Halapatov

Chapter Thirteen

           

Riowyn indicated to us to prepare to exit the train, and we moved off.

"Don't worry." She murmured to us, as we headed onto the streets of a foreign town. "It'll be okay. It's not your guys' fault. It's just... concerning."

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry for.... I've been thinking." She continued, walking hastily and purposefully, eyes occasionally flicking to her device for direction. "I just don't know what to do. If there's an attack happening a day? I don't know. I don't know."

I noticed Sophie, continuing to stare anywhere but at us. As worried and upset as I was, I knew I was the most stable one here, and I'd have to do what I could to keep everyone calm.

I placed a hand on Riowyn's shoulder lightly and kept in stride with her fast pace. "Riowyn, it'll be okay. This is horrible, but it'll be okay. If Sophie and I have something to do with this, then there should be a way to do something to fix it. And if it doesn't have anything to do with us, then the advancing situation will force the authorities to look into it and it will be fixed. It'll be okay. It will it will."

Riowyn glanced sideways at me, and her mouth turned a bit. "Okay." She said softly. "Thank you."

All of us were so worried about everything that we didn't talk for the rest of our long trip, except to make necessary remarks and questions. Finally, we reached a street, at the end of which we could see a roped off area. Riowyn checked her device and nodded.

"This is it." She breathed, then scrabbled through her bag, pulling out a small card and her device from work. We moved towards the scene where a solitary officer stood, as the point of reference for the crime scene. Riowyn showed him her card. "We're from the research team, can we do some work in the scene?"

The officer scrutinised the card for a second and then nodded and moved aside. We moved under the rope and into the alley.

"It says a guy was found here with the same symptoms that all the victims have had. No one's done any scans yet." Riowyn flicked some switches on the side of her device. "Sophie, would you please...?"

"Happy to oblige," Sophie replied, picking her scanner from her belt and turning a knob, searching through its applications for the kind of scans she needed. Since she had these devices to aid her scientific research, I wondered if she would include our investigation on the ghosts into her report for back home. I guess she would have to.

"Staar matter, of course." Sophie mumbled, swinging the scanner round to encompass the whole site. "Traces of energy. I'd have to analyse these patterns to understand it all properly."

"Yeah, there have definitely been ghosts here, not that we didn't know that already," Riowyn pressed a button on her device and then frowned. "Hang on, there's something... some sort of spike that doesn't make sense..."

"Wait, I can probably cross-reference these readings." Sophie flipped the case of the teleport watch open and tapped at the buttons for a few moments in frustration.

"Argh!" she glanced over at me. "Nothing's working; it's like something's... interfering."

I was about to respond but then I picked up a low sort of humming on the tip of my senses, and I stared anxiously around. I recognised this.

Riowyn was watching me with confusion. "What-"

Then, just like how it had happened the previous night, shimmering particles in the air began to draw together before us.

"Abi," Sophie looked nervously around. "Is this..."

She stopped. Riowyn gasped. In the air in front of us appeared a ghost.