The Ghost

I go back alone.

Maya wants to come with me. I tell her no — the Wardens are watching her, and two humans descending into the Underbelly together will draw exactly the kind of attention we can't afford. One human, moving quietly, following an archaeologist's instinct for reading trails? That I can do.

Soll wants to come too. I tell them the same thing, and they argue with me in a mix of English and Threadweaver vibration that makes my teeth hum.

"You are being stupid," they say.

"Probably."

"Definitely."

"Soll. If something goes wrong down there, Maya needs you up here. You're her translator, her advocate, her connection to everyone on Nexus. I'm just the guy who reads old rocks."

Soll's filaments shift to a deep, frustrated purple. "You are not 'just the guy.' You are important."

"I know. That's why I'm going alone. Because what I'm going to do is important, and it requires not being noticed."

Lena left marks.

Not obvious ones. An outsider wouldn't see them. But I've spent fifteen years following trails left by people who lived centuries before me — tracing the paths of Incan chasquis through mountain passes, reading the wear patterns on Mayan sacbeob, identifying Roman military camps from the depressions they left in English farmland.

Lena was an engineer, not an archaeologist. Her marks are functional, not deliberate: handholds worn smooth from repeated use, stone chips from tools used to pry open sealed passages, scuff marks at corridor intersections where she turned left instead of right enough times to leave a record.