One cell for another. Limitation and calculation in exchange for the empty white void.

Niko let his head hang limp between the collar of the jumpseat restraint and stared out through clumps of oily hair. Whatever the VKA had used inside the ruined facility clung to him like a slight he didn’t earn. A grudge he refused to forget.

A hunting quiet replaced his inner voice, and for a moment he thought he understood the lessons of the prototype prophets. What it meant to carve away the body to discover true purpose.

Dead frequencies lingering in the white noise of consciousness.

He wouldn’t look away.

The thin crack of dark landscape beyond the drawn assault door was a constant reminder there was still a way out. He just needed to find the path within whatever came next.

Smells like… fuck if I know.

He wriggled his nose and jammed his head against the harness like an animal.

He might as well have been caged and put on display for all the choice he’d had in things lately.

The pilot leaned back against the opposite wall, pistol in hand. The prick had been told to watch him and hadn’t looked away since. Good dog. Bad dog.

The Gumi gangers made the best sort of pets.

Niko watched him through dirty blonde locks and told himself he’d burn a hole in the creep with his anger.

Rank hair.

Salt forming on his skin.

Organic pain throbbing up from his wrist.

He watched the amber on-again, off-again light of the door’s locking mechanism.

No sensory mod could name what really hung between them.

He ground his teeth.

Flexed his jaw muscles and recognized the look.

Only he wasn’t going to turn from it. He wasn’t going to roll over and curl up on the floor.

Try it.

No one else is here.

If I were you, I would—

The sound of the gunship’s thrusters increased. Hot air pitched up and then back down. Niko let his focus fall inward. He watched João’s stolen memories stream down the side of his vision in lines of compression glyphs. It meant almost nothing to him, no different than blitzing the rig servers, while his programs parsed the events of João’s life.

Subroutines tagged fragments in shifting opacities of blue, blue-green, and teal. Indiscernible to the naked mind. Keywords and phrases turned inside out, like domino pips burning through codex-warm darkness.

If there was a pattern, he couldn’t see it. Not without diving into the data and leaving himself vulnerable.

The thrusters pitched up again, and his eyes refocused on the pilot.

Pet had a wireless connection to the nav system and was screwing with his concentration.

Niko told himself he hated the pilot a little more now… and a little less.

What’s your name?

Pet.

That’s the only name he deserved.

Something moved out of the corner of his eye. Niko looked through the crack at the edge of the door and pulled the blanket over his arms, keeping the pilot in frame. There were soldiers outside the gunship. Some standing and waving their arms, others running. Every few seconds, bright light flashed over the crevice, and he smelled burning earth.

He had no idea what was going on. It’d been some time since the ghost had left him sitting in his chair with those two heavy words: wait here.

Like he had a choice.

A damned zoo.

Niko felt the coarse enamel of his teeth slide against the back of his tongue, stared at the gun in the pilot’s grip, and noticed it was better than the piece of shit he’d left in his coat.

So stupid.

Sponsored violence was a fool’s game. Too many loose ends, and only the Directorate ever won. Niko knew Tsuyomei’s Gumi were ruthless bastards but they were no different than the m-corps in that way.

Mind drifting, Niko heard a light ticking sound and traced it back to the pilot playing with the slide on his pistol.

He was about to cut at the man with something sharp and witty when the assault door slammed open. Niko expected the ghost, instead he saw Woojin flanked by soldiers on either side.

She stepped into view wearing a maroon VKA trench coat too large for her frame, its hem shifting in the gunship’s wash. She looked at him and then turned to the pilot. “Let him up. The Colonel wants to see him.”

Well, well. Who’s the pet now?

Niko looked at Woojin and then the pilot. The harness mechanism clicked, and he stood up.

“Ash on your head,” spat Niko as he walked by his former guard. He pulled the blanket tight around his shoulders.

The other man couldn’t touch him.

“I’m keeping this too.”

The pilot hurled something equally insulting at his back, but Niko just tapped his ear.

“Can’t hear you over these thrusters, slick. I’ll see you around though. Real soon.”

Niko jumped down to the ground.

“You should choose better company.” He wasn’t done spreading his discomfort.

She looked over her shoulder.

“Everywhere I go, someone is always trying to fill my shadow.”

“Ha, ha. What’s the ghost want with me?” he asked.

Woojin started walking and nodded for him to follow while their escorts adjusted their rifles.

If her silence wasn’t so insulting, he might have been flattered he was worth so many armed guards. He told himself he was only a data thief.

Now that he was outside again, he surveyed the yard between the gunships and ruined complex. Several landers had brought in rigid deployables. Defensive structures and supply drops. Niko couldn’t see it, but he could hear the rhythmic stomping of a spider tank somewhere on the other side of the fortifications.

“We’re not leaving, are we?” Niko asked. “This wasn’t a purge. The VKA are taking the site from Corexis?”

“You and your endless string of questions.” She told him to keep up.

It was cold as hell out, and he could only see what the new floodlights touched, but he was sick of being dragged around by Kiyose’s lackey.

“What’s so special about this place, Wooj?”

His eyes traced the line of emplacements and began counting patrol units lurking in the shadows. There were at least a hundred soldiers he could see. More he couldn’t. Double the smaller corp’s entire security detail, at least within earshot.

What are you red bastards up to? You already scrapped everyone inside that place.

One of the soldiers shoved him in the back, and Niko got the satisfaction of seeing Woojin standing and waiting for him. He kept following as she made her way to another line of rigids on the other side of the old barracks.

Thick-walled and braced with extruded beams, the squat gray building looked as cheap as a Halcyon gatchaben bento.

Woojin opened the door on the side and stepped through with Niko, leaving their escorts outside.

Inside, Niko found the ghost leaning over the far table, rolled maps and dataslates spread across the surface.

Niko stepped around her and raised his hands, hoping Woojin would cut the bindings that were still digging into his swollen wrist.

“It’s not bad, but you should get that looked at. Here, hold still.”

With a flick of a hidden blade, the binding broke and Niko impulsively pressed on the worst part of the injury.

“Thanks, I—”

Woojin shushed him immediately.

“My instructions were clear,” the old man started, facing the far wall. “I asked that he not be injured.”

“There was nothing anyone could do about it. The daphemi units got rough with him, and I was in no position to intervene.”

“And the rest of your team?”

Woojin raised her palms, swept the room with her eyes, and shrugged. “Give him to a field medic. In a few hours—”

The ghost turned around. The look on his scarred face caused Woojin to hesitate.

“—he’ll be fine.”

Niko knew the old colonel. The Ghost of Heihe, to those who knew their history. It’d been two years since he’d last seen Tymir Baranov.

Two straps of sinew cut stern angles under his white whiskers. The beard was trimmed but unsettled. A constellation of shrapnel scars pierced the glossy nebula of old burns across his right cheek. Convenient but cursory, the stubble failed to cover where the missing flesh reached up over the crown of his head.

A man at war for centuries never finds peace. Never fully heals.

Niko remembered the words used to describe an infamous EDF major, back just before the bombardments. He’d been a kid when he’d heard it.

No one was a kid anymore.

He’d been broken the last time the Ghost looked at him.

“We did as we said. If I can—”

Baranov turned from the table as if her voice had lost value.

“I have heard several names for your employer. Know that his discretion was appreciated and that your commentary is not.” He clasped his hands behind his back and let the silence hang. The door they’d entered through opened, and one of his Gumi mercenaries stepped inside. “Ty uzhe byla polezna. Ne stanovís’ pamyatnoy.”

Woojin didn’t look at the soldier. She stood mute and motionless.

Niko felt the room shrink, and Woojin with it.

He looked down at his wrist and dreaded the prospect of the nearest field medic being an Ikari surgeon.

“I brought you a gift, Nikolai. Come. Take it.”

He looked up to see the Baranov’s hand holding a small box. Faded red string crossed the lid in the rough shape of a bow. “You were like a son to me. I sent you out into the void. Will you accept an old friend’s apology?”

Like hell, he told himself, and said nothing. You didn’t send me into the void. You sent me to hell and back.

Reluctantly, he took the small box from the man and pulled on the string tails. The bow came undone smoothly, and he let the string fall to the ground.

“Open it.” The Colonel’s voice was a growl trying to pass for excitement.

With a push of his thumb, the small lid flipped open, and Niko saw two blue orbs nested in a scrap of gray cloth. Sticky red swirls wrapped both spheres. Fingerprints marked where someone had set them inside.

Niko’s hands shook.

He managed to hold on to the box—just, and closed the lid.

“I—”

Swallow your fear.

“Thank you, Colonel Baranov. These are very nice.”

“Experimental. Cutting-edge.”

“So I’ve, uh— seen on the subnet.”

Niko looked at Woojin, but she only stared forward, blank and waiting for the Colonel to bring the conversation back to her.

He watched Baranov return to the rear table and push aside a dataslate.

“You don’t like them. How unfortunate.”

Niko tried to object, but wasn’t quick enough.

“Our doctors tell me they’re quite rare and expensive. Of course, if you’d prefer something else, we can provide your choice of the best pieces from tonight’s operation. I don’t want anything between us, Nikolai. I can’t afford to let you think I don’t appreciate what you’ve done, and I need you to help me now. Now more than ever. Help me like you used to.

“We’ll get you fixed up. Nothing for the surgeons. Nothing you don’t want. We can bring you back from the darkness. Put that glimmer back in your eyes. Connect you back to the world.

“You were dead. We— I thought you were dead. Your contract… we’ll reactivate it. Bring you back properly, just as Woojin has brought you back to us.”

Niko asked, “What do you mean Woojin brought me back?”

He looked at Kiyose’s pilot.

Still waiting stiffly and patiently.

“What do you mean Woojin brought me back?” he repeated.

Tymir turned around and looked at the unpleasant woman.

“Well? Tell him.”

Woojin turned her head but avoided eye contact with Niko.

“You were careless. Back on ODS Halcyon, you were careless and used Ikari trench phrases so frequently people began to ask questions, they took notice. Some thought they were clues. Some thought they were code. We knew you were in orbit. We figured out when. Then how. We just didn’t know which station you were on or what name you were using. J-sec was no help—fuck them. It was the trench talk. Badshoo m’passa or whatever it is you say. I still don’t know what it means, but that’s how we found you through the quick hacks you were doing for food.”

“And the rig?”

“A little game to pull you along without a fight. We’d been to the rig before. Everything on the servers… well, there’s a reason the rig is abandoned now.”

“And Grim? João?”

“Names on a long list of evidence. Pre-bombardment greed and old debts. They got what was coming to them, just like you’ll need to finish out your previous contract.”

Woojin turned forward.

She was done explaining.

“Fuck you, Wooj… or whatever your name is.”

She turned back.

“No, child. Fuck you. Every day this miserable rock spins, billions wake up and fulfill their contracts. You don’t get to be different. You don’t get to unplug when you don’t like the future you created.”

“I created?”

Woojin laughed, and her eyes widened.

He could see the blue flicker of a subnet connection at the edge of her pupil and realized she was broadcasting.

“Your name was on that list too.”

Niko stepped back from the damning accusation, as if it’d been hurled at him and struck him in the chest.

“I think that’s enough,” said Baranov. “Take your payment and leave.”

Woojin held out the bottom of her wrist. Her eyes flickered again, and she looked at Niko.

“Whatever is coming, you deserve it. Just like Grim. Just like João.”

She turned and walked out.

Niko felt duped. Horrified and exposed.

Had he been so careless?

He looked at the Ghost of Heihe, standing in the middle of the cramped deployable.

“Don’t worry, Nikolai. The VKA takes care of their own. I won’t use you so carelessly this time.”

Niko pulled the blanket tight across his shoulders and listened to Baranov tell one of the guards to fetch a field medic.