The same disorienting static every time. The same every time. Unable to perceive her surroundings, everything blurs together.
Days.
Weeks?
Months go by with the vex processing, who knows what before the scene was presented to her. No option but to hover and wait.
A seemingly endless interlude.
The same as always, just as time starts to lose all meaning a frigid torrent of wind blindsides her, sending her careening into a nearby snowdrift.
Luck would have it, cold cant harm a ghost. Disoriented for but a moment she shot out of the powdery snow, rotating and shaking her shell to send the ice raining down to the ground.
Reflexively her scanners pinged her surroundings. A pulse of light extended out from her in a sphere for but a moment.
COMPUTATIONAL SENSORS READINGS
Date: ERROR — Unknown. Winter for the northern hemisphere. Approximately late afternoon.
Location: Likely Europe based on architecture. Presumably swiss alps. Cross referencing network
ERROR — Unable to download Global positioning data.
ERROR — Unable to sync a match with geographical data.
Lifesigns: No sapient life signatures alive nearby. Several corpses in vicinity.
ADDENDUM : Scanning recommended.
Threats: Category 1 Strong wind, Extreme category blizzard imminent.
ADDENDUM : Override earlier suggestion. Seek shelter ASAP.
This village was obviously a snapshot sliced from time by one of the Vex probes. Copied meticulously down to the brick to be indistinguishable from the real thing even going so far as to fool her sensors.
Never had she been to this village, but she had seen many of it’s like. She knew not where, but he was here somewhere. He was always here. A lone constant.
Many iterations prior… more than she could possibly count. She attempted to flee this dog and pony show put on by the Vex. Several times in fact.
It always failed.
Anytime she meandered too far from the path laid out for her suddenly she would find herself reset back to the start of the simulation. Your only choice is to follow the narrative until you return to the static.
Giving up and waiting meant nothing. The vex had anything but time. She would make her decision regardless and they would get their data.
Resigned, she began her search for him, scanning various debris and rubble as snow began lightly falling around her.
Nowhere obvious.
It wasn’t clear at first from their experiment, the first few iterations she wondered the purpose of trapping her here. Given the content of the simulation she was given time and time again she had a decently accurate hypothesis.
She floated through several office buildings, checking below desks.
Unusual. There were no old desiccated bodies that normally lay strewn about in these sorts of ruined villages.
The scanners indicated there was a plethora of corpses. The inhabitants of the village… but where were the bodies?
She floated back into the biting chill. Seemingly at random she chose another building. Her egress was through a hole in a stained glass window. She explored the eerily quiet church, the wind howled outside its shutters. Pew after pew remained empty.
Unusual. There were none who had clung to their faith in their final moments, normally these places had several huddled together when they perished.
As she exited she noted rows upon rows of freshly dug graves. Dozens upon dozens of crudely made wooden posts erected above the mounds. Names and approximate date of death carved with meticulous detail. All within days of each other.
Taking a moment she floated through the plentiful graves, scanning through the topsoil. Searching. Most died of exposure, starvation, freezing to death.
Not here either.
Snow began to whip around her in a frenzy as she shot back into the village center. One last building to check.
Oddly she often found him in buildings like this. Perhaps some things you can’t change about a person.
Sure enough slumped over the bar she found him. An open bottle before him. The only constant. A lone exo. Slender yet sturdy. A shovel lay discarded on the floor behind him, dented and soiled. Rusted beyond usability.
His death was always different. His life was always different every time she found him. It was always him though. She was sure he was the only real thing in this whole illusionary place.
The entire village had died due to exposure. Freezing. Starving. The slow decline that follows these sorts of disasters. Huddled together. Praying.
None of that could kill an exo. It appears in this iteration he had chosen to forcibly deactivate himself this time around.
He lay slumped over the wooden bar, pistol still clutched in his metallic fingers. Shrapnel coated the rest of the bar obscuring an exceptionally dull carving knife.
“So we meet again. It always turns out like this doesn’t it? You. Fated to die. Me. Fated to unearth wherever you wound up. It’d be almost poetic, a tragedy. If it wasn’t so utterly fucked up.”
She sat hovering over him. How long had this charade gone on? How many years has it been? Is the traveler even still out there? Does any of this matter?
She looked him over head to toe, looking for potential. The spark.
Do ghosts look for soul-mates? Are they fated for one individual? He never felt right for her. She had long rallied against the vex and their machinations with this experiment.
She tried so long to be stalwart.
To find the fated One.
“It truly seems we are but fated for each other. I don’t even know your name. Your life. Your real life. Who you were before all this. We’ve both been tortured over and over in this temporal purgatory.”
The ghost came to rest besides the exo’s slumped form, sitting on the hardwood bar.
“ I really can’t stand to find you like this. I can’t stand to watch you die anymore. If these are the steps we must dance. I’ll take the lead. We’ll find out what comes next.”
She began the process of putting the exo back together.
