Chapter Text
22063044 Wednesday, 16:45, East Trostland Sector 45-7. Wayland Gibson, Guardian ID TNS5087, initiating patrol.
It had been nearly a year since anyone last inspected this sector, which, by Gibson’s standards, was far too long. Judging by Devrim Kay’s patrol log, not many guardians made it out to Trostland very often, and even fewer felt the need to trudge too far into the once-city’s rotting sewers and rusting train depots. Places like these were the reason Gibson made a habit of chasing down neglected routes and adding them to his rotation, hunting for the Pyramid's phantom offspring.
He’d covered a lot of ground living this way, staying in the City only long enough to tear through a numbered list of patrol agents and Guardians, looking for patrol routes like these. Topographical maps and communiques marked beyond recognition with drawn-in lines and notes covered nearly every surface of Gibson’s living quarters in the Tower. He often promised himself he would consolidate them into one corner. Maybe two. His stern insistence during his brief landings at the Tower was enough to earn him a reputation — the kind that his handlers back in Crucible training would have warned against.
No one likes a zealot, they’d told him. Especially not one with your lack of charm.
In fairness, they were right. Gibson had made few allies, and, lately, had even managed to shed a few. With one exception, Vanguard assignments he’d taken on with a fireteam since returning from Luna had ended in huffs and bruised sympathies.
It hadn’t been his fault, or it had. After everything, after the Pit, it was difficult to care. Being direct was all he had the strength for. If his fireteam was slowing him down, and they often were, he told them. They tended not to like that, though whether they did or not didn’t concern Gibson. Pleasantries were inefficient, and the Hive had taught him the price of incompetence.
Between footsteps, when the wind changed direction, in the seconds before rare bouts of sleep, he swore he could hear the Nightmares, collecting like dust in every corner of the system. From the silent sky, they whispered rage and regret of lifetimes unknown to him. They were so, unbearably loud.
Since October, when the Nightmares had begun to manifest in forgotten places, Clementine sometimes joked that patrols felt a little like checking under the Vanguard’s bed for monsters. It was funny, but she wasn’t wrong. It was always somebody’s monster.
As quietly as was reasonable for a fully-armored Titan, Gibson stepped carefully through a viscous stream of mud, water, and oil, trailing from a long concrete tunnel. Broken pipes and abandoned machinery peeked out at him from a wall of darkness ahead, where the last vestiges of afternoon light could reach and electric bulbs had long burned out. Gibson gave it a drawn-out look of apprehension.
Clementine materialized at Gibson’s shoulder and floated forward, casting her scan ray around the tunnel in front of them. The Ghost’s projected light revealed more cracks in the concrete than he’d expected. Though Clementine shared very little of her Guardian’s seriousness, her diligence was apparent in her movements. As she explored the immediate area, she suddenly changed direction and speed at irregular intervals, throwing off any potential assailant looking to pick off an unsuspecting Ghost, rare a feat as it was. Gibson wondered how much of the maneuver was for his peace of mind rather than hers.
“Something nasty’s been here recently,” Clementine said, circling back to the wall behind her to shine a light on a dense series of scrapes and scorch marks. “I’m getting traces of the Pyramid’s energy all over this tunnel. If I were a betting Ghost, I’d bet on another Nightmare.”
Gibson approached the wall too, and ran his gloved fingers along the damaged concrete. He’d seen something like it before: the aftermath of paracausal weapons mimicking Fallen shock blades and a shrapnel launcher. But while the weapons were familiar, the pattern wasn’t. The blade cuts were deep, short, and grouped together, suggesting multiple frenzied stabs and slashes. Even for a Nightmare, it seemed aggressive.
“Who was it fighting?” he asked, half to himself. Though short, the sentence betrayed an accent of a dialect nearly forgotten, which he only let out willingly when the two were alone.
It crossed his mind to search through the patrol log one more time, but he was sure he’d see the same thing. Even if Guardians neglected to check in, Kay had a way of knowing when someone was around. Clearly, this thing was a capable killer. So, if its target wasn’t a Guardian, then where was the body?
The two stared into the tunnel ahead of them.
“Let’s find out,” Clementine said, and vanished in a puff of Light particles. A waypoint marker appeared through Gibson’s HUD in the shape of a thumbs-up, leading into the dark.
“In case you get lost.”
Gibson couldn’t resist a short, tense smile under his helmet. He rolled his shoulders, took in a deep breath, and closed his eyes. From his memory, a Titan’s voice directed him.
Focus on the heat of the sun on your back. Trace it. Begin at the star’s surface. See it rupturing, boiling. Yes, you see it? Now. It flies through the vastness of space, through atmosphere and clouds. Through your armor. Let it ignite a flame within you.
When he was sure he could feel it, he extended his open palm. With a flash and a clang, the burning Hammer of Sol erupted into being in his hand. He grabbed hold, though it threatened to scorch his fingers. He strained to keep up, to match the heat of his internal fire with the hammer’s. After only a month of summoning them, it still perplexed him that for a practiced Sunbreaker, these flames were not only harmless, but sustaining. Evidently, he was a long way from that. For Titans raised with Solar already burning in them, as Arc had flowed through him, was it really so easy? He wondered if he should have asked the Saint how he had done it when he had the chance. Gibson hadn’t been in the mood for questions at the time.
Once he felt the weapon was stable in his fist, he held it forward. Solar Light stretched deep into the tunnel and danced on the liquid at his feet. The Titan pressed onward, a steady rhythm to his echoed steps.
Further inside, what once had been a sprawling transit hub was now a crumbling, labyrinthian ruin. Old signs and rail tracks littered the walls and floors, but both were far too rusted and mossed over to serve their original purpose. Now, they were only proof of the people who had built them, and a reminder that they were no longer here. Long tunnels and hallways like the one he’d entered either ended abruptly in collapsed rubble or forked into new corridors. Gibson was grateful Clementine was there to track his turns for him, even if the tiny hearts and smiley-faces now cluttering his HUD radar were a little distracting. After twenty minutes of pushing through the flame-lit darkness, the water at his feet had risen to his calves and was running noticeably faster and clearer.
“Looks like something burst the water main somewhere up ahead,” Clementine said, pulling up a map of the EDZ on Gibson’s visor. The image zoomed in on their location, drawing a line to the southern reservoir. “Bet you a pile of glimmer that it’s the water supply from the dam.”
“I thought you weren’t a betting Ghost,” Gibson said, pushing forward, now trying to follow the rising water to its source.
“Well, I was talking to someone a couple days ago on VanNet, and he said he made a ship-load last week betting on Sparrow racing. It kind of piqued my interest. A little bit.”
The Titan squinted, and stopped to inspect what looked like once had been a service area.
“The Sparrow Racing League shut down years ago,” he said.
“That’s the thing. These guys do it in the Botza District, completely off the books. Probably not a good idea, I know, but maybe we could check it out next time we’re in the City. Just to make sure it’s nothing too dangerous.”
Gibson held his hammer to the right wall, looking for more damage like he’d seen at the entrance. Though, it was difficult to focus. It’d been months since she made a request like that. He was struck only now by how unusual that was. Being Clementine’s Guardian had historically meant embracing her many, short-lived fascinations, be they attending fringe faction meetings, convincing him to try every food joint in the City, or, now, gambling on sparrows.
“Clem,” he said.
She appeared in front of him.
“That’s me.”
Gibson contemplated what he was trying to ask, and whether or not to even ask it. He reached through the Light that tethered them together, as he had thousands of times before. It was how they’d first learned to talk to each other, when the language of his prior life proved long deceased. Through their Light, he sensed a mite of hesitation, an unusual space where her relentless enthusiasm usually shined. For a moment, he was ashamed that he hadn’t wondered until now if she was as exhausted as he was.
A clash of metal and a splash of water sounded to his left, snapping his concentration back to reality. The Guardian turned, just in time to see an obscured figure scuttle across a failing service catwalk above him and disappear through a small whole in the wall. The catwalk fell from its precarious fastenings and collapsed to the ground, sending a cold wave against Gibson’s knees. Then, save for the current, all was still again. Clearly, something had been watching him. Even more worrying, he hadn’t noticed.
“Is that a good sign or a bad sign?” Clementine asked, dissipating and placing a skull marker on the fallen catwalk.
Gibson collected himself.
“It’s progress,” he said, and he reached for his weapon sling. Down the left corridor, the sound of crashing water was louder than ever. As he walked towards it, he loaded a magazine into his Häkke submachine gun and readied it in his right hand, holding the Hammer of Sol aloft in his left.
The hallway opened up into a massive room, which became illuminated by the flickering Solar Light of his hammer. To the right, a torrent of rushing white water collided into the knee-deep pool on the ground from a massive, blue pipe along the ceiling. On the far end of the room, a raised platform protected what were perhaps once administrative offices, though many of the desks and cabinets floated in little whirlpools as scrap metal on the bottom floor. The platform connected to a suspended catwalk on the left, which led to another exit.
He made it five meters in when he heard them: the charms of the Dreambane Mark around his waist. The metal loops, cursed by Eris Morn, sang softly like wind chimes, reacting to the presence of a Nightmare.
“Above you,” Clementine whispered.
Reflected in the rippling water below, Gibson watched as something crawled along the high ceiling, positioning itself over him. The phantom, born of harsh red and black curled into the shape of a Fallen captain, looked down, its orange, hateful eyes shining from its absent face. It was about to pounce. When it did, Gibson counted backwards from three. At zero, he would swing the hammer.
Zero.
In one motion, he pivoted on his right leg and swung hard where his head had just been. The Traveler’s weapon struck the Nightmare with a raucous thud and a burst of heat and flame. The Darkness creature emitted a screech like the grind of rusted gears as fire engulfed its chest where the hammer had landed. It spiraled a meter away in the air and fell head-first into the water, half its mass now under cover of rolling liquid. Gibson took half a beat to reset his footing then unloaded his submachine gun’s magazine into the Nightmare, slowly walking backward. The firearm’s deafening chatter and rapid muzzle flash dominated the room as bullets splattered the water’s surface and ripped through the false flesh of the captain. All the while, it howled and thrashed with rage and pain.
Gibson reached the end of the clip and started to reload, preparing for the Nightmare to use the opportunity to get on its feet. He needed to re-engage before it could fully reorient itself. He kept one eye on it as he retrieved a new magazine from his weapon pack. Sure enough, the captain’s top arms emerged from the water, a dark blade in each fist, while its bottom arms sprung to a standing position with violent swiftness. It stood, three meters tall, while the bullet wounds on its scarlet hide began to close and twist. The scorched dent in its chest seethed and rippled, struggling to cope with the paracausal wound. Gibson had seen it before. Bullets could slow it, but he’d need Light to bring it down.
Though, he didn’t like how quickly this one was healing.
He stole an urgent look around to reassess his immediate surroundings. The nearest cover was about 20 meters away—a section of the shattered water main pipe. He warily eyed the shrapnel launcher slung around the Nightmare’s back. The captain seemed to favor its blades, though that could change at a moment’s notice. Like his opponent, he didn’t mind a close-quarters fight, but then, there was the water swirling at his knees, restricting his maneuverability. There were too many factors at play, and most of them were against him.
The Nightmare brandished its blades and screeched again, this one much louder than before. Resonant tendrils of red veined out from its figure as the piercing sound sent static through the Guardian’s audio receivers.
Out of time.
Gibson cast his forearm ahead of him, putting his momentum behind the building Light in his shoulder. A transparent-white force bloomed out from him, and space and time halted in a thin slice to his front — a barrier of Light. He was a Titan: he made his own cover. He made his own time. He slid his new magazine into place, pulled the chamber closed, and fired, peeking in and out from the corner of his barrier. The spray of bullets pelted against the captain’s mid section until it abruptly disappeared in a flash of orange. Within half of a second, ribbons of energy streamed to Gibson’s immediate left. He barely had time to step back before the Nightmare reappeared, and just as quickly, slashed at him with a blade. The weapon grazed his chestpiece, scattering sparks and bits of metal. Trying to catch his breath from the impact, he let the momentum of the blow carry him backward and used it to throw himself backward through his barrier.
When he righted himself to face his opponent, it was still, eyeing him through the window of Light between them. Gibson turned the Hammer of Sol in his fist, preparing for another teleport. Instead, the captain walked slowly forward. With the tip of its blade, it tested the barrier, dragging it along the faintly glowing surface. It tilted its head at him. The gesture distracted him for a few moments. It had been a while since a Nightmare had showed interest in anyone other than the one it manifested to torture. He wondered briefly which Guardian’s troubled mind had spawned this monstrosity. But he had no intention of indulging curiosity. No mercy for things dead and gone.
Gibson crouched, then leaped sideways, letting his boosters carry his momentum forward through the air. Once he was past the barrier, he opened fire. The Nightmare was ready for him. Its form shifted behind him and it charged, swinging wildly. Gibson turned around and cut his boosters. Hammer met blade as he splashed to the ground. Near them, the barrier expired and flashed out of existence. Then, with only the glow of flame to paint the darkness around them, the two combatants crashed against each other.
The Titan drove his burning weapon against the Nightmare, beating through its stabbing strikes, allowing it no space to mount a serious offense. Stray blades pierced and bloodied his arms. He could feel his flesh screaming, his bones creaking under the strain of his enemy’s strength and the growing weight of the Traveler’s gift in his hand, not yet mastered. The Solar fire in his chest still resisted him, it demanded he move against his nature. It roared with defiance within him.
Still, he pressed. He swung and swung until the hammer caught against the captain’s crossed blades. He hefted the handle upward, but Nightmare held it firm, glaring. It spoke warbled Eliksni in a metallic voice, low and venomous. It pulled the Guardian toward him. Before he could react, its lower arms brandished the shrapnel launcher slung around its back and pressed it to his stomach.
The weapon’s ignition cracked the air as molten metal shattered his armor and tore through his abdomen. Gibson’s vision went red. His ears rang. Pain took his mind. He flew backward and collided with the watery ground. The Hammer of Sol fell with him and it broke the liquid’s surface. It sputtered and hissed, seething heavy plumes of steam that quickly suffocated the air.
Gibson heard the muffled boiling from where his broken body came to a stop and his back scraped on the rough, sunken floor. His stinging eyes saw mists of dark blood weeping from his opened torso.
Calm, he told himself.
Heavy water rushed into him, filling his organs. Crushing him.
Move.
Beneath his fading senses, his mind’s eye showed him the dusted ruins where Clementine had found him. It was how he’d come to know when he was dying. He tried to clench his teeth, to push it off for a few more seconds.
He saw Saint, who had just kicked down his door. He was speaking, pointing.
Now, why is the Titan who pulled Saint-14 from the jaws of time now hiding from him? In such a depressing place, too. Walk with me, Gibson. I will make you stronger.
He saw Ikora. The pained look she gave him when he made his eighth request to resume active duty. He knew she ought to be disappointed, or bear something like disappointment toward him, that he couldn’t bear the pain of inaction.
He saw a Hunter. Honeycomb-9. Such a strange name, he always thought, but it suited her. Her Ghost was shattered in her hands. The Hive’s screams approached.
Something in him demanded an answer for all of it. A reason for pain. He denied it an answer. His body, a suffering animal, wanted an excuse to die, and he would not give it.
Move!
Somewhere, nowhere, everywhere, oppressive footfalls boomed. The Nightmare was moving. If there were time for Clementine to heal him, she would have started already. He’d made her promise to always wait until it was safe.
He willed his left arm to extend. He could only trust that it did. His hand gripped something. He pulled his body left, then turned his shoulder and pushed up. His mouth met air. He breathed. The moist atmosphere filled his lungs. His brain, reminded of life, ranted with agony. He squinted, forcing his blurry vision to give him something useful. Anything. Barely visible in the faded glow of the submerged flame, a shape manifested from the fog. A battered and burned phantom slowly approached the roiling fountain of where his hammer had fallen, its weapons ready. Gibson quietly gasped with relief. It hadn’t seen him yet. The impulse allowed him to rise to his knees, then his feet. He began to arc himself to the Nightmare’s flank, using the heavy mist as cover.
When the Nightmare reached Gibson’s hammer, it collapsed on it. It plunged its blades into the water, stabbing again and again at the Guardian it seemed to think was there.
Gibson hobbled closer.
When the bloody water yielded no victim, the Nightmare, in a desperate frenzy, raised its head and scoured the room. Gibson halted. He needed to catch it off-guard. At this rate, it would find him in a few seconds.
Something small flashed in the air on the far side of the captain. Clementine’s shell glinted in the low light. Gibson’s chest leapt into his throat. One last shot of adrenaline surged through his system. He charged.
The Nightmare turned and lunged at the Ghost, but she wove around its strikes, leading it in a circling pivot. By the time it reached for its shrapnel launcher, Gibson had already grabbed hold of it. The captain tugged two times on its weapon before it noticed the Guardian gripping it behind him. Clementine’s eye met Gibson’s for half a second. Through their light, he could almost see his desperate, blood-soaked self in her vision. The space he’d sensed before was gone, and he felt her every emotion. For now, he pretended that he hadn’t, for both their sakes.
The Titan fired his boosters and pulled himself up along the captain’s back, wrapping its head and neck in a crushing chokehold. It flailed, grasping and stabbing at him, but Gibson held firm. With every ounce of consciousness he had left, he focused heat into his left hand. Solar flames gathered and combined in his palm, until it coalesced into white-hot fusion grenade. He plunged his fist into the cavity he’d first made in the Nightmare’s chest and felt the humming explosive find purchase. He then kicked his feet, pushing himself away and into the water. One second later, the world pulsed with roaring heat, and the Nightmare’s torso scattered behind him.
He struggled to rise again as the captain’s form unraveled into searing strings. The strands floated upward through the misty air, snaking into crevices and cracks in the abandoned architecture. Gibson’s legs had gone completely numb below the knees, and his sight was darkening. It never failed to surprise him how tired dying made him feel. Clementine Appeared next to him, and said something he couldn’t hear. There was only ringing, and the unwilling recollection of the moment he’d glimpsed of her.
Among a scattering of other compound sentiments, she was angry at him. It brought him relief. It was truth; what he deserved.
No, that wasn’t it. He was too tired to think what it could be instead.
There was something else, now. Gibson saw a shape approaching him, trudging through the water. The blurry silhouette made itself low, offering its arms up to Clementine, who turned from him to face it.
He thought that maybe he should worry, but the mechanisms for such an emotion were gone. Beneath everything, he had only what he held at his core. She would be all right. He let that thought carry him into the quiet dark.
---
When a flash of Light called Gibson back to life, he was laying in what looked like a storage closet. A single string of cyan light leaked in from a door to his front, slightly ajar. The glow illuminated the clutter of slanted shelves and rotted floor around him, as Clementine floated a half a meter away from his face to his right, the tiny antennae on her shell swiveling nervously.
Gibson sat up.
“Where are we?” he asked. He tapped the side of his visor to check the time. 22:27. He looked to Clementine. “It’s been almost six hours.”
Clementine’s eye flitted around the tiny room, not quite meeting his.
“Okay, don’t worry. We’re safe for now,” Clementine eventually said. “But the Nightmare isn’t dead, yet.”
Gibson let out a long breath out of his nostrils. That’s right. He’d seen its energy escape into the ceiling. This thing was proving to be more resourceful than most. He took off his helmet to take a full breath.
“You remember what Eris said, about some of them being tricky to deal with without the person it’s trying to haunt?” Clementine continued. “Well, I found out who it is. Or, I guess they found me.”
Gibson knit his eyebrows. Then, an image returned to him. Now fully conscious, he could easily recall the figure who had approached them before he lost consciousness: a Dreg. He reached for his weapon pack, only to discover it wasn’t there. His eyes narrowed at the pillar of light at the door. He looked back at Clementine, hesitating to speak, as he was almost sure that she’d only confirm his suspicion. He began to put his helmet back on.
“Probably best to keep it off,” Clementine said. He slowly put it back down.
“Just be very, very calm, and trust me. This is a great idea,” she said, clearly and unsuccessfully trying to hide the excitement in her voice. “Now, open the door. Gentle as you can.”
Tense with apprehension, Gibson rose to his feet and pressed his palm against the door. After a few more seconds, he pushed. The door swung open. Once it had, there was only air between the Titan and nine Fallen standing around some sort of generator, which hummed with Arc energy. Like him, they were unarmed, but he could feel the unease in their four-eyed stares. They were Dregs, mostly, save for the Vandal who stood further back from the rest, seemingly bracing for a fight.
Gibson returned their stares until Clementine floated next to him.
“Trying saying ‘velask,’” she whispered.
To be continued…