She wakes with a gasp of icy air.

Hoarfrost crunches under her stiff limbs. The sky above is blue and clear.

"Guardian? Guardian! It worked! You're alive!"

The little drone bobs at the edge of her view, its chipper male voice far too warm for her frigid surroundings.

"Alive…" she mumbles, testing the shape of the word in her mouth.

She climbs to her shaky feet and surveys the rusting industrial complex. The thin snow cover is packed in drifts, and yellow leaves cling to skeletal trees. Late autumn. Beautiful and cold. So very very cold….

"Can you hear me Guardian? You're alive, but we need to find shelter. There's a storm coming, and Fallen patrols have doubled in the past week. We're not safe."

She looks at the little drone. "Fallen?"

"Aliens. Pirates. Very dangerous. They're focused on the other side of the Cosmodrome for now, but…I don't suppose you know how to fight?"

She shakes her head.

The drone sighs. "Well, too much to hope for. Come on, we should get going. We're too exposed here. It'd be just my luck to have you freeze to death right after…" he trails off as he zips away.

"Wait!"

The drone stops and turns back to her. "Guardian? Is something wrong?"

"What's your name?"

"Name? Well, I don't really have one. I'm just a Ghost. Well, now I'm your Ghost."

"Ghost. Yeah…thank you for bringing me back. That was you, right?"

Ghost nods.

"I'm…Linvana." That isn't quite right, she can tell that much, but it isn't wrong either.

"Pleased to meet you, Linvana. Now let's get moving. You're going to catch hypothermia."

"Will it fly?" Linvana asks.

Ghost probes the prow of the black and orange jumpship with stabs of blue light. Behind her, a blizzard rages above the hatch of the buried bunker.

"In this condition?" Ghost spins the segments of his shell. "Definitely not."

Her fragile bubble of hope bursts.

"It does have an NLS drive though. Funny. It can't even get off the ground, but if we could get it to orbit somehow, it could take us to Venus, Mars, even the outer system."

Linvana sighs and steps closer to the ship. They'd done well in the past three weeks, she liked to think. Ghost found a beat-up old rifle in a caved-in basement. The thing didn't fire straight, and even if it did, she couldn't aim worth a damn, but it did fire, and she'd managed to kill a few Fallen with it. Now she wears their furs for warmth, and Ghost converts the canisters of organics they carried into a bland but edible paste.

But, despite all that, this Last Safe City that Ghost talks about remains frustratingly out of reach. He tells her stories at night, of the great heroes that protected it. Rezyl Azzir, the mighty. Saint-14, the undaunted. Tallulah Fairwind the cunning.

All she wants is to be warm and safe. To see another person.

How will she ever get there? There's half a world between her and that City. Even if she manages to reach the coast, what then? Will she try to swim across an ocean?

Suppressing a sigh, she slings her rifle over her shoulder and pulls the hatch shut over the stairs. Maybe the ship can't fly, but the bunker will make a good shelter for the night.

"Whatever it is, it's definitely not Fallen," Ghost says.

Linvana peaks out of broken window. The distant engine whine is already receding, which means the ship has passed overhead.

There. A tiny, triangular speck was crawling towards the distant horizon. Ghost is right. It's sharper, faster than any skiff she'd seen.

"Hold on…" Ghost's shell spins and jitters. "That's a Guardian ship! From the Last City! Hailing them now."

The far-away speck swerves, then begins growing again.

Linvana watches with a strange, hopeful trepidation. She's begun giving up on finding a way to reach the City. Did the answer really just fall into her lap?

The ship roars overhead, little more than a dark blur. A man wearing a long dark coat materializes in the snowy yard. He looks around, a sleek gray rifle in his hands. He doesn't see Linvana, hidden in the crumbling outbuilding.

"Hello?" he calls, "I received a distress call from this location? Anyone here?"

"It's alright," Ghost says, "He's friendly."

The man holds out his hand, and his own Ghost appears above. They talk quickly and quietly. Linvana catches only a few words. 'Encryption' and 'ambush.'

Linvana swallows and steps out into the open. The man in the coat spins to face her, rifle raised. She freezes, her own weapon half-way up.

The wind hisses and rasps across the snow drifts.

He laughs and lowers his rifle. "Well, if you're trying to pass for a vandal, you're going to need a couple more arms."

Linvana frowns, then realizes she is wearing a bundle of Fallen scarves and cloaks. She sheepishly lowers her rifle.

"Is that a Khvostov?" The man crosses the yard with a light step.

She glances at the skeletal black rifle. "I, uh, I don't know."

"Well if it still works, it has to be. The Old Russians loved their apocalypse-proof guns." He holds out his gloved hand. "Kalumet Ziv."

She clasps the proffered hand. "Linvana."

"Nice to meet you, Linvana. How long since your Ghost found you?"

"It's been a few weeks."

"Huh. Well that makes you older than the other one, by a week at least. I don't suppose you've killed any Archons?"

"I…don't know what an Archon is."

"Ah. Consider yourself lucky then." He pulls out his Ghost. "Bring the ship back around, make sure there's room for both of us." The Ghost nods and vanishes again.

"Anyways. I'm here to plant some patrol beacons. The Vanguard wants eyes and ears in the area, with how many crews the House of Devils has been offloading."

"Yeah," Linvana says, despite not knowing what half of that means.

"So that will take a few hours, but once you're done, we can get you back to the City."

And so Linvana's life truly begins.