After Earth

^{AFTER EARTH} Ghost Stories SAVIOR Michael Jan Friedman

Jon doesn’t know where he is. All he knows is that he’s awake and that there’s a face looming over him. A familiar woman’s face.

How long has it been there? He can’t say. Maybe a long time, maybe not.

A name breaks the surface of his mind. “Doctor Gold,” he says, his voice sounding strange—thin and coarse—in his ears.

Her expression changes, her mouth turning up at the corners and her cheeks bunching under pale green eyes. “Yes,” says Doctor Gold in a voice like music, “it’s me, all right. Do you remember your name?”

“Blackburn. Jon Blackburn.”

“Excellent. How do you feel, Jon?”

It isn’t easy for him to comprehend the question, though it should be. It’s not a difficult question. It’s what people ask one another every day.

“How do I feel?” he echoes.

“Are you uncomfortable?”

“My brain’s wrapped in cotton. Everything seems… I don’t know. Vague.”

Doctor Gold tucks something behind an ear. “Good. That’s how you’re supposed to feel.”

Supposed to…? Why? Jon hasn’t always felt this way, has he? “What’s happened?” he asks.

“You’re in the North Side Medicenter,” says the doctor. “You had a procedure. Do you remember anything about it?”

He doesn’t.

“What kind of procedure? Was I injured?”

“No.” Doctor Gold points to the holographic screen on Jon’s left, a black one with bright gold lines undulating across it. “We did some work on your amygdalae. You remember what those are?”

Jon thinks for a moment. “Parts of the brain.”

“That’s right. And why would we work on those parts?”

Again Jon concentrates. But he can’t come up with anything. Just a flash of something big and pale moving across his field of vision.

The doctor’s expression changes again. Her mouth returns to its original shape, and her eyebrows come together in a knot of flesh above the bridge of her nose.

“It’s all right, Jon. We’ll talk about it later. For now, just get some rest.”

Jon starts to protest, but Doctor Gold holds up a hand, her fingers long and slender.

“No talking,” she insists. “Rest.”

Then she does something at the side of Jon’s bed, and suddenly Jon’s very sleepy. He watches the doctor’s face shiver like a reflection in a wind-struck pool. Then he feels himself dropping into a deep, echoing darkness.

The next time Jon wakes up, he knows where he is and has a better idea of why he’s there. Doctor Gold isn’t present at the moment. But there’s a nurse in the room, a big dark-haired man, walking over to take a look at him.

“It’s all right,” Jon says. “I’m fine.”

“Terrific,” says the nurse, though he looks concerned. “I’ll get your doctor.”

“Go ahead,” Jon says.

The nurse goes as far as the entrance to the room, stands half inside and half out, and calls to someone down the hall. A moment later, he comes back inside.

“It’ll be just a minute,” he says.

“All right,” says Jon.

Funny. He doesn’t feel the vagueness anymore, but he still feels different. Lighter somehow, as if a burden had been lifted from him.

Suddenly the nurse is back in the room. “Sorry. Turns out it’ll be more than a minute. Do you mind waiting?”

Jon finds that he doesn’t mind at all.

He leans back into the pillow and wonders how long it will be. Not that he cares. He just wonders.

Despite what the nurse has said, it doesn’t take long for Doctor Gold to show up. She has long blond hair. She tucks some of it behind her ear as she sits down on the edge of his bed.

“Feeling better?” she asks.

This time he knows how to answer. “The cotton’s gone.”

“That’s good. Do you remember anything more about your procedure?”

“I remember that you operated on my amygdalae.”

“Not me, actually. That was Doctor Nizamani. But yes… your amygdalae…”

“The amygdalae control fear.” He recalls having heard someone say so.

“That’s true.”

“You wanted me to be unafraid.” He recalls that, too.

“You wanted it as well, Jon. That’s why you volunteered for the procedure.”

“I… volunteered?”

Doctor Gold tilts her head to one side. “Do you remember the Ursa, Jon?”

He sees the flash of something big and pale again. As pale as a fish’s belly. “Yes. They kill people. They’re predators.”

“They are. And we’ve been dealing with them for hundreds of years on and off. We get rid of them, and then a new wave appears, each one more difficult to exterminate than the last. Does this sound familiar?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent. You also recall that the Ursa in this wave are better hunters than the ones we’ve dealt with in the past. That’s because they have an ability they never had before. They sense our fear.

“Lately we’ve discovered that there are people who can elude the Ursa—people who don’t experience fear under certain circumstances. We call them Ghosts. Unfortunately, there are only a handful of them, and they can’t be everywhere—which is why there were hundreds of lethal Ursa attacks in the last year alone.”

Was that a lot? Jon didn’t know.

“Then we asked ourselves, ‘Why not explore the possibility of creating Ghosts?’ In other words, taking away the ability to experience fear. We experimented with a number of ways to do this, but none of them completely eradicated the fear response. That left us with just one approach: the one we pursued in your case.”

“A procedure.”

“Yes.”

“On my amygdalae.”

“It was Doctor Nizamani’s idea. He knew that the amygdalae process sensory information and react by instilling in the brain what we know as fear. And he’ll tell you that they do so for good reason. Without fear, our ancestors would never have been spurred to flee from saber-tooth tigers and other predators.

“So what we were talking about was going against nature. That’s something we don’t do around here when we can help it. But the Ursa are taking a terrible toll, Jon. We have to try any approach that has a reasonable chance of success. And we thought if we took away your fear—”

“I could be a Ghost.”

“Yes. And if it worked in your case, it might work in others.”

Jon thinks about that. “Did it work?”

“What do you think?”

He examines his mental state. “I don’t feel any fear. However, I don’t think there’s anything in this room I’d be scared of. Is there?”

“Nothing,” the doctor agrees.

“Then am I undetectable to the Ursa?”

She shrugs. “There’s really only one way to find out. But first you’ve got to recuperate from your surgery.” She starts to leave—to go on to her next patient, Jon imagines.

“Will you continue to visit?” he asks.

Doctor Gold stops long enough to say, “As long as you need me.”

Soon Jon receives a visit from another doctor: the one who performed his surgery. Doctor Nizamani is a small man with a big head and a dark beard flecked with gray. One small spot on the left side of his chin. Doctor Nizamani’s mouth, like Doctor Gold’s, pulls up at the corners. And like Doctor Gold, he asks Jon what he remembers. When Jon responds, Doctor Nizamani makes notes on a personal access tablet.

“Are you experiencing headaches? Other discomfort?”

“No,” Jon says.

“Good.” Doctor Nizamani studies the computer data on the hologram beside Jon’s bed, calling up one screen after the other. Finally, he says, “I want you to walk up and down the hall, get some exercise. Your nurse, Marcus, will accompany you. How’s that sound?”

“Sound?” Jon says. He’s not sure what the doctor is asking. “You mean…?”

Doctor Nizamani pats Jon on the shoulder. “Never mind. Just walk.”

Then the doctor leaves. The nurse with the dark hair approaches Jon.

“Ready to take a walk?” he asks.

Jon says he’s ready. With the nurse’s help, he gets out of bed. His legs are weak, and they shake a little.

But he walks.

Jon and Marcus negotiate the length of the hall four times. Then Marcus helps Jon back into his bed.

“Nice job,” Marcus says, extending his hand.

Jon looks at it, wondering what Marcus expects of him. After a while, Marcus takes his hand back. “That’s okay,” he says.

Jon has no idea what Marcus is talking about.

The next morning, Jon and Marcus walk again. Afterward, the nurse tells Jon he can take his meal in the cafeteria instead of in bed.

The cafeteria contains eight rectangular metal tables. It’s empty except for a couple of other patients sitting at the table nearest the window.

One of them is a tall fair-haired man who is missing an arm. The other is a woman with dark skin and a long black braid. The right side of her face, including one of her eyes, is covered with a bandage.

They’re eating food from blue ceramic trays. Jon sees perhaps fifty such trays stacked by a wall alongside a buffet counter offering perhaps twenty choices of casserole, sandwich, salad, and soup.

Marcus says he’ll be right back. “Enjoy yourself.”

Jon considers the nurse’s choice of words. Enjoy? He scans the buffet. Nothing appeals to him. But he knows he has to eat.

“Hey,” says the fair-haired man, his voice echoing a little as he addresses Jon across the room, “I felt the same way the first time. At least it’s hot.”

Felt? “I don’t—”

“It’s all right,” says the woman with the dark braid. “After you’re here a while, you get a little crazy. Grab some food and sit down.”

She pats the bench beside her. Jon doesn’t know why.

Following her instructions, he gets a tray and places some food on it, then goes to a table and sits down.

But before he can lift a forkful of casserole to his mouth, the fair-haired man says, “If you want your privacy, we’re fine with that. But we’d prefer it if you’d join us.”

“Come on,” the woman says. “We won’t bite.”

Jon doesn’t understand the reason for the comment. He hadn’t expected her to bite.

“Or,” said the man, “we can join you.”

Jon doesn’t object. A moment later, the man and the woman bring their trays over and sit down.

“Arvo,” the man says. “Arvo Lankinen. Good to meet you.”

“Yada Srasati,” says the woman. She looks at Jon for a moment. “How do you feel?”

“The cotton’s gone,” Jon replies.

“The cotton?” Her skin bunches up over the bridge of her nose the same way Doctor Gold’s did.

“You mean your head is clear?” Arvo asks.

Jon turns to him. “Yes.” He sees his companions exchange glances and doesn’t know why.

“It’s all right,” Yada says. “You’ve been through a lot. It’s going to take time before you’re back on your game.”

“I suppose so,” Jon says.

As they continue to converse, he learns that Arvo and Yada are Rangers. Their injuries are the result of Ursa encounters.

“Listen,” Arvo says. “I want to tell you how much I appreciate what you’re doing. You’re making a sacrifice, I know.”

“But if it works,” Yada adds, “we may be able to get rid of the Ursa once and for all. And if that happens, there’ll be less misery in the world.” She touches her bandage in the vicinity of her eye. “A whole lot less.”

Misery, Jon thinks. He doesn’t know what to say to that, either.

Over the next couple of days, Doctor Nizamani is the only physician who comes to visit. Jon wonders where Doctor Gold is. One morning, after Doctor Nizamani checks Jon’s data screens, he says, “I’m clearing you for light exercise. You know where the gym is, right?”

“Yes,” Jon says.

“You can use any of the machines with the green signs. The yellows and the reds, you’ll work your way up to. Got it?”

“Yes,” Jon says. “Can I go now?”

“Absolutely.”

The gym is down the hall, on the right. Jon knows because he has passed it on his walks.

When he enters the place, he sees Yada there. She’s running on a treadmill, her braid flopping up and down.

Jon’s been eating with her and Arvo whenever he sees them in the cafeteria. To an outsider, it may look as if they were friends. To Jon, they were just three people sharing the same table until their meal had been consumed. Sometimes there are one or two other patients there as well.

Sometimes there’s no one and Jon eats alone.

There’s a female attendant who directs him to an apparatus with a green sign even before he asks, and so he gathers that she already has received instructions from Doctor Nizamani.

When Yada realizes that Jon is in the room, she stops exercising, picks up a towel, and walks over to him. “Jon,” she says, dabbing at the exposed portion of her face, “I missed you this morning at breakfast. Arvo’s been discharged, you know.”

“I wasn’t aware of that,” he says.

“Don’t worry; he’ll be back to visit. I made him promise that.”

Jon doesn’t understand why he would be inclined to worry, or why Yada would ask such a thing of Arvo, or why Arvo would agree to it. But then, he’s finding there are lots of things he doesn’t understand.

As he and Yada speak, a couple of other patients enter the gym. One, a fellow with a shaven head and thickly muscled arms, is ensconced in a mag-lev chair. Another, who moves stiffly, is bandaged around his middle.

They’re new to the medicenter, they say, but they know about Jon’s procedure. Like Yada, Arvo, and the other injured Rangers on the ward, they thank Jon for his sacrifice. They express the hope that his courage will help them wipe out the Ursa.

“Bet you can’t wait to get out there,” the man in the mag-lev chair says.

Jon doesn’t know why he would be unable to wait. Anyway, he has no choice in the matter. “My doctors won’t allow me to leave the medicenter until I’m ready.”

The man in the mag-lev chair looks at him for a moment. Then his mouth turns up at the corners, and he says, “Damned doctors!”

The others open their mouths and make a sound Jon doesn’t recognize. Or rather, he recognizes it but can’t put a name to it. It sounds like ha-ha-ha-ha.

Yada seems to notice his lack of comprehension. She makes eye contact with the others. Soon they stop making the sound.

“Jon’s probably got a routine he needs to start,” she says. “Let’s let him get to it.”

“Sure,” says the man in the mag-lev chair. “Can’t hunt Ursa till you’re back in shape, right?”

Jon assumes that the man is right.

Jon’s starting to doze off on his bed, fatigued from his workout in the gym, when Doctor Gold enters his room.

“Hey there,” she says.

Jon sits up. “I didn’t know if you were coming back.”

“You can’t get rid of me that easily.” She checks the data on the hologram beside his bed. “Did you see Doctor Nizamani today?”

“This morning. He cleared me to work out.”

“Excellent.” She continues to check his data. “That means you’re making progress.”

“I have a question.”

Doctor Gold turns to him. “What’s that, Jon?”

He tells her about Yada’s request for information the other day in the cafeteria: “How do you feel?”

“I didn’t know how to answer her,” he says. “I still don’t. Then, just a little while ago, in the gym, someone said something and everyone made a sound. I didn’t know what to make of that, either.”

Doctor Gold tilts her head to the side. “What was it that person said?”

Jon did his best to replicate the remark: “Damn doctors!”

She looks at him for a moment. “Was the sound anything like this?” She re-creates it almost perfectly.

“Yes.”

Her mouth pulls up at the corners. “It’s laughter, Jon. The people in the gym were laughing.”

“Laughing.” He points to her mouth. “And what’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“What you’re doing with your mouth.” He uses his thumb and forefinger to push her mouth up at the corners. “This. I see it all the time.”

Doctor Gold’s brows come together over her nose. She puts her hand over his and removes his fingers from her face. Slowly.

“I was afraid this might happen,” she says. “We took every precaution, ran as many tests as we could on primates as well as on people. But in the final analysis, we’ve never done this kind of surgery on a human being.”

“You thought what might happen?” Jon asks.

“It’s not just fear that originates in the amygdalae, Jon. Other emotions are connected to those parts of the brain as well.”

He tries to follow her logic. “Are you saying I’m no longer in touch with my emotions?”

“I’m saying it’s possible. And even if you have lost touch, it may only be a temporary situation. Despite the way it looks to Doctor Nizamani, your brain may not have healed completely.”

“What if it has?”

Doctor Gold doesn’t answer right away. “Then—and I know this sounds disappointing—the situation may be permanent.”

Jon considers the possibility. He doesn’t feel disappointment.

He doesn’t feel anything at all.

That evening, Doctor Nizamani, too, makes the observation that Jon has been distanced from his emotions.

“This is a challenge,” he says, “not only because you’re incapable of feeling but because you’re incapable of perceiving emotions in others. If you’re going to work with other Rangers, you’ll have to have some idea of what they’re feeling.”

“How can I do that?” Jon asks.

“Emotions are most often conveyed through facial expressions. I’ll arrange for an automated tutorial on the subject. It’ll be part of your daily regimen.”

Jon agrees to participate in the tutorial. He wonders what he will learn.

It’s an unusually warm morning in the desert. Jon has been given permission by Doctor Nizamani to sit outside in the medicenter’s courtyard, a place with ocher-colored ceramic pots full of colorful desert flowers. He’s watching the second sun top the horizon when he receives a visitor.

It’s neither one of his doctors nor one of his nurses nor even one of the injured Rangers on his ward. This visitor has a round face and curly red hair. She wears a dark blue robe clasped at the throat. She asks: “Do you know who I am, Jon?”

“Yes,” he says. “You’re the Primus.” He has seen her many times before on his computer screen but never in person. “Your breath smells like cinnamon,” he observes.

“How… kind of you to say so,” says the Primus. “Would you mind if I spoke with you for a little while?”

“No, I wouldn’t mind.”

Her mouth turns up at the corners, but he knows what that means now. The Primus is smiling.

In the brief time Jon has spent with Doctor Nizamani’s tutorial, he has learned to recognize a half dozen facial expressions. The smile is one of them.

“Now,” the Primus continues, “you’re probably thinking I’ve come to talk to you about your decision to undergo brain surgery. Heaven knows I made my position on that subject known to the Prime Commander when it was first contemplated. In fact, I spoke to him about it every day—both him and the Savant.”

Jon doesn’t know what to say to that.

“As you can imagine,” says the Primus, her expression hardening, “I was against it.”

Jon doesn’t imagine anything these days. He only observes and reacts.

“But what’s done is done,” the Primus says. “The only thing we have to talk about now is what effect the surgery has had on you.”

“I have discussed the effects with my doctors,” Jon says.

“I have no doubt of it. But their concern, and the Prime Commander’s, is how useful you can be as a weapon. My concern is your humanity.”

“I’m still human,” he says. “It’s just that I’ve been altered.”

“You have been altered; on that we may agree. But…” She shakes her head. “You see, Jon, we’re all born with souls—you, me, and everyone else. But your surgery, for which you volunteered, seems to have cut you off from the part of you that feels.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“It was exactly what I feared.” She leans forward. “Feeling is what makes us who we are, Jon. Do you believe that?”

“I haven’t thought about it.”

“Well, it’s true. Without compassion, without love, we’re no different from the animals. Or, for that matter, from the machines with which we surround ourselves.”

Jon isn’t an animal or a machine. He wonders why the Primus would imply otherwise.

“This isn’t the first time we’ve ventured into new territory, child. Technology constantly conspires to strip us of the qualities that make us human beings. This challenge is only the latest in a long history of such challenges.”

“But I am a human being,” Jon insists.

“Not in the way that matters most,” the Primus says. “So why am I here? What’s the point if you’re no longer one of God’s chosen creatures? The point, Jon, is that you can still be redeemed. You can still pray to heaven—and I mean pray—to be remade in the image God intended for you. And if you want to do that, I can help.”

Jon isn’t inclined to be remade in such an image, not even enough to inquire about the effort involved. “That won’t be necessary.”

The Primus sits back in her chair. A tear grows gradually in the inside corner of her left eye and tumbles down her cheek.

“Very well,” she says, her voice trembling slightly, “you may say that now. But there may come a time when you understand what you’ve done, a time when you fear for your soul. And when—”

“I’m beyond fear,” Jon says.

The Primus looks at him for what seems like a long time, her eyes wet and shiny. Then, without another word, she gets up and leaves him sitting there.

As alone as he was when she appeared.

Jon graduates to the machines with the yellow signs in the gym. Yada says she’s proud of him. She also says she’ll be leaving the hospital soon.

“I can’t go out in the field anymore,” she tells him, “but I can still make a contribution. I’ll be working with the Prime Commander’s office to educate the public about Ursa attacks.”

She smiles with the half of her face he can see. “I expect to hear good things about you.”

Jon looks at her until she looks away. To do otherwise, he has been told, is rude. Then he begins exercising on the yellow machines.

They turn out to be more demanding than the machines he’s been using. When he finishes, he’s more fatigued. However, he knows exercise is necessary if he’s to get out of the medicenter and do what’s expected of him.

That night, Jon has a dream.

There are two people in it. They look familiar, but try as he might, he can’t seem to identify them.

When he wakes, he can still see them. One is a male, perhaps fifty years old, with a long face, dark eyebrows, and a thick shock of silver-gray hair. The other is a female. She, too, is about fifty years old, but her hair is light brown with only a few streaks of gray.

When Doctor Gold comes to see him, he describes the dream to her. She doesn’t comment right away. She instead brings up a picture on her data tablet and asks, “Are these the people?”

They are. “Who are they?”

“They’re your parents, Jon. Adabelle and Gregory Blackburn.”

He looks more closely. He has seen himself in a mirror. He looks for evidence of heredity in the picture—and finds it.

“You have your mother’s eyes,” says Doctor Gold as if she can read his mind.

“I seem to,” he agrees.

“And your father’s chin.” She points to it. “You see the cleft?”

“Yes.” My parents. He looks to the doctor. “Is it possible for me to see them?”

As on other occasions, her eyebrows, which are very fair, come together in a bunch of skin. He knows now that this is an expression of consternation.

“I’m afraid it’s not, Jon. They’re dead. They were killed in an Ursa attack six months ago.”

He turns back to the data tablet. “Dead,” he echoes.

“Yes. In fact, it was their deaths that spurred you to volunteer for the surgery. You said it was the only way you could make their deaths count for something.”

Jon continues to study the image on the tablet. He doesn’t feel any anger now. But something—curiosity, perhaps—draws him to the people in the picture.

“I’m sorry,” Doctor Gold says.

Jon recognizes the expression as one of sympathy. “Your condolences are acknowledged,” he tells her.

Days pass, an alternation of light and shadow punctuated by visits from Doctor Nizamani, Doctor Gold, and occasionally other doctors as well.

Yada leaves, as she said she would. The damaged Rangers in the medicenter smile when they see him but seldom speak to him. He can hear them whisper things: “It’s Blackburn.” “Better cut out the jokes.” “Don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

In the gym, Jon’s promoted to the red machines. He finds them a challenge, just as he found the green machines and the yellow machines a challenge at first. But he’s getting stronger. He can see that. He believes his doctors see it, too.

Pretty soon he’ll be fit for duty.

Jon has another dream.

He’s standing in the desert, watching Explorer I lift off from an airfield outside Nova City, its destination a world in another star system. Jon is eight, nine, perhaps ten years old. His father’s hand rests on his shoulder.

“I wish my grandfather was alive to see this,” says Gregory Blackburn. “If not for him, none of this would have happened.”

Explorer I glints in the light of the first sun as it rises into the flawless blue of the sky. Higher and higher it climbs. Then it’s gone.

Jon’s father’s parents, Grandpa Masters and Grandma Sheila, are making whooping noises. Jon’s parents are embracing.

They are smiling, all of them. He knows now what that means. They’re happy.

When Jon wakes up, he finds himself looking at the ceiling of his room in the medicenter instead of the sky. The airfield, his parents, his grandparents… they’re gone.

But it wasn’t just a dream, he realizes. It really happened. He had forgotten, but now he remembers.

It happened.

He wonders about his father’s grandfather. Did I ever meet him? Did I know anything about him before my procedure?

He gets dressed and goes to the medicenter’s library, where he sits at a workstation near the transparent wall along the corridor and looks up his family’s genealogy.

Jon finds that his paternal great-grandfather, Elliot Blackburn, was born in 883 AE. As an adult, he became the spokesman for a group of engineers that made presentations to the Tripartite Council advocating the official exploration of neighboring star systems. After all, they said, the Ursa had been the cause of misery for hundreds of years. It made sense to settle a planet that would provide an alternative for those sick of the bloodshed.

Elliot Blackburn died without making much headway on behalf of his cause. However, his oldest son, Masters, picked up where his father left off. When Savant Ella Dorsey broached the idea of a space colonization program in 951, it was at the urging of Masters Blackburn.

Dorsey’s idea was opposed by both the Primus on religious grounds and the Prime Commander for reasons never publicly stated. However, Jon’s grandfather continued to speak in support of colonization to professional organizations and civic groups.

Finally, in 960, Brom Raige—who had become Prime Commander only a year earlier—tilted the Tripartite Council in favor of a space program.

Tähtiin Industries, which had been working privately with the Savant, possessed plans for an interstellar vessel. With the Council’s support, Tähtiin began developing what it called Explorer I.

Jon’s father, Gregory, had Explorer I in mind when he entered the terraforming program at Nova City University’s Thermopoulos School of Engineering. His dream, he said in his valedictory address, was to prepare a home for humankind free of the fear that had plagued Nova Prime for hundreds of years.

Jon’s mother shared this dream, though she took a different route to it. Inspired by her mother, a Ranger flier in the Varuna Squadron, Adabelle Bonnaire became one of the youngest pilots in the history of the Corps. Her goal, according to her Ranger file, was to helm an interstellar vessel to the first new human colony in almost a thousand years.

Jon’s parents met at a conference sponsored by Tähtiin Industries in 968. Gregory Blackburn was twenty-five at the time, a year older than his wife to be. They married a year later.

They didn’t realize their dreams, Jon notes. His mother didn’t helm Explorer I. His father’s terraforming program wasn’t needed. Yet on that airfield, they were happy that humankind was following the course in which they believed.

Jon has never aimed for the stars. His goal as a Ranger has been to destroy the threat represented by the Ursa on Nova Prime.

However, he has something in common with his forebears: He began by wanting humankind to be safe from fear.

Later that morning, Jon sees Doctor Gold. She smiles at him and asks, “How are you feeling?”

He isn’t sure how to answer that. He reminds her of his deficit in the area of emotion.

The doctor reddens. “Sorry. I guess I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s all right,” he says, having learned that a blush represents embarrassment. “This is a new experience for you as much as it is for me.”

She smiles again. “Thanks for understanding. And allow me to rephrase the question: Have you noticed any changes in your mental state?”

He assesses himself along those lines. “I’ve been thinking a lot, more than I ever did before. About my family, for instance.” He tells her about his dream of the airfield and what he did afterward. “I wonder if I’m trying to replace feeling with thinking.”

“That’s interesting,” she says.

He looks at her. “Is it?”

“Well, yes, of course it is.” Then she adds: “Everything about you is interesting.” And she turns away from him to check the data on his holographic screen.

Something changes in her expression, but Jon can’t decipher the change. His tutorial covers only so much.

“Is something wrong?” he asks, venturing a guess.

Doctor Gold shakes her head—a negative response, he’s learned—and says, “Everything’s fine.” But she continues to study the data.

Then she runs out of screens. But instead of turning back to Jon, she turns away from him.

This behavior, too, was covered in the tutorial. “You’re uncomfortable,” he observes.

“No,” Doctor Gold says. “Just tired. I haven’t slept a lot lately.”

He’s seen his records. He had difficulty sleeping, too, after his parents were killed. “An inability to fall asleep may be the result of unresolved emotional issues.”

She looks up at him. “Where did you hear that?”

“It’s noted in my file.”

Doctor Gold laughs softly. “Right. You’re a smart guy, Jon.”

His records support her observation. He placed first in his cadet class in all measures of intelligence.

“Very smart,” Doctor Gold says. She places her hand on his and leaves it there.

In the tutorial, such behavior is described as an indication of emotional involvement. Jon asks Doctor Gold if he is reading her gesture correctly.

She takes her hand away. “You’re getting better at interpreting behavior, Jon, but in this instance you’re reading into it a little too much.”

“Then you’re not emotionally involved?”

“I’m part of the medical team assigned to your case,” she says. “Let’s leave it at that.”

He agrees to do so. After all, she’s his doctor.

As Jon was taught, he doesn’t look away from Doctor Gold. He intends to wait until she does it first.

But she doesn’t look away for a long time.

Jon is sitting at his usual workstation in the medicenter library, looking up more information on his family, when he feels a hand on his shoulder.

Looking back, he sees a tall, broad-shouldered man looming behind him. “Mind if I interrupt?” he asks.

“No, sir,” Jon says, rising from his chair.

His visitor is Prime Commander Raige. He and Jon met more than once before Jon’s procedure. That, too, is noted in Jon’s file.

Raige says, “Good to see you again, Ranger.” He salutes.

Jon knows why.

“Let’s sit down,” Raige says. “No need to stand on ceremony.” He pulls a chair over from the next workstation, then points to Jon’s chair.

“It’s a courageous thing you’re doing for us, Blackburn. Extremely courageous. We wouldn’t have selected you if we thought you were going into this precipitously. But you heard all the risks, and you volunteered anyway.

“As you know, I am one of this procedure’s biggest supporters. It’s not just a matter of getting one more Ghost out there in the field, as valuable as that will be. If this works, there will be a lot more like you. An army of Ghosts. These Ursa are tougher than any we’ve faced before. Deadlier. We have to try anything and everything to keep more people from dying.”

Just then, Jon catches a glimpse over Raige’s shoulder of someone out in the hallway, on the other side of the transparent wall. It’s Doctor Gold, he realizes. And she’s crying.

Jon is familiar with the behavior. After all, it’s the first one he studied. But why is Doctor Gold engaging in it? Most of the time crying reflects sadness. Is Doctor Gold sad? For what reason?

If she comes inside, he thinks, I’ll ask her. But she remains in the hallway. Jon continues to watch her and to wonder.

“Is something wrong?” Raige asks. He looks back over his shoulder, perhaps trying to see what Jon sees. “What’s out there?”

“Doctor Gold,” Jon says.

Raige’s eyebrows come together in a knot of flesh, reflecting a measure of consternation. “Gold?” he says.

“Yes. She’s one of my doctors.”

Raige shakes his head. “I haven’t heard of a Doctor Gold. Maybe she’s new.”

“She’s out there.” Jon points to the hallway, where she’s still crying.

Raige looks over his shoulder, then back at Jon. “Hang on a second,” he says. He takes out his personal comm device and punches in a sequence. “I need you,” he says into the device. “Now.”

A minute later, Doctor Nizamani enters the library.

“Why is Doctor Gold crying?” Jon asks him.

Doctor Nizamani looks at him for a moment, then turns to Raige. “Gold?”

“I was hoping you would know,” Raige says.

Nizamani looks at Jon again. “Why is Doctor Gold crying?” Jon asks a second time.

Doctor Nizamani shakes his head. “There is no Doctor Gold.”

Hallucinating? Jon thinks.

“Don’t worry. It’s not entirely unexpected,” Doctor Nizamani says.

“I’m not worried,” Jon says.

Raige pats him on the shoulder. “He means me, Ranger. But I’m not worried, either. And neither is Doctor Nizamani… right, Doctor?”

Doctor Nizamani’s mouth pulls up at the corners. A smile, Jon thinks. But one that was tighter than normal.

“That’s right,” Doctor Nizamani says. “There’s no cause for any of us to be worried.” He sits down on the edge of Jon’s bed. “It’s perfectly natural. You’ve been cut off from your emotions. You’re finding other means of support.”

Jon doesn’t understand.

“Doctor Gold,” says Raige, “isn’t real.”

“More than likely,” Doctor Nizamani says, “you’ve cobbled her together from other women you’ve known in your life.”

“Not real?” Jon asks.

He looks for Doctor Gold out in the hallway. If he can persuade her to come in, it’ll be obvious that she’s as real as Jon is.

But he can’t find her. She’s gone.

“He’s fine,” Doctor Nizamani tells Raige. “It’s nothing to be concerned about.”

“Our expectations are the same?” the Prime Commander asks.

“Exactly the same,” Doctor Nizamani assures him.

“Expectations?” Jon asks.

“That you’ll be able to ghost,” Raige explains.

But ghosting isn’t on Jon’s mind at this moment. He can’t take his eyes off the empty hallway.

Jon is confused by the question of Doctor Gold’s existence.

On the one hand, no one seems to know a doctor named Gold. Doctor Nizamani in particular is adamant that she’s an artifact of Jon’s imagination.

On the other hand, Jon has spoken to her. He has shared his thoughts with her. On those occasions, she seemed as real as Doctor Nizamani or anyone else.

In the end, the result is the same: Doctor Gold doesn’t come to see Jon anymore. A week goes by, and there’s no sign of her.

It’s just as well. Jon will be sent out into the field in a couple of days. He has to spend all his time preparing for that moment.

He studies video records of Ursa encounters. He trains with his cutlass, a new one, apparently, rather than the one he used previously. And, sitting around a table with the team that’s been assigned to him, he runs through one strategic scenario after another.

Thanks to his limited familiarity with human expressions, Jon has some understanding of how his squad mates look at him. They see him as distinct from the rest of them. A valuable asset, to be sure, but different.

Doctor Nizamani says their opinion of Jon will change once they’re out in the field with him. At that point they’ll establish a bond. Jon takes Doctor Nizamani’s word for it.

Finally, he and his squad receive a mission. Jon is curious to find out if he’ll meet Prime Commander Raige’s expectations. Of course, no one will know until Jon encounters an Ursa.

Blackburn’s orders take him and his squad to a school building on the South Side of Nova City. The day before, one of the creatures got into the school and killed two of the students there.

Raige and his command staff have noticed that Ursa sometimes revisit the scene of a recent kill. It’s their hope that Blackburn and his squad will encounter the creature as it returns in search of more victims.

As squad leader, Jon leads the way through the front doors of the school and down the main hallway. Despite everyone’s efforts to be quiet, they make scraping sounds with their boots that echo from wall to wall.

The others seem to be bothered by the sounds. Jon knows that the scraping may give their presence away, but he’s not bothered by it.

A classroom comes up on Jon’s left. He indicates with a hand gesture that he’s going to take a look inside. The others assume positions in the hallway in case an Ursa comes charging out.

Jon opens the door, but there’s no Ursa beyond it. The room is quiet, empty. However, it’s clear that an Ursa was there at one time.

There’s blood on the floor. A good deal of it, in dark, dry blotches where it dripped and collected and in streaks where the children’s bodies were dragged by the Ursa across the room.

A couple of chairs have been overturned. There’s blood on them as well.

Saturria, a squarish, muscular man, curses between clenched teeth: “Bastards.” Jakande, lean and quick, draws a deep, ragged breath. Though Tseng does neither of these things, a single tear traces a path down her cheek. No sooner has it fallen than she wipes it away.

They’re reacting to the evidence of the children’s deaths, Jon notes. Even though they’re trained to confront such a sight, even though they have probably seen death before.

Jon himself has no such reaction.

Perhaps because he’s not distracted, he hears something. A ripping noise. He recognizes it as one of the sounds an Ursa makes in its throat.

With a hand signal, Jon gets the attention of the other Rangers. Then he points to the direction from which the sound came.

They take their places around the room. Noiselessly, their cutlasses assume the shapes the Rangers want from them: pikes, blades, hooks.

They wait, their backs against the walls, their eyes fixed on the doorway.

All but Jon. He takes up a position by the entrance that doesn’t block the doorway but makes it impossible for the Ursa to miss him. If, of course, it’s capable of detecting him at all.

As the Ursa gets closer, the sound it makes changes, becoming louder, deeper. More terrifying, as well, if the looks on the faces of Jon’s teammates are any indication.

Then the creature comes around a corner out in the hallway, and Jon gets his first look at its pale, powerful form. He can see its huge black maw, which is ringed by double rows of sharp silver teeth. He can see the talons that are hard enough to score metal, hear them make soft clicking sounds on the floor.

Despite the Ursa’s apparent lack of sensory organs, it has a range of senses. Humanity’s scientists have examined Ursa carcasses and identified organs that facilitate hearing, smell, and touch. It’s only a sight organ they haven’t found, long ago leading them to the conclusion that the creatures can’t see and that their creators, the Skrel, may not be able to do so, either.

The Ursa, however, more than makes up for the deficit with its ability to perceive fear. This sense is its most acute by far. That’s why Ghosts are so valuable to the colony, valuable enough for Doctor Nizamani to invade a man’s brain and permanently impair its functions.

The data, drummed into Jon in briefing after briefing, sift through his mind. There’s another piece: the Ursa’s ability to utilize camouflage with the help of color-changing cells in its skin. But this specimen, like a few others the Rangers have encountered, makes no attempt to conceal itself.

It simply advances.

Jon can hear the breathing of his Rangers, quick and shallow behind him. They’re not like him. They’re disciplined, but they’re afraid.

But what they do and how they feel are all but irrelevant. This mission isn’t about them. It’s about him.

As Jon stands there and watches, the Ursa proceeds the length of the hallway—slowly, fluidly, despite its angular alien anatomy. It doesn’t pause to look into other classrooms. It heads right for the one occupied by the Rangers.

Jon steps out into the hallway, placing himself in the beast’s path.

With its increasing proximity, Jon can see the smart metal woven into its hide. It’s what makes the Ursa so difficult to kill even when a Ranger gets in a good stroke with a cutlass. A death blow can be made only in the creature’s unshielded spots above and below—nowhere else.

Suddenly the Ursa roars, its voice like rocks cracking in half. Jon can feel the sound in his bones. It moves closer, still closer, until it’s almost close enough to touch.

A sour metallic stench issues from its gullet, like that of human blood but more powerful. It’s the smell of its venom, an oily black substance capable of eating through flesh, bone, and even metal.

Nonetheless, Jon stands his ground.

If the Ursa detects his presence, it’ll make short work of him. It’ll tear him apart as it tore the children apart.

Such an outcome would be a source of disappointment to Jon’s medical team as well as to the Prime Commander. It would refute the idea that fear can’t be surgically eliminated after all.

Yet that’s an outcome Jon may have to face.

Suddenly, the Ursa gathers itself and leaps. Jon brings up his cutlass, knowing what little help it will be at such close range.

But it’s not Jon the Ursa is attacking. It sails past him through the door of the classroom, its target one of the Rangers behind him.

He looks back in time to see the creature pounce on Saturria or, rather, on the spot Saturria occupied until a fraction of a second ago. Saturria himself rolls across the floor, his reflexes saving him.

But they won’t save him a second time. Jon can see that as the Ursa rounds on the Ranger. It’s imprinted on him, Jon thinks. It’ll stay after him until it kills him.

Jon’s job as squad leader is to keep that from happening.

Tseng configures the blade of her cutlass into a pike and tries to spear the Ursa, but her point glances off the smart metal in its hide. Still, she draws the creature’s attention.

It’s all the distraction Jon needs. Pelting across the room, he leaps onto the Ursa’s back and drives his cutlass deep into the creature’s soft spot.

It’s a small target, an easy target to miss, but he hits it dead on. The Ursa bellows and tries to flip him off its back, but Jon hangs on. He taps his fingers in the required sequence and transforms his cutlass into a blade. Then he turns it inside the creature, tearing its insides apart.

In a spasm of pain, the Ursa finally does wrench Jon loose, sending him crashing into a wall with stunning force. But the damage to the creature has been done. It won’t survive much longer.

Knowing that an Ursa can kill even in its death throes, Jon directs his squad to leave the room one by one. Then he joins them outside in the hallway.

Through the transparent pane in the classroom door, he sees the Ursa writhe in agony, smashing walls and cabinets and windows. It’s only after several minutes have gone by that it collapses and lies still.

Jon hears a cheer go up among his squad mates. He understands why. They’re alive and the Ursa is dead.

The mission couldn’t have gone any better.

Jakande and Tseng and Saturria pat one another on the back. The others do the same thing. But no one pats Jon.

“I’m pleased,” Raige says.

Jon looks at the Prime Commander across the man’s desk. “Because I was able to ghost when the time came.”

“That’s right. We’ve been working for centuries trying to figure out how to beat these things, and we’ve finally got the answer. It’s one thing to find a Ghost once in a while, usually by accident, and another to be able to make one any time we want. That tips the odds.”

Jon knows something about odds. They are reducible to numbers, to ratios, which are a lot easier for him to grasp than hopes and dreams.

“It does,” he agrees.

“And you did that,” says Raige, “because you had the courage to take a chance no one had taken before.”

Jon is familiar with the facts. What’s more, he has a sense of what the Prime Commander is trying to do: instill a feeling of pride in him.

However, he doesn’t feel any pride.

“We’ve got other volunteers who’ve been waiting in the wings,” Raige says, “hoping to get the same chance you did. But we didn’t want to contact them until we made sure the procedure had the desired effect. Now that we know it does…”

“You’ll operate on them as well,” Jon says.

Raige nods.

Jon wonders if the Prime Commander will ask him to speak with the volunteers. He doesn’t think so. After seeing his lack of emotion, they may not wish to have the operation after all.

But he doesn’t say what he’s thinking.

The other Rangers in Jon’s squad spend a lot of time together. He notices that. They talk, they engage in laughter, they spar in the barracks.

Jon isn’t inclined to take part in such behavior. He remains separate from the others. He does the things he has been trained to do—work out his body and inspect his cutlass—and very little else.

When he eats, he eats alone. And he doesn’t linger in the mess hall. He remains there only long enough to take nourishment and then leaves.

Once he saw a woman with blond hair walking ahead of him in the hallway and jogged to catch up with her. She turned around and looked at him with eyes that weren’t green. Eyes that weren’t Doctor Gold’s.

Doctor Nizamani asks Jon how he’s getting along with his squad mates. Jon tells him the truth.

Doctor Nizamani says, “The squad has been together for more than a year. You’re the newcomer. Give it time.”

But as time goes on, Jon doesn’t interact any more with his fellow Rangers. If anything, he interacts with them even less. So little, in fact, that he doesn’t think it would be troubling to him if they had died in the Ursa attack.

Maybe he would have grieved for them before his operation. But not now.

Questions come to mind with increasing frequency, questions Jon finds difficult to answer. One is why he should kill Ursa.

They present a threat to humanity, true. But he’s no longer human as far as he can tell, so why act on humanity’s behalf? What makes the Ursa any less worthy of survival than the colonists they hunt?

Jon has no answer.

Days after Jon’s first mission, he and his squad are dispatched to a power station on the North Side of the city where an Ursa has attacked the workers.

From all indications, the Ursa is still inside. So are the workers, who got off a single truncated distress call, though it’s not clear if they’re still alive.

The power station is a massive orange-colored mound designed to blend in with the red earth of the desert. Even before Jon disembarks from the Ranger transport that has brought him to the scene, he sees the ragged hole in the exterior wall where the Ursa crashed through it.

He starts for it even as his squad hops off the transport behind him. There’s really no reason for him to wait for them. At this point, they’re just a burden to him.

Jon picks his way through the rubble created by the Ursa’s entry. Inside the power station it’s cool and quiet except for a low hum. If there’s an Ursa present, it’s not making a ruckus.

That suggests two possibilities. One is that the creature already has caught its prey. The other is that it’s detected the approach of Jon’s squad and camouflaged itself in order to stalk it.

Jon taps his cutlass and watches its metal fibers form the pike configuration. His favorite. The one he consistently finds most useful.

He recalls the layout of the station, which he studied on the way over. The facility has two main access corridors that run perpendicular to each other, crossing in the middle, where the power chamber is situated.

There are doors along the corridors. The workers may be hiding behind them, he thinks. Or their remains may be lying somewhere. He doesn’t see any evidence of bloodshed in the corridor. But that doesn’t mean anything. It’s a big place.

He approaches the power chamber, senses alert, cutlass at the ready. The chamber, which is made of a blue-gray ceramic material, houses an apparatus that uses magnetic fields to generate energy-rich plasma, which then is pumped into a complex web of underground conduits.

The chamber has a small window on each corridor. Jon isn’t focused on it, and so it’s a surprise when he notices movement through the window.

One of the workers, he thinks. A male. He’s still too far away to tell if the worker’s injured.

At the same time, the worker seems to see Jon. He beckons to someone inside the chamber, someone Jon can’t see. A moment later, two other workers crowd the window.

A scenario begins to unfold in Jon’s mind as he advances. The workers took shelter in the chamber. It kept them safe. But they can’t leave for fear of the creature.

Jon holds his hands out, the empty one palm up. He’s learned that this gesture poses a question. In this case, the question is: Where’s the Ursa?

The workers return the gesture, signifying that they don’t know. Yet they have line-of-sight access to all parts of the station. So the creature has camouflaged itself. This is valuable information.

They’re now on even footing, Jon and the Ursa. Neither can be seen by the other.

Unfortunately, the creature won’t reveal itself until it’s about to pounce. With the workers constrained to remain in the power chamber, they won’t become prey. That leaves only one other possibility.

Jon turns to his squad mates, who are coming up behind him. He points to the one nearest to him, Tseng, and says: “You and I will scout ahead. The rest of you remain here.”

Jon doesn’t know if Tseng understands what he has in mind. Either way, she doesn’t hesitate. She moves down the hallway with him, her cutlass a pike like his.

The Ursa could be anywhere. They watch carefully for a sign of it. However, they reach the power chamber without getting such a sign.

The chamber is encircled by a strip of open floor about fifteen feet wide. It’s enough space to hold an Ursa who could be monitoring its prey, smelling their fear through the air vents in the chamber.

Waiting for them to emerge.

It no longer has to do so, Jon reflects. If it’s here, or anywhere in this vicinity, I’ve given it another option.

He’s barely completed the thought when a huge form seems to materialize out of thin air. It’s a blur of pale hide and smart metal blue, and it strikes Tseng before either she or Jon can make a move.

Tseng goes flying backward and skids across the floor. She finally stops thirty feet away.

She’s already dead, her chest caved in by the impact, by the time the Ursa lumbers after her. But she’s served her purpose. She’s brought the beast out of hiding.

Jon’s squad mates go after it. They weave a web of silver with their cutlasses. But there’s not much room for them to operate in the corridor, not nearly enough for them to surround the Ursa as they’ve been trained to do.

Jon watches as the creature swipes at Saturria and tears his arm off. The others come forward to cover him while Jakande applies a tourniquet.

Jon looks at the cutlass in his hand. He might be able to kill the Ursa with it. But he feels no desire to do so.

His fellow Rangers are in mortal danger, but that fact doesn’t faze him in the least. He isn’t human anymore. The Primus was right about that—he sees that now. He has as much in common with Tseng or Saturria or Jakande as he does with his cutlass. In other words, nothing.

Then he realizes that someone’s standing behind him. Turning, he sees that it’s Doctor Gold. She’s wearing the same white lab coat that she wore at the medical center, a lock of her hair tucked behind her ear, her eyes the same pale green.

The other doctors insisted that she wasn’t real, that she was a figment of his imagination. But she looks real, as real as any of the Rangers who followed him there.

“Doctor Gold,” he says. “What are you—?”

“Jon,” she replies, her voice tight and urgent yet just as musical as he remembers, “you’ve got to help these people. You’ve got to kill the Ursa.”

“Why?” he asks.

Her brow puckers. “Because I’m asking you to.”

It isn’t much of a reason. But because it’s Doctor Gold who’s asking, Jon accepts it.

The Ursa is completely unaware of him. He capitalizes on that fact, taking a run at it and eyeing the one vulnerable spot on the creature’s back.

He misses it on purpose.

But he comes close enough to make the creature shriek with pain and rage—to hobble it, slow it down, and force it to address the invisible threat behind it rather than the visible prey before it.

It jerks him off its back, sending him crashing into the wall. Something snaps in his side, but he manages to scramble to his feet.

“Get out!” he yells despite the pressure in his side. “And take the workers with you!” He turns and gestures for the workers in the power chamber to leave it and run.

They do as he asks, falling over one another to get out of the chamber and down the corridor. But the Rangers hesitate. They have their duty, after all.

Again he yells: “Get out!”

With obvious reluctance, they follow his order. The Ursa turns to go after them, but Jon won’t let it. He stoops to pick up Tseng’s cutlass and, without breaking stride, leaps onto the creature’s back. Then he drives the point of the cutlass into the center of the Ursa’s soft spot.

The creature whirls, no doubt intending to confront its attacker. But Jon is still on its back. He transforms his cutlass into a blade, cutting up the Ursa inside. Then he turns it back into a pike and into a blade again.

With each transformation the cutlass does more damage, weakening the beast a little more. Finally, Jon pulls his weapon out of the Ursa and drives it home again, even deeper than before.

It’s a mortal blow.

Making a gurgling sound in its throat, the creature whirls, rears, and tears at the air with its forepaws. Jon slips off it and presses his back against the wall, then slides away so that the Ursa doesn’t kill him with its death throes.

In what seems like an attempt to dislodge the cutlasses, the monster slams itself against a wall. But it only succeeds in driving the weapons in deeper.

The Ursa goes wild. It spins, crashes into one wall and then the other, screams in its agony.

Jon doesn’t know what a complete human being, someone still in touch with his emotions, would see in the Ursa at this point. A menace that has to be finished before it can kill again? A beast that needs to be put out of its misery?

A moment later, the question becomes moot. The Ursa takes one more long, lurching stride. Then it falls over on its side, shudders, and dies.

A gout of venom spills from its mouth and pools in a slowly widening circle, viciously eating the floor beneath it, hissing and raising twists of black, oily smoke. Then even the smoke and the hissing stop.

It’s over.

Jon has never been so close to a dead Ursa. As it lies there, inert, he comes to a realization: He has something in common with the creature. The Ursa is a biological machine, engineered to carry out one purpose and one purpose only: to kill. And so is he.

So is he.

Jon looks around for Doctor Gold. She’s gone. Somehow he’s not surprised.

He takes stock of himself. A couple of his ribs are broken, and half his face is bloody from a cut over his eye. Otherwise he’s unscathed.

But his victory means nothing to him. Victory, defeat… they are simply events in a featureless series of events, strung together one after the other, all of them meaningless.

Then Jon hears something and realizes he’s not alone. At first he thinks the workers have come back for some reason. However, the sounds are too loud, too heavy. There are other Ursa in the station.

More than one, he thinks.

Even if they can’t detect him, it’ll be difficult for him to finish them all off. Not that he cares what they do to the Rangers or the workers or other Novans. But Doctor Gold seemed to care.

Which is why, holding his side, Jon makes his way to the power chamber.

On the way, he passes Tseng. Her eyes stare up at him. They don’t look any different than they did a few moments earlier. But there’s a trickle of bright red blood from the corner of her mouth that tells Jon she’s dead.

He continues to the chamber. Its door is open, the workers having left it that way. Jon moves to its control console and slides his fingertips along its black command strips one by one, increasing the pressure of the station’s magnetic fields on its plasma supply.

Just then, the Ursa shed their camouflage. Jon was right. There are three of them.

They don’t know he’s there. They also don’t know what he is planning.

A blinking red danger light comes on, causing every surface around Jon to strobe with its lurid reflection. He continues to increase the pressure. A voice, echoing throughout the enclosure, warns him that conditions in the facility are reaching a critical level—one that will result in its destruction.

Jon isn’t daunted in the least. In fact, destruction is precisely the outcome he has in mind.

In the golden light of morning, the air mercifully cool on his skin, Cypher Raige walks through the debris field that was, until the events of the day before, the site of the North Side Power Relay Facility.

Raige has spoken at length with the survivors of Blackburn’s squad. They have all said the same thing, that both Blackburn and the Ursa were destroyed in the explosion.

The magnitude of the blast seems to support their observation. There are chunks of ceramic composite—pieces of the relay facility—hundreds of meters from the building’s footprint. Nothing exposed to such a massive release of energy can have survived.

Raige frowns. And yet…

The Savant’s forensic team has discovered bits of flesh containing Ursa DNA. Plenty of them, in fact. It’s no less than what Raige expected.

But as many scientists as the Savant has put on the job, not one has been able to turn up a sign of human DNA.

It’s puzzling, to say the least. And Raige doesn’t like puzzles. Especially when they have such a profound effect on his colony’s prospects for survival.

He considered approving four surgical procedures along the lines of Blackburn’s. However, given the mysterious circumstances of Blackburn’s demise, he will have to put those procedures on hold.

A shame, he thinks, but he has no choice. Until he knows more about Blackburn’s death, he can’t allow another Ranger to undergo amygdala surgery.

It’s a bitter development, as bitter as the smell of ashes in Raige’s nostrils. He’d had high hopes for Nizamani’s program.

Such high hopes.

The second sun is beginning to melt into the western horizon, its race run, and every rock and grain of sand in the desert is touched with fire. The San Francisco Mountains in the north seethe as if made of lava. A much smaller, more distant chain in the south writhes in what seems like agony.

From Jon’s vantage point on a high bluff, he sees for miles in every direction. What he doesn’t see—doesn’t wish to see—is any part of Nova City.

That is why he has made the trek out here. To be alone in the desert, far from his fellow human beings. Far from their striving and their purposes and their emotions.

If he had stopped before reaching this point, someone might have found him and tried to persuade him to go back. But not now. He is beyond their reach, beyond their help. He is exactly where he meant to be.

It has taken him days to reach this bluff. On the first day, he became thirsty and then hungry. On the second, his hunger and thirst got worse. On the third, it was difficult for him to go on.

But he went on anyway.

A normal man would have balked at the idea of walking into the desert without food or water. A normal man would have done whatever he needed to do to survive.

Jon has no needs. No needs at all.

He only has preferences. He prefers to escape the way others look at him. He is tired of explaining his lack of motivation to them. Not that he blames them. He was their hope, after all. But he’s become something else, something more like the Ursa he was supposed to destroy. They have to accept the fact that their hope was misplaced.

So he has come to this place to be alone, to let nature—his nature—run its course. To let the desert claim him in its own good time.

Does he wish he had never become a Ghost? Never undergone the operation that gave him the ability to go undetected by the Ursa at the cost of his humanity?

Certainly, his life would have been different. He knows that, thinks about it. But he doesn’t feel any regret regarding his decision.

He doesn’t feel anything.

And in the fiery stillness of the desert, under a perfect blue dome of sky, he waits. For what?

For something that might not appear. After all, he can’t control his life, not even the last bit left to him. Even as he searches for it in the great, dark expanse, he knows he may be denied it.

The sky turns black. The stars come out. He falls over on his side, too weak to sit up. But somehow, he finds the strength to right himself.

Then he sees something off in the distance.

A tiny figure, limned in starlight. A feminine one in a white lab coat. It’s an odd garment to wear in the desert.

As the figure gets closer, he recognizes the blond hair. It tosses in the breeze, obscuring the figure’s face. But only for a moment.

Then he sees it clearly and knows it’s her.

Again he falls over on his side, and the ground is cool under his cheek. But this time he can’t push himself up no matter how hard he tries.

“It’s all right,” she says, her voice as soft as the wind. She sits down beside him. “Don’t get up on my account.”

“I didn’t know if you would come,” he says.

“Yes, you did. I told you I wouldn’t abandon you.”

He realizes that she’s right. He knew. He knew all along.

She looks up at the stars. A tiny piece of their light is reflected in her eyes. “It’s beautiful here.”

“Is it?” he asks.

“I guess you’ll have to take my word for it.”

She puts her hand over his. It’s warm with life, much warmer than his hand. There was a time when he would have loved that touch, or so he believes.

“How long can you stay?” he asks.

“As long as you need me,” she says.

Jon waits for her to look away, as his training has taught him.

She never does.