GABRIEL TOSH

When Kath Toom awoke for a second time, her circumstances were quite different.

She was in bed in a dimly lit, well-appointed room, dressed in comfortable clothing, her wounds washed and dressed. She was no longer restrained, and the throbbing ache in her head was gone, replaced by the calming, soft haze of an analgesic flooding her system.

She sat up gingerly, touching the bandage on her temple. Someone had taken good care of her, although she still didn’t know exactly what had been done to her. It was a far cry from the first time she had awoken. Still, there was no sign of her ghost suit or weapons, and when she tried the door, it was locked. A prisoner. She would rather not imagine what that meant.

Flashes of memory came flooding back to her, bits and pieces from her time in the Ghost Academy and much more recently. Her guts churned, her entire body suddenly alert.

My name is Gabriel Tosh, and you know me … Team Blue will be together again, and you’ll be free.

She did know him, his long hair like ropes against his massive shoulders, chocolate skin, every line of his handsome face sharp in her memory. She had been his colleague, his friend, and his lover. They had joined the ghost program together, trained together, learned how to harness their powers and fight for the good of the Dominion. They had faced the harsh, nearly impossible demands of their teachers, fought battle-bots in combat simulations, learned to bond with their team, and prepared themselves for the unknown as if they would have a future together instead of the blank slate of a ghost assassin’s mind.

They had even investigated her father’s suicide together, and uncovered … something, the details of which still weren’t clear. But then she had been mind wiped.

And Gabriel Tosh was dead.

She remembered the reports of his death on a secret mission, and the memory cut her deeply: crouched in a corner in agony, feeling the pain like physical blows wracking her body. Toom sat back on the bed and let out a sob. She could not handle these memories, real or not, and the still-gaping holes in them left her unmoored. It was too much. She hated revealing any kind of weakness, any cracks in her normally rock-solid emotional armor. A ghost showed no feelings. But she could not trust herself now to remain impassive. Whatever the thing was that had wormed its way into her body, it was affecting her mind as well, breaking her down, keeping her from regaining control. She felt terribly unbalanced.

And yet. A strange kind of power coursed through her, making her limbs tingle. She felt like a vulture hover-cycle upgraded with ion thrusters, her engines rumbling and ready for action. She could hear a multitude of voices whispering, as if her teep abilities had been amplified to receive a thousand signals at once.

What was happening to her?

She heard a noise at the door and looked up. Tosh was there once again, blocking out the light from the hallway, staring at her.

Impossible.

“Not impossible, Kath. It’s me.” He smiled at her tenderly, and even through her rage at what he had done to her, she ached to hold him in her arms again.

He took a couple of steps toward her, stopped halfway across the room, just out of arm’s reach. “I’m sorry about earlier. That kind of treatment ain’t my style. You deserve to be handled like a queen, ’cause that’s what you are.”

“Don’t … come any closer.”

(rolling across a sweat-soaked bunk, sheets twisted through their limbs, gasping for breath)

A thrill raced through her body, and Tosh’s grin widened. “I remember that too. It’s been a long time, girl. You look better than you ever did.” He reached out a hand, then let it drop. “You’re learning how to handle the terrazine. Don’t fight. It takes time, but you’ll start to control these flashbacks soon enough. And you’ll start feeling everything else, what it can do. The power. It’ll free your soul, baby. You don’t have to be a prisoner of the Dominion. All those things they did to you and your family, to all of us, in the name of patriotism. No more.”

“I like being a ghost.”

Tosh shook his head, and his gaze darkened. “You like being controlled like a puppet, made to do others’ dirty work, a slave to the master? You don’t know what you’re saying. Don’t matter if it’s the Confederacy or the Dominion: they’re all the same. They squeeze and punch and kick you into a shape they can mold and then wipe it all and start again. You’re just a machine to them. They use you, baby, use you up until there’s nothing left. Terrazine changes all that. You don’t understand yet, but you will.”

(terrazine?)

Tosh smiled and sent a brief mental picture of a gas cloud that curled and wafted and swirled like a living thing, lighting him up like hab and expanding his mind outward until he could reach the very edges of the universe. Something that to him was magical but to her felt like an invader pushing its way inside her.

“You set me up,” she whispered. “All that happened on Altara, it was meant for this?”

“To show you what it means to be free, Kath. To show you the love I have for you. For all ghosts. We’re special, and we deserve our freedom. We answer to no man.”

“But you … hurt me.” She flashed back to the caverns under Altara, creeping through the darkness while being stalked, taunted, and attacked. I’m coming for you. “Why?”

A dark shadow passed across Tosh’s face. “That wasn’t right,” he said. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.” He stepped closer, reached out again, and let his hand touch her face. She couldn’t move, every muscle frozen and screaming, and she wasn’t sure whether he was doing it, or whether her own body had betrayed her.

His fingers caressed her cheek, his touch so light she could barely feel it. She remembered his capacity for tenderness, such gentleness for a powerful man. He moved to the bandage at her temple, lifted a corner to look at the wound. “We removed your neural implant,” he said. “They can’t track you anymore. I missed you, Kath. You don’t know how much.”

“I—”

A noise at the door made Tosh turn. A woman stood there, the lights in the hallway outlining her short hair like a halo. “She’s up, then,” the woman said. “Came to check on her—”

Tosh moved more quickly than Kath Toom had ever thought possible; looking back later, she wondered if she had really seen him move at all. The power in him was breathtaking and terrifying all at the same time. He took the woman by the neck and threw her up against the wall, knocking over a shelf full of towels and linens, holding her a foot off the ground as she spit and choked and kicked at him in a futile effort to free herself.

“You done hurt this girl when you took her,” Tosh said, centimeters from her face. “That wasn’t part of the deal. And you butchered that pretty forehead when you took out the implant. I told you to treat her carefully. You hurt her, you hurt me. Understand?”

The woman’s eyes bulged as she struggled to breathe. She clawed at his forearms, but they looked like wood in her hands.

(just having a little fun Gabe no harm done she’s okay isn’t she lemme down please can’t breathe pleaaasssseeee …)

“Tell her you’re sorry,” he said.

(can’t—breathe—)“

Tell her.”

The woman managed to turn her head enough to look at Kath, her eyes pleading for mercy. A sound like a hiss escaped her mouth as her lips began to turn blue.

“Let her go,” Kath said. She stood up from the bed on shaky legs and made her way cautiously closer, every nerve in her body singing. She could feel the rage pouring off Tosh like sweat. “It’s okay, Gabriel.”

“She’s the one who took you on Altara,” he said. “She was too rough.” He shook his head. “She needs to be punished.”

“No.” Kath reached out and touched his shoulder. “That’s not what I want. Please, let her go.”

“You don’t need to be scared of me,” Tosh said, glancing at her. “I can feel your fear. I would never hurt you. Never.”

(I’m Dylanna Team Red the Ghost Academy you know me Kath help me please)

Kath stared at the woman, then staggered backward as the memory hit her like a physical blow; this woman screaming at Nova Terra after a training mission, accusing her of getting her own team killed—

(Team Blue you were part of Team Blue)

—and Kath had agreed with her then: Nova had gotten them all killed, and thank God it had been only training, but what would happen once they were in the field and the action was for keeps?

But then Nova had gotten her act together and learned the value of teamwork, and they’d become friends, and they’d vowed to remain together even though they all knew that they would have their minds wiped after graduation …

November Terra. Lio Travski. Aal Cistler. Delta Emblock. Gabriel Tosh. They were all part of Team Blue at the academy.

Kath regained her senses on the floor, cradling her head in her hands. She looked up, tears wet on her face. Tosh had put Dylanna down, and the woman was rubbing her neck and coughing.

“What’s happening to me?” Kath screamed. “What have you done?”

Tosh stared at her for a long moment, as if struggling with what to say. She could see and feel the range of emotions washing through him, the rage, the love, the frustration and impatience.

“You’re one of us now,” he said. “You’re a spectre. Better be getting used to that.”

Then he spun on his heels and left the room.