The Trial of the Ghost

Chapter 14: Revelations, Kind of

Kra quickly explained what she’d found to Los as she led him to the basement to study the wall properly.

How was she going to open it? Rip the magic out of the wall? No, that would be a bad idea. She didn’t see any mechanical mechanisms in the stone. Taking the magic out of it would mean she’d need to smash the wall and that would be discrete, if anything it would reveal her involvement. Assuming they didn’t already know. There had to be some kind of activation switch. Something that triggered the magic. It would be hidden and they’d have to find it.

“Which one, Ghost?” Los asked.

“Here,” she replied, striding up to the wall and placing a hand on it. “No alarms on it that I can see. The magic doesn’t feel like an alarm.”

“Good?”

“Good,” she confirmed. “As long as we can find the trigger.”

“What if it’s only on the other side?” Los asked.

“Then we’re in trouble.” She hesitated. “Or I make a hole. We’re trying to avoid that if possible.”

“Understood. I’ll start looking.”

Los took in the basement. Wooden floors and tiles on the walls. Nothing else. What would have been here before they cleared it out?

He studied the floor, the scratches and dents from table legs. Or the solid tables. Maybe those were shelves. Storage. Whatever it was, the markings reduced the accessible floor space. So, he stooped down and started jostling the floorboards.

“What are you doing?” the Ghost.

“Looking for loose floorboards. If one comes up, it might have that trigger you mentioned.”

“It’s not in the floor.”

“Have you checked?”

“Yes, just now.” Los looked at her, skeptical. “Transparent vision, remember? Nothing here.”

He sighed and stood again. “Okay. So now we need to check the wall. Might be a tile to press in that triggers it.”

“Found it!”

“How?” he asked as she walked to a wall and stooped down. “Wait, don’t answer that.” He could imagine a smirk on her face as she pressed into a tile not far from the bottom. “Why am I even here?”

Her response, “Company,” was as dry as a desert.

He let out a fake gasp. “Ghost, is that sarcasm I hear?”

“You’ve rubbed off on me.”

She rose and they both turned the wall. It started fading into nothing.

“Think we can pass?” he asked.

“I don’t think there’s any defense magic in there,” she said, approaching it. “But just in case. Don’t come until I give the okay.”

“Understood.”

It did not take long for her to cross the threshold.

They waited a second. Then another. And another.

“That was anticlimactic," the Ghost said, almost disappointed. “Come on.” She turned and peered down the dark tunnel. “This thing does so far even my vision can’t yet tell us what’s on the other side.”

He joined her and the door rematerialized behind them, leaving them in darkness like a mine. Los reached for his flashlight, but he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Not yet.” The air shifted and Los got the feeling they’d just traveled miles in a split second. “Okay now.”

He turned it on. “How far did we go?”

“About forty miles? I didn’t really count. Anyway, there’s a magic alarm a few feet from us. Similar to the one surrounding the warehouse. A limited amount of my strength, hearing, and vision related powers will be available to us. None of my other abilities. We’re walking the rest of the way. Quietly. I can see a freight elevator in half a mile.”

“Great. Let’s go.”

Their footsteps remained silent as they walked onwards. Los found it nice, being at her side. Easy. Comfortable.

Kind of like Kra.

It astounded him sometimes, how easily the two of them had incorporated themselves into his life. In just a year and a half, he’d learned more about the Ghost, about Cael, than anyone alive. Except those Orjel and Ralehal people. More than anyone in Emlytos- did Orjel and Ralehal live in Emlytos? He had no idea. Well, better than most people. Better than Corla. He doubted Corla knew everything he’d learned today.

Or did she? She seemed to know Orjel and Ralehal. Still, that didn’t mean she knew about Tro or starism or Cael’s parents. Or her name. This was the only time they were working together, just for this project.

Third best. He knew her third best, better than Corla. The thought brought a smile to his face.

Were they friends? He certainly hadn’t expected to go on missions with her when they’d started swapping information. She’d been telling him things. Things he’d never expected. He’d even told her about his magic. He never talked about that. To anyone. Not even his mother and his sister. He was sure his mother knew, but did Siba? He’d never talked about it with her. Well, except for that one time. Kind of.

It had been years ago. When he’d first come home after his mother won the custody battle. He’d been in the kitchen, drinking tea, hoping it would soothe his mind enough to sleep, when his sister had suddenly appeared in front of the fridge.

“Uh- I….” she’d stammered.

“Come here,” he’d said instantly, patting a stool next to him. She shuffled over and sat down. “Lyrusiba, if what I think happened just happened, you are never to do that ever again. At least, not where anyone can see it. Understand?”

“But… it’s my power,” she’d murmured back.

She’d been so small at ten. So innocent. She hadn’t seen anything. She’d grown up loved, not used.

“It is,” he agreed quietly, “but it’s also something that will be used against you if anyone finds out. Please, trust me.” He took her hand and looked into her eyes. “When you have a power they find useful, you don’t get to live your own life, it becomes theirs.” Her eyes widened in understanding. “I know.”

“Losin-” she whispered.

“Please,” he begged, “promise me you’ll be careful, Siba, please. You deserve a life.”

“I promise.”

They hadn’t discussed his power since then. They’d talked of hers in hushed tones though.

But he’d told Cael about it when he’d avoided it with his sister. Did that make them friends? Or was he kidding himself?

Maybe he was. He hoped he wasn’t. He hoped she also thought of him as a friend.

Huh. He’d never expected that thought. A year and a half ago, he’d never have wanted this, wanted her as a friend.

And he could pinpoint when that had changed. Kra. Ever since he’d met her, the Ghost had seemed to warm up to him, to talk more. It was nice.

It was probably Kra’s influence. Being around her had turned him into a more approachable person and so the Ghost- Cael talked to him more.

He’d have to give Kra a hug in thanks next time he saw her. She loved hugs so she probably wouldn’t question it. And hey, he liked hugging Kra. He liked the friendly, casual physical contact. He’d never had that outside his family before meeting her.

If he told her why he hugged her, would she want to invite Cael to their Zaday dinners with Zrayt and Rox?

He tried to picture it. It didn’t quite seem right. He couldn’t quite imagine who she was outside the hood. Or her sitting down at a table and eating a meal. That would require her to have a face, which she never did in his imagination. He could never figure out the right features. Nothing he tried ever felt right.

He glanced over at the Ghost, who motioned for him to turn off his flashlight. He complied without question, he could see some lights getting bigger with every step. No, he really couldn’t picture the Ghost with a face.

They came to the freight elevator, a large cavern around it bathed in blue light. The cavern was full of trucks, all of which would easily be able to go down the tunnel they had just come from. The wall next to the elevator had a door.

“No cameras,” the Ghost whispered. She pointed at the door. “That’s the stairs.” She looked up. “It’s a factory.”

“We’re going up, right?”

“Right.”

“See anything to look at here?”

“The trucks have been used,” she said. “Maybe recently. Their tanks aren’t completely full.”

“Full enough for eightyish miles?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. It would be a ratio of weight and length I don’t know. I… I’m not much of a car person. I have the measurements though. Ralehal will be able to figure it out later.”

“So onwards and upwards for now?”

The Ghost gestured a hand towards the door and dipped her head. “After you, Mr. La’dyliap.”

“Why thank you, Ghost.”

The stairs were pitch dark. He took out his flashlight and looked around. There were stairs going all the way up to a roof.

“There’s a switch,” the Ghost murmured at his shoulder. “I’ve got it and turn that off. There are guards outside the first floor door. We’ll need to sneak under the window so they don’t see us.”

“Not past them?”

“No, we need to get to the security booth first. That’s on the second floor. We need to loop the cameras. But first we need to avoid being spotted. I can figure out the blind spots when we leave the staircase, so follow my exact movements, okay?”

“Will do.”

She snuck up and he turned off his flashlight again. He saw nothing until the ceiling vanished and then he spotted the Ghost gesturing for him to follow.

Of course he followed. It was never in question. Still, a shiver went down his spine. Of everything, the last thing Allelosin had expected the stairs to remind him of was the staircase in his old high school. And yet, there he was, feeling the same way he’d felt when going up a floor to the better bathroom. He’d never liked those stairs. When they were empty, they felt like they existed outside of time and space. Creepy.

Kra did not feel they were creepy. She was busy watching for cameras and guards and breathed easier when they turned the corner on the stairs, out of shot of the window on the first floor doors.

No more guards on these levels. She would be able to hear or see them if they were there. Arrogant, but she understood. No one was supposed to find the tunnel, so the guards on the door outside the first floor’s stair entrance should be enough to prevent intruders from coming up. Oh well.

Before opening the door, Kra scanned, and counted herself lucky that no camera was fixed on the stair door. And that there weren’t any cameras in the stairs. Most were fixed on the factory floor.

That would be their mistake, she thought as she cracked the door open and slipped through, pressing against the wall, just under a camera.

One door at the end of the short hall. Only a few feet to shuffle against the wall. Slowly, quietly, she pushed on. The security door required a card. Damn.

She gestured for Los to wait as best she could then took out her T-phone and held it against the card reader.

Please dad, she thought and a moment later, the pad lit up green. Thanks dad! She pushed the door open silently and added, And thanks Troan technology. Where would my secret identity be without your hacking skills?

She slipped in and in the moment before she tapped on the drowsy security officers’ head to knock him out, she felt disappointment. It was a very standard security room with the monitors and chairs. So, boring, standard.

She felt bad that this guy had to work at such an uninteresting place.

Los slipped in behind her and closed the door.

“Now what?” he asked.

Kra held the T-phone to the computers and let her parents work. “Ralehal is going to download a program from this onto the monitors. It’ll infect the system and we’ll be invisible as long as we’re here.”

“And I’m going to keep the connection to the system,” Ralehal announced. “No need to give this up. We’ll be able to see what’s happening here from now on.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to trace who runs this place?”

“From just the cameras? No. It’s a closed system. Now that I’m in it, no one can make me leave, but I can’t trace back. It doesn’t connect to wifi. If it did, I might be able to trace who pays for the account, but not a closed system.”

“Got it. Thanks.”

“No, thank you. This is the most fun I’ve had in years.”

“Ralehal!” Orjel interjected.

Kra just sighed and turned to Los. “He’s a science person. And that’s it. You should have met him when I did. His social tact has significantly improved since then.”

She turned to the security guard. His head was back, dangling over the rest of his chair.

“And if you’d met him when I did,” Orjel added, “he’s practically a different person.”

Kra gently took him and leaned him against the desk.

“Well,” Ralehal added in a way that made Kra think if she could have seen the hologram of his face, his cheeks would sport a blush, “you gave me a reason to change.”

“Ra,” Orjel said, and Kra recognized the tone. Her mother was also blushing.

“Are they always like this?” Los asked.

“Yeah, mostly,” Kra admitted. She arranged the guard’s arms so he’d hopefully think he’d just fallen asleep when he woke. “We should go. We need to find the offices.”

“Where are they?”

“One floor up. They have the computers we need to hack.”

“How?”

“Ms. Anvislu’s flash drive. It has a virus of some kind. You’ll have to ask her how it works when I drop you off tonight.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

She chuckled in her head and led him to the stairs again. She felt relaxed. The hard part of the beginning of the mission was done. Well, she had anticipated more guards and cameras to sneak past. It was odd. Someone was determined to run this place with the smallest crew and resources possible, despite having the means to strip down the ice cream factory in under half a day.

What did it mean? It seemed like someone was trying to keep this place as secret as possible.

She’d have to ask the others for their opinion later, see if they differed from hers.

A similarly short hallway later and key card entrance, they were in the office. It was bigger, extending to the right. One on that right wall and one opposite the entrance, both with curtains.

Kra moved the curtain ever so slightly on the one opposite the stairs. She let go instantly. It showed the factory floor. Any disturbance would be seen by the guards and then they’d be in trouble.

“Don’t open that,” she whispered to Los, who was at the other window. “Were does that lead to?”

“Just the forest outside,” he told her, matching her tone again.

Opposite his window was the desk, with a laptop on it. Kra examined the laptop. “Oh, thank Awronadai. There’s a USB port.” She inserted Corla’s flash drive.

Three minutes, that’s how long Corla said she needed.

“Why Awronadai?” Los asked.

“When you can’t think of a connection to a specific Troan deity, you just thank Awronadai, and there's no deity connected explicitly to luck.”

“That would be Kikynej for pathists,” Los mused.

Kra recognized the name of the Goddess of Opportunity. The ‘Three Goals’ for her, the traits her followers aimed to embody the most in order to be let into the Godrealm after their death, were opportunistic, enthusiastic, and creative, while her ‘Three Failings’ were passive, different, unimaginative. She guessed that lined up with luck the most of the pathist deities.

Sometimes, she didn’t understand pathism and how it had gotten so big. Each deity had three goals attached to them and three failings attached to them. If you overall embodied more Failings than Goals at your death then your soul would go to What Is Nameless where What Is Nameless will devour it and use it as power to attack the eight goddesses and one god in the Godrealm. If the soul truly embodied the Goals of one of the deities then they would go to their section of the Godrealm upon death. If they embodied the Goals, but didn’t stand out, the Underrealm, part of the deities’ territory, to have their fate determined separately. And then, if someone fully embodied all the Goals, all twenty-seven of them, they would be given the option to dissolve their souls so their energy would assist the deities in powering the shields protecting the Godrealm and Kyp from What is Nameless. Service, as it was called, was supposedly the highest honor a soul could get when the deities requested it. Supposedly anyone could do it though, even if they weren’t specifically offered it.

And wasn’t their highest honor supposedly what they were trying to avoid What Is Nameless doing to them just for their deities?

She didn’t understand that. She might never understand it. If they were good Troan souls were either taken into their sun to be with Awronadai and their people for all time. However, if they were bad, they were cast out to wander space, alone and cold, for all time.

It felt simpler to her. More comforting. What kind of religion told them the very best thing they could do was sacrifice their very existence, everything they were when that was what they worked so hard to avoid? Who said the most honorable thing to do was essentially suicide of the soul? The most permanent death possible?

She often imagined believing this and dying to learn her parents were gone, had sacrificed themselves to this shield. Defending the world was all well and good, but she had never met them. They’d sent her away, died, and if they did ‘service’ she never would be able to, even in the afterlife.

Kra knew she’d be angry. She’d hate them a little and hate her deities if that was her reality.

But she didn’t know what she believed about the afterlife. Her people’s souls were supposed to be housed in a star that had blown up over twenty years ago. Were they now wandering the universe, frightened, abandoned, cold, alone? Had they moved? Would her soul join them? Or would she seep into the land as according to the wildists customs she’d been raised with, fueling the magic of the world?

Three minutes, past and gone. Kra removed the flash drive and pocketed it. They could leave now.

She looked around the office. The desk, the three filing cabinets, the paper shredder, the empty waste basket, tacky rug. She likely would never be back here.

“Should we look in those?” she asked Los, nodding at the filing cabinets, stuffed with papers.

“Maybe.” He considered it and tried to open one of them. “Locked. Oh well. Wait.” He turned to her. “Can you look at these with your transparent vision?”

“I can try.” She shifted her vision and looked. “Seems to just be orders. Orders for weapons. They go back…. Wow.”

“What?”

“Almost ten years. Nenot-month, 1548. That’s the earliest. They get bigger as time goes on. I… They double suddenly around five years ago.”

“So, only supplying one gang when all this started.”

“So, we’ve stumbled into something that’s many, many years in the making. Someone has played the long game.”

“Which means it could be in a final stage or the cumulation could be years away.”

“Could it?” Kra wondered. “We need to discuss this with Ms. Anvislu.”

“We need to leave,” Los extrapolated.

“Yeah.” She looked up. “Want to climb off the roof?”

Los stared at the Ghost. “Excuse me?”

“From that window,” she began explaining, sounding as if she was talking to a toddler and gesturing to the window on the right wall, “we can lift ourselves onto the roof. If we can leap to the trees and climb down from them. Or go tree to tree until we’re out of range of the magic detectors. From there, I can just fly you home. So, I repeat, do you want to climb off the roof?”

Los shifted everything she’d just told him through his head and found, to his amazement, the only thought he had about it was, “Why not?”

He imagined a grin under that hood of hers as she got the window open, pushing it wide. “You first. I’ll hoist you up.”

So, Allelosin found himself balancing out a window, his legs still inside. His hands on the extended panels, he pushed his body up. The Ghost grabbed his ankles and leaned out the window, pushing him upwards even more until he could rest his elbows on the flat roof, which he did and then threw his leg onto it. He finished pulling himself up and leaned down, wanting to help, but the Ghost had it.

She leaned out the same way he had and pushed herself up as he had, but instead of someone pulling him up, she pulled herself until she was balancing on one of the open window panels. She stepped onto the roof and then stooped down, grabbed the panel and pushed it back into place, closed. She easily did the same with the other before rising to her feet again.

“Well,” she announced. “That was fun.” She clapped her hands together, careful to not make too much noise in doing so. “Come on. We need to find a tree.”

It wasn’t hard. Los gave her a skeptical look when she announced the one they’d been aiming for, hoping she’d see his cocked head and use her transparent vision to see under his mask. That was easily twelve feet. Maybe more. He definitely couldn’t jump that. He voiced the concern, hoping she’d find a different tree.

Instead, she just told him, “Get on my back. I’ll carry you piggy back style. I can easily make that.”

So, Allelosin found his arms around the Ghost’s neck, desperately clinging, and his legs wrapped around her waist.

“Ready?” she asked.

No, he was not. This was insane. “Yes,” he said, knowing it wouldn’t matter.

The Ghost backed up and ran to the edge, then jumped. They soared through the air. Los pressed his eyes and mouth closed, praying, holding in the scream, and then he felt a jolt. He opened his eyes and there they were, standing on a branch, perfectly safe.

“We need to go the half mile before I can fly,” she reminded him quietly, holding the trunk of the tree. “I can keep jumping for both of us if you want. But we shouldn’t go down to the ground so close.”

“Just keep going,” he murmured back.

Before he knew it, she was jumping again and he held in a scream again. What the Underrealm, Cael? he thought. Warning next time, please?

But she kept going without warning. And kept going. And kept going. Speed hadn’t been one of the powers she’d listed, but Los couldn’t help wondering. She was moving so fast, balancing so well, it felt unnatural. The way she never paused, never lost momentum going from tree to tree, there had to be magic in it. No human moved like that.

Before he knew it, the Ghost jumped down, hitting the ground with a deceptively normal thud.

“You can get off now,” she said. “We’re outside the barrier.” She adjusted her shirt, almost nervous looking as he hopped down. “Sorry about not letting you off earlier. I know I said I would, but once I got into it.” She shrugged. “I didn’t want to stop.” Her head tilted up to the sliver of sky they could see, and in a far off voice, she said, “It felt almost like flying.”

“You….” Los felt his feet sink into the earth, grounded. “Were you using magic?”

“What? Of course not.”

“It felt like it.”

“Oh…. Yeah, that kind of speed…. It's natural for me. I…. Most of my powers have a certain level of innateness where I don’t need magic for them, they just happen. That kind of speed and agility, I didn’t have to disrupt the magic field to do it. It was just as if a normal human could go that fast.” Los stared. She continued, “I sometimes forget that to most people, moving that fast feels like a superpower.”

“That’s incredible,” Los final said.

The Ghost shrugged. “It’s been my normal since I was a little kid. I don’t really know any other way to live.”

“What… Is it insensitive if I ask what exactly you are?”

“Honestly? I don’t really fit into normal magic categories.” No Troan does, she thought. “I….” What did she want to tell him? Had she told him too much tonight? “I’ll tell you more about my powers another time.”

That would give her more time to think. She definitely needed time to reflect. She’d told him more than she ever thought she would. She barely talked to Corla about her heritage this much. Not that Corla ever really asked, but still, Kra never found that it came up between them. So why had she told Los, who she was still trying to hide from? Was this a sign she maybe was comfortable enough to tell him?

She closed her eyes. No, not now. She’d think about this later.

“We need to go,” she said and held out her hand. “Are you ready?”

Under his mask, Los grinned and slipped his hand into hers. “Let’s get out of here.”

Kra took off into the sky, slipping into her superspeed with ease. For a moment, she hovered above the shield.

There was nothing below it. Just forest.

What?

The shield, she realized, wasn’t just an alarm. It doubled as a disguise. She could still see it with her magic vision, where the power bubble cut off, but not the factory. And there was no road leading up to it. Kra bet that if she looked, there would be no record of this place.

She’d have to ask her parents and Corla to look.

She shook her head. Now, time to go.

Los felt a second pass before he found himself in Corla’s room. Normally, when traveling with the Ghost, he didn’t feel as if any time passed. He was in one location and then in another before his brain could register it. The only time that he’d felt like this before was when she’d taken him to M’sav a few months ago.

Was it the distance? That trip had felt longer than this one.

Los settled in as the Ghost started debriefing Corla on everything they’d found. She spoke quickly and succinctly, and Los admired how she managed to summarize everything so efficiently.

Once she was done, Corla pondered as she plugged in her flash drive. Finally, she said, “I think we are in the final stage of whatever plan this is. We’re seeing such a dramatic increase in attacks I can’t imagine this isn’t the final stage. It can only go on so long, even with your interference. It has to crack at some point.”

“I agree,” Kra said. “Something has changed recently and we’re building to something.”

Corla scanned the files they’d retrieved. “Well, I’ll need time to go through these. But,” She typed a few things into Garn and pulled up a map of satellite pictures, “we can look at this.” She zoomed in on where the factory was supposed to be. “And isn’t that fascinating. You were right.”

Kra hovered over her shoulder, examining. “Not there.”

“Nope. Someone has a secret.”

“I’ll check on it as often as I can, to make sure it’s still there.”

“That’s probably for the best.” Corla nodded. “And Ralehal? Monitor their cameras. Let me know if anyone visits who looks important. Wait, on second thought, Orjel, can you do that instead?”

“I’m on it,” she piped up, her voice coming out of Corla’s computer.

“Thanks.” She closed her eyes. “I don’t have answers out of the data yet. If you leave me alone right now, I might be able to tell you something in the morning.”

Luckily for her, they both recognized a dismissal when they heard it.

“Good night,” Losin said with a yawn.

“Night,” Kra echoed.

Corla knew Kra wasn’t going to sleep. No, she was going back on patrol. Oth had taken over for a few hours and now Kra was going to relieve her. She knew Kra didn’t need to sleep, but sometimes, Corla wished her friend would stop working.

Whatever, she thought as they left. She lanced her fingers together and stretched. Now was not the time to debate her alien friend’s sleep schedule.

Not that Kra would change. Oh, she would listen and probably acknowledge that Corla was right, but then she’d say something like, ‘why do I have these powers if I don’t use them to help people, and then not actually do anything about the advice.’

Corla grimaced. Damn girl thought it was her responsibility to save the world and would never stop until she did exactly that. Nothing was ever good enough. She never could be enough. And she didn’t know how to make Kra see that the world was too fucked up for one person to completely fix. She’d have to settle for only solving some or she’d never relax once in her life.

Kra needs a therapist. And with that lovely thought, she settled down to work.

It was going to be a long night.