The proximity meter blinked nearly as rapidly as his pulse pounded in his head. Just down the hall, around the corner, the target was in the shower. Vengeance was his for the taking.

Adrenaline licked Ivan's spine as the water shut off. Every step he took screamed an alarm in his ears, though silence was barely disturbed. Stunner at the ready, the man swung around just as the bathroom door opened.

Steam greeted him from the other side of the master bedroom. The scent of damp roses sweetly assaulted Ivan's nose. Its familiarity gave him pause.

A figure emerged from the warm cloud, mostly obscured by an enormous towel, in the process of drying hair. It froze almost comically at the quiet click of the laser's safety releasing. Ivan didn't bother controlling his grin. This time, there was no glich, nowhere to hide weapons, no escape. It was almost criminal how easy the new shades' prototype had made it to find the elusive "ghost". 

The figure wound the towel around itself with deliberate, painstakingly slow, motions. Ivan's grin froze. Surely not...

A body, much too curvy for public safety commitee standards, covered in skin nearly comprised entirely of - were those scales..? - stood before his disbelieving stare. Even with the dark lenses, he squinted at the unnatural brightness reflected off this unmistakably female form. How had she managed to pass this long?

Shimmering white curtains of hair were lifted off the strange, yet too familiar face. Eyes of wine guiltily looked askance. Those pupils... Horror chased across the man's expression. This changed everything.

The woman opened her mouth to speak, but an intake of breath was all the sound she brought forth. Ivan cursed as the front door burst open. He'd nearly forgotten about the backup. The man lunged toward the startled female, grabbing an arm. Noise filled the hallway. Where to hide her became moot as he saw nothing in front of him. Ivan squeezed the bicep he could clearly feel beneath his palm.

"Ow!"

"Shh!" he hissed near where he estimated her ear to be. "Don't move a muscle," he whispered. "In here!"

Three armed uniforms responded to block the doorway, thankfully not noticing the apparently floating towel in front of their colleague. Ivan tore it out of the invisible hands and faced the others. The man steered his imagination from the fact that he was now holding a very naked woman at arm's length. Not being able to see her didn't help. Heat radiated off her, though he could feel her shiver.

"Empty," he said in a carefully even tone. "The sensor must've malfunctioned." The quite steady point of light at the edge of his vision privately contradicted his words with nary a flicker. 

Ivan forced himself to relax. "I'll search the place."

"Need help?" sneered his team-mate.

"Yeah, we wouldn't want you to waste more time on nonexistent ghosts."

"Shut it!" barked the last. "We've wasted enough time on this." She nodded to Ivan. "Report to the professor when you're done. He'll want to know how the prototype failed."

Ivan's brows rose as the sergeant's gaze paused, apparently focusing on his stunner. "Who issued you that weapon, soldier?"

The man glanced at the object in his hand, perplexed. "My..." he started, but caught his reflection in the mirror behind his superior. The body of the woman in his grip was not see-through after all. It altered reality and was currently projecting a 21st century glock into his hand. He was hard-pressed not to show his surprise. "...kalashnikov..?"

Closing the gap between them in quick strides, the sergeant nearly stepped on the creature in Ivan's grip. "You know those things are illegal, man! Don't let me catch you with it outside of a display case again!" she hissed so the others wouldn't hear the reprimand. Luckily, they were well out of earshot now.

"Yes, sarge!"

She paused, a hand lifted towards the projection, wistfully. Abruptly, she straightened, gave him a curt nod and left him to his task. Ivan looked at the standard-issue precision laser in his hand, then the antique his reflection held. "Incredible," he breathed.

"What did you do to me?" The voice of the sort of invisible woman accused.

"What did I...?" confusion threw up on any focus Ivan's mind had been clinging to.

"Is this permanent?" The man noticed a slight bubbling of his mirror image as she moved, refracting, as though the woman were a drop of water.

"I did nothing," Ivan stated plainly. "Yet..."

"Why did my body disappear?"

"You don't know?" Ivan felt her glare, though he looked to be speaking to himself. "Right." He holstered his stunner, and traced a finger along her body from his firm grip on her elbow to the neck. He felt no scales. "That's an incredible trick of light," he breathed.

Windows exploded in the next room. Surprising strength kicked his legs out from under him as the world filled with gunshots. Rolled beneath the bed, watching boots surround his hiding place, Ivan cursed silent alarms, ghosts, women in general, and the sergeant, specifically.

He had lost his prize. Now, surrounded by the enemy, doom whispered Ivan's name. Again. The man rolled onto his back in defeat, beneath the bed, waiting for the inevitable discovery.

A weight crawled with soundless stealth on top of him. The heat of another body spread up along his own. Ivan bit his tongue.

Engulfed in the scent of damp roses, he could see nothing, but knew the woman covered as much of him as her trembling body could manage. He felt her hair surround him. Adrenaline shuddered through them both when the bed skirt was moved aside by the barrel of a gun to check below.

The man glimpsed his shades on the carpet before he was blinded by the flashlights. Shit! "They really are defective," said a voice. "Look, the sensor's going crazy."

"There's nothing here, but a corpse," replied another as flashlights swept the underside of the bed once more. "Ew! Juicy, too." Disgust dripped off the words. Sounds of retching reached Ivan's ears from farther down the hall.

"Did you find the glock?"

"No."

"It's got to be here. Sarge couldn't lie about that."

"Wouldn't be the first time someone planted false images."

"She's not that good!"

"Why would she risk that? Maybe the ghost took it."

"Shut up! I hate ghosts! Let's get out of here. This place gives me the creeps."

Ivan lay still long after the footsteps retreated. He was not sure how to disentangle himself from this odd position. He wasn't quite sure he actually wanted to move at all. "You're still alive, right?" her breath on his cheek sent shock waves down to his toes.

"Fine," he croaked.

"Good!" She started to move.

Ivan's hands circled her waist, staying the motions of her hips. "Don't!" his voice nearly shattered with the tension of that command.

Self-control took on the need for superhuman powers. Ivan lifted the woman off his frame without ceremony. He swept the strands of fragrant hair out of his way and crawled to freedom.

The familiar task of checking for danger calmed his nerves. Ivan could only speculate why this ghost had such an intense effect on him. The scent of damp roses..

Shell casings littered the carpet, but the shades were nowhere to be found. Ivan cursed, picked up a garment, shaking it free of debris, and returned to the bed.

"All clear," he bent to look underneath, then straightened, remembering he wouldn't see her. "Still down there?"

Something flickered in front of him. "What was that?" A strobe-light in humanoid shape snatched the shirt from Ivan's hands. "Payback for saving your bloody life?" she shouted. "Expose me, and destroy my home?"

"Saving..?"

"The nanos were just a prototype, but looks like they worked," the flickering solidified into a female human once again, albeit apparently skinless. Ivan tried to follow her words. She paced around him, looking him over with a doctor's discerning gaze. "You scared the shit out of me in that morgue." The woman crossed her arms, staring at Ivan. "Why did you run away?"

"The morgue!" he pointed in her face as recognition finally dawned. "You were about to cut me open!"

"You were dead at the time," she reasoned. He nodded. Ivan hadn't expected to regain consciousness after the execution.

He raised an eyebrow. "And you had skin.." There was no pigment to her epidermis. "What happened there?"

"Classified," she sighed. "Why did you bring friends to destroy the place with antiques?"

Classified? The government had ghosts?!

"You put a glock in my hand," he reminded her.

"Right," she cursed. "My fault," she disappeared in the bathroom and emerged with amber eyes. "Let's get out of here before they come back."

The floor beneath the bed morphed into a staircase.

The woman grabbed his hand, attempting to pull him along. He stared at her, rooted to the spot. "C'mon! We have a lot to talk about."

He shook his head. "Lady, I don't even know your name."

"Classified!" the word seemed to force it's way past her lips, unbidden.

"Well, Classy, you should probably know that you're glowing." She glared at her hand for a moment, then shrugged. They descended into darkness without the need for flashlights.