Sundreams

Maria

The Deep End was loud. News of the AMG attack had reached (somehow) the Fantasma residents and they were furious. The bartender busied himself getting drinks, feeling the sweat on his brow as he ran back and forth trying to keep everyone in alcohol and the bar clean.

Icey sat down, but decided to give the man a break and not order anything. He was not planning on staying long, only long enough to confirm his hunch.

Xenogears and Razorback entered through the jagged door and Icey's jaw fell. Xenogears was wearing a dress. A long, sheer green dress of satin, that fit her very... efficiently. Um...?Oh yeah, I remember. Never. He stared for a minute, trying to process that, as the couple sat down a few seats away and made their order.

"Well," he said, getting up and approaching them. "You look different." Xeno smiled at him, then glanced back at her companion. Icey read the look, and grinned. "So you two have hooked up?"

Razorback nodded. "Your Xena is quite a lady," he said.

Icey glanced back at her, feeling rather annoyed with himself. So this is what was hiding under the shell of icy logic and nonemotion? "Yeah," he said. "She certainly is. Be good to her or I'll kick your ass."

He did not quite trust this new Ghost that had dropped into their midst several months previously. He kept his emotions hidden, and his anger bottled up-- most of the time. Icey had made it his duty to watch the man carefully. One with such potential violence could be a danger to all around him.

Icey looked back at the lovely woman who was now nestled in Razor's arms, feeling a sudden fear for her safety. What if Razorback exploded at her?

"Oh, I will," Razorback said quietly. "You have my word on it." Icey relaxed. Whatever else Razor was, he was a man of his word.

Ice walked into the room: Maria, her expression frozen in an expressionless mask. Icey knew from long association with her that that expression covered intense anger. She gestured sharply to Icey, who got up quickly and went to her. She led him out into the corridor. "What is it?" he asked.

"There is a traitor among us." Icey's eyes widened. "I intercepted a transmission to the Cybrid Nexus from somewhere in the Colony, apparently on Level Three."

"Residential," he noted, speaking to cover the sudden explosion of nausea in his stomach.

"Right. I could not get a very good fix on it though. There are to be two Ghosts on Three at all times and one shall be in Ops monitoring at all times."

"Okay..."

"Del's in Ops, Ko'ah will meet you at the entrance to Three. If you catch the person I will be down in my sanctum."

Hunch confirmed. "Understood," he said. Maria nodded shortly and entered the bar.

Icey walked in the opposite direction, down the cross-tunnel that extended through Level Four, and beyond into the bedrock. He reached the lift and waited for it to come down to his level, thinking.

Maria was spending quite a bit of time in the sanctum lately. Something was up: if there were a traitor trying to betray the Colony, she would never leave Ops until he was caught. Not for any reason. He had had a word with the bartender: he would mark the time she entered and the time she returned to the Deep End from the tunnel to the sanctum.

He wished he could speak with Del about her strange behavior, but Del was silent lately, recovering from her injuries, wasting what little energy she did have hunting phantoms. Perhaps Xenogears would have a different perspective on the matter: he resolved to discuss it with her later.

If she had not already disappeared with Razorback, that is.

The lift arrived and Icey entered, listening to the creaking noises it made as it ascended the vertical tunnel. A moment later Ko'ah met him at the entrance to Level Three. "Hey Ice," he said. "Got a worm here."

"Yeah Maria told me. What kind of scum would do something like this?" Icey fingered the pistol on his belt.

"Dunno, but we'd better catch him quick. Last thing we need is for the Cybrids to know our defenses."

A chill went through him and it wasn't the air conditioning.

---

"Icey to Maria," he called when his shift was over... the next day.

There was no response.

"Icey to Deep End," he said.

Never one to mince words, the bartender came back with "What?"

"She out?"

"Nope."

"I see..." Icey was already on the lift down from Level One. "Be there shortly."

The lift stopped at the Level Three tunnel, and several residents boarded. "Governor," one said, with a salute.

Icey forced a smile. "I'm not the Governor anymore. Just one of the Ghosts."

The young man grunted. "Yes sir. What does it take to get to be a Ghost?"

Icey gazed at him, considered. How had he become a Ghost? His Talon was blown half apart when he had tried to recover Maria, several years previously. She and Delithita had rescued him from the Cybrids' clutches. They spent years together, fighting for their lives, hiding from the Cybrids that infested the whole of Mercury, never knowing which day their last battle would come. Somehow they had survived, discovered Xenogears, later liberated the entire Fantasma population from their enslavement, and built and defended this small underground city that was their only hope for survival.

He thought of the other Ghosts: Maria, who had wandered the planet alone for nearly a year, her family presumed killed, striking at the Cybrids whenever she could with vengeful fury. Of Xenogears, captured by the Cybrids, made into nothing more than a puppet with drugs and hypnosis, who finally was freed by luck and an incorrect drug dosage. Of Tycho, discovered in among the recovered slaves, driven by fury until one day he attacked the Cybrids alone and never returned.

"Insanity," he said finally as the lift door opened. He left before the young man could respond.

Icey went behind the bar to the heaps of boulders tossed against the back wall, to the small door that led to the tunnel to the sanctum, Maria's hidden chamber a kilometer below the rest of the colony.

He dropped, his stomach heaving as he fell down the tunnel, occasionally slowing himself by grabbing the walls. A kilometer drop was nasty even in Mercury's thirty-eight percent gravity, and would certainly kill him if he rolled up in a ball like his instincts were telling him to do.

He struck bottom with a thud, stood, and brushed himself off. Of course Maria wouldn't install a lift: that would be inefficient when one could drop down and climb up.

He entered the airlock, passed through it. The stone table in the center of the first chamber had a scarp deck stacked neatly on one side, a chessboard with a black queen facing a phalanx of diagonal pawns in front of a pair of knights. He studied it briefly, and glanced at the aft wall, looking for the tiny airlock control embedded in the rock. He found it, pressed it, and a slab of rock slid aside, revealing the inner airlock chamber.

He passed through this chamber to the back room of the sanctum, and Maria was sitting at the table in that room.

The chessboard was in the same configuration as the one in the other room. Maria's right hand occupied the space between the pawns and the back row of the white side. The elbow of her other arm was on the table beside the chessboard, and her chin rested in her hand.

Her eyes were closed and her face was serene, peaceful.

"Maria?" he said softly, so as to not disturb her if she was sleeping.

She smiled faintly, but made no other acknowledgement.

"We haven't found the spy," he said. "Del's monitoring from Ops, and she asked me to tell you she's fixed the sensors on top of the scarp. We've found a new AMG base."

No reply, only a twitch of the corners of her mouth.

Icey turned to go, then turned around and snapped, "Maria, what the hell is going on?" Her eyebrows rose questioningly, but she didn't open her eyes. "You've been ducking down here with every chance you get! You never tell anyone what you're doing down here!"

"The sun," Maria said softly.

Icey's anger derailed into confusion. "What? The sun?" He glanced up at the stone ceiling, thinking of the blinding ball of fire that filled Mercury's black sky. "What about it?"

"It's beautiful," Maria said.

Icey studied her, mentally assessing her psychological stability. "Maria... are you alright?"

Her smile widened. Icey raised his eyebrows. First Xeno, now Maria. Was there an epidemic going on here? "Very well, my friend," she said. "Very well indeed."

"Del to Icey," his communicator crackled.

"Go ahead," he said, not taking his eyes off Maria and her rare smile.

"We have picked up a nasty solar flare. Biggest I've seen. We have to evacuate the top levels and keep everyone down in Three and Four."

"What? The solar maximum isn't for another four years!"

"Not my problem, I just call them."

"I see... alright... order the evacuation." He glanced at Maria, who had not moved. "Maria?"

"Mmm?"

"What the hell is going on?" he demanded again. "Did you know about the flare?"

"You may look at it that way," she said.

"How?"

"You'll understand in time."

Icey glared at her for a moment, then turned to leave.

"Icey." Maria's voice was soft, but commanding. He looked back at her. "Anything is possible."

He did not reply. He didn't know what to make of her comment. So he left, her last words echoing over and over in his mind...

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