Chapter Text
The day I found the body, my life changed dramatically.
You might laugh at me for that. "You're a Ghost," you might say. "Looking at bodies is your job as you try to find your Guardian."
Which is true. The huge alien sphere called the Traveler created us ghosts and sent us out to find our partners. Each of us is a little robot-like creature, little more than a mechanical eye in a double triangle shell. But once we find our companion, living or dead, we bond to them, and can heal or resurrect them as often as necessary. Guardians are warriors, so healing and resurrections happen all the time.
We Ghosts wandered Earth and the other planets and moons, hunting for the elusive spark of our Chosen. Some of us wandered for hundreds of years.
But the body I found wasn't my Guardian.
He was a middle-aged man, his body badly damaged from a fall from an immense height. I was working just outside the walls of the Last City at the time. They towered overhead, seventy stories tall, like a concrete cliff. It was obvious to me how the man had died. Maybe he had been walking along the top of the wall and lost his footing. The wind blew hard up there sometimes. I played my scan beam over him, looking for the spark of my Guardian.
No spark. But my scanner uncovered other data. His clothing was good quality, and the New Monarchy symbol gleamed on a shoulder patch. And what were these dark marks on his neck? They looked like bruises. Had he been choked to death before falling off the wall?
I studied these details, scanning them over and over as I thought about it. I had seen a lot of bodies - fresh ones slain by aliens, long-dead skeletons, decaying corpses in shallow graves. I'd seen a lot of ways people could die - wounds, exposure, starvation, drowning, the list went on.
But this was the first death that truly worried me. This was the City wall. I was only following it to reach one of the cemeteries that lay a few miles further onward. Some ghosts had reported finding their Guardians there, and I was eager to try. Along the way, I had discovered what appeared to be a murder victim. No Guardians came out here. The body could have rotted away to powder before anyone would have found it. It was pure chance that I had happened across it.
I scanned the dead man again, looking for identification. The pockets of his clothing were empty. I scanned his fingerprints and retinas, instead. Then I connected to the Vanguard database.
The signal wasn't great, there at the base of the wall, so far from the networks. I checked the personnel database for a match, but found no hits. Of course not - this database was Guardians only. This was a human.
I queried the database for New Monarchy's members, but hit a security layer I lacked the access codes to. As I tried a few basic logins, another Ghost hailed me.
"Zero! What do you think you're doing?"
Her tag said Priscilla, another unbonded ghost looking for her Guardian. Priscilla was the one Ghost I did not want to speak to right now.
I looked up and saw her in the distance, primly flying back and forth above the dry weeds of the distant cemetery. "Did you ditch another spark for a dead coyote?" she laughed. "I swear, Zero, you are the dumbest Ghost I've ever met. Coyotes aren't Guardians."
Embarrassment burned through my core. She had caught me avoiding a potential Guardian and studying a dead animal, instead - and she had never let me live it down.
"There's a body here," I replied. "I think he was murdered."
"By the Fallen, yawn," Priscilla replied. "Seen it a million times, Zero. I know you're a moron, but you don't have to work so hard to prove it."
Her words stung. They always did. She and I were sisters, yet because of that one choice, I was the failure, the zero, the stupid one. I suppose another Ghost might have fired insults back at her, shut her up. But I never knew what to say. Maybe I had made the wrong choice, not bonding to that lonely spark. Being called stupid for so many years made me wonder if it was true.
So I didn't reply at all. Instead, I looked at the body again, the position, the injuries ... and the marks on the neck. This was someone from the Tower who had been murdered, I was certain. I had to tell someone.
I flew up the wall, headed for the Tower in the blue distance overhead. It took a long time to get there, and the wind grew stronger as I climbed, knocking me about. I spotted bits of blood on various ledges, marking the poor fellow's fall. I followed them, and arrived at about the place where he'd been pushed off.
It was an empty stretch of wall about half a mile from the Tower. Here the wall made a slight bend, the curve blocking the view of anyone patrolling. The parapet was only waist high - easy to push someone over.
I flew around the spot, looking for any further clues. Why had someone chosen this place to strangle that New Monarchy guy? Surely there were more secret places around - we may be at a distance from the Tower, but plenty of windows faced this direction.
I swept the parapet and floor with my scan beam, hunting for tiny details the way I hunted my Guardian. Something flashed in the light of my beam. On the other side of the walkway, against the inside of the parapet, there gleamed a tiny jewel. I flew up and studied it closely. A diamond of about five carats.
I stared at it, mystified. Was this connected to the man's death? Or was it sheer coincidence, dropped here by someone else?
I uploaded the diamond to my data storage, breaking down the atoms and accelerating them into the energy I carried in my core. I had a lot of odd trinkets in my storage, but no diamonds.
Puzzled and hoping I wasn't being stupid, I flew toward the Tower. I needed to tell someone about this.
My first thought was to approach the Vanguard. But as I peeked into the command room, my courage faltered. Commander Zavala? Too frightening, the way he glared at the screen in front of him, no doubt coordinating an attack against our enemies. Ikora Rey? The Void Light that shimmered around her terrified me. She was so powerful. Cayde-6? He was bent over a huge map, making tiny notes and talking to his ghost.
No, I couldn't bother them. I crept along the line of the ceiling, back through the next room, and hesitated near Lord Shaxx. He was working on his tablet, his horned head bowed. But his ghost floated at his shoulder, his eye following my movement.
"Hello," I ventured.
"Hello, little lady," he replied. "Need help with something?"
"Yes ..." I hesitated, spinning the back half of my shell left, then right. "I ... I found something that I need to report. A dead human."
"You want Tower security," Shaxx's ghost told me. "Across the courtyard, turn right, up the stairs. Look for the sign of the Cormorant Blade."
I bobbed politely. "Thank you, sir."
Shaxx's ghost immediately whispered this to his Guardian. Shaxx turned his head, listening, then shrugged and returned to his work. Investigating human deaths wasn't his job.
I flew out of the building, back into the sunny courtyard with its decorative trees and green lawns. Guardians gathered here and there, talking, eating lunch, helmets off, relaxed and smiling. I glanced at them uneasily as I flew by. Had one of them strangled a human and tossed him off the wall? But why? Guardians were meant to protect humanity, not randomly kill them. And there were no diamonds to be seen. Where had my tiny diamond come from?
I flew up the stairs, one more anonymous Ghost among my brethren, and found a door marked with the black wing and sword of the Cormorant Blade. I dispersed myself into energy and phased through the door.
I returned to solid form on the other side. Here was a fairly normal-looking office with several desks arranged side by side. All were unoccupied except one. A cracked mini blind cast a long ray of sunlight across the only Guardian there.
I mean, I knew he was a Guardian because his Ghost floated beside him. Otherwise, I never would have guessed. Most Guardians are slim and muscular from all the running and fighting they do. This man, however, was fat. I didn't know how else to phrase it. His belly overflowed onto his huge thighs, his arms were bigger around than my shell was wide, and he had a generous double chin. Instead of armor, he wore a loose shirt and sweatpants. His Ghost wore a courier shell, currently full of cookies. This Guardian was munching cookies with one hand and filling out paperwork with the other.
As I entered, both of them looked up. "Hey there," said the enormous Guardian. "Come in, come in. Got a message?"
I crept forward, nervously looking from the Guardian, to his ghost, and back. "Um, yes ... I need to report a security issue?"
"You've come to the right place," said the Guardian. "I'm Paul Johansson, detective with the Cormorant Blade. This is Bud, my Ghost. Say hi, Bud."
The Ghost with his shell full of cookies bobbed politely. "Hello."
If I could have gulped, I would have. "My name's Zero. I was looking for my Guardian outside the walls, when I found a dead person." I explained about the body and how the fall wasn't the cause of death. I projected the images I had captured in a holographic display.
Paul frowned and looked closely at the images, leaning one arm on his desk. "Any identification?"
"None, but I captured fingerprint and retinal scans."
Paul's wide face split in a grin. "Did you? That's some smart thinking. Transmit it to Bud and I'll do a check."
Smart thinking. I had done something smart. Not quite trusting the compliment, I forwarded the data.
Paul and Bud bent over a computer screen and murmured together about their findings. I floated there in the middle of the room, watching Bud's cookies. I kept waiting for him to forget about them and spin his shell, throwing them everywhere. He never quite did, although once he tipped precariously to one side.
"Ah," said Paul, leaning back in his creaking chair. He wore a grimly triumphant expression. "Seems our John Doe was one Bradley Veneer, assistant manager with New Monarchy's Vanguard branch. Hadn't even been reported missing." He rubbed his chins, gazing at his screen. "I'll send a crew to collect the body and take it to the morgue. We'll need a solid post-mortem to figure out the time of death." He looked at me, his gaze thoughtful. "You've been a lot of help, Zero. You can return to your business, now."
I hadn't told him about the diamond. I wasn't sure if I should, since there didn't seem to be much connection.
Besides, here in the Tower, I was surrounded by people who wouldn't call me stupid. Paul had said I was smart, even. I wouldn't find a Guardian here, but then again, I had probably passed up the only spark in the universe destined for me. I'd be a single ghost forever. Why not spend my time rooting out murderers walking around the Tower? I might save lives.
I twirled my shell nervously. "Please," I said, "do you think I could help investigate? I could observe over at the New Monarchy area. People say all kinds of things in front of ghosts."
"Hm." Paul looked at Bud, who nodded. "I guess it wouldn't hurt anything. Go ahead and poke around, Zero. If you find anything, I'll be here."
As I phased through the door, I caught Bud's parting remark. "Supposedly, she's the dumbest ghost the Traveler ever made."
I emerged in the hallway with my eye shut, struggling to master the shame and embarrassment that filled me. Even a Tower ghost knew about me. How far had Priscilla gossiped? So much for Paul's high opinion of me.
My core burning, I made my way through the Tower to New Monarchy's booth. It was a spacious place in a building off the hanger, with rich red hangings and a carpet to soften the concrete. Inside were soft-looking sofas with piles of throw pillows, along with tables for computers. Several New Monarchy members lounged on these sofas, working on tablets while sipping bright yellow drinks. Outside their booth was stacked dozens of pallets of wheat, oats, wool, and other raw goods to be shipped to their dealers in the Last City.
I ducked among these pallets and used them as cover to peek into the booth. I recognized Executor Hideo by his photo all over the Vanguard database. He was a smoothly handsome man with shrewd eyes, his head wrapped in a red scarf.
This looked like a good place to find a diamond. Hideo wore a gold necklace with an emerald in it, and several of the others wore necklaces, bracelets, or rings set with precious stones. Maybe one of them was missing a diamond. Maybe the killer. But at the moment, I dared venture no closer.
A dark-skinned woman turned to the man next to her. "Looks like the bakery chain just signed on for flour deliveries every other week."
"Standard contract, then," said the man next to her. "Five years?"
"They're asking three."
They went on about it for a while, haggling with this bakery chain down in the City. I listened, growing bored. While New Monarchy's political goals were to eventually set up a king and abolish the Vanguard, their day to day work was buying and selling goods. They oversaw the stock market, kept supply lines open despite Fallen incursions, managed the outlying farms, that sort of thing.
After a while, another woman rose from a sofa, went to the front of the booth, and peered out. "Where is Bradley?" she demanded, turning to Hideo. "He's late, and I need him to sign these manifests."
Executor Hideo shrugged. "I'm not his babysitter. Check the personnel logs. Did he take the day off?"
The woman tapped her tablet in an irritated way, as if she was stabbing the screen with a finger. "No, he's scheduled to work today, like usual. I'm paging him."
I waited with a sense of dreadful anticipation. Bradley Veneer's coworkers didn't seem to know that he was dead. I watched each of them - there were six people in the booth - and all of them only looked mad. As they muttered to each other about Bradley's faults and the way he took random time off without scheduling it, I wondered if anybody actually liked him. However, none of them seemed like the type to strangle him and throw him off the wall. They were just grumbling about a somewhat unreliable coworker.
Executor Hideo's tablet made a chiming sound. "Hold on," he said to his people. "I just got a message from the Cormorant Blade."
The booth fell silent. Every eye turned to Hideo in sudden dread.
Hideo's face changed from vaguely irritated to horrified in a fraction of a second. "Everyone," he gasped, mouth hanging open. "Bradley was found dead at the base of the wall this morning."
The New Monarchy booth broke into a babble of exclamations, shocked, disbelieving, demanding to see the message. The group gathered around Hideo, reading the message.
"As of right now," Hideo told them in a hushed voice, "we're all under investigation. None of us may leave the Tower for any reason."
"They think one of us pushed him off?" exclaimed a woman. "Don't get me wrong, I thought about it sometimes, but I'd never do it."
"Hush," Hideo replied, glancing at the walkway outside. "That kind of talk might get you arrested. We'll cooperate fully with the Blade, of course. Meanwhile, we'll hold an inquiry of our own. Andrew, I want you to audit Bradley's accounts. See if he's had any unexpected cash flow lately. Lila, you take over management for now, until I can hire someone else on. And Max - where's Max?"
"He had guard duty at the north warehouse this morning," another woman said.
Hideo made a disgusted sound. "If Max did it, I will be severely disappointed. Notify him of developments and find out if he saw this coming. He and Bradley were thick as thieves."
"Right," said the woman, tapping her tablet screen.
I watched as the team generally conducted damage control. Their body language was agitated - jerky movements, running hands through hair, tugging at jackets, pulling lips, scratching noses, picking things up and setting them down over and over. My instinct was that these people were innocent. They were genuinely upset and massively inconvenienced. Despite being unpopular, Bradley Veneer seemed to have worked very hard for New Monarchy - when he wasn't slacking off.
I watched them all morning, as agents of the Cormorant Blade showed up and asked them questions. I crept closer, hiding in the canopies of the roof, and looked at the pictures of Bradley's body as they were passed around. Everyone was horrified. One of the women, Lila, sat and cried with a handkerchief pressed to her face.
One of the parts that interested me was when a Blade agent asked Hideo if Bradley had any enemies. Hideo looked at his friends and sighed. "He was never very popular," he began. "And he was serious rivals with some of Dead Orbit's people. I hate to implicate anyone, though."
"Any names?" the agent pressed. "Any leads will help this investigation."
"I saw him arguing with two men in Dead Orbit uniform last week," Hideo said unwillingly. "And he had an ... encounter ... with a Guardian in the bar yesterday."
The team murmured in shock. "You don't think a Guardian was involved?" one of the women whispered.
"Which Guardian?" the agent asked.
Hideo shook his head. "A female Hunter. Long blond hair. About this tall," he indicated his forehead. "Had a ghost in a red armored shell. Bradley bought her a drink. They got to talking politics, and pretty soon she pulled her knives on him. Security asked them both to leave."
The agent noted this down. I did, too. Guardians were trained in fighting and killing. One of them could have assassinated Bradley without blinking. I thought of my own Guardian's spark, abandoned in the wilds, and shivered a little.