Chapter 2: Guardians and Ghosts
1073 Words
The Guardians met under the dome soon after second bell, their tall profiles serious under the uncompromising glare of overhead lights. The Assembly Room, cut out of the limestone belly of Vault 9, stank of sterilized water, old metal, and ozone. A discipline room. The kind that scrapes feeling from bone.
Faris stood at attention in the third row, right fist tucked behind his back, thumb rubbing the space where his League mark had been branded into him last year. The skin still twitched from time to time when Rahim appeared. Today, it itched.
Commander Rahim strode the platform in his desert-gray uniform, epaulets where drops of condensation sparkled—one of the League's psychological tricks. Make the soldiers yearn at a glance for their superior. "Hydration," Rahim began, voice crisp and metallic, "is not a luxury. It is earned, rationed, respected."
He suspended the words like sand suspended in still air.
"Vault 9 is at 87.2% capacity," Rahim continued. "Which keeps us safe. Not safe. Never safe. We're keepers, not dreamers. Your job is not to dream. It is to maintain the line."
There was a flicker of something on the commander's face—fatigue, or maybe disgust. Then it was gone again.
Faris's mind wandered—not from duty, but deeper into it. Numbers. He had read the same tank levels at 87.2% five cycles ago. A random event, maybe. Or careless handling of data. But his own sensor—the Model 6-FX, calibrated by himself—had indicated 84.1% last night.
He shifted position. Rahim's recitation went on, but was muffled, such as water behind pipe walls.
Faris raised his hand.
All the heads in the hall obeyed his gesture.
Rahim stopped reciting.
"Tell me, Guardian Faris," Rahim spoke slowly.
Faris's voice was flat. "Sir, my sensor read 3.1% decrease in the past five cycles. Below the claimed 87.2. A cross-feed or misread error, perhaps?"
Rahim's hawk face, sharp eyes, locked onto him. "You question League telemetry?"
"No, sir. I merely want to check the integrity of the system. There could be a leak, an anomaly in Chamber K, or—"
"We monitor each chamber daily. Vault 9's levels are standard. You would do better to come back and resync your equipment instead of questioning official findings." His tone fell to a whisper. Threatening. "Is that understood?"
Faris bobbed his head. "Yes, Commander."
But already his resolve faltered. His sensor was not deceiving him. He checked it twice. Three times. Numbers never lied—unless instructed so.
The briefing dissipated in a whirl of steel boots and stifled murmur. No one spoke to Faris. That was the way of the League. Dissent wasn't confronted with violence—it was merely starved out of existence by silence.
He escaped into the rear corridor, past Storage Intake, where transparent tanks stretched on like giant lungs behind safety glass. The vista usually calmed him. Not today.
He halted at Bay G. His breath caught. The tank was lower. Visible lower. The line—red-drawn for the quarter line—had been breached.
No warning flag.
No flashing light.
No mention in the report.
He seethed behind the glass, heart rate a metronome like grains in an hourglass ticking.
"Why lie?" he panted.
The glass mirror snapped back: a seventeen-year-old kid in a guardian's uniform, already challenging the walls that confined him.
Footsteps along the hallway. Faris stood back.
Behind him, the storage tank pulsed. Silently. Dwindling.
Rahim's voice still rings in his mind, cold as reused fog: "Your duty is not to hope."
Hope did not come into it, though. He was starting to suspect something worse.
That someone had planned for the Vault to fail.
---
That night, sleep escaped Faris like vapor—near, then gone.
The bunkroom was a tangle of breath and crinkling fabric, the other youth guardians sleeping in uniform stillness. Above, the air recycler hummed like a lullaby written by machines. But Faris was motionless-eyed under the blankets, eyes staring into the ceiling grid, mind plugged into one beat: 84.1%.
At 02:00 hours, he stood noiselessly from his bunk.
Bootless, jacketless, silent.
He moved through Corridor Delta as a ghost would, trained not to be seen. A loose grate between the dehumidifier shaft was his doorway—an old maintenance tunnel mapped out by cadet orientation but forgotten by all. Or perhaps conveniently taken out.
The crawlspace smelled of coolant and copper. It split just past the hydro-condensation coils, widening into a pipe above Storage Bay K.
Faris peered through the slatted vent.
There. The tank once more.
But this time, someone was already there.
Below, a figure in a black hydration suit sans the League insignia kneeling beside the base valve of the primary tank, surgical hands moving. Faris's heart was racing in his throat. Unauthorized individual. Tampering.
He rubbed his eyes. Not a hallucination. The valve was being rerouted.
The intruder paused. Glanced upward. Straight into the shadows.
Faris held his breath.
Nothing stirred.
But the man didn't come back to work. Instead, he rose, backed away from the tank, and spoke quietly into a communicator:
"Phase is active. Ghost Line confirmed. Proceed to Vault 12 next rotation."
And then, as smoothly, the figure disappeared into the other tunnel.
Faris remained locked in place for minutes. Perhaps hours. Until his limbs were recalled they were attached to him.
Ghost Line.
The term had been used once in covert systems training. Rumor. A black market syndicate tapping water between vaults and diverting it for. no one knew. The League had discounted it as a rebel rumor.
Someone was bleeding Vault 9. Quietly. Elegantly. Purposely.
In the bunkroom, Faris pulled the sheet into place, face to wall, and spoke three words into his pillow:
"Ghosts are real."
He didn't mean ghosts.
He meant traitors.
---
Dawn
Commander Rahim stood on the rationing platform before dawn, preaching caution and balance. His voice echoed like righteousness.
Faris stared at the commander's boots. He noticed that they were wet.
Why not?
No leak. No storm. No mist trigger. And yet.
His gaze moved upward.
Rahim was smiling.
Not for them.
For himself.
Something in that smile made Faris want to run—not from it, but to something deeper. Somber.
He needed proof.
But more than that, he had someone to take him at his word.
And in Vault 9, that might be harder than finding water.
Advance.
—
- Writer
