Rémi smiled to himself as Jacques struggled with the grate.  At least he wasn't too outclassed in regards to strength.  It wasn't in this machine so he moved into the next one.  He pried the cover open finding the entire innards filled with a thick mat of cobwebs.

He wished he had kept his gloves.  He had stopped wearing them after changing out of his uniform.  He sighed at the idea of digging through the webs. Once again his cold breath appeared visible in the air.  "How could you not feel the cold?" he rubbed his arms.  His hairs were standing on end. 

Suddenly, the temperature seemed to drop even further.  It felt like he was burning.  It wasn't the air. It was...

Rémi grasped for the Sniper's diary, throwing it several metres away.  It landed with a thunk.  For a moment, nothing happened.  Suddenly it flipped open - the pages turning and turning until the very last written page.  The Sniper's signature was now red. 

Rémi backed away, his eyes fixed on the book.  Something flickered.  A man.  But it was gone as soon as it had appeared.  The air stirred.  Once again, the figured appeared - a translucent image of a man.  The outline of his body was wispy and mist-like.  Every small movement caused tendrils of coloured mist to peel off and drift away, soon vanishing into nothingness.

"I think ghosts are a common enough occurrence in this world that they don't need a great deal foreshadowing.  It'd be like foreshadowing a cat."  Was that another wall crumbling to the ground?  Maybe Saxton Hale was punching through them.  Regardless, ghosts were usually only seen for a few weeks before and after Halloween.  It was the irregular timing of this one that shocked Rémi.  He wasn't scared, just surprised - honestly!

The Sniper examined the two Spies.  He knew these spies - the spy in red and the spy in blue who discovered him in after all these years.  He had felt them flip through the pages of his book.  He knew why they were here.

"Leave." He said - his voice seemed to be inside their heads.  "What is here, is not for you."

How like Jacques to not be able to judge threats correctly.  This reminded him of the conversation with the administrator. 

"Be quiet, you don't want to get him angry," Rémi spat the words in Jacques direction.  He didn't want to have another Australian wanting to kill them.  Was it even possible to reason with ghosts?  Australians were unreasonable at the best of times...

"You must understand, there is ..." he was going to say 'Australian' but decided against it on the fear that the ghost would side with the other Australian, "a madman after us.  He's going to kill us all.  We need to find..."

"What is here, is not for you," the ghost repeated floating towards the two spies.  "It is our national treasure.  It is not for foreigners."

"Wait," The Sniper sniffed the air.  Rémi remembered Hale doing the same thing during their chase.  "There is one here who can receive my final gift."  Rémi's heart sunk.  He could smell Saxton Hale.  The ghostly Sniper closed his eyes and followed his nose like a skilled tracking dog.  He floated in a way that he was just a little taller than the two Spies in the room, as he passed by Rémi, he could feel his skin prickle.

"No, not you.  Your face is wrong."  Rémi wasn't sure what to make of that.  The ghost continued further, to the BLU Spy.  He opened his eyes, and examined the Spy from head to toe.  "Take your mask off," he ordered.  "Despite your voice, I think you are one of us."

In the presence of the ghost, Rémi avoided making a snarky comment.  Oh God, he was dying to.  No man should have his hair that long.  He was determined get the guy a haircut.  Perhaps he wouldn't even have to do anything about it himself.  The Soldier would have a heart attack if he saw Jacques' hippy hair.  If the Soldier got his way, no doubt it would be shaved for an 'initiation into manhood.'

The Sniper's ghost did not move for a long while.  He examined the face of the BLU Spy carefully, looking for some kind of sign that only an Australian can see.  "You're not full-born, but you're Australian, aren't you?"

The need to make a snarky comment- it was even worse than before.  Rémi tried his hardest to keep a straight face but one would've noticed a twitch or a small grin.  This explained so much.

"Don't call Australians 'idiots' in front of the Australian, you idiot," Rémi scolded Jacques in French, before swapping back to English.  "And why do you keep putting words in my mouth, I've been so well-behaved!" Keeping his mouth shut was so difficult.  Bottling all this snark inside was causing an aneurysm.

The ghost didn't need to be told he was right.  Words held no credence.  He had intuition, and it was never wrong.  "Follow me," he said go Jacques, before spinning to face Rémi sending a gush of freezing air in his direction.  "Stay here." Rémi wasn't going to argue - he raised his hands in defeat and took a couple of steps in the opposite direction.

The ghost glided further down the hallway.  Now away from the filthy Frenchman he continued to talk.  "It it a disgrace that I must pass this down to a half-caste, but I am left little choice.  You must never let this get into foreign hands."  He lead the other Spy to a particular large metal duct that ran up the wall.  "The screws are loose, pull it away from the wall," he ordered Jacques.

What was taking him so long?  The room around them grew colder as the ghost grew frustrated.  Where the duct came away from the wall, it split off, one of the pipes travelling into the wall.

"Just reach in and grab it," the sniper growled.  This was only confirming what he knew true of other races - they were inferior imbeciles.  The Australium would destroy this one.

The Sniper was losing his grasp on this world.  Being the wrong time of year made things especially difficult.  Now that the Australium had been found, he no longer needed to be here.  Almost instantly, his shape became less defined.

"Tell my wife and..." he struggled to say before the mist that made up his body scattered.  It travelled back down the tunnel, and spiralled down into the diary.  The pages turned rapidly.  Suddenly, the book coughed up the photograph that Rémi had found earlier - the woman and young girl.