TRANSMITTING
LABEL: FRAME-0935, RECORDING 64793
TIME STAMP: 0400 Hrs, SIXTEEN DAYS AFTER 'CITY-FALL' EVENT
INTERACTION WITH [LIGHTLESS] GUARDIAN, DESIGNATION; HUNTER
FLAGGED FOR SIGNS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA, REFER TO VANGUARD ASAP
Entity-3, Exo Gunslinger
INTERACTION
/RECORDING UNAVAILABLE/
/TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS/
...
In all the years I've been a Guardian, I've never seen anything like it. I hope that I never have to see a sight like it again.
[silence]
I s'pose I'll tell you, you're just a dumb machine, aren't you? I need someone to listen, and no one else cares. They'd just think it's another one of those tall tales us Hunters tell around bonfires.
But it's not. Not this one.
[pause, ice clinking in glass as Hunter intakes alcoholic beverage]
Anyway, like I said, never seen something so shit. Barely have the stomach to think about it these days, to be honest. There were four of us, out there in the tundra of the European Dead Zone that day.
Transmat wasn't working, and we'd lost our Sparrows during Cityfall, so we were on foot the whole way, picking our way through deep snowdrifts to reach the outlying villages that the Red Legion had rolled over on their way to the City, on their way to steal the Traveller from right under our noses.
When we got there, there wasn't any village to speak of - just... ash.
And death.
They'd been civilians, just trying to make their way in the world, independent of the Traveller or the City. But that didn't matter, Cabal didn't give a shit about any of that, they just stamped them into the ground all the same.
Have you ever seen what a high-velocity slug of uranium fired from a Cabal command ship does to a hut? Or a person?
(silence)
Nothin' pretty.
(silence)
Like I said, ashes and death. Bones and silence, only the wind and the fresh snow covering the ruins of that place. I can't even imagine how scared they must have been. We spent the last hours of the day looking for survivors, but there was no point. We all knew, it's just that no one wanted to say it. After we inevitably gave up, we went to take shelter in a cave for the night before heading back to the Farm.
(silence)
That's where we found them.
(silence)
Children. A dozen or so, no older than six or seven. They stared at us like we were the Cabal come back to kill them. I've no idea how they survived. They might've been part of a pilgrim train, or maybe some parent had the sense to hide them away and told them to wait for help.
Well, they did.
Don't get me wrong, we were happy to find 'em, but we didn't know how we were going to get them home. There wasn't enough rations for everyone, and the journey would be a long five days without having to look out for them. Would've taken us a week to get them all back safely.
(silence)
But, uh...
(silence)
But that wasn't what happened. You see, the four of us, we were a new fire team. Put together quickly because our old team-mates had died in the assault on the City, and we hadn't gotten to know each other that well, except for a few basic things about each other.
First off, there were the twins. Zello and Tresh. Awoken siblings. They weren't related by blood, but the Crucible had a way of forging brotherhood in battle, you know? They were Titans, both of 'em. I've never seen anyone better connected with someone else. They were practically the same brain in two bodies. They were... Well, you get the picture.
There was me, of course, the Hunter. The Gunslinger, or at least I had been. Before the Light died in so many of us. I could tell the tall tales they all liked to hear so much, and I could throw knives like the best of 'em - Light or not.
Then, there was Talon-4. The Exo. But that was the only thing I had in common with him. He was... strange. Quiet, like he had the questions of the universe in his head. Kept to himself mostly, never had a full conversation with the guy.
Well, he was a Warlock, I s'pose. They all have to be a bit 'out-there', you know?
Anyway, he muttered to himself a lot. I thought it was just a habitual thing that all Warlocks did. Traveller only knows Erebus used to do it a lot too.
(chuckle, then silence)
If I'd known, though, what he was really muttering about. Maybe things would've been different, maybe not. I'll never know now. That night, while we were putting kids to bed on our cloaks by the fire, he went off by himself for an hour or so. Don't know why. Didn't matter at the time. Anyway, me an' the twins were keeping watch for Fallen, or worse, Hive.
Then Talon came back, and he went over to watch the children. But then, he...
(silence)
He, ah...
(silence)
(silence)
He took out his revolver, and he just slaughtered them.
As many as he could. We didn't even know anything was wrong 'til the screaming started. We got there pretty quick, but we froze when we saw him. Firing, again and again and again. None of us wanted to believe it was happening. Tresh was the first to react.
He launched himself at the Exo, wrestled him to the ground. But, Talon got his sidearm up into Tresh's gut, pulled the trigger. None of us had Light since Ghaul took it away from us all, so none of us had Ghosts.
So Tresh never came back.
He was just gone, in a single moment. Then, Talon just rolled the body off him, stood up, and just went back to what he'd been doing before.
Zello just sank to his knees when he saw Tresh murdered, wailed this horrible, dry sound. Clutched his head and sobbed. That was what made me do it. Tipped me over the edge.
I threw my knife.
There was a long, long moment after that. I looked from the body to the children, from the murdered remains of Tresh to the seven children Talon had managed to massacre. Pulled the knife out of Talon's forehead, tucked it back in its sheath, started hushing the children.
They weren't even crying - not a sound, like they couldn't see anything worse than what had already happened to them.
(silence)
'Burn... it,' I told Zello, trying to snap him back to reality. 'Armour too.'
But he just stayed there, frozen, wailing behind me. So I threw my cloak over Talon's body, hid him from the kids, and burned him. I wanted Zello to scream at me for doing it, to fight.
Felt like I deserved it. But he didn't, no one has since we came back.
I have to keep telling myself that I don't hate myself for what happened, that I'd done what had to be done, and that was that.
(silence)
That... thing I killed wasn't Talon anymore, certainly wasn't a Guardian.
I told myself that he was just a broken thing, like a malfunctioning tool. But that's just it, don't you see? That we're all tools, that we're only here to make sure that Humanity gets another shot at things.
[silence]
[silence]
[silence]
I'll be leaving tomorrow. Alone.
Zello hasn't left psychiatric observation, and the kids - they act like it never happened. Trying to, at least. I'm heading out for the European Dead Zone soon, gonna look for survivors of the Red War - try to keep the road safe.
Might be that I'll need someone else to come with me. Might be that they can give me a hand... and it might be that someday I'll need someone to put a knife between my eyes. Might be that someday, they'll need someone to do it for them. Like them to be there to help me out, if that's the case.
Least they could do.
[small, defeated chuckle]
[footsteps]
[silence]
[silence]
/TRANSCRIPT END/