Chapter Text
The sign on his cage set his price at one million glimmer.
The ghost paced back and forth, back and forth, seeking some chink in the anti-transmat mesh. All he needed was a tiny hole, and he could dematerialize, feed his atoms through the hole, rematerialize, and escape. But the cage had been made by Eliksni craftsmen to contain the little robots, and the aliens knew their job well.
The Eliksni crime lord known only as the Spider kept the ghost in the back room of his hideout, one more item on the black market. Every so often, Spider's customers would enter the room to survey his wares. Other Eliksni. A disgraced Cabal legionnaire. Shifty-looking Awoken. Guardians pretending they weren't.
The ghost cowered at the back of his cage whenever anyone entered. The black aura of Darkness around them made him shudder. But when a Guardian came through, shining with ill-concealed Light, he flew to the bars and begged in a whisper, "Please, please let me out. You have a ghost, don't you? Would you want them trapped like this? Please, just open my cage a crack. My Guardian is out there. I need to find them!"
But the Guardians avoided his gaze and ignored his pleading, especially after a glance at his price tag. Instead, they bought illegally modified weapons, raw Queensfoil, liquid ether, delicate spin metal, or any other of the multitude of strange items that Spider acquired through his contacts.
Sometimes, Spider, himself waddled through, inspecting the goods, arranging them in enticing rows. He was a huge Eliksni who weighed upward of a thousand pounds, most of his weight in his huge paunch. The ghost tried to hide in the back of his cage whenever Spider came in.
The huge clawed hands always picked up the cage, holding it close to the four glowing eyes. "Still alive, are you?" Spider chuckled wheezily. "If you damage yourself in any way, you'll join the rest of the little flies around my throne."
The ghost had seen them: mesh bags full of dead ghosts.
"I'm f-fine," the ghost stammered. "I'm in prime condition. Uh. Sir. Please don't hurt me, oh, oh, please let me go!"
"Not a chance," Spider said, setting his cage back on the table beside an immense rocket launcher called a Gjallarhorn. "Your price is only a modest markup of what I paid for you. You're what they call an investment."
Days passed. Weeks. Months. The ghost's existence was hours of dreary misery punctuated by moments of terror. He spent a whole day nearly catatonic with fear when an Eliksni captain produced almost enough glimmer and haggled with Spider for hours. From what he overheard of their conversation, the ghost gathered that he was to be an experiment in which a High Servitor would try to absorb his spark.
But Spider wouldn't lower his price. The captain departed, muttering under his breath. The ghost stayed within the relative safety of his cage.
During the days when nobody visited the black market, the ghost dreamed of his Guardian. All ghosts had been created to find their Guardian, that special soul best suited to bond with the ghost's particular spark. This bond enabled the ghost to heal and resurrect their partner, granting them immortality as long as the ghost survived.
This ghost had never taken a name, hoping that his Guardian would name him. Sometimes Guardians let their ghosts name them. He already had two picked out: Athena if his Guardian was a woman, and Gilgamesh if his Guardian was a man. Fine warrior names. Of course, if his Guardian remembered their name, he would be fine with whatever that might be.
But with every day he spent in the cage, the more his dream of his Guardian faded. Eventually, someone would buy him. And someone who could afford to pay a million glimmer for a ghost would want it very badly. The only people who wanted a ghost that badly would be the kind who would subject a ghost to study, experiments, and other tortures he couldn't even imagine. All for the sake of tapping his Light.
Every day that passed brought him closer and closer to the fate that awaited him. The ghost was wise enough to see it coming. So he dreamed of the Guardian he would never have, looked in vain for holes, and tried to hide from Spider's critical inspections.
The ghost knew his time was up the moment the Awoken man entered the room.
This Awoken wore fine clothes, blue and purple, embroidered in gold designs. His hair was cut in the latest Reef fashion - shaved on one side, long on the top and other side. His blue face was set in a haughty, shrewd expression that spoke of his distaste for this place and Spider.
"Show me the ghost," he said, refusing even to enter the room.
One of Spider's underlings lifted the cage and carried it into the front room where he presented it to the man. The man took the cage. He and the ghost regarded each other. The ghost had time to catalogue the man's expression, his clothes, and the fierce power of mingled Light and Darkness that boiled within him. A line of white swirled up his cheeks and across his forehead, more elaborate than the usual Awoken birthmarks. Possibly a tattoo.
"Does it speak?" the man demanded. "I'll not pay full price if it doesn't speak."
"Of course it speaks," Spider growled. "Ghost, introduce yourself."
"Hello," the ghost said, deadpan in his despair. "You're not like the rest. You're going to buy me."
The man grunted. "It appears functional. But how do I know it's not a fraud? I've seen replica ghosts that moved and talked."
"Spider doesn't sell replica ghosts," Spider said, offended. "Besides, a replica ghost wouldn't beg for release the way this one does."
"Oh really." The client returned his gaze to the ghost. His fingers moved to the latch on the cage. "Maybe I should just ... open this."
"No," Spider barked.
At the same time, the ghost jumped, his eye flashing brightly, pushing against the door, ready to escape the instant it opened.
The man smiled and withdrew his hand. "I think not, little ghost."
"Oh please!" the ghost burst out. "You don't know what it's like! Please free me!"
The man smiled at the ghost - a hard, cold smile. "Ah. You've been caged a long time." His expression shifted, then, a little sorrow shining through the mask. For an instant, the ghost glimpsed the person behind the hard eyes, the haughty expression and fine clothes. A person as trapped and lonely as himself.
"I wish you were my Guardian," the ghost whispered.
At that moment, he meant it with his whole spark. He would take an Awoken - anyone - to escape Spider and the clientele who visited him. But a Guardian must be dead, first. Very few ghosts found a living Guardian. Either way, this man was not what he seemed. The ghost would take any hint of goodness he could find.
The man's eyes widened a fraction, barely a flicker of eyelids. The mingled Light and Darkness inside him seethed as if he had suddenly grown agitated.
"No, you don't," he muttered. The man set the cage on a tiny table. To Spider, he said, "I'm convinced that it's genuine. Now. The glimmer."
The man lifted a lock box into sight and opened it. Inside were stacks of glimmer - enormous chunks worth ten thousand bits each. The ghost's eye contracted to a dot. He'd never seen so much glimmer in his entire life.
Spider examined the glimmer carefully, producing a little electronic instrument to count it milligram by milligram. This took some time. The Awoken man stood by, his green eyes glinting with impatience.
The ghost trembled. He was being sold. Who knew what this rich man wanted with a ghost. The Awoken had strange affinities with Light and Darkness. This man had power enough to kill Spider where he sat on his throne, and they all knew it. A ghost was probably one more augment to that power.
Finally, Spider was satisfied that the million glimmer was present. The ghost in his cage was shut in the empty lockbox, and the Awoken carried him out.
The ghost stayed in the darkness of the lockbox a long time. He heard the rumble of a ship and felt the thrust of takeoff. He had time to die a thousand deaths of fear, to imagine every possibility an Awoken might have for a ghost. A gift to the queen? Cut apart, his Light siphoned away? Taken to a Techeun lab for study, where they'd fill his core with Darkness?
The ghost regretted ever visiting the Reef. Why had he been so determined to seek his Guardian among the derelict ships of the asteroid belt? He'd sneaked from ship to ship, smuggling himself on cargo freighters and jumpships. Then he had meticulously searched each huge asteroid and the ships lashed to it, terraformed and unprotected alike. He'd wandered atmosphere and vacuum, his robotic body unaffected by flying dust and radiation. Then, one day, he'd roamed too close to a den of Fallen, and one had trapped him in a net. The alien gleefully sold him to Spider, and was likely living the high life somewhere on the inner planets.
The ghost waited for that lockbox to open. When it did, he'd face his doom. If only they'd kill him quickly. He couldn't bear the thought of being tormented for years - if any torment was worse than knowing he'd never find his Guardian and see the Light return to their eyes.
The lockbox clicked and opened. The ghost blinked as bright light streamed in and illuminated his cage. The Awoken man lifted out the cage and set it on a tiny table.
They were in the engine room of a space ship - a fairly large space ship, if the size of the reactor was any indication. It hummed a few feet away, a great cylinder ringed by pipes and cables.
The Awoken man had exchanged his fine clothes for a set of greasy coveralls. But his face and hands were too clean to match the grease, his expression too aristocratic. Beside the cage, a set of tools were laid on a cloth. Fine, sharp tools for maintaining ghosts. Or pulling them apart. The ghost shivered.
"I am Rex Magtoris," the man said. "You will address me as Guardian."
"But ... you're not my Guardian," the ghost protested.
"You will act as if I were," Rex replied. "I'm going to open this cage in a moment. If you try to escape, please note that we are currently traveling at near light speed, and exiting the ship will destroy you."
The ghost's gaze turned unwillingly to the tools. "Are you going to hurt me?"
"Not if you cooperate," Rex replied. "I'm going to change your shell. That's all." He opened another box sitting nearby and produced a brand-new shell. It was deep blue and sparkled like stars on a clear night. The ghost gasped in awe.
"Do you agree to cooperate?" Rex asked.
"Yes," the ghost said. "I give you my word."
Rex gazed at the ghost a moment, his glowing green eyes wary. Then he snapped open the lock and raised the lid. Before the ghost could move, Rex grabbed him with one lightning-quick movement.
"Sorry," Rex said, lifting the ghost free of the box and looking at the frightened blue eye. "I long ago learned to take no one at their word. Even a little spark like you."
The ghost expected the worst at that point, but all Rex did was detach the old shell and attach the new one. He gripped the ghost's core firmly, but not enough to crush the thin metal. When the new shell was in place, Rex released the ghost.
The ghost floated into the air, opening and closing the star-shell, spinning it into place around himself. "It's beautiful," he said. "But I don't understand why you're doing any of this. A new shell? And I'm to call you Guardian?"
"My reasons are my own," Rex replied. "Now. That shell of yours may be beautiful. But it carries a deadman switch. In your case, a dead ghost switch." He lifted one hand, displaying a metal band around his wrist. "You are now wired with an explosive. Should you travel more than three hundred feet from my location, the signal from my band will fail, and your shell will detonate."
The ghost floated very still, his eye contracted to a terrified dot. He didn't even dare move. Where was the charge? Could he detect it inside his own shell? He was afraid to look. What if he set it off?
Rex smiled. "This is to ensure that you don't forget that I'm your guardian and wander off looking for one. You belong to me. Understand?"
"Y-yes, Guardian," the ghost said meekly.
"Good." Rex put away the tools and discarded the old, safe shell. Then he set off through the ship's corridors without a backward glance. The ghost followed him.