Second Contact

by Guerric Haché, Keezy Young

  The words creaked out of Isavel’s mouth, and Ada recognized old, familiar sentiments in them. She took a step closer, keeping her hands to herself, and leaned against the wall next to Isavel. Breathing deeply, she was quietly thankful to Isavel for taking the focus onto herself. “What happened?”

  “Bandits - or ghosts, I don’t actually know anymore.”

  “Those don’t sound like ghosts, Isavel. Ghosts keep the bodies.”

  Isavel glared at her. “I’m really not interested in speculating at this point.”

  Heat prickled at Ada’s face again, and she kicked herself mentally. “Of course. Sorry.”

  “Me too. They killed everyone.”

  “Except you.”

  Isavel’s right hand rose to her neck, and she rubbed it as though it were sore. “They killed me too. Threw me in the pile. I died, and… woke up later. Somehow. With three fucking gifts, Ada, but I’d never had one before.”

  Ada’s eyes widened. She could only imagine the horror of that experience, and Isavel’s voice and expression already provided her with a hint of it. Exhaling quietly for a moment, she rested a hand on Isavel’s shoulder. “That’s… holy shit.”

  Isavel shook her head. “It’s past, now.”

  “Why are you telling me?”

  Isavel looked at her. “I want you to understand that we’re in all of this together. I know you’re dangerous, you’ve killed people, but I don’t think you’re the kind of monster everyone thinks you are. You’re not alone. The two of us can figure something out, a way to keep everyone from killing each other.”

  She was alone. She was always alone. But it occurred to her that it might be nice, for a little while, to pretend she wasn’t. If she knew what she was getting into, she might be safe. “So what’s your plan?”

  Isavel stared at her, chuckling nervously. “That’s why I came to you. I don’t have a plan.”

  Ada smirked. “Well neither do I.” But this was a problem, and one thing Ada felt she was good at was solving problems. If they needed to plan, they should plan. “So we need to keep the human army away from here for as long as possible, right?”

  “Ideally.” Isavel uncrossed her arms and turned to look at Campus through the window. Ada followed her gaze, and she saw Hail awkwardly standing near Zhilik and Tanos, with Sam at a slightly wider distance. Isavel sighed. “We need to convince them to not head straight here immediately, for one thing.”

  “What, straight across the water?” Ada looked at her. “You know the thing I destroyed the bridge with is a ship, right? It travels underwater. If they tried crossing the open water I could just shoot them all.”

  Isavel’s eyes widened, but after a moment she nodded. “No, that’s good. I can tell them that. If they know they can’t cross open water, maybe they’ll travel further north where the strait is narrow. That’ll add… I don’t know, a lot of days.”

  To the north of the island. Ada’s mind raced. “There’s another ghost walker.”

  Isavel stared at her. “What? I’ve already killed two.”

  The casual tone of the comment made Ada want to giggle, but she restrained herself. “There’s just one more, apparently. Hiding up north. I can get Sam - uh, one of the ghosts - to show you on a map where he was last.”

  Isavel nodded. “They might be persuaded to hunt him first. I don’t know if anyone in Glass Peaks will trust that information without proof, but I can try my best. Ada, can you stop the outers or the ghosts from retaliating? I can’t control every little party that decides to run around the island shooting people.”

  “The outers don’t really fight. The ghosts… I can tell them to stay put, defend the walls and that’s it. There aren’t enough of them to stage an offensive, don’t worry. Just a few hundred.”

  Isavel seemed concerned even at that number, but she didn’t say as much. “Okay. So I try to delay them for as long as possible, but I can’t do it forever. I’d rather there not be anyone left here when they arrive. Can you get these people out of here?”

  “I -” She stared out at the city. There were a thousand outers here, at least, and over two hundred ghosts. They wouldn’t all fit in the Chengdu , at least not in one trip. And the outers seemed to be hoping someone was coming for them from the stars, even if they had no proof of it. If that someone didn’t come soon enough, they would have to leave. They didn’t have a choice. “I can try. I’ve got a big ship, and I can take maybe a hundred of them at a time. I can bring them down the coast, somewhere past Hive, and we can figure it out from there.”

  Isavel seemed to catch something in what she said. “Okay. And after that?”

  Ada looked at her, at the summer light pouring through the glass and streaming down her olive skin. “After that, I go back to what I’ve been trying to do this whole time. Figure out how to fix the world. Learn from the ancients’ successes and mistakes to build something better.”

  Isavel’s mouth flickered into a grin. “Fix the world? You know, you might want to consider humility someday.”

  “Never.” She grinned back. “What about you?”

  Isavel stared at her hands. “You know… the gods might not care about us, but they know things. They knew what I was before we met, and they understand a lot. I need to know what I am. I don’t think I’ll be able to find peace until I’ve figured out what this second life of mine is . Why I have it.” She smiled at Ada. “Maybe I’ll have to fight the gods for an answer.”

  Ada chuckled, wondering if the gods really did know. There was so much they should know, but they shared so little. She looked at Isavel, and found herself hoping she found the answers she needed. Ada was feeling a bit curious herself. “If you need a hand, I’ll hold them while you punch them in the face.”

  Isavel laughed, turning away from the glass towards her. “I like this better. Us being friends.”

  Ada pursed her lips. She had to agree - every time they had met until now, they had been holding back from each other. For good reasons, perhaps, but it had still felt forced and wrong, like the universe was conspiring to make their lives difficult. Maybe those times were at an end. “Me too. I never wanted to fight.”

  “Me neither.” Isavel looked at her then glanced away, back outside. “You know, I borrowed your gun, last time we met. I forgot to bring it with me.”

  “Oh - uh, that’s okay.” She didn’t really need the gun; it took her a second to grasp that Isavel wanted to return it, though, and a thought occurred to her. “Listen, you can bring it back whenever you have time. It’s a good thing to have, I guess. Just a second, let me make something.”

  She turned around and started rooting through the greenhouse shelves; they were packed closely with soil and plant life, but a number of the plants had little stones covering the bare soil, to keep insects out and water in. She picked up two of the little stones, soft black shapes only a bit larger than the last segment of her thumb, and held them in her hand. She slowed time to a crawl, and in time dilation she recalled the sigil for creating locator stones. It was normally a huge sigil, useful but generally too large for coders to apply in the wild.

  Her own dark code spindles, however, seemed to have no limit to how small they could be, and so Ada wrapped each of the stones in a locator sigil in turn, intricate weavings of black that seemed at first to do nothing at all. Back in real-time, she handed one of them to Isavel, and held up the other one. “Touch the stones together.”

  Isavel stared at it. “Was that code, or magic?”

  Ada shrugged. “Magical code.”

  Isavel shook her head, clearly thinking this was silly, but when she touched her locator stone to Ada’s, the two of them flashed bright white, and when they broke contact a shimmering glow remained on one side of the stone, each one pointing at the other. Isavel looked at it curiously, moving it up and down and side to side in front of her, watching the glow maintain its orientation, locked to its twin. She smiled. “Is this an invitation to come bother you whenever I want?”

/>   Ada couldn’t imagine being bothered by that. “Only if you want to return that gun. Or, if you take too long, maybe I’ll come find you myself.”

  “Of course.” Isavel took a deep breath. “I should go, then. I need to get back to Glass Peaks and try to delay them for as long as I can.”

  “I’ll talk to everyone here about evacuating.” She swallowed. “Isavel, thanks. For coming here.”

  Isavel looked at her. “Of course.”

  The silence that hung between them quickly weighed on Ada, and she started stammering. “Um, well, do you have a way to get back?”

  “Yes, we have a hauler tucked away in the ruins.” Isavel seemed to have only just remembered about it. “I’ll grab Hail. I don’t imagine she wants to be here much longer.”

  “Sure. Of course.” They stepped away from the wall and back down towards the door, but as they passed the tomatoes Ada remembered the flash of interest in Isavel’s eyes when she had mentioned them. She probably liked them. Ada wrenched a small one off the vine and handed it to her as they stepped out the door. “Here. You like these?”

  She smiled brightly, taking it from Ada’s hand. “My mother used to cook with them whenever she got the chance. I’d eat them when she wasn’t looking.” She popped it in her mouth and chewed it happily for a moment. When she had swallowed it, glanced over at Hail. “Ada, thank you. But I should get to Glass Peaks as fast as I can.”

  “Right.” She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say, but there were plenty of platitudes within reach. “Thank you, Isavel. I think we can pull this off.”

  Isavel nodded, looking down at her hands. Hail was already walking over towards her, cutting the meeting to an end. “I hope so.” She pulled up the locator stone, still pointing to the one Ada was holding in her left palm. “Maybe I’ll see you soon.”

  “Maybe.” Ada tried to smile, but after Sam showed them on a map where the ghost walker was hiding, and Isavel and Hail left for the city gate, she found her face falling again. There was no reason to think she would see Isavel again, really - even if this all went according to plan. The outers would leave, and Ada would have to make her way with the remaining ghosts.

  She felt her friends stepping up next to her, and they looked oddly eager to hear what had happened. Sam spoke first. “Hail is alright. I said I was a ghost and she didn’t shoot me.”

  Ada laughed, and watched Isavel go. “I think Isavel has a leash on her.”

  Tanos glanced after Isavel and Hail as well. “So that’s Isavel. You didn’t tell us she’s built like a lion.”

  Ada felt her face redden, and glared at him. “I really don’t see how that’s relevant.”

  Sam nodded. “Yeah, not surprised she knocked you out.”

  “Please, let’s not pile on any more humiliation.”

  Zhilik cleared his throat. “Ada, what did she say? Are we safe, here?”

  She sighed, pressing her fingers to her temples. “No, Zhilik, you’re obviously not safe. Apparently Glass Peaks is gearing up for war. Isavel wants to coordinate with me to slow them down, but I don’t think we can stop them outright.”

  His ears flattened, and he looked to the sky. The ring floated there in space, encircling the planet, but beyond that? If there wasn’t anybody else out there, the outers would need to evacuate their city soon. “I must tell Elder Kseresh.”

  He was already on the move, cloth wrappings shifting along with his stride, but Tanos and Sam stayed with her for the moment. She pressed the locator stone into her palm with her thumb, taking a few deep breaths. She didn’t have much time left here in Campus, either way, and she needed to make the most of it.

  “Ada, are you okay?”

  She glanced at Tanos, and shook her head. “I’m fine. It’s fine. I just need to work, that’s all. We don’t have a lot of time - come on.”

  She left the greenhouse behind her, walking towards the medical building, a squat tower where the outers treated their sick and kept a great deal of old machinery. Ada had been spending a fair amount of time here in the past few weeks, trying to figure out the secrets of the technophage, but she wasn’t making a great deal of progress yet. Tanos didn’t bear the scars, but his blood had filled more than one sample vial in the course of the process, and she saw him reflexively rub his arm at the sight of the building.

  “Tanos, I don’t think we need -”

  Something was wrong. It was remarkably quiet on the street, but it wasn’t that. She paused, and thought about it. Stared at the medical building. She was missing something.

  Sam’s hand waved in front of her face. “Ada?”

  She glanced back down at them, a smile splitting across her face. “Isavel told me there was an ancient golem sealed in that mountain. Someone trying to keep ancient civilization from returning. That’s exactly what the technophage is meant to do as well.”

  Sam and Tanos exchanged glances, but Sam shook her head. “I don’t think a golem will want to talk to you.”

  Ada looked east, towards the mainland, excited curiosity building in her chest. “I have to try. It might know something. Come on - get a hauler, and let’s get it in the Chengdu . We can be over there quick.”

  They looked taken aback, but she shooed them away and made for the southern gate. If Isavel was telling the truth - she had to be - there was a chance that golem could end up changing the course of history. Ada needed to get there before some scavenger did. Gods, she hoped nobody had rummaged through there these past few weeks.

  She almost reached the gate when she heard running behind her. As she turned around to see Zhilik catching up to her, she noticed, again, that the streets were virtually empty. How strange. “Zhilik, what’s going on?”

  He was panting; he had clearly run as fast as he could. “Ada - Ada, the message.”

  “What message?”

  He pointed up.

  The message. She looked up, but of course there was nothing there. “Zhilik - Zhilik, did somebody answer? ”

  He gasped. “Yes. Mirrans. Our people.”

  She looked up to the stars, invisible in the pale blue of daylight, and felt the world hollowing itself out beneath her. If there were mirrans out there, Mir was still inhabited. If Mir was alive out there, the outers would want to return.

  If they returned, they would leave her alone on Earth.

  She felt the dizzying vastness of space beyond Earth come crashing down onto her head, all at once, crushing to dust a hundred possible futures she might have imagined for herself. With Zhilik gone - all the outers gone - the number of people she had left in her life would rapidly dwindle, and her world would grow ever smaller.

  Chapter 6

  As the solid blue light of the Campus gate snapped closed behind them, Hail stared at her. Isavel had already told her the plan, and Hail didn’t look thrilled.

  “Herald, are you certain you want to let the ghosts and these outers escape? What if they return?”

  Isavel looked back through the gate. “They mean us no more harm. We just need to keep two cities from tearing each other apart long enough that they will accept each other again.”

  Hail stared at the city as they walked away, and nodded. She wasn’t speaking against Isavel, exactly, but Isavel was no fool. She could tell her bodyguard was disagreeing with her, and she wanted to force that out into the open. Trust couldn’t last if they didn’t talk to each other.

  “Hail, tell me what you’re thinking.”

  Hail glanced at her, then down at the ground in front of them. “My first thought is that it is unfair to act as though Glass Peaks’ desire to strike back is the main problem. Sometimes violence is invited.”

  That much Isavel could understand. “And your second thought?”

  “That I myself have been quick to anger often enough, in life.” Hail sighed. “I may not be the best judge of what violence is acceptable.”

  Isavel nodded. She had yet to see Hail truly lose her temper, but if those reflections on her own youth led to a
more accommodating view of the situation, so be it.

  “My third thought is that your sense of loneliness makes you too quick to trust Ada Liu.”

  The words felt icy, and Isavel glared at Hail for a moment. Hail didn’t know Ada, and despite their friendship she didn’t know Isavel so deeply either. Isavel felt alone, yes. It had impaired her judgement before, perhaps. But she was not a child, not for a few years now. She knew the difference between scrabbling for any human connection and deliberately deciding who to trust. “I see.”

  Hail’s pale cheeks suddenly flushed red, and she looked away. “My apologies, Herald. I didn’t mean to offend.”

  “No, no, it’s fine.” She breathed out, trying to seem calm. “I want honesty, not nicety. What do you think about Ada, then?”

  Hail’s voice was tinged with an uncharacteristic jealousy. “I don’t like how she looks at you.”

  “What?” Isavel frowned. “How?”

  “I don’t know.” Hail rolled her shoulders uncomfortably. “It makes me suspicious.”

  Isavel hadn’t noticed anything, but it wasn’t impossible. She would have to think about it, but they were rapidly approaching the hauler, and Ren and Zoa had emerged from the corner of the ruins where they had hidden it. They looked at her warily, as though worried about what she might say.

  She glanced at Hail. She trusted the southerner, but she didn’t trust Zoa or Ren as much. She would tell them as much as she wanted, no more. “Ada is watching the open water with the same weapon that destroyed the bridge, and she’s going to shoot anybody that tries to cross it.”

  They both looked panicked, but she held up a hand.

  “There’s also another ghost walker holding the north of the island, but we can cross the army over more easily there, and deal with him along the way. We need to tell Mother Jera and anyone else who’s thinking of marching over here.”

  The siblings exchanged glances, and Ren spoke cautiously. “How do you know this?”

  “Ada told me.”