Stay away from the darkness.

I must...... Stay away from the darkness.

But why? The darkness protected me.

Ouch.

Am I bleeding?

Different and confusing thoughts crossed his mind, and the Spectre wondered if he was still alive; all he felt was pain, and another emotion he wasn't too proud to admit.

He wanted to go back into the darkness, back to the bottom of that pit, which was damp and warm, with rats for food and mud for shelter.......

He didn't want to take this..........He didn't deserve to be treated like this.

But a voice whispered in his ear, urging him to abandon such thoughts.

Stay away from the darkness, Spectre, that is not a fate you deserve, it said.

......Fate?

The raw word penetrated his already chaotic thoughts, making the place even more manic.

Countless visions swooped down in the next second, flailing and grabbing him with sharp claws, telling the ghost the truths they believed in.

"You have no choice, boy, you have no choice!"

They roared, their voices like bells and midnight thunder.

"The foolish dreams of fools! There is no way to change what has been established, and you must submit! You are destined to be bloody and infamous, and only then can you become..."

Become what?

The apparition looked at the distorted landscape in confusion, and then a light struck.

-----------------

"Awake?"

The apparition sat up with a jolt and began panting heavily, but without thinking, he rose from the floor and used his sense of smell to make his way back on his hands and knees to the corner he knew best.

After a shuddering ten seconds or so, he realized who the greeter was.

And where this place was.

Khalil sat in the darkness and looked at him with a blank face, "Are you against the wall, Spectre?"

"What?"

"I said, are you leaning against the wall?"

"Yes," the apparition replied with a shudder, "I'm leaning against the wall."

His shoulders were shaking at the moment, the fear from the visions still hadn't subsided.He didn't understand what these things really were, and he didn't want to.He just wanted to forget about them.

"Come here," Kalil said. "Stop leaning against the wall, that position is not good for your injuries."

"No, I don't want to..."

Instinctively, the Spectre wanted to refuse, he didn't want to leave this corner, this place was as comfortable to him as the bottom of the pit.

But all instinct went up in smoke the moment he saw Karil's eyes.

The neon light coming in through the battered door was shattered by the hollowness of the wooden door itself into a series of irregular, broken points of light that struck half of Khalil's face, making his pale face look like a furtive painting.

His eyes glowed.

The Spectre's trembling stopped.

"Come here, Spectre." Khalil repeated quietly. "Don't lean against the wall."

This time the Spectre obeyed.

The pain in his back prevented him from walking smoothly, and a sticky sensation slid down his spine.

Blood, my blood.The Ghost thought.

He pursed his lips in pain.

"You're badly hurt."Kalil cocked his head, looking slightly wistful."They shot you with a hook and line gun, that thing's for hunting, lucky you."

"Hunting...?"

"Yes, there were a lot of people outside the city who were kicked out when they couldn't afford to pay, and they struggled to survive out there, at the cost of becoming indistinguishable from wild animals."

"So the nobles invented a new form of entertainment, and the gangs were happy to participate, but not with the nobles; they call the process catching up. It's funny, isn't it?"

He laughed, but there was no laughter in his eyes.

"It's not funny...."Spectre whispered."What's a hook and line gun again?"

"That stuff is scary, Spectre."Karil laughed and shook his head.

"It will explode apart the moment it hits, and the arrowhead will shatter into a dozen pieces with brutal barbs on each one.It would catch the flesh and bone of its prey and extend inward as far as it could.So your back is a miserable mess right now."

Am I going to die?The Spectre asked wordlessly, he didn't speak, but his expression was enough to tell Karil his question.

"No, you won't," Karil said. "In fact, in a few hours at most, your still-bleeding wounds will be ready to scab over, Spectre."

"......"

The Spectre didn't answer his words, just sat in silence; he seemed a little frustrated, and Karil didn't miss the emotion.

He was rarely wrong, almost never wrong.

"You're frustrated?" asked Kalil.

The Spectre lifted his head and looked at him before burying it again, "That question, am I not going to get an answer?"

"Yes."

"......I forgot to close the window," the apparition said, annoyed."You ......reacted so quickly."

"Are you trying to find reasons to defend yourself, Spectre?"

"......"

Kahlil couldn't help but laugh at the Spectre's reaction, but there wasn't much in the way of truly happy emotion in the smile.

The laugh was more a mockery of himself.

You've been hit by one of those things that can tear through a grown man, he thought, and then you've been thrown off the roof of a thirty-foot building and dragged.

Pulled and bloodied by the combined force of three motorcycles - and then you bled almost a vat of blood under the acid rain.

Yet you're still alive and can call yourself healthy.

Your wounds will even heal in a few hours.

You're such a horrible monster, Spectre, but you happen to have a heart that only a human can have.

What am I going to do with you?

The smile faded, and Karil stopped speaking as he gazed at the ghost, his expression becoming calmer.

After a moment, he spoke again.

"For a novice, you did well.You bypassed the guards and the sentries on the roof, and you opened the window without making a sound......".

"It took you less than a minute in total to kill the three leaders.That's good."

"But don't look at me like that, Spectre," Karil said calmly."I'm not complimenting you.You're not a novice anymore."

The Spectre nodded dejectedly, agreeing with Karil.He didn't argue back because he knew Karil was right.

Karyl was always right.

He lowered his head again.

"You started this job six months ago.You're not a novice, Spectre.You've already killed a lot of damn people, and yet you still haven't learned the most important part of this job, among others."

"You must always be careful, Spectre. Mark my words, always be careful."

"If killing the person in front of you will expose you, don't move.If the enemy's location is unknown, wait until they show up before you move.If you don't know what's in the dark......................................................................................"

"But..."

"No buts, Spectre," Khalil said softly, "Listen, if you don't understand, write it down, sooner or later you will understand, and you must........................................................................................"

The Spectre's eyes widened, the first time he had ever acted so surprised.

"What does that mean?" he asked in a very quick tone."Why don't you have time?Are you leaving?"

"No, I'm not leaving. I don't have time because I'm dying," Khalil replied calmly.

"But you're obviously healthy!"

The apparition said sharply, "I can see that I know a lot of things, Khalil-you're not going to die, and I know that as well as I know how long I've been alive! Do you know how long you've lived?"

Khalil did not respond to this statement.

The apparition's incoherence made him smile again, a pale smile, and then he turned to something else.

"Do you know what a time bomb is, Spectre?"

"It's a funny little device, a normal bomb explodes quickly within seconds of being triggered.Not so with a time bomb."

"It's artificially timed, a constantly beating countdown....The moment the countdown hits zero, it explodes."

The Spectre looked at him with extreme unease, waiting for the next words.

"And I......I have a countdown," Khalil said."There are two problems here.First, I don't know when this countdown will run out.I can't see the exact number, just a vague sense of it."

"Second, I'm much more dangerous than a time bomb, and I can sense it - and so can you, Spectre, remember? You said that the kind of power I use is dangerous....Yes, it is indeed dangerous."

The Spectre bared his teeth in anger at his words, his teeth clean and white, his face stained by the acid rain and made filthy by his own blood.But Khalil could see the truth.

Beneath the filth, the Spectre was perfect.

There was no doubt that he was not human.

But he was angry at the moment.

"You said the time bomb was man-made!" roared Spectre. "Countdown? Who set the countdown for you? I'll find out, and I'll kill him!"

Anger flashed across his face, and Kalil narrowed his eyes, feeling the palpable and terrible threat.

The Spectre was not hostile to him; in fact, the Spectre's fury was meant to protect him at the moment, but the mere aftermath of the fury already made Karil resist the urge to swing his sword.

Perfect, perfect, Spectre.You can definitely change the world.

"Relax, Spectre."Khalil chuckled."Nobody set a countdown for me, and in fact, if you had to ask me to find someone to blame for this, well, that person would have to be me."

"What?"

Faced with his question, Kalil didn't explain - or rather, he chose to explain in a different way.

"Everything in this world has a price, Spectre. Some are obvious, some are hidden."

"Take, for example, the kind of power I use.It's convenient, responsive, and so powerful that it doesn't need to adhere to the logic of reality; it can even summon a dead soul floating through the universe......".

"And the cost, often associated with these things."

"It changes me, Spectre," Khalil said softly, his tone almost dreamy.

"I can detect this subtle change....And speaking from experience, the price I must pay for such a powerful force must be staggering."

The Spectre looked at him in confusion, completely unable to comprehend what he was saying, but it was for the best.Kahlil didn't want to tell the whole truth in just half an hour.

Some things had to be done to make the Spectre realize that he was already wary of the world, but for a world like Nostramo, he wasn't wary enough.

He was still too naive.

He should be decidedly cruel to his enemies, treating them as if they were the worst monsters in the world before he even decided to do anything about them.

A man's attitude toward the world should depend on how the world treats him; if the world kisses you with pain, you don't have to return the favor.

But you don't have to burn the world down with fire either.

"Go and rest, Spectre."

Karil stood up."Your first solo hunt wasn't a complete failure, but you weren't successful either.As for the answer to that question....I'll consider it later, at my discretion.".

"Where are you going?" asked Spectre.

Khalil grinned back, "Where did you think I was going, to return the car? The night never ends in Nostramo, Spectre, and your poor hunt clearly needs a rest."

The Spectre watched him go in silence, the dark corner not so cozy for the first time.