Prologue

As far as he could tell, his existence was a sequence of lights and colors, flashing through his mind at speeds he was unable to comprehend. If anything, it was like a dream: images flowing into each other in nonsensical ways, traveling a path he couldn't quite follow. If he didn't think too hard, it was almost nice.

After a while, things started to make sense.

Slowly, the colors solidified into images. A metallic room lit in a piercing blue light. A mansion on a hill; a child bleeding out on the streets outside. A tunnel. A featureless grey amphitheater. A tempered glass window with a view of the stars.

A tree, alone on a cliff.

He wasn't sure what the significance of these images was, or where they came from. It felt like flipping through a book, not stopping on a single page long enough to make out any meaning, just a few words here and there and maybe a vibe if you're lucky.

The images stopped. He awoke.

He wasn't sure how he knew he was awake; all that greeted his eyes was an inky blackness. A moment before, he simply wasn't, and he now was; some fundamental shift in how his brain was working that screamed this is consciousness. This is real.

Gradually, sensation came to his body. His skin felt immersed in some sort of viscous cold fluid, like he'd been covered in molasses; if he concentrated, he could tell that the fluid had slid underneath...something that emerged from his skin in most places. Scales? He wasn't sure yet.

At the very least, he could surmise that he was currently weightless. Probably somewhere in space, by his guess.

Shortly thereafter, he felt the numbness drain from his limbs, and signals flooded his mind with his overall body plan. He had two legs, with what seemed to be three toes on each foot, as well as a tail protruding from his back. Additionally, he had four arms, and if he flexed his hands he could tell each had four fingers.

He felt an uncomfortable presence in his throat. Involuntarily, his tongue slid over to find the intrusion, quickly hitting some sort of tube lodged down his trachea, which jiggled a bit as he hit it but refused to dislodge.

He needed to gag but was unable to. Panic set in, and he began to squirm and spasm, muscular contractions wildly moving each of his six limbs. His tail slammed against some sort of wall, something that felt smooth like plastic, and as he slipped forward, the tube in his throat tugged up against the roof of his mouth, scratching it slightly and eliciting a wince.

He nearly leapt out of his skin as a klaxon suddenly sounded, followed by the metallic ring of a recorded feminine voice. "Movement detected. Disengaging cryosleep systems."

He felt an uncomfortable friction as the tube gently slid out from his mouth, then he slipped and fell forward, still suspended in the fluid, nausea wracking his body.

"Draining suspension fluids."

A sound much like a vacuum rang around him, and he felt the pressure on his skin loosen as the fluid slowly disappeared from around his body, replaced with the somewhat warmer feeling of breathable air. Once the 'suspension fluid' as the voice put it drained from around his face, he retched and puked up what he could only assume was more of the fluid that'd gone down his throat. Fuck.

"Emesis detected," the voice chirped. "Spraying cleaning solution."

With a hiss, a perfume or something sprayed onto him, strangling out the stench of the vomit with a floral scent. He could only assume that his body's reaction to...whatever was happening to him was normal, at least.

He was almost about to wonder where he was before he realized his eyes were closed. Lightly blinking them open, he was greeted by the interior of some kind of pod, large enough to fit him and not much else. The walls were a featureless grey, illuminated by cyan LED strips above him...and by...him?

He glanced down at his body. He was nude, and his assumptions as to his body had proved correct; he was evidently some sort of bipedal lizard, and he was covered head to toe in cobalt-blue scales. Perhaps most interesting, his body was covered in twisting, glowing patterns, teal in color, softly illuminating the floor beneath him and the walls to his side.

What was he? Who was he? He came to the uncomfortable realization that he didn't actually know.

Panic set in. Shouldn't he know who he was? What his name was? Even just the name of his species?

Before he could freak out too much, the voice returned. "Welcome to your Taro Manufacturing escape pod. Pinging Taro servers to establish location."

It was silent for a moment, then an electronic beep sounded over the speakers. "ERROR: Unable to establish connection to Taro servers. Beginning diagnostic...Slipnet ping: FAILED. Checking onboard starmaps."

Electric motors whirred in the background as something adjusted internally in the pod. "ERROR: No known starmap matches. Sending electromagnetic distress signal. Distress signal: SENT."

Well, at least something works, he thought to himself.

"Scanning current location for infrared signatures," the voice continued. "Planetoid signature detected. Autopilot has put this pod into a stable orbital trajectory."

The voice went silent for a few seconds. Just when he thought it'd finished speaking, it continued.

"Emergency controls initiated. Provide input to continue."

He frowned. What the hell does that mean?

"Who am I?" he asked.

"Unknown command. Options are: run extra diagnostics, parse planetoid data, or provide trajectory input."

"WHO AM I?" he shouted.

"Unknown command," it repeated. "Options are: run extra diagnostics, parse planetoid data, or provide trajectory input."

He sighed. "Run extra diagnostics."

"Running diagnostics. Thruster system: ONLINE. Life support system: ONLINE. Cryosleep system: ON STANDBY. Internal clock: ERROR. Current date is: UNKNOWN. Current location is: UNKNOWN."

That doesn't help much. "Parse planetoid data."

"Running spectroscopic analysis...body appears to be a planet in its star's habitable zone. Atmosphere determined to be breathable. Mass is approximately 1.1 Elyas. High void signature detected. Analysis: appears to be survivable."

Good enough. "Land on planet."

"Trajectory input provided. Initiating landing."

Immediately, he felt the pod lurch as its thrusters kicked into action, pushing its trajectory out of orbit and toward the planet. He kicked back against the side of the pod, settling in for the landing process. He knew this kind of thing usually took half an hour or so, though he couldn't remember how he knew that.

The voice came back over the speakers. "ERROR: Malfunctioning- -kzzt-"

With a static crackle, its audio suddenly cut to a different sound - an audio recording of a loud thruster. Over the noise, a slightly garbled voice began to shout - a voice he recognized as his own.

"I don't have much time. To get this -kzzt- recording onboard, I had to...-kzzt- overwrite part of the emergency handling software...you might be hitting the ground pretty hard. -kzzt-"

His voice sounded rushed, interspersed with heavy breathing and an omnipresent static. He could almost swear he could hear footsteps in the recording somewhere.

As the recording played, he felt the pod begin to shake. That wasn't supposed to happen. Was it hitting the atmosphere already?

"I had to send you to...-kzzt- to escape...-kzzt- need to survive. You are -kzzt- in great danger."

The recording was breaking up more now, and his voice was getting more audibly strained. By now it was abundantly clear that past him had been running from something. He didn't remember what.

"There's no time to explain, -kzzt- sorry...I've lined things up so -kzzt- should be able to -kzzt-. Be on edge the -kzzt- you land...the...-kzzt-."

Whatever he'd been trying to say dissolved into static at this point. The shaking was getting violent now. He'd braced himself against the wall to try to avoid losing his footing. It wasn't helping much.

With a final crackle, a few last words came through the speaker, clearly now.

"Go forth, Ghost. -kzzt- The fate of everything lies with you."

The recording ended there. He heard an explosion somewhere behind him. The pod went tumbling around his body, sending him careening into the ceiling.

He felt his head slam into metal, and everything went dark.