Chapter 13: 12 – Ghosts

"Multiple centuries later, it still keeps me awake at night."

- The Unabridged Interview of Veldraken Juinper, ARCborn

❄

Prime had business to attend to, so jack of all trades, Adin, led Mori to her quarters. Even after the morning tour, it continued to impress upon Mori just how large the Ion Blade was. Certainly far larger than her mining village. Three levels tall with one deck completely reserved for combat training, the rest of it was split into various sections—sections that didn’t quite match what Mori originally took for a warship. Besides everyone wearing black military looking uniforms, it appeared anything but. There was a fully equipped weight gym and running track, a lounge and bar, a library and study lined with handsomely wood-carved desks and bookshelves that, well, held actual, paper books. The Enforcers never allowed such things on Telark, only half-functioning holo-V tapes of old shows and arena fights. Mori took in the smell of parchment before moving on. It was, well, parchment-y.

Next they passed an indoor swimming pool.

A swimming pool. It was bizarre seeing so much unfrozen water through the glass paneled wall.

Adin assured her all of it held a purpose strictly adhering to the mission, but it was difficult for Mori not to imagine that this might be what a Galactic Space Cruise Ship would look like.

“Here we are, Space cowpoke.” Arriving in the lodging section, Adin paused before a door with white LED light trimming its edges. The door even had her name on a plaque—Mori.

“Consider this your new home. Access is integrated with your nanites”

Mori swallowed. All of this seemed like too much. Considering she was entering a school disguised as a Favored in just under a month’s time, was this even necessary? She chewed her cheeks. As long as Prime helped her grow stronger, she wouldn’t question it.

Mori hovered her palm before the door, the white light surrounding its edges blinking green. It opened. Mori stepped inside, Adin following behind.

The quarters were lavish, nicer and more spacious than any miners home back on Telark, nicer than anything Mori had ever seen. Black marble tiles ran the length of the floor, empty wooden shelves lining the far wall waiting to be filled, her own desk with a port looking out into the asteroid field.

Igniamous drifted by.

Further in was a bed large enough for two or three people by Treasure Corp standards, and certainly large enough for the two twins lying atop it poking at personal holos generated by nanostrips around their bandaged wrists.

Mori’s heart skipped a beat and Adin patted her shoulder. “Surprise,” he said quietly.

There they were—alive and well. Her tongue twisted into knots. What should she say? What was she going to tell them? What if they blamed her? What if they hated her.

“Ahem,” Adin cleared his throat.

Launi was the first to look up, her absent expression transforming into wide eyes. “Mori!”

Jeren poked his head up—face forehead still wrapped with black material and his ear covered—and followed suit.

Mori kneeled and captured them in her arms, hooking her chin between their small shoulders, squeezing them as tight as her sore arms and burned channels would let her. The weight of it all came rushing back to her, hot tears pressing at the back of her eyes.

She blinked them back. She needed to stay strong. For them. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I…

They pulled back to arms length. “It’s not your fault,” Launi said. “Mr. Adin told us everything. We don’t care if you're an Osai. It’s the ARC’s fault! They’re a big fat liar!”

“You saved us,” Jeren said. “And the flying masked lady who swooped in all whoosh like.”

Mori smirked despite herself, her lips falling back to a line. “I’m sorry about Joma. I should have known what I was. But more than that, I’m sorry I was too weak. I promise from now on, I’ll grow strong enough to protect you both.”

Their faces crinkled and it almost broke Mori, almost sending her wracking with tears, but she held them at bay.

“I wasn’t strong enough, either,” Jeren said, “even though I’ve watched the holo-V fights a gajillion times.”

Launi shook her head. “I should have used the water to soak Grandma’s scarf so she could breathe. I should have protected her from the flames.”

Mori wrapped them up again in her arms, and for a long while the three held each other, the dampness of the twins' tears soaking into Mori’s Nanofiber suit.

She vowed to make good on her promise, no matter the disadvantages she faced against other Favored. She’d find a way around them. The Ascension would come crumbling down at her pull, and in its absence she would lift unFavored like the twins up, giving them a life they deserved.

Jeren sniffed. “Mori?”

“Yeah?”

“You smell so bad.”

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And for no logical reason Mori could find, that was enough to send them into fits of laughter.

After Adin dabbed at his eyes under his sunglasses while decreeing he was, in fact, not crying, he left with the promise of delivering dinner. With everything Mori had gone through, eating with the rest of the crew who looked at her like she was some savior was the last thing she wanted.

She left the twins to peruse unfettered holo feeds, and took advantage of her new bathroom, complete with a high-pressured shower. She let hot, steaming water cascade down her icy-blue veined skin, thinking of how back on Telark they had to burn precious fuel to melt ice and snow and fill tubs if they wanted to bathe. In the winter, they often didn’t bathe for months. Mori cranked the temperature as low as it would go, shivering in the cold stream, letting it take her back to the Tundra where she often forgot about her troubles, her community dying from lack of resources.

She sat down on the shower tiles and crossed her legs, attempting to cycle. She lit the burned anima in her channels, remembering the flow of the movements on her mother’s scroll, how when linked together, it formed a complete loop. One you could continue over and over in theory. In practice, it was like funneling an avalanche down a winding crevice. Anima in Mori’s mind’s eye was a pristine white, but burned it was a gelatinous blue. Cycling the white was lighter like fresh snow, but the blue was like shoveling sleet. Either way, the anima flared against the confines of her channels, and her nanites pushed back. When she tried to slow her cycle, her anima sputtered and threatened to go out. Many times, it did.

Frustration blossomed in chest as she reignited and restarted over and over, her skin overheating despite the cold droplets pelting her skin. The heat brought unwelcome memories of the village alight with flame, the smell of burning flesh, the screams for help.

Her father’s pale, dying face appeared in her mind. She opened her eyes and gasped, heaved on all fours, fingers clawing the wet shower tiles.

She couldn't do it. Couldn't just sit there lying still.

She turned off the shower, slapped her face. Be strong. Be strong.

Slipping into a clean smelling cotton shirt and shorts—she didn’t know clean had a smell—she ate with Launi and Jeren cross-legged on the floor.

It was the best meal she had ever tasted— tender chicken marinated in a thick, spiced sauce with ginger over vegetables and white rice. She didn’t know rice could be just white. The village’s rice always came with hard and off colored grains, sometimes even dirt and small pebbles.

As good as the meal was, it left a sour note on her tongue, and she ended up leaving it half finished.

She wished she could have shared it with… she clenched her eyes shut.

Later, with Jeren and Launi unwilling to sleep in their own prepared quarters, and Mori unwilling to let them leave, she lay on the mattress softer than any she had felt in her life with the two slumbering peas curled up in her arms. Even after sleeping for almost two days in the medical bay, the twins still passed out in an instant.

Mori was tired, too, and felt the exhaustion deep in her marrow, her channels barely recovered and anima barely regenerated after her failed attempt at cycling.

But sleep felt like a waste.

She opened her personal holo, and found there was a night mode in settings. The orange translucent screen shifted to a dim dark-blue.

Anima burn: 79%

Advancement: no perimeters met.

Her stats nagged at her, but she exited out, had the thought to look up Favored fights on the holo-net now that she had access like never before. She could study them, but as she brought up a thumbnail of combatants in battle, she pictured Black Lightning Killuan’s malicious grin.

She closed her holo, internally groaned, and soon fatigue dragged her into a state of half-sleep, her thoughts and dreams shifting between flames and burnt flesh and her father telling her to run, to the practice bots sending green energy blasts streaking down the training deck, how she could barely dodge one volley before getting torn apart. She felt the phantom pains of reanimating thrumming through her body.

All while her Enhancement slowly chewed through her anima.

Mori opened her eyes with a sharp breath, sweat cooling on her forehead.

She couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t bring herself to analyze fights. She couldn’t even practice cycling. How was she going to get stronger, faster? The entry exams were less than a month away.

An idea came to her.

Gently unspooling the two twins off her arms, she extracted herself from the duvet and pressed her feet onto the chilled black-marble. She tucked the two of them back in.

She grabbed her nanofiber suit from the closet and slipped out the front door. The ship was quieter at night, though machinery still hummed through the metal walls, and she heard murmurs beyond closed hatches of those still up or working. Still, she didn’t pass another soul, didn’t get odd looks or responses.

It was just her, and a single purpose.

When she opened the hall to the training deck, lights blinked on in a wave across the ceiling, unveiling the polished expanse of interlocking gray tiles. She pulled up her holo to the training deck controls.

Prime said she was free to access to the ship network.

She intended to use it. And, likely ask for forgiveness later.

Five training bots materialized in a swarm of nanites, hands sparking with green, destructive energy. There was a slider for bot intensity on Mori’s holo. Prime had it set to Initiate, so Mori cranked it to Proven with a swipe of her will.

The green energy writhing in the bot's hands elongated into bows. They knocked rippling arrows and drew back.

She exited out of the holo, sparked her mostly burned anima, and readied herself to charge.

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