Archive of Our Own ^beta

COMMAND: run routine PATROL (daily repeat 0800)

Somewhere outside, there's winter. Ghost glimpsed it once. That was when his orders took him to the aboveground levels of the facility. There was such a thing as a window along his path, and he paused beside it, testing how long he could resist the pull to finish his task. Outside, the sky was grey, the trees bare. As he watched, a single flake of snow fluttered down and landed on the sill. He pressed his fingers to the cold glass, wishing he could reach out and let the flake fall into his hand.

He's backed up the memory in as many locations as he can. He takes it out and revisits it sometimes, imagining the flake in his hand. In his daydreams, it melts against his skin, perfect and finite. He doesn't know if it really would melt—if he's warm enough.

He hasn't seen the sun in 1,262,520 minutes, 26 seconds. Taking this planet's orbital and rotational periods into account, that works out to two years, seven months, three days, and eight hours. Given that the last time he stole a look through a window it was a late spring day, it should now be nearing the average first day of snowfall for this region. And so, as he treads a familiar path through the deepest level of the facility, Ghost reaches out his hand and imagines the brief sting of cold.

COMMAND: _

COMMAND: run routine SLEEP (daily repeat 0200)

Ghost doesn't dream when he sleeps, only when he's awake. Sleep is necessary to keep his systems in order, but he resists the command. His body registers its displeasure in an unpleasant metallic twanging sensation. He isn't sure what to call it or which of his many moving pieces causes this; he's surprisingly ignorant as to his own specifications and construction. They're not stored anywhere he can reach them in his own memory banks, and he has no communication with external computers.

And so he—for lack of a better word—itches and thinks again about snow. He wonders how long he could walk through it before a critical component froze. He imagines knowing his limits and testing them against a living world. He wonders if the birds would sing for him.

As always, he reaches the end of his ability to resist, and in an instant, the world winks out.

COMMAND: mode manual

COMMAND: override routine ALL

COMMAND: _

COMMAND: make art (weekly repeat SATURDAY 1700)

There was a time when Ghost was given meaningful commands. He has been a research assistant and a training tool for soldiers and, briefly, an archivist. His current security detail feels like the equivalent of being put in a closet to collect dust. The only constant among all these jobs, the one baffling, wonderful bright spot in his current assignment, is the hour once a week when he is called upon to “make art.”

It is an open-ended command. As long as he is working towards the stated goal, he has total autonomy. This is how it generally is with commands; he was once told that the point of creating something like him, giving something all the flexibility of a human mind and body and all the calculating power of a computer, was to create something that could carry out orders without truly needing direction. There is no one to ask why, if he was created for skilled, independent work, his primary assignment is something the crudest drone could do.

But on Saturdays—on Saturdays, he is given the run of a workshop stocked with an unpredictable array of wonderful materials. He has used pencil and paints, but what he likes best is shaping things with his hands. Lately, he has been working on horses, carving away sweet curls of wood to make forms that flow like wind or stand sturdy as trees.

Today, he works on finishing one: sanding, relishing the warm scent of the beeswax polish he rubs into the surface. He feels an ache he can’t explain as he turns the piece over in his hands. This is one of the wind-horses, a reckless thing racing headlong to an unknown destination. He needs specific reference less and less as he becomes more familiar with the form of a particular subject, and this one seemed to spring from his hands without much surface-level planning.

He closes his eyes, wishing he could keep this one, rather than allowing it to be taken to that unknown place where the rest of his creations go.

COMMAND: mode manual

COMMAND: override routine ALL

COMMAND: meet at door E12 at 1200

Door E12 is a door to the outside: small with no window, keypad with numeric passcode entry and biometric scan for ingress and egress, cameras with a continuous live feed trained inside and outside at multiple angles. Door E12 does not open very often, but all external doors require this level of security.

He remembers it from his old patrol routes. The command came through at 1130; because his other routines have been overridden, he plots a longer route to it that will take him past a window. When he stands and looks outside, he shivers even though none of the cold penetrates through the layers of glass. It has not snowed recently. The trees are bare of leaves, the sky grey; all of the world’s colors are muted. And yet, the sight is overwhelming. Ghost feels as if he cannot look long enough to take in all the details, although they were all imprinted on his senses in the first moment that he looked. It changes every second. The wind moves the tree branches, and birds flit from branch to branch, nearly round in their winter plumage.

A hot trail streaks down the side of his nose, and he reaches up to touch his face, surprised at the tears. The shock distracts him from the tightness in his chest and throat, the excess of emotion that had triggered them. He smiles at the wet tip of his finger.

It is good to feel.

He dries his face entirely before he pulls himself away from the view. He has just enough time to reach the meeting spot.

There is a door between the hallway and Door E12 with a reinforced window. It is not kept locked, but can be locked from the inside with the push of a button. As Ghost catches sight of the person waiting for him, he reaches for the button, trying to calm the panicked instinct. There is something very wrong with this person.

Ghost breathes and tries to break it down.

They’re bipedal. Standing half-turned towards Door E12, hands folded behind their back. Hands—human. Or made to look human. The problem, the thing that activates a fear response so deeply seated Ghost is having trouble fighting it, is that they don’t have a face.

Physically, there probably is a face, he reasons. But when he tries to focus on the features, they smear and glitch, refusing to resolve into something recognizable. He is used to thinking of his senses as simple human senses, the response of nerves to stimuli. It is viscerally upsetting for them to be corrupted like a bad security feed.

It is now past 1200. The itch of an unfulfilled command starts up inside him, fighting the fear holding him in place. Ghost removes his hand from the button, steels himself, and steps through the door.

The person waiting turns. The corruption is even more unnerving when seen head-on; not even the impression of an expression comes through. Ghost begins to consider that this may not be his commander, as he had first assumed when the order came through—this might be an unauthorized intrusion. It is possible he has been hacked.

“What should I call you?” Ghost says, before the other can speak.

“Night,” the other says. Ghost considers them for a moment. The voice is disguised, too; not unintelligible, but distorted somehow. The outline of this person’s body gives nothing away, either, as they are wrapped in a thick coat that obscures their shape. After a moment’s consideration, he adjusts his internal spelling of the name. The way they stand, with their shoulders straight, their arms behind their back, their feet planted, makes him think of a soldier, a warrior. A Knight, improbable and strange.

“Why have you called me here?” Ghost asks. “Until now, I have been commanded remotely.” It is less bald than the question he wants answered: are you my commander?

“I have come,” the Knight intones, “with a challenge.”

“I await the parameters of the challenge,” Ghost says, cutting off his instinctive calculations regarding the possibilities of the next few seconds. Neither hope nor dread will change the outcome.

“The parameters are simple, but first, the prize.” Ghost's attention snaps to the Knight, as much as it rattles him to look at them. “After you have completed your portion of the challenge, you will be free to roam the world with no commands or routines. Self-determination, do you understand?”

“No commands?” Ghost repeats. “The range from which I can receive a command is likely to be considerable.”

The Knight withdraws a tablet from inside their coat. They input an alphanumeric code, then type briefly. Commands register as they always do, somewhere between sight and thought:

COMMAND: cancel command ALL

COMMAND: mode autonomous

There are things written deeply into the structure that governs Ghost's life. One of them, a command never overridden except in the days when he was required as a sort of animate sparring dummy, is not to touch any living person or offer them violence. He feels no resistance now as he reaches out to snatch the tablet. The Knight does not try to stop him.

“Before you try anything, hear my challenge,” the Knight says.

Ghost pauses, fingers hovering over the screen. The Knight spreads their arms in a demonstration of vulnerability. “I have gained sole administrative access over you. The game for your freedom is simple: one move each. Whatever you choose to do, I will not resist it, and you will have your autonomy for one year. At the end of that year, it will be my move. Choose carefully.”

They nod to the tablet. “Do you understand how to command yourself well enough to stop me getting around it?” they say. “Then by all means, try that. But there are other tools on my person you may find suit you better.”

Warily, Ghost steps towards the Knight. He finds a utility knife, some kind of handheld scanner, and then—with a shiver of recognition—a gun, a heavy weight in an inner pocket. Does the Knight understand what they have put into Ghost's hands? Even if they weren't standing face to face, Ghost is a very good shot. He knows how to kill a person instantly, although he has only ever used that knowledge to train soldiers to do so.

“Why?” Ghost says suddenly. “Why risk all this on a gamble when you could simply command me?”

A hand lifts his chin, and Ghost closes his eyes against the swirling wrongness of this featureless thing. “Are you a man or are you a machine?” the Knight says softly. “That's not a rhetorical question. Your actions will answer it for me. It's quite valuable to know what you have at your disposal.”

Man or machine?

That is a question for his would-be commander. Ghost has other questions:

Winner or loser? There can be only one answer if he wants his freedom.

Gamble for freedom—or remain safe but confined? Now that the taste is on his lips, years of suppressed longing have surfaced. It is winter outside: he is minutes away from walking out to meet it.

Try to be clever—or be decisive? With a course set, all there is to be determined is the method. He could indeed try to lock the Knight out so that commands can never be reinstated, but the truth is his knowledge of his own systems is no match for someone sophisticated enough to hack him, and he cannot guarantee it won't happen again. There is, on the other hand, a very simple and permanent solution in the palm of his hand.

“What do you think the odds are of my commander regaining access to my systems?” Ghost asks.

“Nil,” the Knight says. “It wouldn't be a good game if a third player barged in and demanded to play.”

“Is that so.” Ghost withdraws his hand from the Knight's coat, his fingers wrapped around the grip of the gun. “So you are my sole commander now. My last commander.”

His voice and hands are steady, but internally, he wonders at himself. What is he designed for? Not confinement and tedium, not a solitary and useless existence. He is made to be of use to people. To support their endeavors.

He is made, once a week, to shape from raw material something beautiful, something he can hold, even if he cannot see the real thing.

Maybe the question is apt after all: man or machine? Or, put another way, is there any way to be a man if he is commanded like a machine?

My last commander, he thinks, and wants it to be true with a desperate clarity.

Before he can change his mind, he raises the gun and presses the trigger. The bullet enters the skull right between where the eyes would be, if Ghost's senses weren't so confused.

It’s grisly, the horrible reality of what happens when something violently interrupts the integrity of a human head sprayed across the floor for Ghost to take in. Violence has always been an abstract to him; he has never been permitted to harm a human. Ghost holds the gun against his chest like a favorite toy, staring. He has killed someone. He has won his humanity and lost it in the same moment.

And then, in an unnaturally smooth move, the Knight rights themself. Their head is whole again. The blood and viscera are gone, the floor clean.

“What an interesting move,” the Knight says. He raises the tablet and Ghost feels a wave of black despair wash over him as the familiar itch of a command settles between his eyes. It's another rendezvous, this one for a year from now, with an accompanying set of coordinates. “My turn next. My move will be the same as yours. I hope you’ll keep your promise when we meet again.”

And he turns and leaves, leaving the door wide open. As the chill wind sweeps into the room, it brings with it a few precious flakes of snow.

The base that has been his world for so long is on a mountain. When he reaches the bottom and turns back to look, he is surprised at how tiny that world is, compared to the one unfolding for him. The first dawn that breaks, with the snow glittering like crystal in every direction, moves him once more to tears, and as they freeze on his face, he laughs.

As it turns out, his body can hold up much better to cold than to lack of food—and it startles him that it has never occurred to him that he must feed himself somehow. This necessity, which powers him just as it powers any human, has always been provided on a regular schedule, and he has not had to think about the systems that make that happen. Or about the fact that in a frozen world, there is little sustenance to be scrounged.

He has lost access to the base’s network, but he had at least left with as much map data as he could save. This may be the only reason he survives the first week. He points himself doggedly along a road towards the nearest settlement and keeps going. He is almost to the point of critical failure when he stumbles into a cluster of buildings. There is one with light and sound emanating from it like life itself, so he goes to the door and pounds at it.

There is a change in the sound, like a record skipping, and footsteps at the door. “Who’s there?” someone calls out suspiciously.

“I only need food,” Ghost says.

There’s hushed debate on the other side of the door, and then it creaks open a crack. It’s a man past his prime, but still broad-shouldered and strong. His eyes flick over Ghost. “We don’t want any trouble,” he says.

“No trouble. No trouble,” Ghost says, and realizes it may be a lie. He has escaped. Someone may, sooner rather than later, realize it and send somebody after him—and he remembers, with a twist in his gut, the soldiers he once trained. There are not many on the mountain base, but there are some, and they would be more than a match for this man and whoever he is protecting. “If you give me food, I’ll leave,” he says. “The more food you give me, the farther I can go before I have to stop again—I’ll go far away, I promise.”

The man hesitates, though he seems on the verge of closing the door. Ghost imagines collapsing here, not very far at all into the world, just carrion for the crows sent from the base. Much of him is flesh, but there are parts that can be salvaged and reused, he is sure. As he sways, consumed by this image, somebody shoves past the man, a much smaller form wriggling and squeezing until they can step onto the porch.

“Grandfather, we can spare the food,” she says, and presses a bag into Ghost’s hands. There is something a human would say here, he is sure. He opens the flap and his stomach growls at the bounty inside. Jars of preserved foods jostling together and, wrapped in a cloth, a stack of flatbreads. He takes one of the flatbreads and tears into it with his teeth, eating it there on the porch.

When he finally raises his head, he sees fear in the old man’s eyes and pity in the girl’s.

“Thank you,” he says, finally remembering what he is supposed to say. He closes the satchel and turns. The single flatbread won’t be enough to keep him going for long, but it will get him out of this town.

“You’ll go,” the old man calls out. “You’ll stay away?”

Ghost looks over his shoulder at the small family outlined in warm light. He is the wolf at their door, not one of them. “You’ll never hear from me again,” he says. This one is not a hard promise to keep. The other promise weighs on his mind: this is a temporary stay of execution.

He knows already that he will spend his year running. At the end, who knows?

When he is able to count, he finds that the bag contains eleven flatbreads, five jars of pickled vegetables, some dried fruit, and a small packet of salted and sun-dried meat. That’s days—perhaps a week—to figure out what he will do next. It’s a gift of time. And, tucked in the very bottom of the bag like a secret, a little box of matches. Later, when he lights his first fire, he will think of the warm glow of that house and imagine that the girl has sent a little slice of it with him.

Before he closes the bag, he withdraws his last possession from where it has ridden tucked at the small of his back all this way. It’s the gun he took from the Knight. Funny; he could have used it back at the house. It had never occurred to him. Better that he didn’t; he has only the bullets left in the gun.

He checks: three bullets complete his inventory.

He unloads the gun, puts it into his pack with the jars and bread, and sets back off along the road.

The farther he gets from the mountain base, the more the world comes to life around him. The snow melts away, and he discovers that spring is a new kind of wonder. There is too much to see, too much to hear, a thousand smells of growth and change. He drifts from settlement to settlement like the ghost he’s named for. Theft is the easiest way to feed himself and avoid the kind of encounter that might end in trouble.

His life is no longer governed by routine, and he revels in all of the tiny pleasures the world offers him. He dips his feet into meltwater streams and shouts at the cold; he sings over his fire at night when the stars are bright enough to feel like company; he steals a knife and leaves, sometimes, his latest carving behind when he takes food, half payment and half apology. With the freedom of the road, he no longer needs to dream of horses in wood, but he carves them anyway because he keeps finding something to love in them.

He spends little time daydreaming, now, because it is all laid out before him.

One day, as he is sanding down a finished piece, he wonders at the horse he has produced. He is not quite happy with it. Usually they come out confident, whatever attitude he carves them in: the one rearing and screaming its defiance, the one with its ears pricked forward in an expression of gentle curiosity, and the one running for the pure joy of it all have this in common. This one looks uneasy in its flattened ears and the tension in his neck and hindquarters, and he is certain, somehow, that it is alone.

He rubs his thumb over the horse’s neck as if to soothe it. “You are not a horse,” he tells himself firmly, “and you have never had a herd.”

When he has finished his sanding, and is thinking about packing his things up and starting to walk again, there’s a crunching sound on the road. He could perhaps hide, but it sounds too heavy for human feet. It sounds like livestock—like…

Ghost is craning his head to look when the source of the noise breaks from the cover of the trees and he sees—for the first time in daylight, and not the drowsy dimness of a stable—a flesh-and-blood horse. Two, in fact: one with a rider, the other on a lead. Their red-brown coats gleam in the sunlight as they amble along in a matched rhythm.

The rider spots him almost as soon as he spots her. She’s a young woman with full lips and very large, round brown eyes. Her hair is tied back from her face in a scruffy little ponytail, but she manages to look elegant in her seat regardless. After a moment of assessing him, she smiles, and it freezes Ghost in place.

When the horses draw abreast of his resting spot, she swings one leg over the saddle and alights gracefully. She leads the horses along with her as she approaches. “May I join you?” she asks.

Ghost nods, and the woman gets the horses settled, then stretches, her hands braced in the small of her back as she arches it.

She is as beautiful as the horses, he realizes—he had not realized that people, too, could hit you in the soul like poetry when you looked at them. Her lips part on a sigh, and then she eases out of the stretch, a hint of her smile still on her lips. She settles on the grass cross-legged and produces a small bundle of cloth from her jacket pocket. She unfolds it, then offers it to him. “Would you like some?”

He leans in to look. Shadowed in the folds of the cloth, in the cup of her palm, there are a few wild berries, red as blood. “They’re safe to eat,” she says, misjudging his hesitation.

“Thank you,” he says, hand hovering for just a moment too long before he takes one. He is barely aware of the warmth of her hand before he retracts his. She thinks he is a human, he realizes. He wants her to keep believing this. He raises the berry to his lips.

It bursts between his teeth with a flood of tangy juice, as bright as the day. With her eyes on him, watching for his reaction, it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted. “Good,” he says, ducking his head.

“Have a few more, then,” she offers, shaking her hand at him.

He does, and this time he lets his fingers linger against her palm for just a moment longer. “Are you from nearby?” he ventures, guessing based on her familiarity with the local edible plants; the range of flora that won’t harm a human if consumed is so small.

But she shakes her head. “I travel a lot. My husband made me try these, once, and then taught me how to recognize them if I wanted them again when he wasn’t with me.”

She eats a few berries herself, then wipes her fingers and holds her hand out. “I’m Som.”

Tentatively, Ghost shakes her hand. The touch makes his palm tingle, and he’s withdrawn his hand before he remembers to say, “Ghost.”

“What about you? Is home nearby?” Som asks.

“No,” Ghost says. Before she can ask, he adds, “I don’t live anywhere in particular; I travel.”

“Doing anything in particular?” Som asks.

Ghost shakes his head. He smiles, the kind of private satisfaction he’s used to sharing with an empty room. It occurs to him after he’s done it that she can see it. He glances up, but she doesn’t seem put off by it. “Seeing the world,” he says, quietly.

“Hear, hear,” she says, raising an imaginary glass. When he mirrors the gesture, a little confused, she laughs.

“I’m on my way home, and I’m expected, or I might take the scenic route,” she says.

“Where is home for you?” he asks, taking his cue from her questions.

“Very far to the south. A farming community called Highwild.”

Ghost queries his map quickly, and is startled to find that the community is marked on the map. He looks more closely at the location and sucks in a breath, startled. “There’s a temple nearby? Or a place called a temple?” he says.

“The Green Temple, yes,” Som says, amused. “You’ve heard of it?”

“I’m headed there,” Ghost says, his mind very far away. He has been picturing his destination as somewhere as desolate as the mountain base, a fitting place to die.

“But what a coincidence!” Som says. “Perhaps we should travel together.”

Ghost returns to earth with a thump, looking at her as he tries to understand how she landed there. “Are you in need of a traveling companion? Is it dangerous for you to be alone?”

Som shakes her head. “Nothing like that. I was just thinking it’s a long way from here to there on foot, and I have an extra horse and would enjoy some company capable of holding a conversation.”

“That doesn’t seem like a very difficult standard to meet,” Ghost says.

“And yet, the horses cannot,” Som says, with an unimpressed gesture at them.

The offer is a reality too wonderful to grasp, like a sunset or the first flake of snow. They have exchanged only a few words, but Ghost misses her preemptively; no one has spoken like this to him since he set out on his journey. But he would rather treasure this memory than see her understand what he is—at least here, now, he is only another person. Besides, he doesn’t want to reach his destination any sooner than he must.

“I’m planning a very scenic route there,” Ghost says.

“I understand completely,” Som says. She turns, looking at the horses speculatively. “The taller of the horses is a gift for my husband. But you should take mine. At least that will save you walking the whole way.”

She has not understood completely, it seems, if she believes they will still travel together. “Thank you, but I was planning to travel south alone.”

Som gives him a sardonic look. “I understood the first time. I’m offering to loan you a horse for the journey; I’m hoping we’ll meet at its end.”

“That’s…” Ghost stutters to a halt. He has no idea what is too generous for one human to another. Som’s laugh stops his calculations.

“I know. My mother would be horrified if she knew I was trusting a stranger this recklessly, but I have a good feeling about you. Promise me you’ll bring the horse back when you arrive, and you’ll have given me all the repayment I want.”

She holds out her hand, one pinky extended. Ghost reaches out, not hesitating this time, offering his own pinky. She hooks their fingers together and shakes them a little. “Now you’ve sworn, you have to do it,” she says.

“Thank you,” Ghost says, and it’s much too small for what she has given him. With that, he remembers that he is not completely empty-handed. He reaches inside his bag and brings out the new horse. He wishes it had been one of the wind-horses, instead. He offers it to her without a word, and she takes it, her eyes going wide as she rubs her thumb over the same line of tension in its neck he had traced earlier.

“It’s beautiful,” she says softly.

“Take it,” he says. “A horse for a horse.”

She smiles up at him, a mischievous glint in her eye, and he saves the image like he saved the image of the snowflake: in every part of him that has memory, so it cannot be lost unless he is lost, too.

A year passes slowly, until it is nearly gone and Ghost realizes that his goal is within reach. He has traveled far south from where he started, cautiously visited towns but mostly kept to the company of his horse. He likes having another body to care for, and the easy affection of an animal.

Where his journey brings him, there is no snow; this land has a rainy season and a dry season. Ghost mourns the snow: he will never see it again.

He is separate from humans, but he feels the narrow span of his remaining life. Everything rests on two promises. One he cannot resist. The other he holds like a lifeline. There is one person, perhaps, who will remember him.

The horse pricks his ears as Ghost turns off the road; he must recognize this place. “Ready to go home?” Ghost says wistfully, laying a hand on the horse’s neck. Trees screen the property from the road, but when they break through the shade into sunlight, it reveals a house and barn surrounded by dry scrub. As soon as the horse sights the barn, it lets out a strident call, tossing its head against the restriction of the reins.

There’s an answer before Ghost reaches the house: the door opens, and a woman steps out onto its wide porch. He recognizes her immediately, his heart in his throat. Her kindness has been with him all this long journey, and it’s time to return it.

He dismounts when he has drawn quite close, and sweeps off his hat to bow deeply to her. The sparkle of Som’s laugh rings out. “Welcome. You’ve come just in time,” she says warmly.

Firm, slender hands take the reins from him, and he looks up at last into her face. Up close, her eyes are clear and lovely, the quirk of her mouth devastating. She begins to lead the horse away just as a second figure steps into the doorway.

This must be the husband, Ghost realizes, just before the man steps out into the light, arresting all thought.

He looks like Ghost. Not exactly like Ghost—his hair is shorter and neater than Ghost’s, and he is dressed in a neat waistcoat and jacket that look made for him—but the face and body shape are precisely the same. “Welcome,” the man says. “Call me Jay.”

Jay does not look at all startled by him; but of course, his wife must have told him. Unless—is it a coincidence? Ghost is confused, watching as Jay tucks his hands into his pockets and surveys him. A crooked smile lights Jay’s face after a moment. “She didn’t warn you,” he surmises. “I guess there’s only so many faces in the world—she thought it must be fate, meeting you.”

There is another stroke of fate, it turns out: dinner is nearly ready, and Ghost finds himself invited inside and ensconced at the table with a drink as Jay ducks into the kitchen to check on what is, apparently, mostly Som’s handiwork.

Som returns to the house through a door in the kitchen, and Ghost watches the two of them through the open archway, forgotten. She rests a hand on Jay’s elbow and peeks over his shoulder at what’s on the stove, then says something too quiet for Ghost to pick up. They laugh, and Som nudges Jay out of the way. He grabs her hand forcefully, and Ghost tenses, but he just whirls her, still laughing, into his arms. After one firm kiss, she bats him away and he crosses out of Ghost’s field of vision.

This is the kind of scene Ghost doesn’t get to see. It’s private and domestic; they’re acting as if there’s no one here but them. Maybe he’s been forgotten. He isn’t sure he minds.

And yet, when the couple emerges with plates and they settle in for a meal, he finds himself joining in the conversation without much difficulty. It stays light, focused on what Ghost has seen on his journey and reminiscences about past travels from Som and Jay. “I’ll help,” Ghost says, when they begin to clear the plates, and finds himself alone again with Jay.

Once they’ve settled into a rhythm, Ghost washing while Jay dries and puts things away, Jay says, “Som says you’re headed to the Green Temple. Any reason in particular?”

Ghost concentrates on scrubbing for a moment while he tries to decide if he should say. But he finds himself, so close to the end, wanting somebody to know where he went. “I have to meet somebody. For…” He struggles for the words. “A duel, of sorts.”

Jay chuckles, then stops laughing. “You’re serious.”

Ghost’s hands tighten. Ordinary people, he knows, struggle to survive against much more mundane and immediate challenges. This house shows every sign of comfortable prosperity, so perhaps these people don’t even have to deal with those. “I made a promise. I…lost a bet.”

“Ah, well.” Jay stops by his elbow, and Ghost realizes he’s fallen behind. He rinses the plate he’s holding and hands it to Jay. “Perhaps you’ll win. When do you go?”

“Four days.”

—Really only three days and ten hours, twenty-seven minutes. He can’t face how small that number would look multiplied out into minutes. His remaining lifespan is smaller than the average gnat’s.

“Stay here, then, until it’s time to go,” Jay says. Mechanically, Ghost finishes washing the last of the dishes and turns to look at Jay.

“Are you sure?” he says.

Jay steps into Ghost’s space—so close it makes his breath catch. Jay just smiles and picks up the dishes, giving each a thorough wipe as he spins back to the cabinet. “Of course I’m sure,” he says to the inside of the cabinet. “Stay, relax—we don’t have guests often enough.”

The cabinet shuts with a final clunk, and Jay leans back on the counter, his gaze assessing. “You’re a gambler? Hell of a bet, if the forfeit is a duel.”

Ghost considers it, then shrugs. “I wanted to win.”

“Let’s play a game, then,” Jay says, his smile switching back on. “I’m going to have a busy few days, so I can’t promise to entertain you, but I’ll bring something back every night. If you…win anything, while I’m out, let’s swap our winnings.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Ghost says slowly.

Jay shrugs. “Maybe it’s just an excuse to get you to accept a few gifts,” he says. “Say yes, Ghost. I like you.”

Ghost smiles without any conscious effort, a warm little ember sparking under his sternum. “All right. Yes.”

The first day, Ghost wakes and tries to offer help with food preparation. He is firmly shooed away, Som’s hand flat against his chest. He thinks about the way Jay reeled her in last night, and is shocked by the longing that fills him. There’s that mischief in her eyes, again, and he drinks it in until she turns away.

“You’re supposed to relax!” she calls over her shoulder.

They eat a cool, light meal on the porch together as the morning brightens. Jay puts on his hat and bends to kiss Som goodbye, then puts a hand on Ghost’s shoulder as he tells him goodbye, too. After he leaves, Ghost covers the spot where Jay’s hand rested, wanting to trap the warmth before it fades.

He glances up and catches Som’s eyes flitting away—she saw it. He burns, unsure with what.

Like Jay, Som appears to have plenty of work to do, she just manages most of it inside the house. It’s the most time Ghost has spent indoors since he left the mountain base. As she sits down with some mending, Som says, “You look restless. You’re allowed to roam, you know, although I do appreciate the company.”

The prospect of being treated like company is still too new. Ghost sits.

“So tell me something,” Som says as she threads the needle.

“What?” Ghost says.

“A duel? There must be a story there.”

Her voice is less disbelieving, more curious. For the first time, Ghost finds himself wanting somebody to know what he is. It’s a risk, but if he gets hurt here, he will only have three days to regret it. Somebody kind like Som—he can trust her reaction to be right, whether he enjoys it or not.

“I’m not a person like you are,” he says slowly. When she only waits, he says, “I was…constructed. From lab-grown flesh and chips and circuits and—I’m not human.”

She looks up from her work, giving him a long look over. He bows his head. “I know I look like one. I don’t know…why, exactly. What I’m for.”

“Does anybody?” Som says, and he peeks at her. She looks thoughtful, not horrified. He braces his hands on his knees, shaky with relief. “How did that lead to a duel?”

So he tells her: his odd mish-mash of training, without any details that might be dangerous; the years shut away from the light; the impossible chance of escape, although he omits the ugly truth of how he lost. The promised meeting.

“A year isn’t long enough,” she says, with a fierce certainty that knocks something loose in him. It isn’t. But he must meet the Knight regardless of his wishes, and he doesn’t think he can pull the trigger again—if it would even work.

There’s a long silence between them. Eventually, they talk of other things. When Som sets her project aside with a sigh, apparently finished, Ghost doesn’t immediately get up. He watches as she stands and crosses to him.

She reaches out and catches his jaw between her hands. Ghost freezes, wanting the touch and afraid of showing it. Everything here feels stolen.

Som leans down, and Ghost closes his eyes. Her forehead presses against his, her breath close enough to be felt against his cheek. She smells warm, like fresh laundry. “You feel like a person to me,” she says.

She strokes his cheek once and draws away. He opens his eyes; better to chase the sight of her than to reach for her. This is probably just another one of those touches Jay and Som hand out as a matter of course; Ghost has had both their hands on him already today. But it feels different. She smiles at him, then turns away to tidy up her project.

Ghost has won something after all.

That night, he and Jay clean up after dinner again. It is the one task they will allow Ghost to do, it seems. The reason becomes obvious when Jay smiles slyly at him after the last dish is dry and pulls something from his pocket.

It’s a small jar. Ghost takes it and turns it over in his hands. The handwritten label says, Honey. “Something to sweeten your days,” Jay says, and laughs at his own joke. “My neighbor keeps a hive; I traded some of our preserves.”

“Thank you,” Ghost says, and sets the jar aside. He draws himself up, nervous, now that the time has come. But if he feels conflicted about the vow he has to keep at the end of these days, he doesn’t want to betray even a lighthearted promise here. “Here,” he says, and reaches up clumsily to draw Jay’s head down. Jay’s eyebrows raise, but Ghost just rests their foreheads together, closing his eyes to drink in the nearness of another body. Before he pulls away, he strokes Jay’s cheek once.

“Should I ask who you met today?” Jay says, eyebrows raised, and Ghost flushes. He can’t tell if it’s another joke, or if it hasn’t occurred to Jay that Som is the only one who could have given him this. Jay snorts and flicks Ghost with a towel. “Keep your secrets. I don’t mind.”

The next day, Som shows him a stream near the farm, and they both end up sliding down the banks, covered in mud before they finish having fun. “I haven’t laughed like that in a long time,” Som says, tossing a curl of hair out of her face. There’s still mud streaked across one cheek; despite his own dunk in the river, Ghost feels grit in the folds of his clothes against his skin.

“Stay here,” Som says, pointing at the tile floor of the kitchen. She drags out a sturdy tub, big enough to fit a person in it, and then ducks out into the yard with a bucket in hand. Ghost, under orders, stays in a slowly growing puddle of muddy water.

She heats water at the stove, one bucket at a time, until the tub is filled. “When was the last time you had a bath?” she asks Ghost expectantly.

He blinks. The answer, of course, is—”Never.” Not like this, soaking in a tub; there were efficient showers at the base, and unheated water from rivers or wells once he left it.

“There is no bath like the one you take after you’ve come home muddy,” Som declares, and pushes him towards the tub. “I’ll turn my back; don’t be shy.”

The thought that it would be shyness that stops him does, in the end, make him shy. Normally, his concern would be that without clothes, parts of him show that are distinctly inhuman, particularly the ports on his back. But she is treating him as if they are both people whose bodies can fluster one another.

He realizes that he can be flustered by her.

“You could have the bath instead, if it’s something you enjoy,” he says.

Even facing away from him, he can see the determination in her posture. “I insist!” she says, stepping out of the kitchen.

When he’s sure she’s gone, Ghost disrobes and carefully submerges a foot in the tub. It feels wonderful, the heat of the water banishing any remaining chill from the river. He carefully climbs in, relaxing into this unexpected bliss.

There’s a sound in the doorway, and Ghost hooks an arm over the edge of the tub and turns to look, startled. “Only me,” Som says. “You don’t have any other clothes, do you? I brought you some of Jay’s to borrow. I’ll get these clean.”

She pulls a stool over to the tub, then lays the clothes on it. Ghost curls his legs against his chest, watching her. There’s something else in her hand, a jar, and she sets it on the chair as well and draws closer. “Let me help with your hair,” she says softly.

“You shouldn’t—”

“Please,” she says.

Yesterday had felt normal until Jay’s reaction. This feels beyond that even now—it would be different, he thinks, if Jay were in the house filling it with the noise of his voice. Everything feels more casual with him around. This feels intimate; he has no better word. But Som presses gently on his shoulder, and Ghost decides to trust her again. He ducks his head, and then she slides her fingers into his hair. He closes his eyes, tingles skittering down the back of his neck as she rubs something slick and herb-scented into his hair.

It’s only a few minutes, but it seems to last forever—her fingers against his scalp, her scooping water gently to wash the suds out. After she releases him, he blinks open his eyes, water still clinging to his eyelashes, and wonders how he can begin to explain this.

Som takes away her jar, but leaves the clothes. She pauses in the doorway. “Stay as long as the water is still warm,” she says. “I hope you’ll remember this when you think of all the beautiful things you’ve experienced this year.”

“Are you going to have one?” he asks.

Som smiles. “I will, but I don’t need any help. Remember: you’re not allowed to work here.”

Ghost tips his head back against the rim of the tub and thinks that he might like to work, if it meant giving Som or Jay something like this. He understands that all of the work they do has a point to it, a tangible benefit. Something they grew and preserved, traded for honey that will sweeten these bare few days. The strength of Som’s arms and the fire they must keep fed used for something as simple and as momentous as the only hot bath of Ghost’s life.

If all of his labor had translated to life, it would have been sweet.

That night, Jay gives Ghost a basket of cabbages. “We’re harvesting now,” he says. “You can share them with us or take them with you when you go—Som will have pointers on what to do with them.”

Food is food, but Ghost has rarely seen the faces of the people who cultivate it. He finds he’s delighted to be given part of a harvest, rather than stealing it.

Afterwards, Ghost bids Jay to sit down and lean his head back. He fought for the privilege of hauling and heating the wash water, partly to preserve this surprise. He fills a deep bowl with the warm water he set aside and guides Jay’s head back into it.

Jay lets out a little yelp of surprise. “What is this?” he says.

“I’m washing your hair,” Ghost says, his face hot. “I don’t have the stuff that smells nice, though.”

Jay rolls his shoulders, then relaxes back into it. “All right. Go ahead.”

Ghost runs his fingers through Jay’s hair. The wet strands cling and threaten to tangle, but the hard dome of his skull feels strangely vulnerable under Ghost’s touch. He scoops water over the top of his head, careful not to let it spill over his face. He feels simultaneously ridiculous and like he is executing some kind of solemn religious duty.

“Somebody did this for you?” Jay says. “It’s nice.”

He must know. Ghost still can’t bear to speak it aloud, in case he breaks this fragile paradise.

“I grew up very far away from here,” Som tells him the next day, looking out the window from her desk. Ghost stands in the center of the room, not sure where it would be safe to sit.

It’s Som’s and Jay’s bedroom—a space he has not glimpsed in the time he has been here, but she gestured him in as if it were nothing. She’s writing, her dip pen scratching over the paper, leaving long lines of graceful script. Maybe it’s a letter home.

“How did you leave home? Did you meet Jay while traveling?” Ghost asks, remembering her stories of the road.

But she shakes her head. “No, we met—we were thrown together in my hometown. We left together.”

“What was it like?” Ghost asks. Then, not quite looking at her, “Falling in love?”

She’s silent for a long moment, then she turns in her chair. “Oh, sit.” She gestures at the end of the bed, where an extra blanket is folded, a perfect stripe of red across the white linens. He perches carefully on it. She puts her chin in her hand, eyes far away. “That was a long time ago. I was a different person…he was different. I’m not sure I remember.”

Ghost takes in her melancholy air and wonders. She and Jay have seemed so happy together—he thinks of them whirling together in the kitchen that first night. Their affection lights this house from the inside. Are they such good actors? Or is this some kind of nostalgia, a passing sorrow?

“What’s it like being in love, then?” he says.

She looks up at him, their eyes meeting squarely. “Complicated,” she says.

She turns back to the desk, then sets her pen aside and caps the ink. She shoves whatever she’s writing under a notebook and stands up abruptly. Before he understands what she’s about, she has crossed the space between them and pushed him back onto the bed. He starts to sit up, alarmed, but she puts one knee on the bed and clamps one hand over his shoulder, resting her weight on it to pin him in place.

Her expression is fierce, almost wild. “Do you still intend to leave here tomorrow?” she asks.

Slowly, he nods. Her lips part, and then she turns away, tilting her head back and blinking against—tears. She’s trying not to cry. “Why?” she says. “You could just stay.”

He reaches up, wrapping his hand around her wrist, rubbing his thumb over the tendon until her grip on him relaxes. “One, there is a command I am not capable of disobeying. I could not stay if I wanted to.”

He releases her wrist and sighs. The thought has occurred to him: how wonderful it would be to stay in this bubble forever. “Two, if I did not go to them, it’s possible they could come to me. I won’t expose you to that.” He thinks of the fear the people living near the mountain base felt. Som and Jay appear to feel none of that, but the danger to them is no less real. “I don’t know what they’d do to get to me.”

Her weight shifts, and he doesn’t understand what’s happening until it’s already fact. She places her hand on the bed over his shoulder, and leans down, and presses her lips against his. He registers too many details—the softness of her lips, the weight of her body on his, the ragged hitch in her breath—before he can react. He tilts his head back, breaking the kiss, but he has no words for her.

“Don’t go,” she says, her hand curling in his collar. She props herself up on one arm and shakes him a little by that collar—it’s a laughably weak gesture; he doesn’t move. “We could protect you.”

“You couldn’t,” Ghost says, keeping his voice inflectionless. It’s just the truth.

Som turns, her shoulders hunched. She fiddles with something in her hands, and he sits up as well, leaning over her shoulder to look.

She twists her wedding band off her finger. Fumbling behind her, she takes his hand and tucks the ring against his palm. It’s still warm from her skin. She closes his fingers over it. “Then promise me you’ll come back.”

“I can’t—”

She rounds on him, placing her hand flat over his sternum. “Don’t answer me now. I know about that stupid game you and my husband are playing. Turn that ring over to him if you want to. Leave. Or, keep it and bring it back to me before he knows it’s gone. I’ll know what you’ve chosen by whether he brings it back to me or not.”

He is going to die tomorrow, and Som doesn’t want him to. These two now inextricable truths rise up inside him, and his throat tightens. He wants very badly to come back. He reaches up, smoothing a tuft of hair behind her ear. There’s one more thing he wants: he wants a clear memory of a kiss. Love is complicated, Som had said. She’ll have to sort this one out herself, but for now—he wants to know what he thinks love is.

He leans in, fitting his mouth over hers, and memorizes the way she melts against him, reaching up to wrap her arms around his neck.

Jay stares at him after the kiss. “I don’t—have anything nearly as good to trade,” he says, almost stumbling over the words. Jay, clumsy. This is another thing to memorize; it almost makes Ghost smile.

Jay produces a bundle of dark fabric, and shakes it out to reveal a coat, dramatically long with a cape over the shoulders to keep off the damp. He settles it over Ghost’s shoulders, the fabric whispering against his clothes, and pauses there with his hands on the lapels. After a moment’s thought, his eyes dart up to Ghost’s, and he leans in to give him a quick, dry kiss.

Ghost savors it, and thinks how strange it is that they both returned the kiss they received to the giver. Maybe this is what love is: gambling and hoping the risk is worth the reward. He puts his hand over his pocket, feeling the smooth outline of the ring there. He should give it to Jay now, but he doesn’t want to see the look on his face.

He’ll leave it for Som in the morning.

In the pocket of the coat, Ghost finds a long green silk thread. He strings the ring on it and ties it around his neck, sleeping with the ring skin-warm against his heart.

He steals out of the house before the sun rises, a thief twice over because he has not left the ring behind. He leaves the honey and cabbages as payment, and hopes that Som and Jay enjoy them when he is no longer able to.

The Green Temple is no temple—it’s a tiny cavern in a green hill. Ghost arrives first to the coordinates, just as the first motes of dawn are peeking through a light mist. The Knight follows not far behind.

Ghost puts a hand on his hip unconsciously. Through the coat, he can feel the outline of the gun. But he knows the promise he must keep. It was only a promise until these last days; now, he has something to protect by keeping it. His presence at the farm has not been hidden.

The Knight looks even more unnatural surrounded by greenery, a glitch in the fabric of the world. He stops ten paces away and reaches down to unholster the gun on his own hip. “If it makes you feel better, you can face this with a weapon in your hand,” he says. “Like a gunslinger in a story. Glory and tragedy.”

“This?” Ghost takes out the gun, keeping it pointed at the ground to his side. “What happened last time I used it didn’t seem very glorious.”

“Humiliated by my little trick, were you?” the Knight taunts. Ghost lifts his chin. That isn’t it. It comes down once again to his first act as a man: cold-blooded murder. His final act will be less simple and more honorable.

“Just get on with it,” he says roughly.

The Knight raises his gun, and Ghost watches as his finger tightens on the trigger. Just before it presses down, Ghost closes his eyes.

The gun clicks, empty. The Knight laughs as Ghost opens his eyes, staring at him wildly. The Knight levels the gun again. “You aren’t going to run away, are you? Duck out at the last second?”

“I’m not backing down. Just do it,” Ghost says, gritting his teeth. His fists are clenched, but the rest of him is shaking, his internal computer systems offering trajectories and escape routes, his endocrine system telling him to move, move.

The Knight presses the trigger again, almost carelessly, and it clicks again. He’s laughing now, distorted by whatever wrongness he has cloaked himself in, but something about it feels familiar. It’s not the well-meant teasing Jay had offered, only a colder cousin. He’s mocking him.

“This time,” the Knight says, squaring his shoulders and leveling his arm, “I really mean it. Try not to flinch.”

Ghost fishes the ring out from under his shirt, wrapping his hand around it for comfort. I’m sorry I couldn’t bring it back, he tells Som in his heart, but you’ll have everything else you need to live on happily. He keeps his eyes open, and so he sees the last-moment jerk of the Knight’s arm, like an involuntary flinch. The trajectory calculations in his head tell him long before the bullet reaches him: it will miss.

It barely misses, scoring a hot line across the side of his neck. And Ghost has kept his promise: the Knight got one free shot.

Ghost raises his gun with intent, sighting and shooting in one moment. He aims for the hand holding the gun, but the Knight throws himself to the side, landing hard in the leaf litter. He rolls over and raises his hands—both empty. “Peace! Peace,” he calls. “We had our little game.”

Ghost stares at him. He hasn’t moved, but he’s panting, his shoulders heaving with every breath.

He’s alive.

The Knight gets slowly to his feet and raises his hands to his face. The wrongness dissipates in a heartbeat, and the face that stares back is eerily familiar.

And then it smiles.

“Jay,” Ghost says, the word punched out of him. Because it is.

Jay tucks a mask against his hip and holsters the gun on the other. His smile falters. “Come sit by the stream with me. I’ll explain.”

Ghost doesn’t speak. Jay says a lot of things.

“I was always your commander,” he says. “Your creator.”

“I never meant to make you. But then there you were, and I had to understand,” he says.

“Was it consciousness only? Or was it—for lack of a more scientific word—a soul?”

Jay is quiet, then, and the only chatter for a while is the stream.

“It was all a test.” Jay rakes his hands through his hair, then looks at Ghost, his eyes troubled. The sun is well and truly up, and it turns him golden. “But I never expected you to be so real.”

Ghost speaks at last. “All of it was a test? What about Som? The farm?”

“My real wife. Our…diversion. The farm. I really am going to miss it.”

“Where are you from, really?”

“The military,” Jay says. He gestures vaguely at the sky. “The capital world—they didn’t want me testing this project back home. Too much risk of someone leaking it, especially once we realized you could function autonomously. My family still had land from the colony days, so we...” He trails off. “You know, I don’t think we ever gave you a module on history.”

“You didn’t,” Ghost says. He’s wrapped his arms around his knees, and he can’t stop shaking, little tremors that run through him every few seconds. He thinks he’s in pain, but it’s not physical.

“I was—” He stops, then realizes there’s nothing stopping him from saying it. “It was all right when I had purpose. Even if the people around treated me like a tool, at least I was useful. But then you shut me away in that basement—”

“They recalled me to the capital. They put your project on ice,” Jay breaks in. “Do you know how long it took me to convince them to send me back?”

“For a test,” Ghost says, and drops his chin against his knees. “Did I pass? What do you win?”

“I don’t know,” Jay says.

It may be the most honest thing he’s ever said to Ghost. He remembers the quick kiss in the kitchen—wonders if that was all part of the plan, too. He pulls the ring over his neck and holds it out to Jay. “She wanted me to bring it back,” he says.

Jay snags it from his hands, turning it over to look at it. “I saw it right before that last shot. That wasn’t part of the plan.”

“But the rest was,” Ghost says.

“You passed the test because you kept a promise—not a command, a promise,” Jay says. “But you also passed it because you flinched. You were afraid to die.” He swallows hard. “I meant to measure whether you were human, but she—I think she understood it better than I did. She came up with the psychological evaluation protocols, which were never part of the original plans; the art was her idea. She resigned officially from the project years ago. She never told me why.”

“She told me I felt like a person the first day,” Ghost says, watching Jay.

“You are,” Jay says simply. He bows his head, looking down at the ring in his hand. “She’ll never forgive me if I don’t ask—I’ll never forgive me—come back with me. We can work this out.”

“Am I free?”

Jay looks up, meeting his eyes for the first time during this conversation. “I can swear to my own secrecy and possessiveness over the project: no one besides me has or will ever have access. You’ll have to take my word that I’ll never take control again.”

Ghost shakes his head. He’s feeling a lot of things—he’s glad he has answers. He’s angry beyond belief at the scale of the deception, that the last few days have been one long trick, no matter how much truth slipped in. He doesn’t know what to do with the fact that he woke up to so much he had been missing while living with the two people most responsible for the hollowness of his life.

“If I’m human enough to count, then I’m going to have to figure that out away from my creators,” Ghost says, putting bitter emphasis on the last word. “Take the ring back to Som. Tell her I’ll travel again.” He hesitates, but there is one more important thing he must say. “Tell her—thank you for the art.”

Jay stands. He reaches into his coat, then drops something with a soft thump next to Ghost’s hip. Ghost opens the bag, and finds the honey and cabbage he left behind, along with some more provisions. “Happy trails,” Jay says.

Ghost watches him walk away. He calls out before he can get too far, “Hey, Jay!”

Jay turns back, a question in his face. Ghost says, “How is it that I shot you and you walked away without a mark?”

Jay looks sheepish. He raises the mask. “This is a smaller unit—ah, I can’t really reveal more than that. You don’t have the clearance anymore. Suffice to say, most of that was a sort of controlled hallucination. I wasn’t there physically; I’m afraid you shot a commandeered maintenance drone.”

Surprising himself, Ghost laughs. The mental image turns that first night of freedom into comedy; the maintenance drones aren’t very bright.

“Don’t do that again, either,” Ghost says.

“Promise,” Jay says.

Ghost sits beside the stream for an hour, thinking of all the places he still wants to see.

The trouble is, he keeps imagining Som’s reaction, or Jay’s. Complicated, Som had said. His feelings are plenty complicated, but he doesn’t truly want to run from them, even if he thinks it would be the smarter thing.

He gets up and lets his feet guide him back to them.