Seth continued to lead her down the sticky hot tunnel. It had been nearly twenty minutes since he last spoke to her. Did she say something wrong? Why did she even care?

A break in the passage marked the path that would lead them to the hidden chamber beneath the academy. "It's an hour walk. Are you sure you want to do this?" It was the third time he had asked since starting this ridiculous task.

Going back was out of the question; they had come too far. Had Seth been forthcoming about where the passage was, she could have scouted the area ages ago. For some reason, beating the information out of him didn't seem like the right course of action; at the moment, she had her doubts. "Is it dangerous?" She tried to mask her sneer with genuine curiosity.

"An element of danger might make this situation a bit more interesting," Seth admitted. "I feel like I'm wasting my time." He snorted. "And your time." That wasn't her fault.

She didn't need him to hand hold her every step of the way. She suspected that he thought her search would yield to a fight with some slumbering demon. She realized that all of her efforts to train the captain had served to numb him to the dangers of a demonic attack. Some trainer she turned out to be. "My time is spent however I choose. For the time being, I choose to spend it analyzing the shield and verifying that the ghost is properly contained."

"And if it's not?"

The fact that he had to ask just proved how much he didn't understand the threat level that a demon represented. Astral could only stare at the captain in disbelief. Here was a man who knew the dangers of the killing fields. No, he knew that the odds of survival were against him. He knew statistics. It was the reality of the danger on the killing fields that wasn't connecting.

He should have realized by now that his skills were insufficient. He should have begun to adapt. His aversion to learning how to use his environment to his advantage was only half of the problem. Over the course of the past nine weeks, Astral had come to the conclusion that Seth was determined to become a Hunter. Granted, if he didn't improve, he wouldn't make it that far.

"What am I suppose to do?" Seth asked her, taking in the meaning of her silence.

"You could always get your head out of your ass," Astral hissed. Seth turned on her. It wasn't the wisest decision to have it out with him in the tunnels. But there was nowhere else they could speak candidly. The Academy's security system did more than just protect the students. The Academy was also one of a few information hubs, where given a sizable donation, recorded conversations for key targets could be pulled, assessed, and used as leverage. In the program chamber, she had to mind her words around the ghost's ever constant presence. One slip and it might be able to figure out that she was more than just a Hunter. It hadn't actively tried to kill her, but that was likely because it thought she'd stay her hand to appease a desperate Seth. Meanwhile, it would feed on both of them.

Seth might have a powerful soul, but she carried the souls of thousands within her, and one troublesome core.

"You have no idea what I've been through!" He shoved a finger in her face. "You have nothing to worry about. All you have to do is spread your legs and pop out babies until kingdom come. Oh, right, you don't even have to do that. Your family makes enough money to exempt you from having to be a breeder."

She cringed. Is that why he wasn't listening? Did he think that her privilege made her less skilled to handle the realities of the demon hoards? She'd seen the killing fields first hand on more than one occasion. Spending a few hours a day in the training program was not a fair comparison to the challenges he was going to face. Was there a way to show him what he could expect without accidentally overwhelming herself? The program was getting harder to beat, and she had it on the easiest settings with demon types who were prone to destroy each other and themselves. She hated knowing that the ghost in the machine was testing her.

Seth raged on. "You don't have the right to tell me that I'm wasting my time!"

On that he was right. "Fine." Astral's voice was like ice. She pushed past Seth. "You obviously don't respect my skill or experience. You think so lowly of my rank that I couldn't possibly know the ordeal that you will have to face. I can accept that. I'm done training you. Go get yourself killed. It's not like you practiced anything I have taught you so far. I'm through wasting my time with some glory hound with a hero complex."

His soul flickered causing Astral to glance back at the captain who had balled his fists.

"So that's it, you'd abandon me." Seth seethed.

"I thought that was obvious." She'd let him use whatever excuse helped him to sleep at night. "I have a job to do."

She managed a few steps before he hissed, "I could report you."

She nodded. "You could." He wouldn't report her. The only way he could prove the allegation would be to bring the authorities into the program chamber. She would have to deal with the ghost quickly before it could capitalize on Seth's wrath. Dezmond might have enough pull to seize the academy before the Red Order could forced their way in for an inspection. Everything would have to happen so fast.

One foot in front of the other, with a hand along the wall to help guide her in the darkness, she buried her rage. The steady crunch of Seth's footsteps followed behind her. Why hadn't he given up? She could take him if he tried anything stupid.

It was a heavy forty-five minutes before Seth dared to speak again. "If a demon were to come at us right now, how are we supposed to defend ourselves? I'll bet you don't have your scythe," he challenged.

"I do have my scythe," Astral replied. She didn't think that the revelation would give Seth much peace of mind.

"So you get to use a weapon, and I don't." She expected his rebuttal.

"I'm already cursed. No amount of pushing out babies is going to change the fact that I'm being hunted by the very things I'm hunting. Killing a demon myself or with the tunnels won't change my situation. Although it will help me to conserve energy for the next attack, and the one after that, and the one after that... Do you get it now? Do you not understand that I can't have a normal life? That every day, I'm fighting the goddamn war you're accusing me of being capable of paying my way out of. Honestly, I wish I could give the Council all of my inheritance if it meant I never had to deal with this." It was a lie. She loved the hunt. She loved being the thing that demons feared but had no name for. For her, there was only the mission. Everything else got in the way.

"How would you use your environment?" Seth's rage was subsiding.

"That's what I was attempting to train you to figure out. You tell me." Seth's whole reputation as a squad captain hinged on his use of clever field tactics. She needed to open him up to think beyond his fear. Maybe he was playing dumb. It wasn't the first time the thought had crossed her mind.

The fog in the tunnel had grown thick, and the static pulse of her armband grew erratic. Astral breathed slowly, timing her breathing with each step as she fought the urge to release a pulse wave to locate the threat that she knew was near.

"We could collapse the tunnel," he offered. "But I didn't bring any charges."

"I did." Astral didn't even bother to point where she stashed the games approved weaponry. She was never fond of explosives; too volatile. She preferred magic, but that required energy. Magic, unfortunately, was not always an environmental element. Her talent lay in particle manipulation. She imposed her will on existing energy, shaping it to what she needed. It wasn't an easy skill to use. "The real trick is getting out before accidentally killing yourself."

"You could anticipate the attack, and lure the demon to the charges," Seth volunteered. "That's assuming you can run fast enough."

"Breaks in the tunnel are particularly vulnerable. Granted, running for an hour to reach your first trap is stretching it a bit." Astral countered. It wasn't a bad idea, but he needed to think rationally about what he was capable of.

She wasn't placing charges. She didn't know enough about the ward to want to risk damaging it. If the barriers were keeping the ghost contained, she didn't want to be the one to free the demon. Sharing that information with Seth would only yield to more questions about topics he had no business learning about.

"We'd have to preserve our charges and make sure we have enough to slow down the enemy so that we could reach the trap." Seth sighed. "It would have to be done in regular intervals if they're anything like the swarms. That bulky husk demon wouldn't be able to get through, he's easily three times bigger than this access route. The centipede, spider woman and the shadow though; I think they'd be able to manage."

"The demons I've introduced you to aren't the only demon forms that exist. It's good that you're considering your enemy as more than one build, even if your knowledge is limited. It shows potential." They had to be close to Academy's educational center.

"I've been thinking about something else too." Seth took care with the way he worded his next question. "If demons create husks, and the ghost in the machine is a demon, why aren't the students infected with demon spawn? Shouldn't that prove that the demon is contained?"

Astral nodded. "That's one way of looking at it. It could be that it's biding its time or that it's passed its breeding prime and can't reproduce. On the other hand, not all demons reproduce in the same way or during the same periods of maturity. For example, not a lot is known about energy demons. They don't require physical bodies for the most part, though there are some types who prefer to use an empty vessel. An empty vessel is often an object or carcass. Simply put, it's something that doesn't have a soul. As an energy entity, they don't pose a physical threat to people. Mentally, on the other hand..."

The tunnels smelled stagnant and dry, with a dash of an electrical charge. The humidity was oppressive, slowing her. Seth covered his nose. "I hate it down here."

The fog swayed around Seth, shifting from the bright gold to shape dark brown wisps entangling the squad captain's arms and legs. He shook his leg and kicked at the energy vine. "It gets worse up ahead. It's like..."

"They're trying to feed off of you," Astral offered.

Seth's sagged. "Why aren't they bugging you?"

Astral smirked. "Oh, they do." She pulled back her sleeve to show Seth the damage. Under the halo of his flashlight, he could see the long slender scratches rake her arm. She lowered her sleeve. "It's tasting me. It prefers you."

Seth brushed off a new grouping of dark tendrils. "Great, now you're using me as bait."

Astral smiled. "I never asked you to come along. Let me try something." She centered herself and took a deep breath. She took Seth's hand into hers as new wisps scurried up Seth's arm. From the base of his palm to his shoulder she released a soft twilight breath that blanketed his arm. The spawn withered and dissipated.

"It stings!" Seth scratched his arm. He gasped. "It burns! What did you do to me!"