“Really? Me waking up alone in some fishing village says otherwise!”
She was about to shout back at him when Zhilik raised his hands. “Ada, Tanos and I can remain in Hive. We can figure out what is happening there, send you information. It would be safer and easier for all of us.”
Ada looked at Tanos, his desperate anger unsatisfied. She nodded. “Fine. Do it. Stay away from the woods, from the armies. I’ll keep in touch with your communicator, okay?”
Tanos stormed off to the hauler, huffing and cursing under his breath. Fine. He could do whatever he wanted. Zhilik sighed deeply and nodded. “We will keep in touch. Stay safe, Ada.”
“You too, Zhilik . Get going.”
The outer turned away as well, and she turned back to Cherry, with Sam standing awkwardly next to it, picking at his beard. She shook her head, resigned to have to deal with his tics. “Ghost, come on. Let’s find this Master of yours and talk some sense into him.”
“I think you mean present him with a deal. We’re plenty sensible already.”
“Sure. Right. Come on, sit down at the bottom of the cockpit.”
“Like a dog.” Sam grumbled as he followed Ada into the ship.
“Well you’re basically a dog, aren’t you? Isn’t that why you keep scratching at your beard? Or what do you have, lice?”
He scoffed as he clambered in after her. “No, it just feels weird.”
Ada settled into the seat, laying her bare hands on the control grooves. It was already calming to know she was back in her ship. “Right. You said it’s been awhile since you, er, died, right?”
“Longer than I bet you can imagine.”
“I can imagine plenty. You'd be surprised.”
“I doubt that, honestly.”
She frowned, searching her memory, feeling tension ease away as she melded with the ship. She lifted Cherry up into the air, fins folding up and away from the ground. As the ship rose, her mind trailed back through memories of Sam’s words.
“When you told me that the ghosts would stop fighting if I fixed the afterlife, you told me you would kill yourself all over again.”
Sam’s response was remarkably neutral. “Yeah.”
“So… you killed yourself. The first time.”
“Congratulations, you know words.”
Ada bit her lip, lifting Cherry above the treetops. “Can I ask why?”
“Not like I can stop you. Honestly, though, it’s been so damned long I barely remember.”
“I’m not sure I believe that.”
Sam’s voice curled. “Not exactly sensitive, are you? Somebody tells you they killed themselves and what, you push for an explanation? Why do I owe you an answer?”
Ada was struck by the sudden hostility, but it only took her a second to realise that she would probably have been much less kind herself if the roles were reversed. She sighed. “I, uh, I mean if you ghosts are all dead, asking how you died must just be like asking where you’re from, right? That’s kind of what I thought.”
“It’s really not.”
She felt a flush of embarrassment across her cheeks. “Sorry.”
Sam sighed. “I mean, if I killed myself, I was obviously unhappy. I felt alone, nobody gave a damn, blah blah blah. Jumped off a building, died, the afterlife wasn’t much better, then it got a whole lot worse and I became... this monster. Curiosity sated? Any more questions?”
Ada did have another question. “Yeah, actually, why do you keep scratching your damned beard?”
“Seriously? That’s what you’re asking me now? I told you, it feels weird as fuck.”
“But it’s just a beard. Lots of people have them, especially men.”
“I never did, though.”
Ada frowned, the ship floating above the treetops. “But you were alive once.”
“Yeah. Still no beard.”
There was something more to that, something Ada wasn’t understanding. “Did you die too young?”
Sam grabbed his head with his hands. “Okay, Ada. Here’s a hint. My full name is Samantha.”
Samantha. A strange name, one Ada had never quite heard before - but it wasn’t totally unfamiliar. It sounded like Samtha, and Ada had known someone with that name once.
A woman.
“Oh. Oh, you were a girl.”
“Congratulations, genius.”
She looked down at the scruffy face, the deep voice. She had misgendered more fluid folks once or twice before, but this was an entirely different situation. What was it like, to be Sam? “So, um, what's it like for them? For you, now?”
“Trust me, the novelty wears off real fast. It’s weird. I miss the way I was before.”
Ada hummed. “So why don’t you go to a geneforge?”
Sam laughed. “We’re fighting a fucking war, Ada. And the geneforge that used to be in Glass Peaks is long gone. I don’t have time for a three-week hike into the wilderness to search for and reach the nearest surviving one.”
“But you said you miss the way it was.”
“Yeah, but there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Yes there is.” She scowled. “That’s why the ancients built the geneforges - so people could have the bodies they wanted to have.”
“And I don’t even know where the nearest -”
Ada shook her head. “There’s one somewhere east of the Institute, one of my classmates went. Cherry? There’s a geneforge out there, right?”
The ship’s response was quick - and out loud, for both of them to hear. “ Geneforge is not a term I am familiar with.”
“It’s a place people go to have their bodies changed.”
“Noted. A facility matching your description exists at Halcyon, in the eastern half of the mountain range. It is approximately one hour away.”
Ada took a deep breath. Sam was a ghost - a body-thief, a destroyer, a monster. But Ada thought of what it would be like to lose her own body, to have to make do with someone else’s, and the thought did not appeal to her at all. She would not want to feel like a beggar, like someone who had to just make do.
The ancients had created incredible wonders of technology - and they had done so in order to solve problems like this. To give everyone the body they needed. That power was there, at her fingertips, ready to be put into service.
“Cherry, show me how to get to the geneforge at Halcyon.”
Sam sounded startled. “Wait, what?”
“I’m taking you to be reforged.”
“I - Ada, why -”
“Because the power of the ancients exists to give us the lives we want to live. It’s there. Sam, you’re a ghost riding a corpse right now. Being human means becoming more than you are, and the geneforge can help you do that. I'm here because I want us to have power over our lives, and that can't happen if you're not in control of your body.”
“What do you care? Is this some kind of twisted guilt thing?”
What did she care? Ada thought about it even as she flew Cherry over the treetops, towards the mountains in the north-east. She had been lost and ignorant, and suddenly she had seen the words of the ancients, read their voices in their relics, and she had felt… more. She was becoming what she needed to be. She didn’t know what it was like for her body to spite her, but she knew that, now, she was more than just an angry heretic.
“I care because I’m here to fix things. I’m here to fix the afterlife, and our whole broken world - but those are big. Those are huge. Right now I have the power to help you, to put the ancients’ technology to use to improve at least one life. That’s… I haven’t been doing a lot of fixing yet. I need to start somewhere. Yeah, maybe it’s guilt about my having not saved the world yet. So what?”
“I’m touched.” Sam sounded sarcastic, but there was a touch of vulnerability in that sarcasm. “So we’re flying to a geneforge?”
“You bet. The ghosts can wait - if they get themselves killed in the meantime I’ll just have Cherry hold off the human army. I’m sure we can ma
nage either way.”
“What about all the other ghosts who’ve got the wrong body?”
Ada bit her lip. What about them, indeed? She couldn’t shuttle hundreds of them to the geneforge one at a time. Well, she could, but she had better things to do.
Should she even be helping Sam? Did that establish some kind of precedent? Fuck it. She would do what she wanted to do, and if that meant giving any other ghosts expectations and crushing them immediately, she was fine with that. This was the right thing to do now, and the right thing to do afterwards was go on with her mission.
“There will be plenty of time to lead them to geneforges after the fighting is over and Elysium is fixed. After we have our afterlife again. After I’ve fixed my ancestors’ fuckups. Now quiet for a minute.”
As Ada cruised towards the mountains, Hive receding behind them, watching forests grow scragglier and more sparse in the higher altitudes, she reached out with her mind for Zhilik’s communicator. Zhilik, are you there?
Yes, Ada. We are headed back to Hive now.
She nodded absently. Good. How’s Tanos?
There was a pause, and she could feel the two exchanging glances before Zhilik’s voice came back through the transmission. Unhappy.
That’s fine. I get it. Just keep out of trouble, both of you.
We will. Do the same.
Sure. She smiled, though. She couldn’t really keep out of trouble; as the senior coders at the Institute had told her, again and again, she was trouble. Hopefully a geneforge was a fairly harmless place to be, at least.
Sam sighed. “Well, I guess I appreciate not being tied up anymore, at least.”
Ada smirked, though Sam couldn’t see her. “Be nice, and it won’t happen again.”
“What if I’m very, very nice?”
Ada blinked for a moment. “Yeah, no. Let’s not go there.”
As Cherry zipped over the mountains, reaching the great valley nestled in the middle of the mountain range, Ada looked out the cockpit and into the vague, shadowy world below. Somewhere down there was the Institute. She knew it was there, and she once thought she recognized it, briefly, a set of squarish buildings illuminated in the dark near a long, skinny lake. She couldn’t make out much, though - certainly not the courtyard of cherry trees. The only thing she really wanted to see again.
She could always go back for a closer look.
In fact, if she wanted to, she could swoop in with her ship and blow the entire Institute to the ground. She could destroy everything that they stood for, all the rituals and rules and prejudices and superstitions that had punished her and held her back for years. They would regret underestimating her, casting her out like a heretic.
Ada smiled at the thought, but it was a bittersweet smile. They weren’t all bad. Not quite all of them. So she kept on her path, looking instead to the dark horizon, her mind drifting for a while. She focused on the sensations of the ship, and her mind grew empty except for Cherry’s twitching and turning in the air.
“Why don’t you spent all your time flying?”
Sam’s sudden question broke her concentration, but it resonated, too. “You know, I might, if I wasn’t needed elsewhere. But flying gives you perspective. Up in space - looking down on Earth - you… realize things.”
“What things?”
She wondered just how to say it. “The world, and everything we’ve ever known, is so small. It fits into the blink of an eye. It’s a wet grain of sand in the dark. And yet here we are, fighting and bickering over petty things when we have so much potential for greatness. It’s shameful. This planet… I was about to leave, you know. But this world is our cradle, now as ever, and I couldn’t just let it become our grave.”
She brought the ship higher into the atmosphere, the mountains just a dark, textured, rumpled blanket of snow beneath them as they cruised eastwards. They were almost there. Sam nodded, looking out on the world below. “So you came back down from the heavens to save the world.”
Ada considered it.
“The ancestors that came before us, humans and monkeys and rats and whatever else… with their births, lives, and deaths, they’ve worn flat dirt paths into the world, and we keep following those paths. I came down from the heavens to make sure that we can step off the path if we so choose. So that when we do save the world, we don’t do it because it’s the only path we have - we do it because doing so makes us great.”
“You're so full of yourself.”
Ada smiled. “I’ve never been one to settle for small ambitions. We’re coming up on the geneforge now, by the way. You ready?”
Sam sighed. “I don’t know. What if it’s just another body, in the end?”
Ada tilted her head a little, wondering. She had never thought of it like that. Just another body? Well, for a ghost that might be a more familiar feeling. “Then at least you'll know there’s no escaping the discomfort. You’ll know you have to face it some other way.”
As she maneuvered the ship closer to their destination, an indicator appeared in her vision telling her exactly where the geneforge was located, down on the edge of another long, narrow lake. She approached it in the dark, circling the building once to check. It was a set of low rectangle, fires simple braziers and torches burning on the rooftops. Cherry’s scanning revealed only a single person inside. Ada disengaged the ship’s camouflage, settling down in front of the building, fins positioned delicately on the ground even as the cockpit cover retracted. She stepped out and helped Sam onto the ground.
“Come on, Sam, let’s see what they can do for you.”
Even as they turned towards the building, an old man was stepping out of the building. He was clad in grey robes, his hair gone and his skin’s dark brown veering a little greyer. The old man squinted at the ship in amusement, and raised a hand in greeting.
“Hello there, strangers. Many take weeks to reach this place, but I rather suspect the gods have granted you a much faster journey.”
Ada smiled, and shoved the ghost forward. “My friend here wants to use the geneforge. Come on, Sam - make that body yours.”
Sam still looked a bit dazed, but followed the old man to the building. When they reached the threshold, though, the old tender turned to Ada and shook his head.
“If you’re not going to use the geneforge, then you cannot enter. Transformation is a journey, not a spectacle.”
Ada blinked, and almost rose to defend her curiosity, but she saw lines etched into Sam's face that she didn't want to dig deeper. “I - um, okay, sure. I’ll wait. How long?”
The old man looked at Sam, and shrugged. “Depends on what he wants.”
Sam cleared her throat. “What she wants.”
The man smiled. “Ah, I see.” He took Sam’s shoulder. “Come with me, then, young lady.”
They disappeared into the building, leaving Ada out in the night. She stepped away from the door, looking across the walls, and noticed ancient writing there, scrawled above the archway-shaped door on two lines. Words that no human but her could read anymore. She gave them life in a whisper, under her breath.
“The lives we live need not be the lives we were given.”
Chapter 9
T he army left Hive in the morning, having clearly swollen in the meantime. Looking at all the newcomers, Isavel wondered whether the watchers of Hive’s weaveries had paused to consider why they were being told to make so many turquoise armbands. She could only hope they had worked fast enough.
They walked all day, heading north along the road to Glass Peaks. As the previous night’s events flickered through her mind, Isavel couldn’t help but wonder what the hell was going on. Somebody had broken into the Mayor’s home, killed him and found the location of the ancient shrine, but spared his son. It seemed it might be Ada, but why?
If Ada really was an angel, perhaps the answer was simple - she had done the gods’ work. Kill the Mayor, who stood in Isavel’s way. Unlock the secrets of the Mayor’s artifacts, which Isavel might not have
known how to do. Leave a power vacuum in Hive, so that many hundreds would follow her army against the ghosts.
It didn’t make the most robust kind of sense, but it was all she had.
Walking here, at this pace, the questions nagged at her. She wasn't doing anything in the midst of the throng except growing restless. She wanted to act, to accomplish something, but she didn't feel comfortable simply running off ahead of everyone either.
By the time the sun and the army had slowed down for the final hours of the day, she had made up her mind. Her party, if she could still call it that, was nearby. Sorn, Marea, and Rodan followed her wherever she went, though they felt more and more like an entourage at times. Zoa and Ren, much younger and more relatable than amicable old Tan, were not much further. She turned to them all and beckoned them closer, and they picked up the pace, coalescing around her with attentive expressions.
“I want you to wait here for me for a minute. I might need your help.”
They didn’t even bother nodding, as though her word was enough. Was it? She shook her head, jogging through the moving army towards the nearest of the ancient haulers. One of them was for transporting Mother Jera and Elder Tan, but as the two elderly leaders in the army, it would be unfair to expect them to surrender it. The other one, though, was carrying a few guards, younger and stronger than the elders, and Isavel felt no compunctions about asking them for it.
When she reached it, to her utter lack of surprise, she found Dendre Han sitting on the flatbed. He stared at her approach with only the briefest flicker of exasperation, and she found herself grinning. He was one of the few people, here, who dared to express any negativity towards her. One of the few people, as far as she was concerned, who was being completely forthright.
“Dendre! Remember how much I love scouting?”
He blinked. “Gods, girl, you want to set the woods on fire again? You don’t need my permission for that. Not like I could stop you.”
She nodded. “You’re right, but I do want this hauler.”
He looked down at his own feet. “Of course you’d take mine. My horse won’t be happy.”
“Your horse will do just fine. Feel like giving it up?”
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