Ghost Formation
The prequel to The Inbetween Archives
You know the ghosts.
Now meet the people they were before they became them.
Before Wraith.
Before Shade.
Before Geist, Spirit, Phantom and Spook.
There were six young soldiers trying to survive a war that had already taken too much from them.
They were never supposed to become a family.
They certainly weren’t supposed to become Ghost Command.
ARCHIVE ADVISORY
Ghost Formation takes place before Hard Parole.
You can read it first.
I don’t recommend it.
If you’re new to The Inbetween Archives, start with Hard Parole, meet the Ghosts as they are now, and then come back to discover who they were before everything went wrong.
It hurts better that way.
Already know the Ghosts?
Excellent.
This is going to hurt.
Before Shade, there was Zane
Sixteen years old.
Poor.
Angry.
And sitting in a black-site research facility with a rock nobody else can touch without dying.
Major Zahir Qamar sees something the scientists don’t.
Potential.
So he offers Zane a choice.
Technically.
A new name.
A Tether buried in his spine.
A one-way trip into military service.
And absolutely no possibility of ever going home.
Happy birthday, kid.
Before Wraith, there was Ash
Seventeen.
Raised among mercenaries.
Already very good at violence.
Ash Raine enlists because the military is her only way out.
Instead, she lands at Camp Ephebe: the place the Confederation sends problem recruits, criminals, the desperate and anyone else it considers conveniently expendable.
That’s where she meets Zane.
He is underfed, tattooed, weirdly cheerful and has absolutely no problem fighting dirty.
She likes him immediately.
This proves to be the beginning of a very long pattern of questionable judgement.
“Like recognizes like.”
Camp Ephebe is designed to break people.
Ash and Zane respond by becoming harder to break.
When the instructors put them on opposite sides, they find loopholes.
When they are told one of them has to die, they choose a third option.
When everybody else sees another recruit, they see someone worth pulling back to their feet.
By the time they leave, they’re already something dangerous.
Not lovers.
Not quite family.
Something harder to define.
Something that will eventually become the foundation of Ghost Command.
And then there were six
The War keeps moving.
So do they.
Zane and Ash are separated.
They grow up.
They get better at what the Confederation needs them to do.
Which is mostly survive impossible situations and kill things efficiently.
And eventually, a Strategic Intelligence officer with a deeply concerning relationship with the phrase acceptable losses starts putting a team together.
Six operatives.
Six very different weapons.
One experimental program.
Zane
Engineer. Pilot. Dangerously insubordinate.
Hears things in the dark that nobody else can.
Eventually: Shade.
Ash
Pilot. Fighter. Survivor.
Trusts almost nobody.
Eventually: Wraith.
Zahir
Strategist. Intelligence officer. Manipulative bastard.
Absolutely certain he can control the variables.
Eventually: Geist.
Matt
Scout. Tracker. The one who still believes things might turn out okay.
For some inexplicable reason.
Eventually: Spirit.
Rina
Assassin. Hand-to-hand specialist.
Anger management enthusiast.
Eventually: Spook.
Elijah
Sniper. Soldier. Quiet center of gravity.
Built like a wall and considerably harder to move.
Eventually: Phantom.
Together?
That’s where things get interesting.
This is how Ghost Command happened
Not in one glorious mission.
Not because someone gave an inspiring speech about duty.
And definitely not because six highly functional adults sat down and agreed to become lifelong friends.
They get there the hard way.
Training.
Missions.
Bad planets.
Worse orders.
Alcohol.
Arguments.
Near-death experiences.
Inside jokes.
Violence on one another’s behalf.
And the gradual realization that somewhere along the way, the people beside them stopped being colleagues.
They became theirs.
The kind of family that will insult you mercilessly and then burn a government facility to the ground if somebody hurts you.
Healthy?
Debatable.
Effective?
Extremely.
The War is still happening
And it is not kind.
Ghost Formation follows the team through the years that forged them, against the background of humanity’s brutal war with the people they call the Others.
There are military operations.
Black sites.
Hostile planets.
Failed experiments.
Things Inbetween that nobody understands.
And an increasingly uncomfortable question:
What exactly happens when six people stop operating like six separate people?
Because Ghost Command becomes unusually good at working together.
Then impossibly good.
And eventually, something in the Inbetween notices.
That is probably fine.
It is not fine.
Some origins should probably have stayed classified
If you’ve read the main series, there are things you already know.
You know how the War ends.
You know Ghost Command doesn’t remain together.
You know who walks into Hard Parole carrying the scars.
What you don’t know is what those scars used to be.
You don’t know:
how Ash first trusted Zane;
why Matt can reach Zahir when almost nobody else can;
how Rina became their sister;
why Elijah’s calm matters;
when Zahir stopped thinking of them as assets and started thinking of them as his;
or exactly when six damaged people became something none of them could survive losing.
That’s the story.
Not how Ghost Command fought the War.
How Ghost Command became a family.
If you’ve ever wondered…
Why Wraith and Shade are like that
There are answers.
Some of them involve hypothermia.
Others involve military disciplinary procedures.
Why Geist knows absolutely everything
He doesn’t.
This causes him considerable distress.
Why Spirit calls him Shining One
There is history there.
A lot of it.
Why Rina and Wraith fight like sisters
Because functionally, they are.
Neither would enjoy hearing that phrased sentimentally.
Why Phantom is the calm one
Somebody had to be.
Why these people would die for one another
Because at various points, they nearly do.
Repeatedly.
Eventually everyone stops pretending this is unusual.
Before the ghosts, there were people
This is the part that matters.
They are younger here.
Less scarred.
Not unbroken (none of them started that way), but still becoming.
You get to watch:
Zane learn that darkness can mean safety.
Ash discover that trust doesn’t always make you weak.
Matt refuse to let the worst things in the universe define him.
Rina find people she doesn’t have to perform for.
Elijah discover where loyalty becomes love.
And Zahir make the catastrophic tactical error of caring about the people under his command.
By the time he realizes what has happened, it’s far too late.
They’re family.
Poor bastard.
Reader advisory
Ghost Formation deals directly with the War and some of the darkest parts of the Ghosts’ histories.
Content includes:
- graphic violence and combat
- child soldier and forced conscription themes
- institutional abuse
- torture and coercion
- psychological trauma
- PTSD and panic responses
- survivor’s guilt
- body horror
- non-Euclidean / Inbetween interference
- death
- war crimes
- morally questionable decisions
- abusive military training
- loss and grief
There is also:
- dangerous loyalty
- found family weaponised for maximum emotional damage
- banter under deeply inappropriate circumstances
- terrible coping mechanisms
- at least one environment that appears to have a personal vendetta against human life
And glowing moss.
Do not lick it.
[VIEW FULL CONTENT INFORMATION]
Ready to meet them before they were ghosts?
You already know Wraith.
Shade.
Geist.
Spirit.
Phantom.
Spook.
Now meet:
Ash.
Zane.
Zahir.
Matt.
Elijah.
Rina.
Before the War finished forging them.
Before they lost each other.
Before the names became armor.
Before they became Ghost Command.
New to the series?
Seriously.
Don’t let the word prequel bully you into chronology.
The recommended starting point is:
Hard Parole
Five years after the War, Wraith is released from a black-site prison because humanity suddenly needs her again.
The man sent to retrieve her has been made her Tether.
If he dies, she dies.
Everything goes downhill from there.
Already finished Ghost Formation?
Oh.
You knew how it ended and did it anyway.
Bold choice.
Questionable, but bold.
If you came here after Hard Parole, return to the main series:
Conditional Release
The mission is over.
The consequences aren’t.
CONTINUE TO CONDITIONAL RELEASE
Already further along?
One final thing
There’s a moment, long before anyone calls them Ghost Command, when Ash pulls a half-dead boy to his feet in the dark.
Later, he returns the favour.
Then they keep doing it.
Again.
And again.
And eventually four more people get pulled into the pattern.
That’s really the whole problem.
Six people who refuse to leave each other behind.
The universe will spend years discovering just how dangerous that can be.
Ghost Formation
This is where the Ghosts begin.
Strap in. Mask up.
And seriously: don’t lick the glowing moss.
Ghost Formation
The Prequel to The Inbetween Archives
by AJ Pryor