Riowyn indicated to us to prepare to exit the train, and we moved off.
"Don't worry." She murmured to us, as we headed onto the streets of a new town. "It'll be okay. It's not your guys' fault. It's just... concerning."
"Yeah."
"I'm sorry for.... I've been thinking." She continued, walking hastily and purposefully, eyes occasionally flicking to her device for direction. "I just don't know what to do. If there's an attack happening a day? I don't know. I don't know."
I noticed Sophie, continuing to stare anywhere but at us. As worried and upset as I was, I knew I was the most stable one here, and I'd have to do what I could to keep everyone calm.
I placed a hand on Riowyn's shoulder lightly and kept in stride with her fast pace. "Riowyn, it'll be okay. This is horrible, but it'll be okay. If Sophie and I have something to do with this, then there should be a way to do something to fix it. And if it doesn't have anything to do with us, then the advancing situation will force the authorities to look into it and it will be fixed. It'll be okay. It will, it will."
Riowyn glanced sideways at me, and her mouth turned a bit. "Okay." She said softly. "Thank you."
All of us were so worried about everything that we didn't talk for the rest of our long trip, except to make necessary remarks and questions. Finally, we reached a street, at the end of which we could see a roped off area. Riowyn checked her device and nodded.
"This is it." She breathed, then scrabbled through her bag, pulling out a small card and her device from work. We moved towards the scene where a solitary officer stood, as the point of reference for the crime scene. Riowyn showed him her card. "We're from the research team, can we do some work in the scene?"
The officer scrutinised the card for a second and then nodded and moved aside. We moved under the rope and into the alley.
"It says a girl was found here with the same symptoms that all the victims have had. No one's done any scans yet." Riowyn flicked some switches on the side of her device. "Sophie, would you please...?"
"Happy to," Sophie replied, picking her scanner from her belt and turning a knob, searching through its applications for the kind of scans she needed. Since she had these devices to aid her scientific research, I wondered if she would include our investigation on the ghosts into her report for back home. I guess she would have to.
"Staar matter, of course." Sophie mumbled, swinging the scanner round to encompass the whole site. "Traces of energy. I'd have to analyse these patterns to understand it all properly."
"Yeah, there have definitely been ghosts here, not that we didn't know that already," Riowyn pressed a button on her device and then frowned. "Hang on, there's something... some sort of spike that doesn't make sense..."
"Wait, I can probably cross-reference these readings." Sophie flipped the case of the teleport watch open and tapped at the buttons for a few moments in frustration.
"Argh!" she glanced over at me. "Nothing's working; it's like something's... interfering."
I was about to respond but then I picked up a low sort of humming on the tip of my senses, and I stared anxiously around. I recognised this.
Riowyn was watching me with confusion. "What-"
Then, just like how it had happened the previous night, shimmering particles in the air began to draw together before us.
"Abi," Sophie looked nervously around. "Is this..."
She stopped. Riowyn gasped. In the air in front of us appeared a ghost.
I froze. Riowyn's hands rose towards the apparition. Sophie's eyes fixed on it in horror. A seemingly distant part of me recognized the danger of the situation but for the most part I was just shocked and in awe that this was here before me again.
"You have the machine." My body shivered involuntarily at the terrifying sound that seemed to emanate from the ghost. They could speak? Actually, I was unsure whether the voice I could hear was coming through the normal way, vibrations in my ear, or if I was hearing it inside my head. What were these things?
Riowyn spoke tentatively. "The machine?"
The shimmering mass before us seemed to shift, and despite the absence of a face or eyes I could just feel its gaze turn and pierce Riowyn. She shook but stood her ground.
"The... machine," the voice continued. "The girl has our machine... that brings us here... helps us be."
My eyes flicked to Sophie, who was rubbing her left arm. They knew about the teleport watch? Oh no... This was our fault. But how? There were so many questions.
"Yet you are one of us, a..." the ghost continued to address Riowyn who watched with wide eyes. "Halapatovian..." Then its attention switched swiftly to me. "You," I pursed my lips, the voice and presence unsettling me greatly. "You are not one... you are special... you are more... here."
I had already been so terrified over the past few days, but this had rattled me on a whole new level. I felt almost as if this ghost was psychologically targeting me. Special? That was what I'd been called my whole life, and in some cases bitterly (as evidenced by Leila). It distanced me from everyone, and although it could be called a blessing, a privilege, all it made me feel was guilty. I didn't want to be thought of as better than others. I just wanted to work together with people, but I was always singled out.
I realised how whiny that all sounded. I realised how heavily the ghost was affecting me. I realised that I had theorised correctly; these things messed with our minds.
The terror I think we had all already been experiencing heightened for me with these realisations. I was so confused with the ghost's description of me; more here? If that meant what I thought it meant, then that was worse than anything, although it did tell us something about the ghosts – the astral plane, ascended minds. That's what they were, and as evidenced by Sophie's comment, they could be interacted with using the teleport watch. This was all so weird.
I ripped myself from my thoughts back to the present encounter, where Sophie and Riowyn were standing beside me and opposing the ghost, Riowyn's hands held warily raised – I could tell that she was preparing to use her powers if the ghost came near her – and Sophie, whose fingers twitched near her belt where her friction stabiliser was (I could tell she was doing this subconsciously, as she would be perfectly aware that such a device would be of little help against this staar matter projection).
"What do you want?" My voice rose harshly from my throat, with the undertone of my worry and fear forcing it an octave higher than I might have wanted it. I curled my hands into fists as I addressed the ghost defensively, asking the questions I knew we needed the answer to. "Why are you here?"
It unsettled me that the ghost did not make any obvious movement or show any physical sign of it yet I could still tell that it was staring at me, contemplating. I wondered just how intelligent these beings were, or if they thought more basically. Would they even have an answer for me?
After this incredibly eerie moment, when I could hear nothing but the nervous breathing of my two friends in this dark alleyway, the ghost spoke again.
"We are... here... because we were called here. We were made to... be here. We... want you... to be... like... us... to be happy."
I felt light-headed, my head spinning with everything going on, but I knew I had to push forward, to find out as much as I could. With difficulty I held my reserve.
"You were made to be here? By the machine? But you were here before the machine." I stated measuredly.
Did the ghost's gaze flicker? "We were not... made by the machine... more are here... because of it."
"Then who made you?" squeaked Riowyn breathlessly. "Where are you from?"
I sensed a shift in tone, as if the ghost was annoyed. "We are here... we are from here... we were made by us... except for... before."
"Before?" Riowyn asked incredulously, clearly overcoming her shocked paralysis from before. True to her journalist self, she probed inquisitively, needing answers. "What was different before?"
Silence. Then, "You have the machine... we will... show you... her..." before the particles dissipated suddenly out from the place where the ghost had stood, and we were left alone in the dim place where someone had been killed only a few hours earlier by one of the creatures we'd just been talking to. Just been talking to. We'd just talked to a ghost.
We were all breathing heavily, somewhat in relief from what we had just experienced. Riowyn glanced at me, eyes wide, and then turned intelligently to my best friend.
"Sophie, are the ghosts gone?"
Sophie looked up, pale faced, distracted by her confusion for a second before she nodded in understanding and played with her teleport watch once more.
After a moment she looked up and answered in a low voice, "No, there's still interference... they're coming back."
"Okay," Riowyn squared her shoulders and adjusted her bag. "We've got to be ready. We've already found out that they're linked to Sophie's watch... somehow... I don't know. And that... you don't think..." she looked at me.
"What are you thinking?" I asked.
"'We were made by us'" she frowned. "What do you think that means?"
"Well... I guess..." My stomach flipped over as the thought occurred to me. "The ghost don't just kill people, they convert them..."
Sophie made a strangled noise in her throat. "They said they want us to be happy... to be like them... That's..." she broke off.
"Yeah." I said.
"Do you think they remember who they were?" she asked, her voice small.
I stopped in my tracks. That was a horrifying thought. That changed everything. If the ghosts we'd been talking to were the dead people we'd been investigating, and they remembered their lives here, and thought that life the way they were was better than our existence... then all Sophie and Riowyn and I were fighting against was the transport of people from our world to a happier place. Could that really be what this was? Was it right to stop the ghosts?
Riowyn answered after a stifled moment of silence. "We'll just have to ask them."
We waited in the darkness for a few more minutes, all thinking, thinking. Then the strange sensation again and the swirling particles gathered once more. Instinctively Riowyn and I stepped back, and we watched as this time not one, but two ghosts formed. I didn't know how I could tell, but I could recognise the one on the left as the one we'd spoken to before. This time a higher voice spoke in my head.
"I see... you have the machine." It stated, and Sophie gripped her arm protectively, still unsure as to what this all meant. "Why... did you want me... here?"
I knew there were lots of questions we could ask, but I cut straight to the point. "All the ghosts were made by other ghosts, except for you. How did you become like this?"
The ghost fixed me with an unsettling empty stare. "I was alone."
Riowyn seemed upset by this, understandably. "What?"
The ghost, somehow, turned its attention to her. "A long... time ago... I was alone... I was unhappy... this world... suffocated me... no one... cared... Then he came... and he showed me... a way... to be, forever... a shining light... he took me... and changed me... the true machine... and now... there are more... but I was first... does that answer... your question..."
Riowyn looked ready to probe more, but I felt sure that this approach would not work. The ghosts seemed to think and express themselves far more vaguely than we did, and asking them specifics would be unhelpful. So before she could continue her investigation I interjected.
"What is your name? What was your life like before you were as you are now?"
The ghost seemed to hesitate.
"My name was... it was... it is unimportant... I am better now... I was alone... and now... I am... happy... as you will be too."
A cold feeling cascaded my spine, and all my instincts told me to run, but I continued to press. "But why were you alone, did you have family, what did you used to do for fun?"
"I..." I could sense the glimmering being growing frustrated. "I was unhappy... I was... abandoned... I needed... to leave..."
"But leave where? Where on halapatov did you live? When did you come from? Who did you use to be?" My voice rose with the intensity of my thoughts. I needed to know. I needed to know.
"It... means nothing... to me."
"Well, our lives have meaning!" I returned emphatically. "You said you want us to be like you but you need to recognize that we don't want to leave. We are here, we are happy. So why don't you leave this world and enjoy your own!"
I cut off, panting hard. Talking to the ghosts seemed somehow, difficult. Silence from the ghost, though I could feel its presence as if it was reaching out, trying to sift through my brain, find something to turn me to its way of thinking.
Riowyn's face was set, as she stood, considering what we'd just been told. I recovered my breathing, I now had my personal curiosities to put at rest before the ghosts continued to speak.
"Tell me, why do you like Sophie's machine? What makes it special?"
The ghost answered after a moment, tone suddenly hostile. "It brought... us to you... it helps us... be... and now... you will... join us..."
My body shivered in alarm. The ghosts began to move towards us.
"Sophie, get back!" I snapped over at my best friend where she stood, motionless, expression anywhere but here with us. She looked up and moved sluggishly away from the ghosts.
Riowyn started to rotate her hands, manipulating what staar matter particles were still free, and they began to gather in front of her. From the ghosts I felt an odd sucking motion, as if they were trying to draw us out of the air itself. Well we'd have to fight force with force. I lifted my own hands and began to heat up the air before me with friction, then when it was powerful enough concentrated all my being into blasting it at the coming ghosts. Their particles, their presence in this world, scattered briefly due to my attack, but as we watched started to draw back together. I couldn't think of what else we could do.
"We've done all we can," I shot at the others. "Run!"
Riowyn gathered her own ball of energy and chucked it at the ghosts, slowing them once again, then I moved to Sophie, grabbed her hand, and started to run. We stumbled as we sprinted away from the malevolent glow, turning the corner, out of sight. We ran and ran and ran. We didn't stop until we reached a lit side street, near the train station where we'd arrived at. Frantically Riowyn grabbed Sophie's wrist, shocking her, and flipped open the teleport watch, staring hysterically at the controls to try to determine if the ghosts were still near, while I buckled over, hands on my knees, trying to control my breathing. After a moment Sophie recovered her wits and looked down at the controls with Riowyn. She tapped at some buttons and then finally sighed in relief.
"Everything works. They're not here." She murmured, and Riowyn stepped back and leaned against the wall, breathing hard.
I watched Sophie closely, thinking of her paralysis during the ghost encounter, and how I'd barely been able to get her to move when they attacked. If Riowyn and I hadn't been there, she probably would've died. I guess that explained how people were killed; they had no ability to run. The ghosts must exert some influence over people's minds, and incapacitate them. Yet somehow Riowyn and I hadn't been affected. I spent a minute worriedly trying to figure out why, before shaking my head. It didn't matter. For now, we had to focus on what to do, what to do about the ghosts.
As if reading my mind, Riowyn said, "So what should we do?"
We stood in silence for a few moments, thinking. I went through everything sequentially, and decided on the most pressing issue.
"We need to find out the link to the teleport watch." I spoke up. "I'm very confused as to how that works."
"I think I know how to work that out." Sophie replied, distantly.
"Yeah?" Riowyn asked. Sophie fixed her eyes on me.
"Do you remember the astronomy centre we visited, Abi?" Sophie asked, sounding almost her old self. I nodded. "I noticed they had all sorts of things, including signal interpreters and coordinate positioning technology. I think we need to go there. That would help us find out where the signal comes from. Hopefully."
"That's a really good idea Sophie." I said, a small smile lifting my face. She smiled gruffly back.
"Yeah, and we need to figure out what that ghost meant about 'the true machine' and the he it mentioned." Riowyn said thoughtfully. "I might have an idea what it could be. We'll have to go back for some files. And then we can go to the astronomy centre." Her eyes shone a little bit. "I think we might actually have a chance against these things."
As tired and scared as we all were, this thought brought a little bravado back into us, and the three of us linked arms and headed to the train station, ready to enact our plan.