By Michael Louie
A Ghost has no name. The individual is replaced by a number, and each number is stripped of its humanity and denied the reality of its own existence. Everything that was human about a number is locked away in a file whose existence is as plausible as the number itself.
Within the Terran gene pool, genetic mutation began to manifest itself in the form of psychic ability. Confederate scientists cultivated the mistakes of nature and pioneered a new field of scientific study, founding the Ghost Academy, which in turn produced human beings with extra ordinary psychic powers. The unlimited potential of this newly discovered power gave rise to a secret branch of the military that became the Confederacy’s cloak and dagger against insurgency. The Confederacy’s efforts did not go unrewarded, or unpunished.
History has proven that humanity is not born into bondage; indeed, free will is an indomitable force. The human condition had become the greatest hurdle barring the notion of a perfect soldier, but this was overcome through the development and utilization of neural inhibitors. The small devices, crafted by Confederate science, could effectively weaponize a human being. With neural inhibitors, a human could be made to obey, feel nothing, and act without remorse. Minds were bent to the wills of their masters. An individual could be freed from moral underpinnings; orders would never be questioned or thought impossible to realize. Free of inhibitions, a human could become a weapon forged from flesh, an automaton shaped by the collective embers of scientific advancement and military expansion. The Confederacy’s conquest over human nature accomplished little in the war against change; its regime ultimately collapsed under the burden of causality: the Dominion rose from its ashes.
My mind is a dark place, a mental wasteland of damaged memories. The neural inhibitors bolted to my brain had done their damage. Memories are mirages on the barrens of my mind; the illusion of their existence is absolute. The more I attempt to remember the more I seem to forget. How much of what little I remember was fabricated by neural resocialization? My only genuine memories were the ones that I was forced to forget. I do not remember my name, my family, or my home. I do not know who I am beyond the number 4185. All that I know is what the Ghost Academy imbedded in every fiber of my being, for that I am grateful.
The incidents surrounding my escape from servitude remain a mystery. Be it by engineering failure, or failure to comprehend the nuance of the human brain, the neural inhibitors released me from their mental prison. All I know to be true are the events following my awakening.
After being freed, I found myself amongst the dead, half buried under the rubble of what was the Ghost Academy on Tarsonis. Bodies were stacked in ramparts, the stench of burning flesh is still vivid in my mind, and the taste of it remains a horror of recollection. I barely escaped with my life, and am barely convinced that I did.
Soon after the fall of the Confederacy, Arcturus Mengsk—the Dominion’s leader—mandated the methodical and systematic eradication of Confederate Ghosts. There was a witch-hunt. A blanket of wranglers was flung over Dominion Space. Wranglers are low-level psychics, natural hunters whose sole purpose is to detect and locate other individuals with psychic abilities. I was bleeding in an ocean of sharks. Where I went wranglers were sure to follow, and Dominion Ghosts were never far behind.
The death toll mounted. The lives that I had taken began to weigh upon my newly discovered conscience. Killing Ghosts was easy, but killing wranglers was cruel. Wranglers were not soulless weapons they were people: men, women, and children who were enlisted to do the work of dogs.
The breaking point was being forced to choose between the preservation of my own wretched existence and the budding life of a child, a young low-level psychic. No one should have to be born with a gun in her hand because of their genetic destiny, but we live in a cruel world and so it shall be. My existence was selfish, but my desire to live was too powerful a force. The cycle of violence would not end until my existence ceased, or my body interred. I do not fear death; I was simply trained to survive.
For five months the hunter was the hunted, and living revolved around death. I grew tired of traversing the killing fields. My aimless wandering came to a close. Clues began to surface surrounding the existence and whereabouts of a data center housing classified information linked to the Confederate Ghost Program.
I cemented my resolve. The tools of my trade proved vital in securing my freedom. Assassination afforded me money. Money bought me information. Torture provided me secrets. The data center was real, its location known. It was not long before I found myself on a civilian transport en route to a sub-surface asteroid mining facility just outside the Koprulu Sector.
The cabin was cramped, filled with tools and bad company, dishonest men trying to make an honest dollar. The air was stale and carried the stench of fecal matter and motor oil. The minds of the multitude were thick with perversion. At times like these, telepathy can be a burden.
The threat of discovery was not an issue. My disguise reaped the benefits of another person’s preparation. My passport was not my own. My clothing smelled foreign. My dirt-caked boots and overalls were stained in the blood of their previous owner. A flayed jacket fit snuggly over my hostile environment suit and a gutted toolbox concealed an AGR-14 rifle. Vanishing is not a Ghost’s only method of concealment. I was perfectly hidden amongst the filth, a wolf clad in wool armor. Yet, in spite of my guise and guile the other passengers kept their distance; I did not care to mingle and they did not care to converse with a devil. Evidently, it doesn’t take a wrangler to know the difference between a human and a ghost.
The engines howled as the transport prepared for its clandestine decent. The transport jettisoned its cargo onto a dimly lit landing platform. For many of the laborers, this would be their final destination. I took a moment to gather my bearings. Before us, a cavernous maw opened to a rocky wasteland. Behind us, hangar doors loomed in the darkness, abandoned hopes devoured in their steely jaws. We were underground, presumably in the belly of an asteroid suspended in the blackness of space. An emaciated man afflicted by a famine of intellect came to greet us. A rickety tram ride conveyed us to the deep mines. Our party was plunged into darkness and the stench of sulfur was the only sensation grounding me to reality.
On the transport, I was careful to observe the laymen and their sordid social exchanges. In small groups the laymen succumbed to their social training and began conversing and carrying on about the basest of human desires. These men were governed by the lowliest of human qualities: violence, lust, and greed; the inadequacy of their moral fiber was abhorrent. Yet, there was something to envy in their communion.
After trawling through the lowest depths of society I could glean the magnitude of what had been denied to me. The disparity was from lacking in what little these men possessed. If nothing else, at least these men had names and a connection to humanity beyond a file. However unfortunate it may have been, there was no way for me to recover my humanity, but at least it was within my means to secure my freedom. My file was the key to my destiny, and I alone possessed the power to pursue it. A singular door was all that stood in the way of me and my future. All that was left was to find it.
The tram came to a grinding halt. All passengers were instructed to disembark. Amongst the throng of societal refuse, my absence went unnoticed. The deep mines were filled with the stench of putrefaction and lonely endeavors. The familiar aroma of demolition charges and high yield explosives was my only saving grace.
The object of my obsession stood deep within the mines, beyond the drudgery and lamentation of haggard souls. I wandered deeper into the mines. No one questioned my presence there. Blank expressions were all around. Not a single sweat laden brow was raised in inquisition. I was free to move about as I pleased. Finding the door proved to be a simple task; I followed the silence. Time was a vacuum as I journeyed deep into the dark heart of the asteroid.
At last, I had found the door to my salvation. The private thoughts of every faculty member confirmed its identity; not a soul knew the contents of the room beyond its portcullis. The miners did not approach it, the orderlies did not speak of it, and the foremen denied its existence. The door was like a ghost and our connection was absolute.
The perimeter appeared unguarded, but a force of habit compelled me to prepare for combat; I assembled the AGR-14 stowed away in my toolbox and stripped away my disguise down to the environmental hazard suit underneath. The suit crackled with psionic power. The air was still and silence abound.
The door was unmarked with no clear point of entry. My methodology compelled me to inspect the seemingly impregnable fortress for exploitable structural weaknesses. I need only to touch the door to know its uniquely familiar composition. The door and my hazard suit were kin and treated me in kind. My psionic power was enough to rest the beastly door from its sleep, granting me passage.
The grinding of locks and gears could be heard as the door hissed open. A digital recording validated my presence. The sense of belonging was at once overwhelming and unnerving; was the door meant to open for psychics, or was it meant to open for me? Trap or no, my path was clear.
One step put me over the final threshold. My entry was welcomed by the feint pop of flickering lights and the whispered hum of resonating electronics. Standing in the doorway, my heart raced, my breath shallow, my knuckles white. I was paralyzed—my body and soul immobilized—incapable of taking another step. I was bound by the wretched shackles of fear and anxiety; their weight bore down upon me. Regardless of how real the AGR-14 rifle felt in my hands, the comfort it afforded me could not free me from my bondage. For once in my life, I was scared.
With the answers right in front of me, none of my questions mattered. At that moment there was only one thing that I needed to know; it was the answer to the one question that I was too afraid to ask: Was it worth it? How many people have I sent to perdition to find this place? How many times has my life been taken to the brink of existence? Will the end justify the means at which I relentlessly pursued my selfish ambition? A monitor flickered on reminding me of my purpose. The price paid has tallied to an amount so high, that the cost alone justifies the means, and the end is irrelevant.
My mind was stirred by the notion that Pandora’s Box was within my grasp. The air was thick as it filled my lungs. I exhaled slowly to regain my composure and hesitantly approached the computer console. Every step felt heavy with the burden of my existence. I retraced my steps as I walked my destined path.
The database was unlocked. A search with parameters Ghost 4185 retrieved a single file. I opened the file, and laid out its contents. A birth certificate and a text document were all that tied me to the realm of the living. My life had been summarized in a scant twenty lines of text that revealed the potential of my doppelganger.
My father was a writer my mother was a nurse. My psychic powers had developed during my childhood. At the premature age of four, I possessed an estimated Psi Index of two, by the time I was fifteen my Psi Index had increased by a factor of three. My innate telepathic abilities—which allowed me to appropriate the knowledge of my professors—no doubt contributed to my academic success. My mental espionage endowed my academic record with an overabundance of accolades. I was admitted to university days before my sixteenth birthday. I was pursuing a degree in biochemistry. Unfortunately, my abusive exploitation of psychic power did not go unnoticed. The discovery of my abilities truncated my academic career; I was abducted from college and dispatched to Ghost Academy. My parents died shortly after the publication of their child’s obituary.
The name on the birth certificate read, “Arin Turais.” I am twenty-five years old.
With two swift keystrokes, my file was stricken from the database. I breathed deep. A sigh of relief passed between my lips.
As I turned to exit the room, a tremendous force made its presence known. Over a hundred voices breached the perimeter of my mind. Marines had made landfall and were encroaching on my position. The trap had been sprung. The asteroid had become an open grave awaiting my interment. My freedom to live was slipping away.
The deep mines were a labyrinth of snaking corridors and winding tunnels; all would be lost but those who grasped the pattern of its web. Only the miners possessed the intimate knowledge required to route the deep mines, I was more than happy to steal it. Like a black widow, I waited patiently for my prey.
The marines entered the deep mines and were quick to expand their search, dividing their numbers. The marine fire teams wasted no time in getting lost. Their thoughts went quickly to dark places, as they wandered aimlessly through the deep mines. I could hear dozens of voices afraid of death; their fear gave way to panic and hysteria. The conditions were perfect. Bodies began to line the corridors. I became one with the shadows. My combat knife was thirsty. My rifle was starved for ammunition. Adrenaline coursed through my veins.
The tram awaited my return. I boarded the otherwise abandoned conveyance. The roar of the engine accompanied me on my return to the hangar bay. I sat quietly. My thoughts were somber as I contemplated the burden of a healthy conscience.
My train of thought was interrupted by the sound of distant voices. In the hangar, a full platoon of marines lay in waiting. All thoughts pointed toward grizzly conclusions. All rifles pointed toward the incoming tram. All attention was focused on the horror. No one was prepared for the terror that awaited them.
There was nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide. A thin wall separated me from oblivion, but I had not consigned myself to death. I faced my adversaries, closed my eyes to the light, and opened my mind to the darkness. A psychic attack exploded from beyond the door, piercing through thinly veiled valor. My thoughts reached out to all those who awaited my arrival. What they could not bear was the painful truth of my existence. The mental barrage inspired its victims with horrible visions, suicidal thoughts, and psychotic behavior. Feeble minds clutched at reality only to have it stripped away. My influence was absolute; the sheep were powerless to resist the shepherd. Their minds led their hands astray. Weapons were turned on their masters. The collective sound of fifty rifle rounds rang through the hangar bay and rippled through the soul.
Cave-ins and massive structural failures were blamed for the catastrophic loss of life that day. Amongst a list of dead, I added the number 4185. I was finally free.
