healing rift going for fifteen minutes. When it ended, he snored in his chair for a while before Max finally roused him.

Sorrel watched this, seeing the exhaustion on Jayesh's face. "Voice," she thought, "remember when I told you Jayesh was weak?"

"Yes," Voice replied.

"Well, I was wrong. He's not weak. He's gentle. I saw him fight ... he's wicked strong ... and he just healed me and a lot of other people and now he's so tired ... Voice, I'm stupid."

"Don't judge people so harshly," Voice said. "Especially before you know what they're like."

Sorrel watched as Max slipped out, then returned with snacks from the hospital snack bar. He coaxed Jayesh to eat, then helped Sorrel eat a little, too. "Healing burns your body's reserves," Max explained. "You have to give it fuel or it'll start consuming itself."

"Hey," Jayesh said around a mouthful of turkey sandwich. "I'm supposed to be educating the patient."

"You've done enough, Jay," Max said.

Jayesh straightened in his chair. "No I haven't. She hasn't had a Light show."

Max rolled his eyes. "Jayesh ..."

"I'm serious," Jayesh said. "Laughter heals, too. All right, Sorrel, here goes." Jayesh painted a series of stick figures in midair, made of glowing blue Light. "A warlock, a titan, and a hunter walk into a bar and order a shot of whiskey. When the shots arrive, each glass has a fly floating in the whiskey." He illustrated this with exaggerated cartoon animations. "The warlock gags and pushes his glass aside. The titan takes the glass and drinks the whole thing, fly and all. And the hunter grabs the fly and starts choking it, yelling, 'Spit it out, you! Spit it out!'"

Sorrel laughed. As she did, a weight of fear seemed to lift from her heart.

Jayesh entertained her until a doctor arrived. The doctor scanned her with an electronic wand connected to a datapad. Then he gently cut away the bandages covering the road rash. After a careful inspection, he pronounced her healed. "But you still have a lot of drugs in your system, plus psychological shock. We're keeping you overnight, just to be safe." The doctor pressed a button and transmatted a small hand mirror onto the table beside the bed. "Look at yourself, when you're ready. There's some scarring, but it should fade with time. Awoken don't scar permanently. Usually."

The doctor left. Jayesh stood up abruptly. "Well, I'm heading out, too. Kari says they shot the monster, but it passed the globe to its last partner before it went down. The partner went back into the sewers, we think. Only Sorrel can locate him." Jayesh gave her an appraising look. "Think you'll be up for one more patrol?"

"As long as it's not all night," Sorrel said. "I have work tomorrow."

Max said, "Hopefully we'll knock out this joker, recover the globe, and ship it back to the Reef with Petra Venj. No more of this Aphelion nonsense."

Jayesh and Max shook hands, then Jayesh left. Sorrel picked up the mirror, but didn't look into it. She was afraid of what might look back at her out of the glass. As Max returned to his seat, she asked, "What Aphelion nonsense?"

"That's the creature inside the globe," Max said. "It's using Awoken as host bodies. We think it's trying to escape the globe somehow. I'm sorry, I thought I told you about it."

The monster had a name. Sorrel relayed this information to Voice. Then, absently, she glanced in the mirror.

The face looking back at her was barely her own. The smooth, pale blue skin had been turned rough and pink with scar tissue, especially across her left cheek, nose, and forehead. The glowing crescent on that cheek was gone. The hair on the left side of her head had been shaved in order to clean out the gravel, and her neck was scraped, too. Her left eyebrow was missing.

Gone was the beautiful, shapely face she had repeatedly masked with makeup. Gone was any reason to worry about Max falling for her ... or anyone at all, really. She was disfigured, hideous.

"Voice," she thought, and Looked in the mirror.

Voice moaned a little. "Oh Sorrel ... I'm so sorry."

"The doctor said that it should fade in time."

"I hope so," Voice whispered. "My poor Sorrel ... I should have done something. I don't know what. Something."

Sorrel laid the mirror down and looked at Max. He was watching her, waiting for her reaction with a grim look, as if bracing himself.

Sorrel tried to smile. Her face felt stiff, as if the scar tissue resisted all happiness. "Well, I ... I guess I don't need makeup anymore."

Max blinked. Whatever he had expected her to say, it wasn't that. "You won't need makeup? I thought you'd be slathering it on by the gallon."

"I'm not pretty anymore," Sorrel said, touching the shaved part of her hair. "I only wore it to hide my looks."

Max gaped at her. "But ... why?"

"Because," Sorrel said fiercely, "boys at school would kiss me without asking. Who knows what would happen to me as an adult. So I wore punk rocker makeup."

Max sank back in his chair. He tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. "Now I understand," he muttered. "Zero, hit me in the head a few times, please."

His Ghost hovered over him uncertainly. "Uh ... why?"

Max passed both hands over his face. "Sorrel, I had no idea you were pretty until that day in the restaurant. I admit, I crushed on you for a few days after. But I ... I didn't want to. I only wanted to be friends. So I've been trying to be a friend. Then I go have a sparrow accident, and I didn't even give you a helmet." He closed his eyes. "Some friend I turned out to be."

This gave Sorrel mixed feelings - he really had been crushing on her, which both delighted and repulsed her. And he valued her as a friend so much that he was pushing back against those feelings. This warmed her in a much deeper place - it was a novel experience to be valued as a person.

"Max," she said, holding out a hand. He sat up and took it, looking at her questioningly.

"I only ever wanted to be your friend," she said. "You've always felt like ... like a younger brother or something. I always wanted a brother. You were such a sweet kid, and I was so sad when you got sick and had to stop working deliveries. Then you came back as a Guardian, and ... that was hard, too. But you were still you, so I adjusted. But then, that day my manager made me take off my makeup, and I had to meet you without it ... and I could see you falling for me. And I didn't want that. Because then I've lost your friendship."

Max developed two spots of color in his cheeks. He looked down for a moment and swallowed. "That's why ... I tried not to," he said. "Because ... when I first saw you in your makeup, I thought you were kind of scary. Then I saw you driving a forklift, and I thought you were cool. I always talked to you because I didn't know a girl could be cool like that."

Sorrel beamed. "That's the nicest thing anybody's ever said to me."

Max grinned, too. "It's true. And ... I want you to tell people that you were in a high-speed sparrow accident. Don't try to cover up the scars. Flaunt them like you did your makeup. Be cool." His eyes were suddenly shiny with tears. "Because it's my fault you have them. I'll regret it the rest of my life."

"Hey," Sorrel said, squeezing his hand. "Don't beat yourself up. I lived, that's what matters. And I'll try to keep on being cool. Maybe get my own sparrow so I can teach you how to drive."

Max laughed, a little jerkily. "That'll be the day."

They talked until a nurse came in to tell Sorrel to sleep. Max reluctantly departed, and Sorrel dozed off, feeling comforted for the first time in her life.

"Max," Zero said, "we need to talk about Erica."

Max had just arrived back at the Tower after saying goodbye to Sorrel. It was about noon, and he was ready to nod off standing up. But he'd promised to spend the afternoon working inventory for New Monarchy, which meant reading databases and translating them into something humans could read.

He ambled along the Tower Walk, hands in his pockets, enjoying the cool autumn breeze in his face. The Tower concession stands teased his nose with aromas of hot tea and spiced ramen. Maybe he'd grab a bite before heading to work.

"I don't want to think about Erica," he told Zero as he joined a short line outside the ramen shop. And he didn't. Sorrel had been so kind about having half her face sanded off on the road. He choked on his own guilt - that beautiful girl was disfigured because of his oversight. He owed Erica nothing. But he owed Sorrel everything.

"We need to talk," Zero insisted, flying in front of him to meet his gaze. "You've got to end this thing with her before it goes any farther. I have two letters from her, and they're awful. You shouldn't read them."

"Two?" Max said. His stomach twisted unpleasantly. It had been doing that a lot whenever Erica appeared in his life. "When did they arrive?"

"Last night and this morning," Zero replied. "She's ... making demands, now. Hive Witches treat their consorts with more consideration than she's treating you."

Max didn't doubt it. He almost asked to read them, but changed his mind. He didn't want to lose his appetite, and Erica's letters tended to have that effect. "I'll read them tonight," he said.

"Right," Zero said. "You also have an appointment to meet with Sorrel's mother tonight about seven."

"What!" Max had been reading the shop menu. Now he spun around to face Zero. "How? Who set it up?"

"I did," Zero said, emoting a smile. Inside his head, privately, she added, "Her mother can tell us if Sorrel is a Guardian or not. She implied that she had kept it secret for years, because Sorrel's sanity is at stake."

"Her sanity?" Max said blankly. "Wow. Don't let me forget that appointment. It sounds serious."

He bought his ramen and ate it as he walked down the wall toward the residential section. The Vanguard had built a series of high-rises to house Guardians and human staff who had lost their homes when the old Tower was bombed. Max's apartment was in one of these. New Monarchy had set up a pavilion just outside, along with a small shop where they dispensed goods to members. It wasn't as convenient as their old location near the Tower hanger - Max did a lot of running from the pavilion, to the shipments in the new hanger, and back - but it helped the hungry and poor who came to them for help. Max was more than happy to give them what time he had.

He greeted Executor Hideo, a sleekly-groomed man in a scarlet hood and tunic, and went to the tables of work computers. Zero transmatted Max his laptop, and Max set to work in between finishing his ramen.

It was monotonous, and yet somehow relaxing after tracking the murderous Aphelion. The afternoon sun warmed the pavilion, and other New Monarchy employees moved about, working on various tasks. Max was pleased to see that the shipments from the farms were coming steadily - it had been a good year. What was even better was that New Monarchy had the glimmer to pay for it. The year after the Red War, he had filed a heartbreaking number of suspensions and promises to pay. There had been little food and little glimmer. But things were finally running more smoothly, with good harvests and more glimmer in the accounts.

By late afternoon, he was nodding off over his laptop. One of his coworkers, a motherly woman named Lila, tapped him on the shoulder. "Take the sofa in the corner," she murmured, pointing to a plush red sofa half-hidden behind draperies. "Grab a nap. I know you've been working nights stopping that killer. I'll take over inventory."

"Thanks so much," Max said. To Zero, he thought, "Make a note. I owe Lila a favor."

"Noted," Zero replied.

Max crashed on the obscenely comfortable sofa and slept for two hours. Zero woke him at six. "You just have time to make it to your appointment if you leave now."

Groggy and disoriented, Max dashed home to change out of his tattered, road-damaged armor into a set of jeans, a warm shirt and a windbreaker. "Don't want to look too intimidating," he said to Zero as he pulled his boots back on. "Plus my gear is trashed."

"I'll mend it when I have a chance," Zero said, playing her scan beam over the places on his armored vest where the leather had peeled and split. "I'm good at synthing repairs. I made that whole vest for you from woven steel threads I stripped off a dead tank."

Max paused and stared at her. "That's what that vest was made of? No wonder it was so heavy."

Zero emoted a smile and twirled her shell. "I didn't want my Guardian to be hurt."

He patted her shell with a grin. Then they took off into the City to meet with Sorrel's mother before the next patrol.

Chapter Text

Havila Atkin lived in a small house in District 8, one of the poorer neighborhoods near the outer wall. While the Red War had not done much damage out here, the marks of poverty were evident in dilapidated roofs patched with tarps, rusted-out cars in front yards of bare dirt, and a depressing reek of old garbage and stale beer.

Havila's house had a simple gravel yard free of weeds, and around the front door were old car parts that had been turned into planters. These were full of cheerful flowers that added a welcome splash of color to the house, which was an old prefab with rust stains trickling down the walls.

The door opened at Max's knock. An Awoken woman with sea-green hair flowing to her waist gazed at him appraisingly. "Maximilian Ross?"

"Yes ma'am," he said with a slight bow. "I'm a Guardian." He nodded to Zero, who floated close to his shoulder.

"I see. Come in." Havila beckoned, and Max entered the little house.

The lights inside were yellow-orange, so his impression of the decor was yellow-orange. The furnishings were old, but clean, and favored an Art Deco look - all cubes and angles. A painting on the wall in the entry was a colorful abstract design.

Havila led him into a small living room and offered him a seat in a threadbare armchair. She sat opposite him, a beautiful pale Awoken who resembled Sorrel - or Sorrel as she had been. Desperate guilt seized Max by the throat. He would have to explain and apologize.

"Have you talked to Sorrel?" he said. "Uh ... recently?"

Havila nodded. "I am aware she was in an accident. You were the driver?"

Max nodded. "It's my fault. I should have planned ahead - given her a helmet -"

Havila held up a hand, closing her eyes. "She explained. I bear you no ill-will. Guardians will be Guardians."

Max exhaled and gazed at the floor for a moment, trying to control his urge to confess everything. He wished Havila would grow angry and curse him, because he deserved it. Her placid resignation was worse than if she had raged.

"Now," Havila went on, "you asked why Sorrel can use the Light, and yet has no Ghost. I must explain a little about our family."

Max nodded and braced himself.

"I met her father a few years before Sorrel was born," Havila went on, gazing at him. "He was a Titan of the Vanguard, assigned to patrol the wall near this district. I was young and inexperienced, and Guardians were like heroes out of a fairytale. We began dating, and he ..." She paused, gazing into the middle distance, smiling. "He was wonderful. Still is. So we married and had Sorrel. She was about a year old when my husband was offered a position in the Sunbreakers."

Suddenly a whole host of facts became clear in Max's head. The Sunbreakers were a mercenary band of Titans who used Solar Light and operated out of Mercury. They battled humanity's enemies on their own terms - usually with far less restraint than the Vanguard advised. They were rumored to have been wiped out in the Red War, putting a sad ending to that particular story.

"I know of them," Max said. "I didn't know they recruited anyone."

"They don't," Havila said with a sad smile. "It was a personal invitation from a high-ranking Sunbreaker he'd worked with. But that meant leaving Earth ... and his family couldn't come along. He knew he would be gone for many years ... longer than my lifetime, or Sorrel's. So he asked me for a divorce."

"That's not fair," Max said, indignation rising in him. "He could have worked it out some other way."

Havila lifted a hand and let it fall. "What's done is done. He left me with a small stipend to provide for Sorrel. I was angry and grieving. So ... about six months later, when Sorrel came toddling in from the back yard with a Ghost following her, I overreacted."

Max straightened. "A Ghost?"

"Yes," Havila said. "It had chosen her as its Guardian. My, it was proud, and so happy. So was Sorrel. Looking back, I think I should have handled it much differently. But I had lost her father to the whims of the Traveler, and I couldn't face losing Sorrel, too. So I told that Ghost to leave us and never see Sorrel again. She was not to be a Guardian. And if that Ghost ever came back, I'd use my shotgun on it."

"And it left," Max said.

"Oh, it followed the letter of the law," Havila said. "It flew away and I never saw it again. But Ghosts establish a telepathic link with their Chosen, which I didn't know at the time. It talked to her all the time inside her head."

Max glanced uneasily at Zero, thinking of how he was still adjusting to communicating with her. And Sorrel had been doing it since childhood. "Uh ... does it still?"

"As far as I know, yes," Havila said. "She calls it her Voice. I've warned her never to tell anyone about it, for fear of being labeled schizophrenic or worse. She was fairly happy until she was about sixteen. Then something happened to the Ghost."

Max straightened.

"I don't know what it was, exactly," Havila said. "I found Sorrel crying in her room, saying that Voice was hurt and we had to do something. But what could we do? Neither of us had any way of tracking a single Ghost. I was not about to ask the Vanguard for help and have them take my daughter. Besides, I hoped that the Ghost would die and leave Sorrel alone at last."

Zero ducked behind Max and hid under his torn cloak.

"I'm not condoning my actions," Havila said. "Only trying to explain. I know what I did was wrong, and I'm hoping that you can bring about my absolution."

Max nodded, not sure what to say.

Havila went on, "The Ghost didn't die. Sorrel thought that it had been saved, somehow. But she began having nightmares about spiders. She's had them ever since."

"She mentioned that in the hospital," Max said. "The drugs they gave her made her see a spider in the room."

"Her Ghost is the source of that dream," Havila said. "But I don't know why, or what it means. Sorrel doesn't know she's a Guardian or that Voice is a Ghost. But if she's beginning to use the Light as a weapon ... I can't conceal the truth any longer." She picked up an envelope from the end table beside her chair. "I've written her a letter explaining all this. Give it to her when you next see her. And be careful how you talk to her about this. My daughter already has image problems. This is going to upset her deeply ... perhaps damage her mental health. But I must try to atone for the damage I've done."

"Why don't you talk to her?" Max said. "Why get me involved? You don't know me from Adam."

Havila studied him with glowing eyes the same shade of green as Sorrel's. "Because," she said simply, "you're her friend. She told me about your recent Guardianhood. You understand what she's about to go through. I'm asking you to be a man and a protector in this. Help her without taking advantage. If you harm her ..." A flicker of Light danced across Havila's irises. An invisible surge of power rolled off her, making the hair on Max's scalp rise in waves. She might not have been a Guardian, but she was Awoken, and she was stronger than he realized.

"Of course, ma'am," he stammered. "I'll take care of her. I - I mean, it's my fault she's hurt, and ... I'd already decided to make up for it any way I could."

Havila's power subsided as she relaxed. "Good. I know where you live, Maximilian Ross. I know Lord Saladin. Please don't force me to lodge a complaint with him."

Yikes, she knew more about him than he realized. Max bowed slightly. "You have nothing to worry about, ma'am."

Zero peeked over his shoulder. "Really, you don't. Because I'll keep him in line."

Havila smiled. "Good." She rose to her feet. "Maybe you and Sorrel can find out what happened to her Ghost. She'll never be complete until she finds it, much as I hate to admit it."

Max nodded and stood. "I'll do my best, ma'am." In his head, he sent a single question mark to Zero. He sensed her begin searching the Internet for any mention of damaged Ghosts in connection with spiders.

He followed Havila to the door, and was thankful to step out of that little old house and back into the fresher air of the City. He summoned his sparrow - the front bars were bent and it tended to swerve, despite Zero's attempts at repairs - and took off to join his team on patrol. Sorrel was still in the hospital and wouldn't be joining them.

"What do you think, Zero?" he thought.

"I feel sorry for Sorrel," Zero said. "And her Ghost. I'm pretty sure the Ghost is in Owl Sector. Her messages come through their servers and use their headers."

"Can you contact her and find out any more?" Max thought. "I'll talk to Cayde-6 tomorrow about how to get permission to go in there."

"I'll do my best," Zero replied, "but this Voice Ghost clams up easily. I might not get much out of her."

"Just try," Max thought. "A Ghost might be able to fix Sorrel's scars."

"Maybe so," Zero replied.

Max joined up with Jayesh, Kari, and Madrid, and began to work their way along the streets where they had slain the second Aphelion and lost the globe. Without Sorrel, the only way they could locate the globe was by the delta signal it emitted. So Madrid led the way with his Ghost's superior scanner, while the rest followed along, watching a map of the sewer system in their helmet HUDs.

Zero, however, concentrated on contacting the Ghost known only as Voice.

Try as she might, she couldn't open a communication channel to the other Ghost's Light. The only way she could make contact was through the Owl Sector servers, which Zero disliked. It left behind logs that could be traced. She'd have to be discreet in whatever she said.

"Hello from Zero, again," she said in a text message. "We've just been to speak with Havila A. She told us the history of you and your ... friend."

Zero waited for a reply. Voice was so reticent to talk, she might not answer at all. Zero glanced across the rooftops at the monolithic buildings of Owl Sector in the distance, surrounded by an eight-foot block wall fence. They were so close to the mysterious research facility ... and so was the Aphelion, and still, nobody knew why.

A reply arrived from Voice. "Oh. So you know. Please don't endanger her. You've already used her name once. If they check the logs, they'll see."

Zero mentally kicked herself. "Why is secrecy so important?"

"Because they've been searching for her since they found me," Voice replied. "I don't have the security access to scrub the logs."

"My Guardian could come rescue you."

"No! I can't be saved. I can't make you understand, but believe me, there's nothing any of you can do."

This distressed Zero so much that Max sensed it. She felt his wordless questioning thought, offering comfort. She responded, reassuring him that everything was all right. He returned his attention to patrolling, but she sensed his fatigue. Max was operating on two hours of sleep in the past twenty-four hours. His reflexes were slower and he'd make more mistakes in a fight. Zero would have to boost Max's Light temporarily in order to clear his head - but he'd pay for it with a harder crash at the end.

Beneath this was Zero's concern about her sister Ghost. What had happened to her behind those featureless concrete walls that she considered herself past saving?

"What if we brought your friend to you?" Zero asked.

"No," Voice replied, her horror evident in her text. "She must not enter Owl Sector. Please - don't bring her here. Please!"

"All right, all right." Zero could bring Max, though. With every word, she grew more determined to rescue Voice from whatever prison she was in. After a moment, she added, "We've been hunting the Aphelion. Do you know about it?"

"Yes," Voice replied. "They're calling it."

"Who is?"

But Voice had hit her stopping point, and no more replies came.

Zero relayed this conversation to Max. Max exclaimed, "Wait. Owl Sector is calling the Aphelion? Do they realize it's killing people along the way?"

"Voice stopped talking at that point."

Max moved to dig his fingers into his hair, but hit his helmet instead. "And they're searching for Sorrel. No wonder her mom kept her secret. Do you think they're experimenting on a Ghost and want to observe the effects on its Guardian?"

Zero couldn't answer. The thought of a Ghost being experimented on filled her with a sick rage. Ghosts were people, not machines to be tinkered with. And if they treated a Ghost so callously, what might they do to its Guardian?

Max shared her anger, but his was different. He had learned to love his Ghost, taking her into his heart as a dear friend to be cherished and protected. And now he cared about Sorrel in the same deep, unfathomable way. The thought of her Ghost - which he pictured as a second Zero - being tortured in a nameless lab enraged him, too. But unlike Zero, Max could do something about it.

Midnight came and went. The fireteam picked up no signals at all. All of them were moving slower now, the constant night patrols weighing on them. When Kari suggested they stop and rest in a healing rift, the team accepted with groans of relief. They settled into a bench at a bus stop, empty at this late hour, and Kari created a healing rift underfoot. Max stretched out his legs and as the ache faded from his feet. Jayesh passed out bags of trail mix and water bottles.

"Got some creepy news," Max told his team in a low voice. "This is top secret, so keep it quiet, okay?"

The fireteam sat up straighter and gave him their attention.

Max told them about Sorrel and her missing Ghost. He explained about Voice's messages coming through Owl Sector, and how someone inside Owl Sector was calling the Aphelion.

"That's it, then," Madrid said, his face invisible in shadow except for his glowing yellow eyes. "The reason we can't find the monster tonight. It's already inside."

"Traveler's Light," Jayesh muttered. "It would kill everyone there."

"Not if they had suitable restraints in place," Kari said. "This creature isn't a pure Aphelion, right? It's an avatar in a mortal body. But I wouldn't put it past those mad scientists to figure out how to free the actual being from the globe."

"We'll patrol along the Owl Sector walls," Madrid said. "If we can confirm that the globe is inside, we'll call off the patrol and report to the Vanguard. The monster and the globe will be contained. The globe can be returned to the Reefborn. Crisis over."

"You think it will be that easy?" Max said. "If they've been calling the Aphelion and letting it murder people, they're not going to admit that to the Vanguard. This is criminal behavior."

The team was quiet a moment, munching their trail mix.

"Well, whatever happens," Jayesh said, "Sorrel has to stay well out of it. Between what her Ghost said and what her mother said ..."

Max nodded. The letter to Sorrel from her mother seemed to burn in his pocket, needing to be delivered, thick with news that would overturn Sorrel's life. At the same time, Max had letters waiting from Erica that he still hadn't read and didn't want to read. They were wrecking his life in a much more gradual fashion.

He daydreamed about taking Sorrel down to the Tex Mechanica shooting range and teaching her to shoot various kinds of rifles and handguns. Then his face grew warm. Would that count as a date? He didn't want to give her the wrong impression, especially since she had confided that she thought of him as a younger brother. Maybe he'd ask her, first. If shooting targets sounded too romantic to her ... which, deep down, he thought it did ... then they didn't have to do it.

But he was being disloyal to Erica with these sorts of thoughts. He put Erica into the daydream instead. Instantly it lost its appeal. She would berate him for his poor handling, hit more targets than he did, and laugh at him for it. Afterwards, she'd demand dinner at a restaurant he couldn't afford.

The fireteam was finishing up and mounting their sparrows. Max snapped out of the daydream with a sense of relief and went to his sparrow. Maybe Zero was right and he needed to deal with Erica.

"Zero," he said, "read me Erica's letters, please."

"Oh dear," Zero said. "A third one arrived this evening when you didn't reply to the first two."

"Read it, too," Max thought with an inner groan.

The first letter recounted how Erica had come to his apartment and he had refused to see her. Of all the nerve, how could he do that to her when she had needed him?

Max broke in. "She came to my apartment?"

"You were asleep," Zero replied. "I wouldn't let her in. I, um, might have insulted her."

That was why Erica was so bitchy in this letter. "Go on reading," Max thought.

The letter got worse and worse, culminating in breakup threats if he didn't shape up. Feeling slightly shell-shocked, Max listened as Zero began the second letter.

This one was full of intimate details of what she would do with him if he let her move in with him. A third of the way through, Zero stopped reading. "Max ... do I have to finish this one? It's embarrassing me."

The back of Max's neck was hot, as was other parts of him. But he felt dirty and used, as if Erica had splattered his soul with sewage. "Skip it," he said.

Zero paused for a long moment, apparently reading the third letter ahead of time to avoid more embarrassment. Then she said, very quietly, "Max. This one crosses a line."

"Like that second one didn't?" Max retorted. He would need brain bleach after that second letter.

Zero began reading the third letter. Erica seemed to purr with satisfaction, satisfied that her second letter had hooked him. But she included a list of behavior she expected from him. No more hanging around with his friends, except on missions. No hanging out with single girls, ever. He must answer all her messages within five minutes or less. He was never allowed to get angry at her. If he wanted her intimate company, he must buy her anything she asked for, first. Half his paychecks belonged to her, and she must have full access to his bank account.

On and on it went, chain after chain that she wished to bind him with. Zero stopped at the last item, made a soft, angry beeping sound, and read, "And you must never let that Ghost of yours appear when I'm with you. No hanging around other girls, including girl Ghosts."

Max clenched his fists against his sparrow's handlebars. Erica wished to strip away his freedom, his social life, and his autonomy. But outlawing his Ghost? That was one step too far. He had suffered too much for Zero, had sacrificed and watched her sacrifice for him. Erica and what she offered just weren't worth it. The more he thought about those three letters - threatening, baiting, adding rules upon rules - the more angry he felt. He had never asked Erica to be his girlfriend. He'd tried to stall her until spring. But she'd wormed her way back into his life anyway, and he'd let her do it.

But Erica would not cost him his Ghost.

"Zero," Max thought, "draft a reply. Here's what I want to say."

As they circled the Owl Sector compound, Max mentally dictated a short, angry breakup letter. He had Zero send it, then focused fiercely on the road. There. He was done with Erica and her garbage. Now he could focus on school and work in peace.

The only problem was that Madrid couldn't detect the delta signal of the globe inside the walls of Owl Sector.

They grew anxious and contacted the watchful Cormorant Blade agents who patrolled a wider circle. The night was quiet. The blue monster had not appeared, breaking its pattern.

By the time dawn brightened the sky, Max was so tired, he was beginning to hallucinate flashes of movement in the corners of his eyes. He kept thinking things were running at his sparrow's stabilizer bars and trying to flip it. He'd never been so glad to get off patrol and head for the Tower.

On the way, he stopped by Sorrel's grocery store to give her the letter from her mother.

Chapter Text

Max found Sorrel in the back, on one of the receiving docks, helping unload pallets from a truck. Max stood back and waited for her to have a moment to speak to him. She wore no makeup, nothing to cover up the horrendous scars that marred her face. While the other employees called jokes to each other, nobody spoke to Sorrel. Nobody went near her. Max became more and more aware of an invisible bubble around her, as if she had become untouchable and nobody wanted to even look at her.

A sick feeling burned in his gut. This was his fault. Before, she'd always been the one who made the most wisecracks and kept the other employees laughing. Now she kept her head down, working in silence.

"I've broken her," Max thought to Zero. "Light forgive me, I've destroyed her."

"Don't be so hard on yourself," Zero replied. "You're exhausted and not thinking straight. You didn't wreck your bike. The monster did it."

After another moment, Max pitched in to help Sorrel move boxes, unable to stand her isolation anymore.

"Oh," Sorrel said, looking up as he seized the other handle of a crate. "Hi there, Max. What are you doing here?"

"Just got off patrol," he replied, lifting the heavy crate and hauling it into the back of the store. "No sign of the monster, no deaths. Quiet and boring. How are you feeling?"

Sorrel's smile was a pathetic remnant of what it had once been. "Pain-free, thanks to Jayesh. I can still work, and that's what matters. I think my hair looks good like this, don't you think?"

"The semi-shaved look is in style," Max agreed, hoping to the Traveler that it actually was. "I have something for you, when we're done here. A letter."

"From you?" The look she gave him, sort of sideways through her eyelashes, set his heart pounding. For a second he fervently wished the letter was from him.

"No," he said with regret. "From your mom. Explains some things she told me last night."

"Oh." Did Sorrel actually look disappointed for a second? Maybe he was reading too much into her posture as she lifted another crate. "Why were you talking to my mom?"

"Uh ... I had to apologize."

Sorrel gave him that half-smile from under her scars. "Did she kill you?"

"No, but your mom is kind of scary."

"Her mom was a Techeun," Sorrel said, as if that explained everything. "I've seen her do some amazing things. When I was a kid, a big dog attacked me. Mom came running out and moved her hands in this weird way. That dog dropped dead. Our neighbors were not happy."

Max realized that when Sorrel had asked if her mother had killed him, she'd meant it literally. Goosebumps crawled up his back. "Um, no, I guess I got off light. So ..." The last box was being hauled off the truck by the others. Sorrel and Max had a moment to catch their breaths and face each other. Max dug into his pocket and pulled out the envelope, by now with a crease down the center. "Here you go. And ... if you need to talk afterwards, just call. Zero can wake me up."

Sorrel tried to smile, but she looked confused. "All right." She slid the envelope into her own pocket. "You look done in. Go get some sleep."

Max nodded and awkwardly held out a hand. Sorrel shook it. It seemed too formal, but if he hugged her, he was afraid he'd never want to let go. They exchanged a last smile, then Max walked off.

He circled the store to reach the parking lot where he had left his sparrow. Many thoughts he didn't want to think about raced through his mind in no order. Sorrel - monster - Erica - Sorrel - schoolwork -

Why hadn't he asked Sorrel out to lunch instead of Erica? Why had he been so dense? And he'd made a pact to remain only friends with her, even though his treacherous heart had run away with him. How did people cope with this sort of thing on a daily basis?

He turned the corner and saw a tiny silver car parked beside his sparrow. Erica leaned against the car's hood, looking at her phone with a sour expression. As he approached, she looked up and smiled hatefully.

"Oh no," he thought to Zero. "I'm too tired to fight with her right now."

"Transmat?" Zero asked.

Max drew a deep breath and steadied himself. "No ... I'll face this like a man. I just wish I weren't so tired." He forced a smile onto his face and approached the waiting woman. "Hey there, Erica."

Erica wore a black pants suit that hugged her figure. She looked cold and professional from her perfectly-groomed black hair to her high-heeled shoes. Her smile was more of a snarl. "Did you write this?" she said, holding up her phone. On the screen was the letter he had dictated to Zero.

Max nodded. "I'm afraid so."

Erica jammed her phone in her pocket. "I thought maybe that Ghost of yours forged it. Seemed like something she'd do."

"No," Max said. "We're through, Erica. I never should have approached you in the first place. I'm sorry."

Her mood flip-flopped like lightning. "You can't drop me like that," Erica said, tears filling her eyes. "Don't you care about me? I care about you - so much, Max."

"So much that you ditched me when I had cancer?" Max replied dryly.

"That's not fair," Erica snapped, carefully wiping her eyes so as not to smudge her eyeliner. "I can't handle death and dying. That's why I liked that you were a Guardian. You can't die, now."

Max shrugged.

Erica looked at him, opening her eyes wide. "In fact ... I could make you stronger. At work, they've been testing Guardian augmentation. I could give you the first run of our new products."

Max recalled Erica's fury when the Vanguard had denied her the grant. Naturally, she'd experiment on him in revenge.

"You'd make me a lab rat?" Max said. "No thanks. Like I said, we're through, Erica. Don't write to me any more."

"It's that Sorrel bitch, isn't it?" Erica snarled, clenching her fists. "You've held a candle for her for years, don't deny it."

"We're just friends," said Max through his teeth.

"Just friends," Erica mocked. "Sure, Maxy, I totally believe that. You were back there seeing her just now, weren't you? You Dark-burned cheater."

Max's temper was creeping toward the volcanic end of the thermometer. Solar Light began to crackle through him, especially in his hands. "You leave Sorrel out of this. In fact, why don't you answer a question of mine? Who inside Owl Sector is calling to the Aphelion?"

Erica gasped and her mouth worked, as if trying to find the right words. "Wh-Wh-nobody! Who would do that? That's crazy! Whatever gave you that idea?"

Max watched the lies behind her eyes and wondered how he'd ever fallen for her in the first place. "You know what? Never mind. I don't even care. Zero, transmat."

He disappeared in a swirl of light particles, leaving Erica fuming behind him.

Sorrel found a moment to read her mother's letter shortly after Max departed.

She read it through twice, sitting on a crate of canned goods in the back of the store, her feet pulled under her.

She'd had a Ghost. Her mother drove it away, but Sorrel had kept talking to it.

Voice. Voice was a Ghost.

Her mind reeled. It couldn't be true, could it? But here it was, in her mother's own handwriting. It had to be true. It couldn't be, but it was.

"I've been a Guardian since I was one and a half," she thought. "Voice ... Mom just told me everything. In this letter. Is this true? Am I - I'm actually -?"

"It's true," Voice said very softly. "You've been chosen by the Light. You and I are bonded so deeply, we can communicate despite ... everything. Our neural symbiosis went deeper than most because you were so young. Your brain was still developing, and it grew an extremely strong communication center."

Sorrel ran a hand down her roughened, scarred face. Her whole world had just come unmoored. She was spinning, flailing, grabbing for the one sure thing she knew. She had a Ghost. She needed to see Voice, touch her, look into that blue eye, before she could begin to comprehend this. "Where are you, then?"

"I'm in a lab in Owl Sector," Voice replied. "But it's too dangerous for you to come here."

"Max could get in!" Sorrel exclaimed, jumping to her feet. "Do you think he's gone yet?"

She dashed outside and around to the front of the store, where Max usually parked. The only person in sight was Erica West, who stood beside her tiny silver car with a black scowl on her face. Maybe Max had just left.

Erica saw her coming and her scowl vanished. "Sorrel! Come here a minute!"

Sorrel approached her warily. But her world was so upset, Erica turning suddenly friendly might simply be part of the new normal. Or it might be a trap. Sorrel was still in freefall. She'd lost her face, her mother had betrayed her, and she didn't know who she was anymore.

"Hey," Erica said, her gaze lingering on Sorrel's scarred face with perverse satisfaction. "Heard you were in the hospital."

"Sparrow accident," Sorrel said, covering her scarred cheek with one hand. "It should fade with time, the doctor said."

"That's so awful," Erica said, but her tone was gleeful. "No more turning heads when you walk through a crowd, huh?"

Sorrel didn't know how to respond to that.

Seeing she had Sorrel off-balance, Erica changed subjects. "That report on your first patrol was really interesting. You can use Void Light?"

Sorrel nodded.

"Are you a Guardian?"

"Sort of?" Sorrel said. "I mean, I don't know where my Ghost is."

Erica's gaze sharpened. "Your Ghost?"

"Yeah ..." Sorrel had no sense of how much to share or keep secret. "I can hear her talking, but I don't know where she is. She's lost."

"That's too bad," Erica said, her smile almost sincere enough to be real. "The Ghost can't give you any clues about where it is?"

"No, she won't talk about it."

Erica looked thoughtful. "You know, there is a Ghost inside Owl Sector. It's damaged, but it's alive. Maybe it's yours?"

"Could I see it?" Sorrel asked. "Maybe we'd know each other."

Erica folded her arms and looked away. "I don't know. They don't usually let visitors into Owl Sector. High security, you know."

"Please," Sorrel exclaimed. She and Erica may despise each other, but she was prepared to beg and grovel if it would unite her with her Ghost. "Oh please, try to sneak me in. I have to know if it's my Ghost and why she's hurt."

Erica shrugged noncommittally. "I could try ... but no promises. If they turn you away at the gate, at least we tried, right?"

"You could show me pictures?" Sorrel said.

"Not sure that would work," Erica said. "You have to talk to the Ghost to identify it." She rubbed her lower lip in thought. "I might be able to beg a favor from my boss. I'll call on the drive up. Come on, hop in."

"Right now?" Sorrel said in dismay. "I'm in the middle of my shift."

Erica shrugged. "I can't wait around. Either you come now, or you ask the Vanguard to give you a pass. It might take weeks."

Seeing Sorrel wavering, Erica added, "It'll be an hour. Surely you can get away for that long. Say you took a late lunch break."

Sorrel gave in. She climbed into Erica's tiny car with misgivings. But there was no other way to get to Voice, and she wanted her Ghost - wanted her like a security blanket. Only then could she start processing that she was an empowered immortal like Max and Jayesh. Her brain kept striking this information and reeling backward, like an animal touching an electrified fence. She was just like her father. All those years of despising Guardians because of him, and she had been one all along.

As they drove, she thought, "Voice, I'm coming to you with Erica. Tell Max where I went."

"No!" Voice shrieked. "Erica West? Oh no, Sorrel! Please don't! She's the one who's been hunting you all these years!"

"What do you mean, hunting me?"

The car pulled onto a main highway and zipped south, into the Core District. Erica pulled out her phone and had a cryptic conversation with someone on the other end. "Hey, it's me. I have a favor to ask. You know the Ghost? Yeah. Yeah. No. Right."

Voice threw caution to the wind. "Owl Sector knows that I'm bonded, but they didn't know to who. Their modifications have taken everything else, but they can't take our bond. They've been hunting you for years, watching the networks for any word of a mundane who can use the Light. Oh Sorrel, don't let her bring you in! Stay away! You don't know what they'll do to you!"

Sorrel drew a nervous breath and glanced at Erica, her expression distant as she concentrated on her phone contact. "I took out the Aphelion with Light. I could kill Erica, if I wanted. I just want to find you. I need you, Voice. I need to see you."

Voice made a sound like an electronic sob. "I need you, too, Sorrel, but not like this. You've suffered enough."

The tiny car pulled off the highway and entered a set of steel security gates with the Owl Sector logo emblazoned on them. The windowless buildings of Owl Sector rose before them, monolithic rectangles of concrete with receiver dishes on every roof, gathering in the Traveler's Light. Erica pulled into a security checkpoint, scanned her badge, and spoke to the guard on duty. She handed him her phone. He spoke into it, listened for a moment, nodded, and handed it back. He printed a pass, which Erica handed to Sorrel, and drove into the cavernous depths of an underground parking garage.

The pass was for one visitor accompanied by an OS employee. Subject to termination after two hours. Sorrel held this pass, wondering about its choice of words.

Erica parked and the two women got out. "This way!" Erica chirped, beckoning. "Looks like my favor came through. Just a few minutes walk and you can see if this is really your Ghost. Wouldn't it be so cute to reunite you two?" Her tone was a little too syrupy.

Sorrel's misgivings grew. But she trusted her own ability to summon Light, and followed Erica into the depths of Owl Sector.

Inside was brightly lit, with hallways hung with colorful artwork. Signs on the walls pointed toward various wings - Light testing, Light synthesis, quantum motion, applied sciences, Vex wing, and so on. Lots of people in lab coats moved about on business, taking no notice of the newcomers.

Erica led Sorrel into the Light Testing wing. They took an elevator five stories down - the facility must be mostly underground, and of monstrous size - and entered a softly-lit antechamber with doors leading to four different labs. Erica went to one and unlocked it with her badge. Then she hesitated, one hand on the doorknob. Her gaze searched Sorrel's face. "Are you ready for this?"

Sorrel nodded. "Yes. Please."

Erica opened the door. Beyond it was the spider of Sorrel's nightmares.

It was a vast, dimly-lit room full of cables and tubes. All of these were joined in the center into the thing that Sorrel always took for the spider's body. But now, seeing it in person, she realized that it wasn't a spider at all. It was a machine with two bulbous shapes, one large and one small, built around a central door. Every inch was covered in screens, dials, and blinking lights. There was a low, electronic hum as power flowed through the many conduits, and a sterile silicon smell.

Erica walked fearlessly beneath the hanging tubes and wires - not spider legs or a web, as Sorrel had thought of them. Sorrel trailed behind, half-afraid of the tubes grabbing her, as they did in her nightmares. But these were simply insulated plastic hoses, supported by cables attached to the ceiling, incapable of movement.

Erica reached the spider's body and opened the door in the smaller hemisphere. "Take a look."

Sorrel did.

Inside the machine was a tangle of fine wires like filaments. All of them were connected to a Ghost core that hung suspended in their midst. The core was the size of a golf ball, the little eyelids closed tightly. But when Sorrel said, "Voice?" the eye opened.

The perfect, diamond-shaped, sky-blue eye of a Ghost gazed into Sorrel's. The Ghost blinked at her and said in her head, "I told you not to come."

"Voice," Sorrel thought, reaching into the machine to touch the little core, the glass lens of the eye. "What happened? Why are you the spider?"

"It's keeping me alive, dear Guardian," Voice replied, slow and sad. "The spider is my nightmare. I shared it with you because I couldn't help it. And now you're caught like I am. I think they'll keep you alive. They want us both."

Something cold pricked the back of Sorrel's neck, along with a cold rushing sensation beneath her skin. She started to turn, raising her hand to her neck, but numbness spread down her legs and arms.

Erica stood nearby with a compressed syringe and a triumphant smile.

Sorrel didn't even remember hitting the floor.

Max was in the deepest sleep of his life when Zero began trying to wake him up. It took twenty minutes for his befuddled brain to realize that her voice wasn't part of whatever dream he'd been having. He had to surface from the depths of sleep with a huge effort. He sat up in bed, where he'd crashed in his shorts an hour before. "Zero?" he said, trying to focus his eyes. "What's wrong?"

"Sorrel's in trouble," Zero exclaimed, flying in front of him. "Her Ghost sent me a distress call. Apparently Sorrel met up with Erica, and Erica weaseled it out of her that she was a Guardian with no Ghost. Erica took Sorrel into Owl Sector, and Voice saw Erica sedate Sorrel. We have to do something!"

Zero had to repeat this over again, because Max didn't understand the first time. But after the second time, the lights in his brain began to turn on. A few very horrible puzzle pieces threatened to snap together in his head.

The Aphelion was probably inside Owl Sector.

Sorrel had been taken captive by Erica.

Erica was working on a Guardian augmentation program and desperately needed a successful prototype to land a grant.

He grabbed fistfuls of his own hair in both hands. "Oh Zero, I'm such an idiot. Call Jayesh. See if his team is available. I have to have backup on this one. It's Owl Sector. Call Cayde-6 and see if he can get us official Vanguard access."

Zero floated in midair, her shell open, sending out flickers of Light as she communicated with other Ghosts. Max jumped up and began pulling his armor back on, which was dirty and smelly from being worn constantly for days. He was even starting to smell like a Hunter.

No time to worry about that, now. He'd just broken up with Erica, and her revenge had been to try to destroy Sorrel. After all Sorrel had been through, he couldn't bear to think of her being consumed from the inside by radioactivity, her eyes burning ultraviolet.

It was mid afternoon, the sun beating on the western wall of his apartment and heating it, warming the small space. Max couldn't wait to escape the close, stuffy atmosphere. Once he had his gear on, he selected an auto rifle and a sidearm, then beat it for the Tower Walk.

"No reply from Jayesh, yet," Zero said, flying at Max's shoulder. "But Cayde says to come on down to the hanger. He wants to know what's up."

Max changed directions and headed down the Tower Walk to the hanger, ducking through crowds of other Guardians as they moved about on business. Every thought in his head was tinged with panic and the urge to hurry, hurry, hurry.

He reached the hanger and found Cayde's little workshop, a half-building filled with tools, maps, and unmarked crates. Cayde's pet chicken, Colonel, wandered around on the concrete, pecking at paint spots and watching people with her bright yellow eyes.

Cayde-6 was a blue-painted Exo, dressed in Hunter leather and a tattered black cloak. He saw Max coming and waved him into his booth.

"So," Cayde said, "got a problem with Owl Sector, huh?"

"My ex-girlfriend works there," Max said. "She just kidnapped another friend of mine. I'm afraid she's going to try to let the Aphelion possess her."

Cayde's blue eyes brightened, the pupils contracting. "Wait. Owl Sector has the Aphelion? Can you prove this?"

"No," Max said, clenching his fists. "But we hunted it all night last night, and it disappeared right outside their walls. And a Ghost inside said that they've been calling it."

Cayde stared at him for a second. Then he summoned his Ghost and gestured to her, communicating in silence. After a second, his Ghost nodded and disappeared.

"You'll have to take this one to Commander Zavala," Cayde said. "Kind of beyond my jurisdiction, if you know what I mean. I think he knows somebody to send with you."

"Good," Max said, "because my fireteam hasn't been in touch. I'm afraid they're off-planet or something."

"Trust me," Cayde said. "You'll have plenty of firepower backing you up."

Chapter Text

Sorrel opened her eyes.

Her head pounded with a furious headache, a side effect of the sedative. Her body felt weighted and slow. She hung in the air in some kind of sling. As she flexed her hands and feet, she realized that she had needles under her skin in her elbows, the backs of her knees, and her hips. Something was hooked into her neck, and an oxygen mask was clamped over her face. The metallic taste of bottled air lingered on her tongue.

Around her arched the cables of the spider. She hung near enough to the central body to see where Voice was, although the door was shut and she could no longer see inside.

Sorrel struggled, but one of the needles sent a pulse of electricity through her that convulsed her muscles. She went still, and the shock subsided.

"Voice," she cried inside her head, "what have they done to me?"

"I told you not to come," Voice said sadly. "I can't see what they've done, exactly. Can you Look for me?"

Sorrel opened that particular channel in her brain that let her Ghost use her senses. Now she understood what was happening - her brain had actually adapted to and built itself around their neural bond. She Looked carefully at the tubes and needles connected to her, and how they led up into a hole in the ceiling, out of sight.

"That's interesting," said Voice, perking up a little. "They've attached you to the spider. You're part of my Light-support network. Can you feel any Light?"

Sorrel tried to sense it, but felt only the discomfort of the needles. "No, I don't feel anything. If I struggle, the rig shocks me."

"That's very interesting," Voice murmured. "I may be able to reach you ... if I can only ..."

Down below, a door opened, admitting a long beam of light. Sorrel turned her head as far as she could against the thing in her neck and the mask over her face. Erica West had just entered, dressed in a spotless white lab coat. Accompanying her were two older men in lab coats over suits. The way Erica was gesturing and talking very fast, Sorrel guessed they must be her superiors.

"...the Ghost identified her as her Guardian, so as you can see, we have a once in a lifetime opportunity. An unregistered Guardian and her Ghost! I've already prepared them for the first round of enhancements. All you have to do is say the word."

The two older scientists gazed up at Sorrel in silence. Then one turned to Erica. "We are not Clovis Bray, Miss West. And even they secured written permission before undergoing human testing. Have you thought about what will happen when you let Miss Atkin go? She'll lodge a lawsuit against us with the Vanguard's legal backing. Maybe even the Consensus's. Miss Atkin is a citizen of the City and has all the rights of the Consensus Accords."

Erica waved a hand. "She won't, she won't! She'll be the most powerful Guardian ever to walk the planets! She'll be thanking us on her knees. The Vanguard will be panting to send their Guardians to us. Besides, I have her signature right here." She showed the scientists something on her tablet screen.

Sorrel was pretty sure she'd never signed anything. But then, her signature was floating around on the Internet, attached to various checks and legal documents. Erica might have forged it from one of those. Or Sorrel might have done it while semi-conscious. Who knew how long she'd been here already.

"Voice," she thought, "call Max and Jayesh. Call anybody. Erica's going to kill me."

"I've already called Max," Voice replied. "Zero says that Jayesh and the others are out on a mission, so Max is waiting on another fireteam. He's extremely anxious about you."

Sorrel was still too drugged to feel very upset. She slowly moved a hand to touch the roughened, scarred side of her face. "If I die, can you resurrect me?"

"I think so," Voice said slowly. "I have enough Light ... maybe. You being close to me is strengthening me a little."

Down below, the older scientists were reluctantly agreeing to let Erica perform one small test, but only under their supervision. Erica marched out with them, looking triumphant.

"She hates me," Sorrel thought. "Why does she hate me so much?"

"She wants Max," Voice replied. "And he likes you more than he does her."

"That's not hard," Sorrel thought with a low laugh. "Max likes his rifle better than he does Erica."

"She's jealous," Voice said. "And bitter with it. So she's willing to destroy everything as long as she can destroy you in the process. She'll probably try to destroy him, as well."

"I'm a Guardian, now," Sorrel thought, trying out the words. "So maybe I can stop her. Shouldn't I be stronger than this?" She tugged feebly at a wire, only to receive another electric shock. She gasped and convulsed.

"You're still under the effects of a strong sedative," Voice replied. "I could heal you, maybe, if I could see you. But I'm locked in here."

Sorrel lay limp in the harness, panting from the pain. "Voice ... Ghost ... I need your help. I don't understand anything anymore. Who am I, now?"

"Sorrel Atkin," Voice said. "My Guardian from the moment you were born. Talented, sensitive Awoken, and a wonderful person."

"That's who you think I am," Sorrel countered. "But I don't know if that's who I am anymore. My face is chewed up. I have Guardian powers I don't want. And - and what if Erica kills you when she starts experimenting on us? I won't even have you anymore."

"Why does any of that matter?" Voice asked. "You are defined by your choices and actions, not by circumstances. Right and wrong haven't changed. You still know what they are. Stop focusing on yourself and focus instead on serving the Light with good deeds. That's all the Traveler asks of its Guardians."

Sorrel was silent. Voice's words were like a slap in the face. She was being narcissistic, wasn't she? Maybe she always had been - obsessed with her own looks until they were stripped from her. She'd let her own self-centered impulses become the focus of her life, and with her biggest one removed, she had to find a new focus. Maybe she could afford to think about the Light and serving others more than about serving herself. It wasn't like she was physically attractive to anyone.

Sorrel drew a deep breath. The only person she could help right now was her faithful Ghost. "Voice ... since we probably only have a few hours left to live ... would you like me to give you a proper name?"

"I'd like that very much," Voice whispered, sounding overcome.

Down below, the doors at the other end of the lab opened. Two orderlies wheeled in a long gray box, like a coffin, strapped to a gurney. The box rocked slightly as something inside hissed and struggled. They began attaching the spider-rig's wires to the box.

The monster was here, all right. Sorrel was pretty sure that box was lead-lined to contain the radiation. The globe was probably in there, too. Time was more limited than she'd thought.

"I've called you Voice for so many years," Sorrel thought. "What if I named you Vox? It means the same thing."

"Vox," the Ghost said softly. "Yes, I could answer to that. I like that."

The lid of the lead box rattled. One of the orderlies tightened the belts holding it in. They retreated, leaving the box with the third Aphelion construct hooked to the spider.

A panel slid open on the wall across the room. Behind a thick pane of glass, Erica and the older scientists sat with tablets in their hands, observing. Erica was bent over her own tablet, tapping and swiping.

One of the spider's wires began to glow ultraviolet, siphoning the Aphelion's power.

Sorrel thought, "Time's almost up, Vox. If you don't mind me asking, what happened to damage you so badly?"

The ultraviolet glow spread down two wires, one connected to Sorrel, the other to the rig containing Vox. A sense of bitter cold trickled into Sorrel through the needle in her left arm.

"I couldn't stay with you," Vox said, "so I roamed around outside the City, helping identify Fallen encampments for Guardians to eliminate. One day, a Fallen Vandal shot me. Ow ... ow, this power is hurting me."

"It's hurting me, too," Sorrel thought. "Stay with me. What happened?"

"It thought I was dead and took me to its stash of machine parts. It had a bucketful of dead Ghosts. I was just one more for the pile. But I wasn't dead, and my bond with you kept me fighting to live. I managed to signal some nearby Guardians. They killed the Fallen and rescued me, along with the dead Ghosts. Apparently Owl Sector had a bounty on dead Ghosts just then, so they turned us in. The scientists used parts of the other Ghosts to repair me, but not all the parts were good. They've been experimenting on me ever since. They didn't know I was bonded until just a few months ago - I was determined to live because of you. But I'm what they call kitbashed, Sorrel. I can't fly, I can't maintain my own Light. If you pulled me out of this machine, I'll die. The Light has no use for me anymore."

Perhaps it was the cold, poisonous power flowing into her veins, but Sorrel felt her Ghost's despair along with it. The Aphelion seemed to magnify all negative emotions, glorying in them, beating down all hope.

Sorrel pushed back against it, reaching for that starry power within herself. No, it didn't come from inside her - she clearly felt it pouring into her from the Traveler, poised directly above Owl Sector.

"I think you're wrong," Sorrel panted, tightening her muscles and blocking the flow of Darkness with a barrier of glittering stars. "You're stronger than you think, Vox. You fought this monster for me once. You kept it from taking my mind. Fight it again!"

She sensed her Ghost rallying, gathering her courage. More Light swelled through Sorrel, the stars brightening.

Down in the observation room, Erica glared at Sorrel, then tapped her tablet. The flow of poisonous cold grew stronger and faster.

The lead box rocked back and forth on its gurney.

"It's too much," gasped Vox. "They're feeding it directly into me. I can't absorb Darkness - it's going to quench me."

Sorrel tore off her oxygen mask and threw it aside. "Then I'm coming to save you." She ripped the thing out of her neck, leaving a vigorous flow of blood behind. Then she ripped the conduit out of her left arm, cutting off the Darkness flow. Immediately she felt better. When the electric shock came, Sorrel endured it, then located the metal node on her back that was sending the shock into her spine, and ripped that off, too. She unplugged the needles from the backs of her knees, then sat up in the harness, groping at the buckles. It was similar to an aircraft flight harness, and her fingers remembered how to open the latches. Then she slid free and dropped to the floor.

Her legs bent like rubber beneath her, weak and floppy. She sprawled on the floor, aware that she only had seconds before Erica sent someone to grab her. Her legs wouldn't support her, so Sorrel crawled to the central machine and opened the door.

Vox blinked at her, a pathetic naked core in a web of wires, snared like a crippled fly. "If you take me out, I'll die," she said. "My Light is too weak."

"I can unplug this one," Sorrel said, eyeing a wire that shimmered with ultraviolet light. She plucked it out of the connector on her Ghost's core.

Vox moaned. "Thank you, thank you."

Sorrel cupped both hands around Vox. She summoned her pretty, starry power, and bent it into a ring around the core. When that didn't seem like enough coverage, she added another ring, then another, until Vox resembled a model of an atom, with rings traveling horizontally, vertically, and diagonally.

"What's this?" Vox asked in wonder. "You're shaping Light?"

"It's going to keep you alive," Sorrel said firmly. She wasn't certain how she knew, but she sensed that it was important to believe that the Light would do what she told it to. She began unhooking wires in handfuls, like pulling weeds. In a moment, Vox was free, floating an inch above Sorrel's palms.

"I'm not dead!" Vox exclaimed. "I'm free! Oh Sorrel, you're a wonderful Guardian!" She played a healing beam across Sorrel's face and neck, leaving a warm sensation across the scars, closing the bleeding throat wound. "I could heal these scars if I were stronger. There, I've eased some of the stiffness."

Sorrel beamed at her Ghost, feeling her face flex more easily. But she had no time to linger or say thank you. The lab door burst open and three burly orderlies dashed in, armed with stunners and dart guns.

"Just come quietly, miss," one of them called. "There's been a big mistake about all this."

"I'll bet," Sorrel muttered, glancing at the window. Erica was watching the chase with a wide smile. Once Sorrel was caught, back into the machine she'd go. No doubt about it.

Sorrel circled the spider's central machine, keeping it between her and the men. They spread out, moving cautiously, trying to herd her into a corner. If they'd just give her a clear path to the door-

The lid of the lead coffin crashed to the floor behind her.

Sorrel spun around. The burning blue shape of the monster clawed its way out of the box and crouched on the edge for a second, head jerking back and forth as it studied each of the four people in the room. It had had more time to transform than the other two versions. This one had no nose or mouth, but glittering ultraviolet compound eyes. Its skin was tight and shiny, like plastic, and its muscles stood out like knotted ropes. Its waist had shrank to barely more than the thickness of its own spine, like a hollowed-out corpse. Of the whole monster, that shrunken wasp-torso unnerved Sorrel the worst.

The Aphelion leaped off the coffin, knocking it to the floor with a crash. In one huge, frog-like bound, it crossed the room and attacked one of the orderlies - an Awoken. He screamed horribly as its burning hands groped his face and throat. The other orderlies struck it with stun guns and darts. The Aphelion ignored them. Possibly, it had no nervous system anymore.

But Sorrel's attention was on the fallen coffin. It had landed on its side and the globe had rolled out: that troublesome black stone globe ringed in gold, glowing purple in its center, powering the monster.

Don't let it see you.

Her advice to Max rang in her ears. She had to cover the globe - blind it, somehow.

She was wearing only a thin shirt and pants, nothing she could spare. If she touched it, there was every chance the Aphelion would seize her. But maybe she could kick it into the coffin and trap it underneath.

As she ran toward the globe, more screams filled the room. The Aphelion had killed the first man and turned its attention to the second. The third man was yelling frantically for help on a headset.

"We could save them," Vox said. "It hates your Void Light."

"In a minute," Sorrel said, giving the globe a solid kick. It rolled back to the coffin. Sorrel grabbed the coffin and tried to overturn it on top of the globe. But it was lined with lead, and she was still weak from the sedative. She couldn't even stir it from its place.

The monster's head whipped over its shoulder, staring at Sorrel. She had touched the globe.

It left the dying man it had been mauling and bounded toward Sorrel on all fours. Its limbs didn't quite touch the ground - it seemed to move on a cushion of force. It sprang at her, hands outstretched, wreathed in burning blue.

Sorrel lashed it with the Light of the stars.

The monster doubled up in midair and skidded past her, hissing and spitting. Sorrel struck it again, her Light an unshaped blast of power. The monster squirmed and crawled behind the coffin, using it as shelter.

Sudden lightheadedness struck Sorrel and she staggered. She clutched Vox a little closer in her left hand, her right hand still twinkling with starlight. "I'm really dizzy."

"You're using too much Light too quickly," Vox said, her voice a calm presence in Sorrel's adrenaline-charged brain. "Shape it into blades with edges as sharp as starlight on a freezing night. Less Light. More focus. More damage."

Sorrel tried to do this. Meanwhile, the monster reached out from behind the coffin, grabbed the globe, and dragged it into hiding, too. Sorrel had lost her opportunity to cut the monster off from the source of its power.

Suddenly, the pain of a taser struck her in the back. She shrieked and crumpled to the floor as maddening, shivering pain raced through her. The third orderly tased her all the way to the floor, his eyes wide and face wet with sweat. Then he left her moaning and writhing, turning his attention to the monster.

"No," Sorrel gasped. "Stay back!"

The orderly pulled a handgun from his belt and fired it at the monster. The reports were deafening. Sorrel clapped her hands to her ears. Black blood splattered across the floor from behind the coffin. The monster hissed.

The orderly ran out of bullets and had to reload. For a second there was silence. Was the monster dead? Sorrel struggled to her feet.

The monster leaped out of hiding and tackled the orderly to the ground, pressing its radioactive hands to his face. He screamed horribly as his flesh burned.

Sorrel ran the other way around the coffin and found the globe on the floor where the monster had left it. She summoned her most powerful Void Light and drove knives made of stars into the globe.

The monster leaped straight up in the air. It turned a backflip, plunged to the floor wish a crash and snap of breaking bone, and lay still. The orderly, wounded but alive, moaned and clutched his face.

Sorrel threw another burst of knives into the globe, and another, panting, sweating. "I'm going to kill you, you horrible Aphelion! Die! Die to my Light!"

Her own Light whipped out of the globe. No longer knives, something had reshaped it into a chain of unbreakable Light, every link perfectly formed. It caught Sorrel around the neck. She choked and clutched at it, but the chain was as hard as steel. It tightened and dragged her toward the globe with irresistible strength. Her feet skidded on the cold floor. "Vox!" she shrieked.

"I can't stop it!" the Ghost cried. "It's using your Light! I can't work against that!"

The chain dragged Sorrel to her knees, forcing her head toward that horrible globe. She strained and resisted, but the chain cut into her flesh with the fury of the stars.

She threw Vox to one side. "Don't let it take you, too!"

The Ghost bounced once, then hovered in her rings of Light. "Sorrel!"

Sorrel's forehead touched the globe.

Max paced back and forth beside the entrance to the Tower lift, fretting and anxious. Commander Zavala had promised him a fireteam to take into Owl Sector, but twenty minutes had passed and they hadn't appeared. No Ghost communications had arrived.

"I finally got a response from Jayesh," Zero told Max, floating at his shoulder. "He and his team were sent on emergency dispatch to Mars. Sounds like they're dealing with Cabal. He sends his apologies."

Max made a wordless, frustrated sound. "It's been two hours already, Zero. Who knows what they've done to Sorrel down there. Any response from that Ghost?"

"None," Zero replied in a small voice. "Not since her initial SOS."

Max dug his fingers into his shaggy blond hair. "That's bad. That's so bad. And I'm stuck here, waiting." It was so tempting to go tearing off to rescue Sorrel alone. But his Iron Lord training and his police training had both taught him to never, ever start a mission without backup.

He sat on the edge of a concrete planter and waited, drumming one foot on the sidewalk. "You know, Zero, this is all my fault. Every last bit."

"Why do you think that?" she asked.

Max reached up and stroked her shell. "You, for starters. When you came bombing in to my life to tell me that my uncle was dead and they thought I killed him ... that started it. I liked you enough to dare to become your Guardian. I didn't die of cancer like I should have because I fought it to the end. And that drug put it into remission - which also wouldn't have happened if you hadn't been there." He drew a deep breath. "Then we lost the Light and almost lost each other ... and I lost my innocence when I killed those men. I've never really been the same. Here. And here." He tapped his head, then his chest. "So I chose to train under Lord Saladin. I chose to train as a detective and go back to work on the side. Which put me in contact with Sorrel. And Erica. Light, I wish I'd never talked to Erica that day. She's such a ..."

"Gold digger?" Zero suggested.

"We'll go with that," Max said. "Felwinter's wolves. I was such a love struck idiot. I had this idea that I was getting my life in order, so I could have a girlfriend again, except, Zero, I don't understand women. Why is Erica so ... Erica ... and Sorrel is the nicest person on Earth? She's disfigured because of me and never said a word of blame." He made a frustrated sound and dropped his head into his hands. "So you see," he muttered, "Sorrel being in trouble is my fault because I picked up Erica ... and then broke up with her."

"Hey," Zero said softly, touching her eye to his temple in a Ghost kiss. "Don't give yourself so much credit. Erica is responsible for luring Sorrel into a trap. I think Erica has always been bad news, but you weren't mature enough to recognize it. And Sorrel ... I agree, Max, Sorrel is a wonderful person. If she dies, that's not your fault."

"If she dies." Max jumped to his feet and resumed pacing. "If she dies, I'm going to turn Owl Sector into a crater."

"I'll help you do it," Zero said. "Eyes up, I think that's your team approaching."

Max halted and turned. Striding toward him up the Tower Walk were strangers in strange armor - Reefborn Corsairs in sleek, Awoken-made body armor, carrying weapons that turned every Guardian's head. Leading them was a red-headed Awoken woman with a patch over one eye and a grim expression.

"Oh boy," Max murmured, heart sinking. "Is the Vanguard serious?"

The redhead stopped in front of him. She was several inches taller than Max, and her jaw was clenched. "Maximilian Ross?" Instead of shaking hands, she bowed slightly with one hand before her face. "I am Petra Venj, Queen's Wrath of the Reef. The Vanguard has assigned you to my service until we have located the stolen Aphelion globe."

Max nodded. "All right. Let's go. A woman's life is at stake."

"Every life on this City is at stake," Petra replied. "Should the Aphelion escape its bonds, every soul within these walls will perish, leaving behind ruins heavy with radioactivity. And you Guardians will be responsible. Lead on."

Max did, even more worried and anxious than he had been a moment ago.

Chapter Text

Poisoned razor blades cut deep into Sorrel's mind. She tasted bitter venom and coppery blood, her nostrils filling with an ammonia reek. Her forehead was pressed against the black globe, the Light chain brutally tight around the back of her neck, tying her against it.

"Let me go!" she shrieked inside her mind.

But the Aphelion didn't speak, or perhaps had no use for language. It pierced through her, cold and indifferent, beginning the first division in her brain as it had divided the brains of its other thralls.

But Sorrel's brain was not like theirs. The Aphelion cut into her and hit the places changed by her Ghost's neural symbiosis.

Her Ghost came boiling to the surface, blazing with fire, crackling with lightning, sparkling with stars. "Get out of her!" Vox shrieked, and struck at the Aphelion.

The Aphelion withdrew like a monstrous snail retracting its eyes.

Vox healed Sorrel, rebuilding the damage in her brain, crooning comforting words to her mind. "It's all right, I'm here. It can't take you as long as I'm here."

Sorrel was able to open her eyes. She was doubled over on the floor, forced to bow to the perverse globe and its occupant. The lab doors had opened, and people moved around her. The dead and wounded orderlies were being lifted onto gurneys and wheeled out. The two older scientists stood at a safe distance, arguing with each other in an undertone, gesturing and glaring. But Erica stood only a few paces from Sorrel, gripping her tablet in one hand, watching Sorrel's torment with a wide grin. In her other hand, she held Vox. The Ghost's blue eye gazed hopelessly at Sorrel from between Erica's fingers.

"Help me," Sorrel gasped. "While it's retreated."

"Oh no," Erica replied. "This is too fascinating. I never meant to take the experiment all the way to this stage. If only you two had stayed in the power rig. As it is, we've never had a chance to observe the transformation process. But you're a Guardian, and you're able to resist. For how much longer? I have three different hypotheses right now."

The Aphelion touched Sorrel's mind again, tracing across her awareness like a single claw on glass. This time, instead of attacking her brain directly, it plunged into her core and ensnared her Light.

It happened in a flash, just as quickly as the spider's claws would seize her heart in her nightmares. Sorrel sucked in a breath to scream, but no sound came out. For an eternity's second she hung there, suspended, impaled on the Aphelion's grasp. Then it pulled the Light out of her, unspooling it like yarn, tearing it away in long, sparkling strands.

She felt the Aphelion's coldness, its distance from her own mind. It was utterly uncaring, utterly focused on its own designs. She was nothing to it, a useful resource, not even a threat. It pulled her Light into the globe and began shaping it into the keys necessary to unlock its prison.

Sorrel sensed that she could have followed her Light into the globe. She could have faced the Aphelion, darkest of Darkness, by herself. But Vox whispered in her head, "Please don't."

Sorrel oriented herself to that friendly voice, looking away from the abyss that invited her inward.

"You would never come back," Vox whispered. "It would consume your Light. In the end, it would escape and you would remain, a shadow of a spark, existing and unable to die."

"What do I do?" Sorrel cried. "It's taking my Light!"

"I'm with you," Vox replied. "If I can just -"

The Ghost exerted herself and flew out of Erica's hand in a sudden dash, like an escaping bird. Erica snatched at her, but Vox used the borrowed rings of Light around her to zip to Sorrel. She hovered beside the chain of Void Light and played a scan beam over it.

"Don't you dare!" Erica shrieked. She lunged forward and swatted at the Ghost with her tablet. Vox went flying across the lab, where she struck the wall, bounced to the floor, and didn't move, the rings around her flickering out.

The Ghost protection vanished. The Darkness welled through Sorrel like an evil spring expelling poisonous water. Her body began to glow ultraviolet.

"Good!" Erica crowed. She pulled back the sleeve on her right arm, exposing a metal gauntlet studded with glowing bulbs and rings. She touched several of them, making adjustments to the flickering lights. "Come, Aphelion. Come through her. I've removed the last barrier. Come!"

Rage burst through Sorrel - or was it the Aphelion feeding on the loss of her Ghost? The Aphelion's might surged through her, burning and sickening. Sorrel twisted her head against the globe to see Erica. Guided by Erica's summons, Sorrel grabbed Erica's leg in both burning hands.

Erica screamed and kicked, but Sorrel didn't care. All she cared about was the woman's meager Light flowing into her, drawn by the sucking void that her being had become. Her Ghost would die without Light - maybe had already died - Erica would suffer -

At this point, the lab doors burst open yet again. Sorrel was vaguely aware of running footsteps, shouts, gunshots. Something struck her two heavy blows in the side. She released Erica and fell sideways, a cold pain bleeding through her.

Someone bent over her - a tall Awoken woman with red hair and an eyepatch. She muttered several quick words and flicked the Void chain. The chain splintered into fragments of Light that vanished into nothing.

Sorrel wrenched away from the globe, but the cold, alien presence accompanied her. It was still pulling at her Light, unraveling her like a knitted sweater. Soon there would be nothing left of Sorrel Atkin.

The Awoken knelt over her, their glowing eyes sharp and focused. One of them lifted the globe into sight, spinning the gold rings with a ticking sound. The globe went dark, the blue glow shut off.

"Nothing for it," said the redhead. "It's too deep." She pulled a dagger from its sheath and held it above Sorrel's chest. "Together."

A dozen hands reached out and closed around the dagger's hilt.

"One, two three."

The dagger plunged into Sorrel's heart.

Max had rushed into the lab with the Corsairs. From the moment they had set foot inside the Owl Sector gate, he had been merely a hired gun on the fringes of a Corsair operation.

Petra Venj forced the security guards to let them into the building, showing her Vanguard credentials and Reef identification. The guards reluctantly let them pass. Once inside, flanked by her Corsairs, Petra strode to the front desk and said, "Tell me where you are keeping the Aphelion's sphere."

The secretary spluttered and stood up. "Who are you? You have no right to be here! Who let you inside?" He reached for a button to call security.

Petra drew her Vestian Dynasty sidearm and aimed it at his forehead. "I will ask only once more. Tell me where you are keeping the Aphelion's sphere."

The secretary blanched and stood very still. "It's ... it's in lab eight. In the Light Testing wing. Downstairs."

Petra lowered her sidearm. "You would be wise not to send guards after us. This is a Reef operation, and we have the Vanguard's full cooperation."

Petra and her Corsairs headed deeper into Owl Sector, following the signs.

"At least she's getting us to Sorrel quickly," Max thought wryly to Zero, fighting the urge to apologize to the ashen-faced security guards they had just bypassed.

"Maybe not quick enough," Zero replied. "I'm picking up a supercharged delta signal from that globe. And radiation. I wish you were wearing a rad suit."

When they entered the lab a few minutes later, Max first saw the wires and machinery of the spider. Sorrel's nightmare? That was the thing she was hallucinating in the hospital room?

Then his attention was drawn by a woman screaming. He saw Sorrel, on the floor and burning with deadly ultraviolet fire, clinging to Erica's leg. Her hands had burned through cloth and flesh, and there was a hideous stench of burned meat. Smoke hung in the air.

The Corsairs shot Sorrel.

"No!" Max cried.

Sorrel curled up like a freshly-wounded animal, without making a sound. Erica fell to the ground and crawled toward the Corsairs, sobbing and gasping. One of them stopped and grabbed her by the arm, hauling her to her feet. But the Corsair wasn't helping her. She held out Erica's wrist to Petra, displaying the strange gauntlet. "Techeun equipment. Human mods."

Petra looked at the gauntlet. Then she gave Erica a look that said she wanted her carved into small pieces, very slowly. All Petra said was, "Take it off her. Get her help."

The Corsair unbuckled the gauntlet and stripped it off Erica. Then she shoved Erica at Max. "Take her."

Max hadn't held Erica in a very long time. She sagged in his arms, reeking of burned cloth and flesh, her eyes wide. "Max!" she gasped.

Max gazed into her face and tried to care about her. He'd thought he'd loved her once, after all. He hauled her to a nearby gurney and helped her onto it. Then he called a couple of guards who were peeking in the lab door. "Get her to a hospital! She's got radiation burns."

He didn't even watch them wheel her out. His attention centered on the Corsairs and Petra, now huddled around Sorrel. He hurried up in time to see them tear open Sorrel's shirt. A spot of icy blue burned to the left of her sternum, directly in line with her heart.

That was where the Awoken drove in the dagger.

Max tried to stifle his cry of horror. Sorrel's back arched in agony, her mouth opening. She slumped to the floor, eyes open and fixed. But the dagger was now glowing ultraviolet, all the power of the Aphelion being drawn into it, out of Sorrel, like a poultice drawing poison from a wound.

"Her Ghost," Zero said suddenly in his head. "Max, she needs her Ghost. Over there!"

Zero materialized in a flash of light and zipped across the room. A little Ghost core lay quietly against the wall, easy to overlook. Max never would have spotted it on his own. He ran after Zero and scooped the Ghost from the floor.

The Ghost appeared dead. The eyelids were open, but the delicate eye beneath was dark.

Zero scanned it. "She's not gone yet, but she's fading." Zero spun her shell, thinking quickly. "She needs a Light transfusion. Max, hold me in your other hand."

Max held the dying core in one hand and Zero in the other, pointing their eyes at each other. Zero shone a concentrated beam into the other Ghost's empty eye. Max felt Zero drawing on his Light, siphoning it into this poor little core. He willed himself to relax and pass Zero as much Light as she needed.

The blue eye flickered on. "What - what's happening?" the Ghost slurred. "What are you doing to me?"

"Repairs," Zero said. Her gaze flicked to Max. "She's incredibly damaged inside, but I might be able to synth parts. Let me go. And summon your Light. Set her on fire with it."

"Won't that kill her?" Max said, releasing Zero.

"No, it will keep her alive," Zero said.

Max summoned a fraction of the Light necessary for his Golden Gun. He let the Solar Light lick over his arm and hand, wreathing the little Ghost core. The Ghost blinked and sighed. "That feels good."

Zero zipped away, flying upward toward the spider. She scanned this bundle of wires and that one, then broke down several of them into particles that she drew into herself with a beam.

Max walked toward the Awoken who were still grouped around Sorrel. Sorrel was covered in blood, both from bullets and being stabbed, but her chest rose and fell in shallow breaths. Max didn't understand how she could still be alive with a dagger through her heart.

One of the Corsairs was wearing the gauntlet recently lifted from Erica. She was muttering rapidly and rotating her wrist, drawing ultraviolet light up through the dagger and pouring it into the black globe. The other Corsairs and Petra kept their grip on the dagger's hilt, providing power of some kind. It looked like an exorcism - and perhaps it was.

Sorrel's Ghost whimpered a little. "My poor Guardian. I hope I can help her when the time comes."

"You will," Max said. "You're Voice, right?"

"Yes," the Ghost replied. "She named me Vox. And you're Max. She's showed you to me." The blue eye scrutinized his face. "You care about her very much."

Max nodded.

Vox emoted a smile. "I'm glad. Recovering from this won't be easy. She'll need to lean on you."

"I'll help her all I can," Max promised.

Zero returned, spinning her shell triumphantly. "I was able to find enough materials for the major parts. Hold me again, Max."

Max again pointed the two Ghosts at each other.

"Stare straight into my beam," Zero instructed Vox. "I'm going to rebuild you, and it won't be easy. Don't flinch."

"Laser surgery," Vox said dryly. "Just what I always wanted."

Zero shone her beam into Vox's eye. Particles of matter flickered down the beam, into Vox's core, reassembling into the delicate, tiny parts that composed a Ghost.

"Your Light processor is connected wrong," Zero said. "And your memory is eighty-nine percent corrupted. What's with your repulsors? They're crushed. And how are you alive with no stabilizer?"

"The scientists here kitbashed me with parts from other Ghosts," Vox murmured.

Zero made an angry beeping sound. "There is absolutely no reason for that. I hope the Vanguard cuts their funding." She kept working.

Max gazed past the Ghosts to Sorrel and the Awoken. Almost all the blue fire had been withdrawn from Sorrel, but the pool of blood on the floor beneath her was widening. Some of the Corsairs were standing in it.

Petra lifted her head and looked for Max. "Do you have her Ghost?"

"Repairing her right now," Max said.

"Will she be able to perform a resurrection?"

"Yes, yes," Zero answered for him. "Ten minutes."

"Right," Petra said, turning to her team. "Dagger out."

They slid the dagger out of Sorrel's heart. Her shallow, labored breaths stopped at once, her face relaxing.

One of the Corsairs closed Sorrel's eyes. "She may be a Guardian, but she is also our kin."

"Sorrel Atkin," Petra said, straightening up and cleaning her dagger with a cloth. "Child of Havila Drell, child of Judith Drell, one of our Techeuns."

The Corsairs murmured in shock.

Max didn't grasp the significance of this. He could only stare at Sorrel's motionless, mangled body, and then at the Ghost surgery happening in his hands. If this didn't work, Sorrel was dead for good. His heart seemed to contract in anguish. Seeing Sorrel hurt was bad enough, but watching her die was worse, somehow. He hadn't seen a lot of Guardian deaths - not enough to become used to them. To him, death was still a terrible end point to a life cut short.

Zero worked on Vox for what seemed like a long time. Finally she shut off her beam. "That's as much as I can do," she said. "You can stabilize your own Light, but you won't be able to fly longer than a few minutes. Whoever rebuilt you damaged as many parts as they added. You need clean parts from dead Ghosts who haven't been tampered with by the Fallen."

"Thank you," Vox said, turning toward her Guardian. "Excuse me." She floated off Max's palm, then shot toward Sorrel.

Max hurried after her. He dropped to his knees beside Sorrel and pulled her head and shoulders into his lap, fighting the hot lump in his throat. "Do it." He didn't care that the Corsairs and Petra were watching, or that Sorrel's blood was soaking his pants. He just didn't want her to wake up on that cold, hard floor, surrounded by strangers. She had been through enough horrors.

Vox's Light field expanded out of her core. She pulsed Light into Sorrel, healing the bullet wounds and the stab wound, healing things that the Aphelion had damaged. The scars on Sorrel's face faded a little. The wounds closed and sealed over. Then Vox called Sorrel back to life with a single, brighter flash.

Sorrel drew a deep breath and stiffened, arms flying out to brace against the floor. She blinked around at the Corsairs, and then up at Max. He felt her relax against his knees. "Oh. Hi, Max."

"It's okay," Max told her, stroking her curly indigo hair. "The Aphelion is gone."

"Thank the Light." Sorrel smiled at him for a moment. Then she sat up and caught her Ghost just as Vox fell out of the air. Clutching her to her chest, and trying to hold her torn shirt shut, she scrambled to her feet and looked around at the Corsairs. "Who are you?"

Petra stepped forward. "I am Petra Venj, Queen's Wrath and acting steward of the Reef. These are my handpicked Corsairs."

Sorrel shrank backwards until she bumped into Max. "Oh. It's ... nice to meet you. Did you kill the Aphelion?"

The Corsair with the gauntlet said, "It cannot be killed, only contained. We withdrew its essence from you, but you may experience side effects for some time. It stole a substantial amount of your Light. This is ... worrisome."

Petra said, "I will give you my communications numbers. My scientists are very interested in you. No one has ever survived an Aphelion attack before, even one so weak as this."

"That - that was weak?" Max spluttered.

The Awoken all nodded.

"As I said before," Petra said, "an attack at full power would have left the Last City entirely unpeopled." She looked at Sorrel. "When you experience side effects, such as nightmares, aberrations in your Light, or phantom limb movement, notify me. We want to track your progress. If they grow worse, we may have to remove you to the Reef for treatment."

Sorrel gulped and nodded.

Petra turned to Max. "You may report to the Vanguard that our operation was successful. We thank them for their cooperation in this matter."

The Corsairs and Petra filed out of the room. Sorrel and Max followed, Sorrel supporting herself with a hand on Max's shoulder. Her touch thrilled him, but at the same time, it only sharpened his guilt and grief. He wanted to hold her, shield her from the side effects of the Aphelion's possession, take it on himself, somehow.

"I feel so weak," she murmured. "The Aphelion was consuming me. I hope I'm back. All of me."

"I think the Awoken brought you back," Max said. "They have scary powers. Not like Guardians."

Sorrel nodded, biting her lip. "All I can think about is sleeping. But I might have nightmares. I'd better call work and explain why I disappeared in the middle of a shift. I hope I'm not fired."

"If you are," Max said lightly, "they have a place for you in the Tower." It filled him with painful hope, thinking of seeing her in the Tower every day.

Sorrel gave him a long look, perhaps reading this desire, then shook her head. "I don't want to be a Guardian."

"Well, I'm here whenever you need me," Max assured her. "If you want to talk or just hang out, have your Ghost send Zero a message."

"My Ghost." Sorrel clutched Vox a little tighter. "I have a Ghost."

"And I finally have you," said Vox, blinking up at her from her hand. "I haven't seen you in person since you were a year old."

Sorrel smiled down at the Ghost. "I'll have to get used to you. And you need a shell so you're presentable."

"I can pick up a nice one," Max said. "There's a sale on right now."

"That'd be wonderful," Sorrel said with a grateful smile.

They made their way through Owl Sector, Max guiding Sorrel up elevators and down hallways. At one point, an important-looking man in a lab coat strode up to them. "You can't leave with that Ghost core. That's Owl Sector property!"

"She's my Ghost," Sorrel said, her weariness falling away. She snarled, "And I was brought here as a test subject against my will. If you don't get out of my way, I will sue you, personally, when I sue Owl Sector."

"You have no authority!" the scientist snapped. "We'll see what the courts decide!" But he stepped aside and let them pass.

"Are you going to sue?" Max asked in a low voice.

"If I can get a lawyer," Sorrel replied. "Not sure how I'll afford to pay one."

They left the building at last, and found that the sun had set while they had been indoors. The City lights burned around them, the population unaware that their lives had nearly ended that evening. Max nearly offered Sorrel a ride on his sparrow, but the words died on the way to his lips as he looked at her scarred face. More guilt. He could do so little for her--she accepted so little help, demanded nothing of him. So different from Erica. The less Sorrel asked, the more Max wanted to give. He offered the only thing he knew she would accept.

"Would you mind a transmat home?"

Sorrel smiled. "That would be wonderful."

Chapter Text

Sorrel never found out if a lawyer would take her case. The following day, after nine hours of nightmare-plagued sleep, Sorrel opened her door to find a man in a crisp suit and a briefcase standing there.

Her threat of a lawsuit must have spooked Owl Sector. They were offering her a settlement of sixteen million glimmer. Sorrel, who really wanted to go back to living her comfortable, boring life and not worry about the City justice system, accepted.

The following day, when she had slept better and was feeling more normal - despite having a Ghost following her around in a limping sort of way - Max showed up at her door. He looked as if he had actually showered and slept for once, his shaggy blond hair neatly combed. His Hunter gear had been cleaned, too - she could smell the remnants of leather polish.

"I brought you this," he said, holding up a pretty white Ghost shell with red scrollwork. "And I brought the tools to install it." He lifted a small toolbox in his other hand.

"Come on in!" Sorrel exclaimed. "Oh, Vox will be so happy. Look at this shell!" She took it from Max and turned it this way and that, admiring the engravings.

Max glanced around her living room, taking note of the music playing on the stereo. "Hey, I know this song. Fallen Kingdom?"

"I've been listening to those albums you gave me on loop," Sorrel said. "They make me ... forget."

For a second, the events of the last few weeks loomed between them, an almost tangible presence that neither of them wanted to talk about. Max broke the silence by lifting his tool set. "Call your Ghost and let's get started."

They sat at Sorrel's small kitchen table. Max took the shell apart and demonstrated how it attached to a Ghost's core, letting the Ghost move it around with their Light field. Vox was ecstatic and flew around and around, twirling her new shell, until her strength gave out and she plopped into Sorrel's hands.

"How much do I owe you?" Sorrel asked.

Max shrugged. "It's a gift. Don't worry about it."

Sorrel traced the designs on Vox's shell with one finger. Ghost shells weren't cheap. She'd looked them up that morning. Of all things, she didn't want to beggar Max. She wasn't Erica.

"Owl Sector settled out of court. I have sixteen million glimmer in the bank right now."

"Wow," Max exclaimed. A fierce light flickered in his eyes. "I think you should have sued them anyway, but ... that's a pile of glimmer."

Sorrel smiled sadly. "It'll keep me going for a while. I lost my job at the store for disappearing in the middle of a shift. They were apologetic, but I've already been a problem employee with the makeup and everything. So yeah. I'm unemployed."

"I'm sorry," Max said softly, looking away. "I feel like it's my fault."

"It was Erica, not you," Sorrel pointed out. "She basically abducted me right out of the parking lot. And I was dumb enough to go with her." She'd been kicking herself for that for days.

"No, I mean-" Max broke off and drew a breath. His gaze roamed around the living room before settling on Sorrel, as if mustering his courage. "I'd just broken up with her. Like ... ten minutes before she grabbed you. I think she was taking revenge on me, doing all those experiments on you. And I'm ... Light and Darkness, I'm so sorry, Sorrel. You've been caught in the crossfire of my relationship mess this whole time."

Sorrel gazed at him, her green eyes glowing a little brighter than usual. Why was her heart beating slightly faster? "You broke up with her?"

"She sent me these letters," Max said, and launched into the sordid details of Erica's relationship demands. Sorrel listened with a revolted expression. The longer he talked, though, the happier Sorrel grew without understanding why. A smile kept slipping onto her face.

"And to top it off," Max concluded, "Erica's having to stand trial before a tribunal at the Vestian Outpost. Apparently, she's the one who stole that globe and smuggled it into the City. She stole a gauntlet thing, too, and was using it to call the Aphelion once it had found a suitable host. She was incubating its power in a host body, and planned to siphon it into a Guardian. Her idea, I think, was to balance the Light with Darkness the way Awoken are. Except in a Guardian, both forces would be a thousand times stronger."

Sorrel shuddered. "It wouldn't have worked. The power coming off that thing was poison."

Max nodded. "Erica committed an atrocity. It's why she's being tried before the Awoken. She endangered Earth, and the Reef-the whole solar system, really. The Aphelion was working its way free. She'll probably be sent to the Prison of Elders."

There was a short silence. Sorrel went back to tracing patterns on her Ghost's shell. Any mention of the Aphelion sent her back to that moment when her head had been chained to the globe, feeling the monster strip the power out of her. It had been exactly like having her guts torn out.

"Any side effects?" Max asked.

Sorrel shrugged. "Nightmares. But I had those before." She didn't mention the semi-seizures that came with them. "Vox is healing and healing me, so I think I'll be all right." She touched the scarred side of her face. "My Lightmark is coming back a little. The crescent on my cheek, here."

Max nodded, and he squinted as if she'd hit him - or he was trying not to cry. He stared at the table for a long moment, biting his lower lip. Sorrel wanted to reassure him, somehow - but that's what she had been doing when he flinched. He must be eaten alive by guilt.

"Come visit me in the Tower tomorrow," he blurted, meeting her gaze again. His eyes were brilliant blue, slightly glassy with unshed tears. "I'll show you around. We can grab lunch or dinner. It's my day off work and school, and I was just going to derp around the Tower, anyway."

Sorrel nearly refused. But as she looked at those tears, the agony in his face, she realized he was trying to make things right in the only way he knew how. Poor Max - she had learned to read him so easily.

"All right," she said, pushing aside her own apprehension about visiting the lair of the Guardians. "I think I'd like that."

The following day, Max met Sorrel at the bottom of the Tower lift and the guards let her in. This made her nervous, but Max was reassuring. "They hardly ever stop anybody. Lots of commerce goes on in the Tower. They'll know you next time."

Sorrel didn't relax until they arrived on the busy Tower Walk, seventy stories up in the windy autumn sunshine. So many humans and Guardians all mixed together! Some Guardians were off duty and went around in casual clothes, only identifiable by their Ghosts.

She had rigged up a sling across her chest for Vox to ride in, since the Ghost couldn't fly very long. Vox rode with her blue eye peeping out, amazed at the bustle. In Sorrel's head, she said, "I always hoped that someday, you and I could come here together." She stirred the image of the spider rig in Sorrel's memory, along with a sense of hopelessness-Vox had been without hope for so long. Sorrel raised a hand and stroked Vox's shell.

"It's pretty busy today," Max said, pushing through the crowd. "A lot of fireteams just got back from strikes. Come on, I know a quiet place where we can hang out."

He wound his way expertly through the passages and pavilions that made up the Tower Walk, then led her up a set of stairs to a small balcony off to the side of the main thoroughfare. Someone had set up a small table and two chairs there. It was sheltered from the wind on two sides, but open to the sunlight.

Sorrel sat down with a relieved sigh. "I didn't know there were so many Guardians. Do you ... do you know a Titan named Tony Atkin?"

Max shook his head. "Sorry, no. I actually looked him up after that meeting with your mom. He's marked missing in action. Seems he took off to join the Sunbreakers and nobody's seen him since."

"Oh." Sorrel gazed across the City to the Traveler. She was nearly on eye level with it up here, and had a clear view of the vast cracks and holes in it from the Red War. "If I do ever decide to be a Guardian ... it would be to find Dad. Or find out what happened to him. See why he left Mom, and if he'd come back."

"You'd need a ship," Max said. "And a team. And ... maybe a detective."

She looked up to see his eyes sparkling mischievously. "You're not a detective yet."

"No," Max said, leaning his chair back on two legs. "Not until I graduate in the spring. And after that I still have to train with a senior detective for a few years. But maybe by then, you'll have made up your mind."

Sorrel turned and watched the Tower Walk through the corner of a doorway. The Guardians moving past seemed like normal people. Soldiers with hard lives, sure. But she saw several who wore uniforms meaning they worked in the Tower, and others who clearly had just returned from the wilderness. The desire to escape the City walls and see the ruins of Earth's great civilizations crept through her again.

"Tell me about Guardians," she said. "How do they pick their classes?"

Max explained, and Sorrel asked more questions. They talked for an hour, then two. When hunger loomed, they bought lunch at the Tower food court, and ate it in the shelter of their little corner table.

Sorrel stayed until the sun sank behind the Traveler. Then Max escorted her home - without offering his sparrow. This wasn't lost on Sorrel, but she wasn't sure how to bring it up. Whenever that look of guilt crossed Max's face, she was more and more ashamed.

Sorrel visited the Tower many times over the rest of the fall and winter. The more she learned about Guardians and the Vanguard, the less strange and frightening it seemed. Max invited along Jayesh, Kari, and Madrid, giving Sorrel a chance to see how other Guardians acted in a casual setting. They were just people, she was surprised to learn. Soldiers who defended the City in a myriad of ways, and had sacrificed part of their humanity to do it.

Once, Max flew Sorrel out to the Iron Temple on Fellwinter's Peak. The vast temple with its echoing halls and ancient statues filled her with awe. But she didn't want to become an Iron Lord, the way Max did. Her aspirations were smaller, her wounds different from Max's and requiring different sorts of healing.

When the snow began to melt as spring approached, Sorrel quietly joined the Vanguard and became a Hunter. Her training carried her well into mid-spring, working under Cayde-6, whom she liked very much. She attended Max's graduation, as well as Jayesh's wedding to Kari.

And then one day, Sorrel packed her gear and left.

"I'm going on patrol," she told Max. "I might be gone a few years."

"A few years!" he exclaimed, aghast. "Why?"

"I want to see Earth," Sorrel said. "Live on my own. Experience freedom. I need to find dead ghosts for parts so Vox can be repaired. And just ... I need to breathe, Max. I can't breathe in the City or the Tower anymore."

She couldn't articulate the stifled feeling that plagued her. It had been why she climbed eight-story buildings after work to watch the sun set. Her soul longed for the freedom of the wilderness. And yet … was that who she truly was? Awoken? Guardian? And now Hunter? Sorrel had lost track of herself.

She didn't want to see the distress in Max's eyes - it meant that he still had feelings for her. Sorrel just wasn't ready to deal with that right now.

Max forced a grin. "Well. Good luck out there. If you ever need help ..."

"I know who to call," Sorrel finished. "Thanks. You've been a good friend, Max." She hugged him briefly. His arms encircled her mechanically, giving her a brittle hug in return.

"Zero," Sorrel said to his hovering Ghost, "take care of him."

"I will," said the Ghost.

Sorrel's last glimpse of them was Max standing at the lift, watching the doors close behind her, the spring wind blowing his cloak across him. The expression on his face almost made her turn back.

But no. The wilderness called, and a Hunter must answer. Perhaps, out there, she could finally make peace with the stranger she'd become to herself.

And she had to start by finding out what happened to her father.

The end