Upheavals

Maria

She stood beside the panel, which was a piece of uncut stone only a centimeter thick. One good, hard slam would grant her access to Ops, and Xenogears would not even know what hit her.

Her computer lit up, and she muffled a curse. Another Ghost had entered Ops, Altas by the insignificant mass reading. She would have to wait.

Waiting was something she was good at. Patience was in her job description, right under the "hazardous duty" item...

She had one shot at this, and she could not afford any mistakes. So therefore she would not make any.

She leaned against the wall, breathing a long, deep breath, wishing she could smoke.

She did not want to set off the smoke detector.

-----

"Mee to Ops," the commander said as she looked up from the screen she had been working on.

"Go ahead." The voice was Xenogears, whom Mee had met briefly. She did not at all like the other woman: her icy reserve and cold eyes set her off and raised her adrenaline levels. She was too much like a Cybrid, and she was not about to trust anyone with characteristics of the Cybrids. She had fought them for too long on Earth and Mercury to enjoy the company of anyone resembling them.

"I have completed the TDF rosters and am uploading them to you now."

"Thank you." There was a slight pause. "Ops out."

Mee had drawn a breath during the pause, and now closed her mouth with a sardonic expression. The other part of her call was not vital, and she supposed Xenogears had picked up on that and terminated communications as inefficient.

She shook her head, and returned her attention to her screen. One thousand nine hundred sixty-eight people she was responsible for. Delithita had made that clear during her brief encounter. "This is our place and these are your people. You can stay here as long as necessary, but one stupid move and the lot of you are out on the rock."

Unfortunately, some of the younger officers-- those who hung on the Emperor's every word like he was God-- were emphatic about completing their mission and eradicating the Ghosts. Mee spent much of her time trying to convince them not to do so, while she herself wanted to avenge her defeat on the Fantasma residents.

She stood, and approached the wallscreen. She had cannibalized the materials from her transports to make a TDF command center on Level One. The TDF had filled up the level, which the Fantasma residents had not used since the completion of the deeper Three and Four, and the neglect was quite visible. She had spent two weeks upgrading the level, until it was in as good of shape as the others. Now, the command center in the deepest part of the level had its own computer systems and was well capable of functioning with no support from the rest of the colony... except that with a single flick of a switch in Ops or one of the other control centers, a Ghost could shut her command center down completely.

That had been Delithita's idea: take One, but we'll be watching. If any of the TDF tried anything stupid, Ops could shut down power, air circulation, communications, door control, whatever. The subcontrol centers, which Mee had heard were in the Ghosts' quarters, vehicles, uncharted tunnels, and God-only-knew where else, were sufficiently scattered that she could not hope to locate them and take them over.

She accepted, grudgingly, that Fantasma was designed as a fortress, and designed well. She knew that any attempt to breach it would be doomed to failure, now that her forces were being watched with an eagle eye.

Now to convince her subordinates of that...

Her musings were interrupted by a knock on the control center's door. "Enter," she said. "Ah, Ko'ah," she said, recognizing the tall, muscular man more by his wry smirk than by his face. "What can I do for you?"

"Came to brief you of some recent discoveries," he said. "Follow me if you would." He turned and left, and Mee followed, reluctantly.

He led her to the lift, then down to Level Three, the residential level. "It seems," Ko'ah said, "That we are in possession of more space than we know what to do with."

"Oh really?"

"Yes," he said as he opened the door to his quarters and gestured for her to enter. She did so, and sat down on the stone desk by the door as he entered. He clasped his hands behind his back and faced her. "You may know that our leader is in some kind of incorporeal state and has been doing some interesting things," he said dryly.

"Yes..." Mee shook her head, looked at her right hand. Maria had taken it several weeks ago, and the contact had transferred... something between them. Her hand still tingled on occasion, and at night she imagined she could see a faint blue glow emanating from it.

"Well, a couple weeks ago we found a tunnel that leads to the planet's core. It seems that there is a very large, habitable space down there. We Ghosts are needed up here; the Cybrids are massing and we will probably need to fight soon. So perhaps you could organize a few teams to explore and map this space down there? And if you determine it is safe, we may move some fraction of Fantasma's population down there."

"The core? That has to be--"

"Burning hot? Nope. It's at 295-one-standard."

Mee raised an eyebrow. "Fascinating..."

"Heh. One way to put it. So what do you say?"

"It sounds worthy of exploring," she said. "Why do you want us to do it?"

"Because we Ghosts have enough on our minds."

"Understood. We will form three teams of ten each..."

"Good. I will accompany you to the core." Without another word he walked past her and through the door.

Mee shrugged, and followed. Finally she had something to do.

-----

Izabella's lips thinned as another Ghost, either Icey or Razorback, entered Ops. The three Ghosts were studying the console on the wall, and seemed to have no inclination to ever leave Ops. She sat down and glared at her sensor, frustrated.

The scanner was behaving oddly, receiving some kind of radiation from somewhere. She tuned it, frowned as she identified an increased concentration of gamma rays. Fortunately they were not numerous enough to threaten her, only about a tenth of a rad, but they were causing snow to sizzle over her display. She set the monitor frequency a bit higher, and the snow vanished.

She stared at the panel, and settled back to wait some more.

-----

"What the hell is that thing?" Icey demanded as Xenogears fiddled with the sensors and brought her discovery into clearer focus.

"It seems," Xenogears said with a trace of wry amusement, "That Maria has set up another surprise for us."

"Bless her heart," Icey mumbled. Altas gave him an impassive look that he would have suspected masked amusement, if he hadn't known better. "What this time?"

"The object that was blocking the star's radiation," she said. "I have been able to resolve it using an inferometric scan, from our communications system here and a comm drone I sent westward a few days ago. By the radio signature, this is it."

Icey and Altas studied the screen. It depicted an object, roughly disc-shaped, with six radial spines growing from it. It was in false color, since it was visible only in the radio spectrum, and it seemed like a green spider had grown red arms.

"The colors indicate transmission power. The center is not transmitting, but the points are radiating a substantial amount of infrared and radio. Nearly as much as a planet, in fact. This is no surprise, however, considering that the object is two hundred thousand kilometers in diameter, equivalent to an M-class red dwarf."

Altas struggled to process this. "Does the object provide any clues as to its origins?"

"It might... by the spectral lines cut from its emissions, I would suggest that a large proportion of the object is made of crystallized aluminum, indeed, the same alloy as our HERCs are constructed from."

"How much does this object weigh?" Icey demanded. Without waiting for an answer, he snapped, "Right, and how could anyone create that much refined aluminum?" Xenogears opened her mouth. "That's what I thought," Icey said smugly.

Xenogears glared at him.

They were interrupted by the Ops door opening. They turned to it, but no one was there. Or at least no one human. When they looked to the floor, they saw a cat.

"Enigma," Xenogears said, drawing her slicestar and aiming at the feline.

Icey backed away, knowing from experience the damage the creature could do with its razor-sharp claws. Altas prepared himself to kill the beast if it attacked his companions; his skin was too tough to be penetrated by the animal's claws or teeth.

The animal seemed to bear them no malice, though, and hopped up on the console without so much as a glance at any of them. Xenogears stepped back, watching the creature's feet as it walked back and forth on the screen.

A few menu boxes popped up briefly, and she frowned as they disappeared just as quickly. The cat looked at her, meowed, and hopped down from the console. Without a backward glance, it left the room.

"Altas, follow it," Xenogears said softly.

"It is an animal," Altas said patiently. "I doubt its wanderings have any importance..." But he shrugged and left anyway, following the animal down the corridor to the lift in the center of One, the lift that the Ghosts had locked out so the TDF would not have access to their Herc bays.

The cat strode up to the lift and sat just in front of the doors, and hissed angrily.

"What possible reason would you have to access our vehicle bay?" Altas asked the creature. He resolved to run a self-diagnostic as soon as possible: talking to a cat was an obvious breach in his logic-processing systems.

He walked past the animal, placing his hand on the lift plate. The door opened, and the cat ran between his legs into the lift.

"I cannot believe I am doing this," Altas said as he took the lift down to the Herc bay. When the lift reached its destination, the cat took off to the entrance to the bay, and it opened in front of it.

Altas followed, and was startled when a low rumble sounded. He turned quickly, seeing the flaming thrusters of la Fantasma activate, sending the Predator careening down the accessway to the bay entrance. And the doors opened to admit the Predator access to the main tunnel.

"Hey!"

"Ops to Altas, is everything alright?"

"Altas. The cat has stolen the Fantasma."

There was silence. That apparently threw even Xenogears for a loop. Altas could not fault her momentary loss. "Pursue," she suggested.

Altas closed the channel, and sprinted across the bay to his Bolo. "Gyl!"

"What's up, boss?"

"A vehicle has been stolen," he said, as he boarded the Bolo and jacked himself into its systems. "Pursue."

"Stolen? By whom, if I dare ask?"

"Don't," Altas muttered as the Bolo took off.

-----

"How can a cat steal a tank?" Razorback asked patiently, as if dealing with a complete lunatic. Icey could hardly blame him.

"How am I supposed to know?" Icey muttered. "Can't you just accept that things are nuts around here?"

"Occam's Razor," Razorback agreed, and dismissed the matter. "Anyway, I thought you might like to know I've finished studying your medscan."

Icey gazed at him for a moment, but did not reply.

"I found nothing out of the ordinary."

Icey's eyes, still glimmering with a faint gold light, narrowed. "Not even my eyes?"

"No. The light doesn't even register on my sensors. Perhaps it is too narrow of a band, and that band is precisely on some kind of blind spot on the sensor, but I really cannot say."

"Have you run any scans on yourself?"

Razorback nodded once. "Yes... I found traces of an extremely low-frequency energy wave reverberating through my body, apparently centered on my nervous system. Of the other Ghosts, Xenogears, Delithita, Ko'ah, and Jehrico all have similar energy patterns, of different frequencies. Xenogears's frequency is the same as mine, though, possibly the result of Maria's having transmitted it to us simultaneously."

"I see... it seems that a matching energy wave running through you must make it interesting when you come into contact."

Razorback reddened. "Indeed," was all he said, though. "Anyway... Delithita has the highest frequency of energy, while Jehrico currently has the lowest. The other Ghosts do not seem to be affected, though you have, obviously, something odd going on with your eyes."

Icey grunted. "Continue your research," he said. "See if you can find any clue that would help us control, modify, or eradicate these changes, but don't do anything that might endanger--"

"Naturally," Razorback said with icy anger. "I do not use humans as subjects in dangerous experiments."

Icey did not reply.

-----

Delithita was in Level One near Ops, laying on a stone bench halfway up the wall. She turned her head to the side to watch her plants climb across the small room, spreading, filling the entire storage compartment before infiltrating the air vent, squeezing through the grill and eventually tearing it off.

She smiled faintly. Xenogears would be horrified to learn that the air circulation systems were stuffed with plants, but so long as they did not force open the vacuum doors or short out systems she didn't care.

This side of Level One was almost filled to capacity with vines and rainforest canopy-level plants, sucking up the soft yellow light from the ceiling panels, purifying the atmosphere while adding a greater concentration of oxygen. The walls were hung with a network of green, half a meter thick and more, and the floor was covered with a spongy, spring coat of grass and small vines. Later, she would add trees, with insects and annelids to nourish the soil that would soon form from the rotting litter.

But for now, she was content to just watch the garden grow, to feel the pulse of its life sing through her blood and nerves as if it were her own.

She closed her eyes, breathing deeply of rich, jungle air, and went to sleep.

-----

Izabella growled a curse, as the scanner informed her that one of the other Ghosts had returned to Ops. Was Xenogears ever going to be alone, or would she have to bring up her simulation of one of the others and hope she would succeed that way? She had studied Xenogears carefully: she knew her reactions, her speed and strength, down to decimal points. Her mind had been downloaded, and the Cybrids had analyzed it carefully over the last few years. The chip implanted in Iza's cerebral cortex allowed her to process a para-Xenogears, and in combat she knew she would instantly overwhelm any moves she made, because she would know what the moves were even before she made them.

The other Ghost for which the Cybrids had such data, Tycho, was rarely on duty in Ops, so she would have to fight without any artificial advantages should Xenogears not be available.

Izabella cursed again, softly. She had been a mercenary assassin even the Emperor respected, and knew her trade well enough to easily dispatch any human being, but attacking and killing ten of them without being detected was not an easy task. The Cybrids, damn them, had given her no choice though. In about six more months, if the Ghosts still survived, the implanted destruct mechanism they had placed inside her left ventricle would detonate and kill her.

She intended to survive.

-----

"Altas to Ops," the call came.

"Xenogears."

"I have matched speed with the Predator. What do you think I should do with it?"

"Can you hook it?"

"Gyl's towing winch was dismantled for refitting recently," Altas said. "And the Bolo is too light anyway."

"Follow it, unless you meet Cybrid forces. If so, destroy the Predator and flee."

"Understood." He closed the channel, and concentrated again on the scene surrounding him. The Predator was skimming the rock several meters in front of him, continuing due west at just under its top cruising speed of a hundred thirty kilometers per hour. It made no move to attack him or change course, as it hadn't since they had begun this mad chase."

"Altas to Enigma," he said over a low-band communication. "If you are driving a tank you are no normal cat, so I suppose you might understand me. Please turn back. I have been ordered to destroy you."

The link to the Predator was automatic, so he was able to hear the cat's response: a purr interrupted by a quiet meow.

"Right," Altas said.

The Predator came to a stop just behind the rim of a small crater, and Altas had Gyl stop several meters ahead of the larger tank. As he watched, the Predator's turret assembly swiveled and faced the rim of the crater. The blue flash of particle beams lit the crater, blowing a smoking hole in the rocky rim.

Altas stared at the gleaming metal that was revealed, then slowly climbed out of the Bolo.

"Fascinating," he said in a direct link to Gyl. "Gyl, point your sensors over here would you?"

"No problem dear," the Bolo said, and its turret turned to face him. "There is a metallic wall embedded in the rock. It is six meters in length and two meters tall. The top is barely exposed. There is a doorway beneath the surface four meters to your right."

"A doorway in solid rock," Altas said. Now there was an exercise in futility. He walked over to the indicated space, and touched the exposed centimeter or two of metal.

His fingers found a small, square impression in the metal, and he pressed it.

The wall rose up out of the stone, and he looked through the doorway that was revealed.

Had he been human, his jaw would have dropped in astonishment. As he wasn't, he only stepped closer to the doorway and stared into it with intense interest.

The view through the doorway was not of Mercury, but of a world with a blue sky, green trees, and bustling activity. Had he not recognized the spectrum of the sun shining through, the "Welcome to Nova Alexandria" sign visible some meters away would have explained it for him.

Before he could step through, Maria's image appeared. To him, with his spectrum-enhanced eyesight, she appeared as a poorly defined blob of scintillating energies. In the infrared and radio, she did not trouble to sharpen her image as much as she did in the visible.

"Altas," she said. "You must not pass through."

"And why is that?"

She shook her head as if in sadness. "Because this doorway can only be used once, and this is not the time."

-----

Mee left the small lift, along with eight others in her team. The final team member took the lift back up, heading for the surface where he would bring down another team.

Ko'ah had decided to follow them, and he followed Mee closely as she activated the airlock that lead to the core.

She passed through it, looked out, and gasped.

"Enough space for you?" Ko'ah said with a grin.

Mee reached back and wrapped her fingers around the stone of the entryway, fighting a sudden burst of agoraphobia. After having been cramped in tunnels for a month, and in various vehicles and small installations for quite some time before that, this vast, open space was rather alarming.

She looked up into the black sky, but could see no light sources. The light came solely from a network of glowing rods a meter tall set into the ground. The rods flickered with golden-red light, giving the impression of candlelight.

The lake was a dark mirror shimmering with flame, light poles poking out of the water much as they did out of the ground. The beach around the lake, crystalline iron pyrite sand, glimmered with golden sparkles. Mee went to the beach, sifted a handful of the sand through her fingers, and watched it fall like a shower of gold back to the beach.

"What is this place?" she whispered, looking out over the lake. She inhaled deeply, smelling the fresh scent of clean water, mixed with other scents she could not identify. She was able to pick out the faint odor of sulfur, and the tangy scent of concentrated iron rust, and the scent of plantlife, a smell she had not detected since she had last been on Earth. She looked to the west, across the lake, and saw a forest there, pressed against the mass of stone that surrounded the core. The forest was completely surrounded by the lake, unfortunately...

She turned, suddenly, gesturing to two of her crew. "Jakobs, Sharazad. Take mineralogical scans of this rock. Myers, set up a seismic scanning station over there, and map the structure of this cavern. The rest of you, proceed through the cavern in a grid pattern and take recordings. Meet back at this lake in six hours and compile your readings into a map." Various acknowledgements sounded.

Mee turned back to the lake, removed her outer jacket, and dived in.

Swimming in low gravity, she decided as she tread water for a moment to get her bearings, was like flying. It was impossible to sink; even most stones wouldn't sink in water at Mercury's gravity. And moving was effortless. Even a poor swimmer could do very well here.

She aimed for the forest on the other side of the lake, two kilometers or so distant, and set off for it.

A splash nearby alerted her to Ko'ah's arrival in the water, and she found him keeping pace with her three meters to her left. She glanced over at him, irritated. So the Ghosts figured she needed watching even here, eh? She took a deep breath, a few more slow, steady strokes, and began to swim all-out, kicking dolphin-like and using a modified butterfly stroke she had learned in her TDF training. Her speed doubled.

Ko'ah did not seem too challenged in keeping up with her, though, so she rolled her eyes and continued on her way, ignoring him altogether.

She dived, and found herself immersed in water so crystal-clear she may as well have been looking through vacuum. The lightpoles placed at regular intervals were perfect pillars of light, shimmering in flaming color. It was a beautiful, though surreal, realm, and one that she had never thought to see on Mercury of all places. It reminded her more of the Tharsis caverns, filled with water since the terraforming, untouched places few humans ever saw.

A sparkle of light directly below her caught her eye, and she stopped, looked down through the water.

Something was down there, something that caught the light of the poles and threw it back in a rainbow spectrum.

She gauged the distance, decided it was close enough to reach, and dived, or tried to.

Her low-gravity-enhanced buoyancy threw her back up to the surface, and no matter how hard she pushed, she could not get more than a few meters down before water pressure forced her back up.

"Well damn," she grumbled as she was forced to the surface for the fifth time. Ko'ah looked at her as if puzzled. Apparently he had not seen the object on the lakebed. "Ko'ah, can you push me down to the bottom?"

"I can try," he said.

Mee nodded. "Take my arms and just push down as hard as you can." She took a deep breath and flipped over, head straight down, her legs hanging in the air above the surface. Ko'ah reached down, grabbed hold of Mee's upper arms, and shoved with all his strength. As soon as he released her, she pumped her arms and legs to dive deeper.

She got to about ten meters down before stopping and falling upward to the surface. She gasped for air, cursing, and rolled over to tread water. "There's something down there, but I cannot reach it."

"What kind of something?"

"Something highly refractive," she said, giving him the only piece of information she had on it."

"Probably some mineral formation," Ko'ah said. "Probably not worth wasting our effort on. This lake is fifty meters deep, and it would be difficult to swim to the bottom even in standard gravity."

Mee shook her head, sending ripples out in concentric circles over the lake's still surface. "No. Whatever it is I am getting it."

Ko'ah shrugged, bobbing up and down in the water like a cork with the motion. "Go ahead," he said, folding his arms over his chest. He frowned, then, and looked around. "Is the water getting warmer?"

Mee glanced at him. "It doesn't seem so."

"No, it is getting distinctly warmer," he said. "It was cold when I first came in. It's more like room temperature now, and it isn't just my perception."

"It is still cold," Mee said dismissively. "Now are you going to help me get this thing or what?"

Ko'ah shook his head. "I think we should get out of this lake." He rolled over, facing the shoreline, and began to swim away.

"Wait!" Mee said. "I am going to need your help--"

Ko'ah did not answer, only continued to swim away. With an angry scowl, Mee watched after him, but did not follow. She would lose the location of the mysterious object below, and she probably would not be able to find it again. "Ko'ah! Get me a spacesuit and some ballasts, and I will locate it from the lakebed!"

"Alright!" he said, not stopping. If anything, his swimming increased in power. "This water is getting hot! You have to get out of here!"

Mee ran her hand through the water. It seemed to be just the same temperature as it was when she entered, about two ninety Kelvin, comfortably cool. She watched Ko'ah's retreating figure, puzzled, then tried one more time to dive for the object below her.

Her attempt failed, and she floated there in the middle of the lake, frustrated.

-----

Izabella heard a faint scratching sound farther down the tunnel she had dug, and rocketed to her feet, drawing her sniper's pistol.

Plants?

She watched in confusion as the leading stems of a network of green vines slowly grew down the tunnel toward her.

What was this? she wondered. For an instant she had the crazy thought that this was some strange new defense the Ghosts had developed. She shook her head as she considered how idiotic that thought was.

Idiotic or not, the plants showed no sign of stopping their advance, and they were already far too thick to cut through without a major effort.

She checked her scanner. Xenogears was finally alone in Ops. Sparing a last glance for the approaching plants, she aimed carefully at the wall, aiming precisely at the weakened section that would knock the entire panel loose with her kick.

She muffled a startled squeak as a set of vines wrapped around her foot and brought her crashing to the ground. She rolled, looked up to find many cubic meters of plants growing over her, and coming down on top of her.

She screamed.

-----

Altas studied Maria's image and shook his head. "I see."

"I am sorry. But one of the Ghosts had to know, and since you are the most logical and calculating of them. I know that you have the discretion to keep this to yourself until it is necessary to use it."

"I require more precise information."

Maria's spectrum fluttered crazily, and Altas assumed that that constituted a laugh. "I figured you would. This portal leads to Earth, specifically the outskirts of Nova Alexandria. If it is used, it will shut down after about a minute, so you might be able to get a hundred people through before it is destroyed."

"And how will I know when it should be used and who needs to use it?"

"It will eventually become necessary for Earth to know what has happened to us. A new Ghost will come, a storyteller, and she will lead those who need to return."

"I see."

Maria vanished, reappeared with a different spectral signature several meters away. "I must go. One of the Ghosts is in danger."

"Who?"

"Izabella," she said, and her energy signature vanished.

"The storyteller?" Altas demanded.

Maria's voice came to him, but it was faint, receding. "No, there is another..."

Altas pressed the control to sink the portal back into the stone, then leapt for the Bolo to return to the Colony.

-----

Delithita and Xenogears stood over the writhing, vine-wrapped form struggling to tear herself free of the plants. "And you are?" Del muttered.

Xenogears gestured to the woman's computer, and Del picked it up. She activated it, and Xenogears's recorded voice played. The Ghosts exchanged a look.

Del closed her eyes, and the plants moved, dragging the woman into a standing position. "Who are you and who do you work for?" Del demanded. She kicked the sniping pistol aside, sending it skittering down the tunnel.

"Cybrid," the woman gasped, choking on the vines that were in the process of growing into her mouth. "Must-- kill you-- or I die."

"Explain, or I will kill you myself." Del carried no visible weapons, but it was clear that she held the assassin's life in her hands. Xenogears's glanced at her, then back at the plants, a puzzled frown creasing her forehead.

"Cybrids captured me," the assassin said. "Told me-- kill Ghosts-- or-- device implanted in my heart-- detonate and kill me. Six months left-- complete mission."

Del leapt forward, reached through the plants to grab the assassin's shirt and lifted her off the ground. "Why didn't you just tell us? We could have helped you!"

"No! Touch the device-- it will explode-- kill me, kill whoever tries to remove it--"

"I don't believe you," Del whispered, her eyes flashing with silver-green light.

Del vanished from her position and found herself several meters away, on the opposite side of Ops. Maria was in her place, and she turned, facing the other Ghosts. "You must not harm her," she said.

"Why not?" Del demanded, and Xenogears backed away as she saw the raw fury on her face. She had not seen Del so angry in a very long time, and the last time she had seen such a display, bad things happened to the object of Del's fury. And with Del's current powers, Xenogears did not even want to think about the damage she could do.

And Del seemed ready to use those powers: Xenogears's skin tingled with electricity, and the faint scent of ozone filled the air. Del's eyes flashed in time to the electrical discharges, and faint sparkles of green flashed over her hands. Even Maria seemed concerned. Her eyes were narrowed and she was tense, or at least as tense as an incorporeal entity could be.

"Del, no. This woman is one of us, one of the Ghosts. She could not help what the Cybrids did to her, any more than Xenogears could. And while Xenogears is free of them now, she is not."

"That is no excuse for cowardice," Del snarled. "If the choice for me was 'kill ten people or die', I would choose death! She is--"

"She is someone who makes different choices than you would," Maria said, and her form solidified somewhat. "And she possesses the same potential as one of the Ghosts. She will join us."

"You don't give the orders here anymore," Del said, and Xenogears backed off as the energy surge filled the room.

Maria was fully solid now, solid, energetic, and not exactly happy. "Actually," she said in a voice as cold as space, "I do."

A flash of light blinded Xenogears for a moment, and when she could see again, the plants trapping the assassin were shrinking back--

"NO!" Del roared, and her voice shook the planet itself. She threw her arms back, and Xeno knew she was about to unleash-- something-- at Maria, whose attention was elsewhere.

Xenogears leapt forward, placing herself in between them, and took the blast herself.

She vanished as if she had never existed.

-----

Ko'ah looked up from the lakeshore as a terrible quake sloshed water onto the beach. Something bad had just occurred, though he did not know what it was.

He turned from the lake, which was quite hot-- hot enough to be emitting steam, in fact-- located the lift, and began to run toward it.

Out in the lake, Mee dived again into the cool water, trying to reach that glittering light she saw...

-----

Razorback sat bolt upright in bed, crying out as a vicious pain ripped through his body. The room disappeared, as he saw Navarre again, firing up an incinerator, only it was he who was being placed inside.
His body was burning away to ash, with his mind still active, just as had happened with the woman he had helped Navarre torture. So he was getting what he deserved.

"No," he whispered. He had unfinished business here in this life; he would not give it up so easily.

An echo sounded in his mind. "No, no no no... Del..."

Razorback blinked, several times, puzzled. "This is... odd."

He felt a presence, nearby, in the room with him, closer even. He stood, turned as he heard a faint whisper in his ear, stared into empty space. Nothing was there.

"I am here," the voice said softly.

Razorback turned, expecting to see someone behind him. On the bed, perhaps, behind it. He began searching his quarters.

"Stop," the voice said. It was maddeningly familiar.

He stopped, and his eyes caught the mirror mounted on the wall. His face stared back, confused, and with glowing silver eyes.

The voice became a laugh, soft, delighted. "Not a bad way to die after all," it said. Razorback felt a touch on his lips, and he brushed them with a finger. There was nothing there.

He looked up, then, and faced the mirror. Nothing around him, nothing behind him. But he could feel that kiss, and at last he placed the voice.

"Xena?"

-----

Del froze, and with that hesitation, Maria spun and fired a blast of her own. A shimmering curtain of white light surrounded Del, trapping her and her energies inside. Del could have resisted, but she didn't. Maria was glad: she was not certain her powers were still superior to Del's. The younger woman's strength was growing much faster than her own.

But Del did not fight back, only fell back against the opposite wall, numb.

Maria shut down her own energies, and concentrated for a moment. When she stepped over to the Ops console, she was completely solid, not even glowing. Her matrix was nearly complete. "Delithita," Maria said softly. "You must control your anger. You must. You will destroy much more than you can even imagine if you do not."

Del made no response. Maria could tell she was dangerously close to slipping into catatonia.

She took a deep breath, enjoying the sensation of real air flowing into real lungs again, even if only for a little while. She stepped forward, took Del by the hands, and dealt her a powerful electrical shock. she jumped, yelped. "Listen to me!" Maria said in her most commanding voice. "Listen! Xenogears is safe! You did not kill her. Do you understand me?"

"But I tried. I tried to kill her. Tried to kill you."

Maria shook her head. "Poor, poor Del," she said with the faintest of smiles. "If you really wanted to kill anyone, they would be dead. You do not fail at what you really want to accomplish." She tapped the communicator on the nearest console. "Maria to Razorback and/or Xenogears," she said cheerfully.

"Eh..." Razorback's voice came back.

Maria laughed. "How are you doing?"

"Which you?" Razorback said dryly.

"Both."

"We are doing quite well," Razorback said, and then, in a completely different tone: "This is an interesting situation."

"Indeed... Maria out." She closed the channel. "Xenogears is now combined with Razorback," she said. "And she will remain there until and unless they decide they want to manifest another physical form for her... it will be intriguing to see what they decide."

Del stared at her. "...what?"

"You did not kill her. You set her free. Like I am, and like you are, though you do not recognize it."

Del just shook her head. "I think... I need some time to think."

Maria smiled. She would be fine, in time. "Stay well, my friend," she said softly, and vanished.

Del gazed at Izabella, and said softly, "Welcome to the Ghosts."

And she vanished through the floor, leaving the new Ghost alone to try to figure out just what the hell was going on.

-----

"Ah, Razor," Icey said as he stepped up to the bar and waved to the bartender.

"Icey," he said, in an odd tone, staring at his drink but not touching it.

"Haven't seen you here without Xeno in awhile," Icey said quietly. "Something wrong?"

Razorback gave him an incomprehensible expression but did not respond. Icey watched him for a moment, then shrugged and took the drink the bartender handed him.

"Nothing is wrong," Razorback said finally. "A bit confused, but not wrong at all..."

"Glad to hear it..." Icey shrugged, and tossed back his drink, gesturing to the bartender for more. "Confused. Isn't everything around here? You seen Xeno? I can't seem to find her."

"Nor will you," the other man replied. Icey stared at him, suddenly afraid something dreadful had happened. Had Razorback snapped at the wrong moment after all? As he watched, he saw Razor's eyes change, not emitting a glow like his own had the habit of doing lately, but changing color and shape. They became a brilliant, rich blue, and shifted to a more almond shape. Icey stared in fascination as Razor's features slowly metamorphosed, piece by piece, until Xenogears was sitting next to him.

She stood, and Icey noticed that Xeno's figure was quite obviously her own and not Razor's. She gifted him with a tiny smile, then said quietly, "Now you know where to find me."

She turned and left the bar. Icey blinked several times, then stared into his cup, wondering just what the bartender had put in there.

-----

Mee walked along the bottom of the steaming lake, weighted down with a mass of iron, her feet squishing little craters in the soft iron pyrite sand.

The shining object was visible just ahead, and she stooped to pick it up.

It was wedged firmly into the sand, and she had to dig a little bit to remove it. When it was finally in her grasp, she shed the iron block and rocketed to the surface.

Popping her helmet and examining the object in the faint, firelike light, she saw it was a gemstone, golden-red, the same color as the lights. She turned it over and found a small computer pad stuck to the base. She activated it, and two words popped up.

She recoiled, nearly dropped the gem back in the water. Someone, apparently, had both a sense of humor and a pretty good grasp of the art of precognition.

The message read, "Hi Kym."

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