Vale gazes at Ryven for a moment, giving him an odd look as she tilts her head. "So, you're saying that your mantle appears to abduct the consciousness of its victims, causing them to behave like ghosts that only you can perceive?"
Ryven nods with a worrying face as the blue haired man phases his hand through Vale's body.
"What the fuck… I'm really a ghost!"
Ryven ignores him as he continues putting his hand in front of Vale's face, seemingly confirming that she can't see him.
"I've never seen someone with a mantle like this," She continues. "A mantle for most dreamers act as a sort of special ability or attack, mine for instance freezes a person in ice that could only unfreeze when I reuse my mantle."
Ryven nods, not really knowing what else to say.
"Well… that's interesting. Your value may have just increased by an extraordinary amount," she says, bringing her hand to her chin.
"You made me into a fucking ghost!" The blue haired man pointed at Ryven. "Put me back into my body!" He screamed as he walked through Vale's desk.
Ryven glanced at him briefly, then back at Vale.
"Has any documented mantle ever done something like this before?"
"Not to my knowledge." Vale was still studying him with that tilted head, turning something over behind her eyes.
"Consciousness displacement has not even really been theorized. There are mantles that affect perception, mantles that induce hallucination, even one recorded case of a dreamer who could suppress another's mantle entirely." She shook her head slowly. "But physically severing the conscious mind from the body and allowing it to persist as a separate entity, even the thought of someone's power doing that seems a bit absurd.
"I said put me back you fucking bastard, I may be on death row, but your ruining my goddamn plan!"
His hands balled into fists as he ran toward Ryven, who instinctively ducked. The scene looked bizarre to Vale, who watched seemingly perplexed as Ryven turned, throwing a fist of his own at seemingly mid air.
The fist went straight through the blue haired man, seemingly having no effect on him.
"Fuck!!!!" The blue haired man screamed, continuing to throw his fists at Ryven's face.
"Why can't I do anything?!" He groaned, falling to his feet.
"What's going on?" Vale asked, looking at him as if he was some sort of schizo.
Ryven sighed. "Can we put him back in his body? He's getting kind of annoying."
"Mmmm… I mean we can, but I want you to keep him in your mind for a while."
"What, why?" The blue haired man asked as if Vale could hear her. Ryven waited for a second, expecting a response before realizing Vale couldn't hear her.
"This is gonna be so annoying," he muttered. "Why do you want me to keep him in my head?" He asked.
"Well, I don't even know if you can put him back in his body, plus, I'm interested in seeing if he gets taken to the Lunar Plane with you."
Ryven looked at her for a moment, giving her a look that showed just how much he'd dread this.
"Just give me his damn file." He said, watching as the blue haired man fail to pick up the pen on Vale's desk.
Ryven pressed his lips together.
"Something funny?" Vale asked, catching the flicker on his face as she handed him the file.
"No." He cleared his throat, continuing to listen to his ghost complain about his situation.
"I can't even pick anything up," he said, with the tone of a man slowly compiling a list of catastrophes. "I can't touch anything. I can't be seen or heard." He looked at Ryven. "Are you even listening to me?" He asks as Ryven opens his file.
Abel Crane. Age 24. Sector 7 Classification: Domestic Terrorist.
He skimmed the rest. It seems that Abel thought it would be a good idea to enter BioFlavor labs—a laboratory owned by one of the many corporate hegemonies that run our society, PureForm Foods—with a gun and bomb strapped to his chest. Unsurprisingly, he and his companions seemed to be apprehended after blowing up parts of the laboratory by authorities and private dreamer security. Afterwards, it seems like the judge gave him the death penalty, and he was stripped of all of his prosthetics. Then he agreed to come here, becoming property of the school and used for various dreamer experiments.
Ryven looked up from the documents, staring at the ghost of Abel with a mixture of interest and worry. Sure he was a criminal, but Ryven could never have guessed that he was a terrorist. Worst of all, said terrorist was now in his head!
'What has my life become?'
…
The transporter set down on the hospital's elevated dock just as the last of the daylight was bleeding out of the sky. Through the canopy, the city had shifted from silver to amber to a deep red, lights blinking on in towers all the way to the horizon. The moon hadn't risen yet, but the sun was setting.
Abel sat cross legged on the floor of the transporter, which he'd decided to do somewhere over the mid district after discovering he could sink through the seat if he wasn't concentrating. He'd spent the first ten minutes of the flight trying to interact with everything within arm's reach and the last ten sitting in hostile silence, watching the city pass beneath them with his chin in his hand.
The door to Vale's luxury transport opened up, releasing a small hiss of steam as the disgusting fumes and air of the outside filled the cabin.
Ryven's face scrunched for a moment before he stepped out. He didn't notice it before, but the filtered air inside the transport seemed so much cleaner.
Ryven saw Vale off, and walked toward the elevator. Abel followed slowly behind him. He clicked the button, calling up the elevator and stared over at his new ghostly companion. "So then… how did a normal human enter BioFlavor labs, one of the most important facilities of a ginormous corporate hegemony, and blow up various portions of storage and data, killing various dreamers and humans alike?"