Chapter X: Out with the Light…

Damn it!

Bang!

Damn it, damn it!

Bang, bang! Scruuunch…!

Damn it all to hell! How could I have been so careless?!

Out in a far part of the ridiculously huge hangar of the Cabal warship known as the Hades' Soul, a Titan bathed in silver, gold and black was throwing a fit. With each throw of her every fist, parts for ships both Cabal and for Guardians were flying, making quite a mess until she punched the support that suspended her heavily armed and armored Draught of Nectar from the ground while mechanical arms was repairing the damage it took, all thanks to Artemis taking control of the repair arms. Lightning's helmet was off, and clearly, her face was a mix of anger and distress. There was even signs of her about to break into tears, but they were suppressed back due to her changed self.

She failed. Let her own arrogance take the best of her. For being the first to enter her ship. For letting her 'little' brother be captured by an unknown assailant that was either Hive or Taken. She screamed angrily as she took her helmet and chucked it against the support beam. The helmet didn't shatter to pieces on impact, as her Ghost ducked before it hit her and lessened the velocity of the thrown piece of armor. For the first time in nine years fighting under the Queen by the order of the Cyphers, she slipped up. A screw up that costed more than a mere defeat. Even if she had a reputation of soloing the Trials on her own, that only hid what many would assume to be a weakness.

A fear of failing to protect Spectre.

"Lightning!" Her red and black-colored twin brother came racing towards her body, picking her up and resting her head against his lap. "C'mon sis, don't die on me!"

The twin of Spectre only coughed out blood in her helmet in response, and her vision was turning black as she covered her wound with one of her hands.

However, as one Lightning was lying on the ground bleeding, another was a ghost in this memory. The present-day Lightning stood at the sidelines, bowing her head in shame at recollecting the first time she failed to protect him and paid the price for it. The Cyphers sent her and her brother after some important cargo down in the ruins of Old Chicago, and it was a case when the Cyphers would send the two of them on a mission; rarely did Vesper join the missions. And this was a time when the Cyphers prohibited them from having Primus and Artemis revive or heal them, and that meant life or death, as well as making their choices in the field count. All for a survival endurance test so that they could survive without their Ghosts. It was protocol of sorts when it came to the Cyphers.

Lightning and Spectre were able to extract the cargo, but they were ambushed by the Fallen in the region. They fended off their attackers, but Lightning suffered a near-fatal wound when defending her brother from a Vandal's Shock Blades. She took the stabs in her shoulder and chest, but she was fortunate enough that the blade that went through her chest didn't stab deep enough to actually kill her. If she didn't leap in at the last second, then she would be the only one of the twins still alive today.

Ever since she put her life on Spectre's─and anyone else she cares for─own, she swore that she would protect them at all costs.

"How could I fail my own promise? What good am I if I can't goddamned protect him?!" she slumped against the support beam with the control panel, her helmet in one hand and head against the structure. "First I couldn't protect Mara, now it's my own brother? Some Titan I turned out to be…" Lightning wanted to cry, but her body wouldn't allow it to happen. Her lightning blue eyes clearly watered upon closer inspection, but they remained there, unable to be free.

Weakness. It was a foreign concept to her, despite having a fear. The only major time she showed it was her failure to get the Queen out of the rings of Saturn before the Dreadnaught's weapon wiped out her and the Awoken fleet. And since she was the only survivor of the attack, and now she and Petra are going to pay the price of mourning. Mourning a close companion and their Grace in a way just like Spectre.

"Light…" Artemis stopped what she was doing on the control panel and hovered over to the Sunstriker. "You can't blame yourself. I don't want to offend him, but it was Spectre's choice to be the last one to leave. Plus, everyone was exhausted after that fight. It was the perfect moment for the enemy to ambush us."

"I almost lost my own life the first time I protected him, and now I didn't even try to do it!"

"Artemis is right, Lightning," the traumatized Primus appeared next to Artemis, shell whirring like he was saddened. "Spectre always did that ever since he started being in a Fireteam with Rez and Silver. It's just in his nature ever since he lost Vesper. He doesn't want to lose anyone, be it a friend or someone he loves."

The Titan and the two Ghosts soon heard the sound of boots clacking against the metal that made up the floor of the hangar, and the three turned their direction towards the entrance of their docking station. Reaper soon came into view, her helmet off of her head but her hood was still on and her own Ghost hovering next to her. Just like the older twin of Spectre, she was clearly in despair, but her face barely showed any sign of such emotion. The Huntress looked down at the Titan, legs close to her chestplate and her helmet sitting next to her as the golden visor stared at the black and silvery-gray colored Fatal Vision suspended in the dock next to the Draught of Nectar.

The Huntress, on the other hand, was feeling unnerved. She heard of how hostile Lightning could be, based on how she beat up Rez and how she already hated Adam from Fireteam Sparta because he was constantly picking on the partnerless Primus.

"Heeeeelp!" The Ghost of the captured Spectre cried out, constantly dodging bullets fired from Adam's FWC handcannon just as soon as Fireteam Nero Bianco turned their backs after he told them that Spectre was captured.

"Dammit, stay still, you little prick of a Ghost!" Adam growled, trying to get a bead on the black-colored Ghost that was running away from him. Whether or not he was able to get a lock on him, he always missed his shots. And not even once did he feel humiliated or like a fool because of a damned Ghost!

"HEY!"

Just as Adam fired the last round in his handcannon and missed, he growled ferociously and turned towards the entrance of the shooting range. Standing there was a very pissed off Lightning, her Arcburn Strike sparking with both Solar and Arc energy like a forest fire and storm combined. She stomped towards the panicking Primus and took him in her hand like the Ghost was a child of hers.

"Just what the hell do you think you're doing?!" Lightning barked, her own Ghost appearing and comforting the traumatized and quivering Primus. All she got in response was a scoff from the over-equipped Titan.

"What do you think you're doing with my prey?" Adam already loaded his handcannon and aimed it at Spectre's sister, teeth grinding under his helmet. "Get lost, and while you're at it, give me back that Ghost. I have some unfinished business with him."

"Like hell I'd give back Primus! You have no right to torture Spectre's Ghost!"

"Under whose orders are you obeying?! Spectre's not here, and what better way to keep that son of a bitch dead is to make sure that his Ghost is destroyed!"

Snapped.

For the first time since she arrived in the Tower, not once has she heard of anyone holding a grudge against her brother. And this asshole just wanted him dead! She may not know the grudge between Adam and Spectre, but already, he did something that he'll regret. Because quite frankly, he caused a small thing within Lightning's mental state to snap. Snap like a twig in your hands. Or better yet, like glass that shattered on the ground. Her face darkened, and if it weren't for her self-control, she would've gave in to extreme hatred.

Lightning's fist, still sparking with Solar and Arc energy, raged out of control while her blood boiled. In an instant, she dashed towards the Titan, whom was spooked and started firing rounds from the FWC handcannon. With each shot aimed at her, she dodged them at the last second, making Adam seriously pissed off since she was repeating what Primus did a few minutes ago. Within a few inches from Adam, her Solar-Arc combined fist already went beyond her maximum limit and in one swift move, she delivered a devastating left hook. The Spartan was sent flying as a result of the punch, the left side of his Skullfort having a portion of it melted off from the Solar damage.

Adam's armored body crashed against the wall, the blunt trauma of his head hitting the wall knocking him out…for the time being. Even if his Feedback Fence was active at all times, it was no use. Lightning's armor, despite being Legendary grade, negated the counterattack thanks to the shared talent of implementing Exotic grade perks to Legendary gear.

"Why don't you do me a favor and stay down?" Lightning lessened her tension after sending such a punch, breathing returning to normal as she blew some of her locks away from her eyes.

She took a deep breath and took her hood down, stepping into the dock where Lightning and the two Ghosts were. "Hey, you're Spectre's sister, right?"

Lightning looked up at the Bladedancer, then back down at the ground. "You're Reaper, aren't you?"

"Yeah, that's me."

"What do you want? Come to add more salt in my wound?"

Reaper shook her head. "Do you mind if I sit next to you?"

"There's other places to sit, you know. Why would you want to sit here of all places?" muttered the Sunstriker, occasionally glancing back at the Huntress and back at her hands. However, Reaper wasn't going to leave and decided to sit next to the Titan anyway, mimicking the Sunstriker's pose. "…Fine. Suit yourself."

"I know how much pain you're in, and I just want to help." Reaper rested her arms on her bent knees, looking up at the docked Fatal Vision. A tiny spark of envy was inside Reaper, since a ship that was amazingly agile and durable belongs to one of the Tower's best Titans. In fact, it made her Devils' Due BKR look like a toy compared to Fatal Vision. She always wanted to own such a ship, but she may never get that chance.

"How the hell could you know how much pain I'm in?"

The Huntress looked at Spectre's twin sister, biting her tongue for a brief moment. "Not many people believe me, but I'm an aura reader. I could just tell by being in someone's presence." The Bladedancer caught the sound of a disbelieving scoff from the Titan. Again, another disbeliever of the Huntress's own ability.

"If you're really an aura reader, then what's the color of my aura right now?" Lightning turned her head to see Reaper's face frown, her previous demeanor replaced in an instant.

"…All I see is black. Black and gray. A lot of things are troubling you, and not just Spectre's capture. You blame yourself for many things, don't you?"

"…You're right, Reaper. I blame myself for a lot of things," she stared down into her hands, her blue eyes darker than before. In her hands was a crystal in the shape of a rose without its stem, colored black and white that both colors took vertical halves of the crystal in an iridescent spectrum. "Leaving my brother alone for nine years when he needed me the most and before his capture, my own failure to get the Queen out of the blast radius of the weapon. I was never perfect. People thought of me as hell's angel because I took on the Trials alone and made it to the Lighthouse multiple times, but really, I was fueled by my own adrenaline and my own combat experience."

"Believe it or not, but when I read your brother's aura, it only remained a constant black. Even though I only knew him for a week."

"Yet you two went on a date. If I'm wrong, aren't you aura readers supposed to not go out with anyone with a negative aura?"

"I wanted to help him open up a bit! His aura's far beyond anything I've read before!" Objected Reaper, turning away to hide a flushed face. "I know how good of a leader he is and a role model to many new Guardians, but aura readers like myself can see through the veil he's using."

"Reaper, believe it or not, but there's a good reason why Spectre doesn't open up much." Lightning paused, pondering on whether or not to tell Reaper that her sister had a lover before. In the end, she decided against it. "He suffered far more than I did. And not because of me leaving him alone."

"It's something else, isn't it?" Reaper caught on, and Lightning nodded. "What is it? Because I'm pretty sure I can─"

"Not now." Lightning suddenly got back on her feet, startling the Bladedancer and making her way out of the hangar where her Draught of Nectar was docked. Just as she was about to turn the corner, she stopped, putting a fist to the wall and looked back at Reaper. A look of confusion was clear in her eyes, practically begging to know more. "I know how much you want to help me and Spectre. I completely understand that desire. But know that there are battles that my brother and I face with every waking moment we breathe. You're trying to step into something that goes beyond a simple talk, so I will say this now: stay out of it. Right now, it's his battle he's fighting, and he doesn't need help. So when the time comes that he'll need help from someone like you, go ahead and help him. But for now, stay out of his own fights."

Lightning walked away from the hangar, Artemis and Primus in tow. Just as she walked down the large hangar within Hades' Soul, her right eye was covered by some of her own locks, mimicking her brother's current appearance. She avoided the gaze of Fireteam Sparta as she passed by their hangar, her brother's customized handcannon in her possession as she fired a round in Adam's direction without glancing at him. Some of the members of the other Fireteams that were a part of the retaliation strike passed by her, but didn't say a word since they thought she was still distressed about hearing Spectre being captured by the Taken King's forces.

But that wasn't the case. Within the dark veil that was her grief and distress, her mind began to plan. Plan and plot, plan and plot. The cogs of planning awoke from their rusted slumber, clicking against each other. Plan and plot what, you may ask? Well, the answer is just as simple.

She would get Spectre out of the Dreadnaught.

With or without help.

It will never stop.

All this pain…

All this suffering…

It's a cycle that will never end.

Even in this darkness, all he could do was suffer. Take the pain. In the darkness of a cell within the Asylum on the Dreadnaught, he was already paying the price for letting his guard down. For being the last one to leave. For being too slow to react to an ambush. How pathetic. The Hive Conqueror, captured by the enemy that should fear him and his name. And his torturer was right all along. He already fell to a defeatist state, but not broken.

In the dim glow of a source of light in the cell, Spectre was suspended from the ceiling of the cell, a chain made out of Hive materials suspending him from the ceiling. Add the fact that the anesthetic Primus administered earlier already wore off, and his shoulders were already numb from the constant pain of his broken collarbone. His face became sickly pale, the scar from his early days reopened and bleeding profusely, bruises scattered all over his face and the splatter of his own blood scattered across his face. His eyelids were swollen nearly shut, obscuring his steel blue-gray eyes from view. Already, his armor was shattered and dented, the fractured shoulder plating now shattered as the Honor of Cormorant was tattered and torn beyond recognition. His signature shield on his arm was bent and on the verge of having major components fall apart, and his Duskrender helmet in ruins, the evidence at his feet as pieces of the armor were on the floor.

His breathing was rapid, both from the pain he's suffering and how he was able to survive in a low-oxygen environment. Because of his torture, the damage to his armor prohibited oxygen being directly fed to his body since it's on an emergency protocol of its own. And that emergency protocol was to use whatever power his armor had to try and relay a distress signal.

Whack!

Spectre coughed out blood as another punch was thrown into his abdomen by his captor, another spray of red blood flowing out of his lips and an audible crack following the punch. The metallic taste of his own blood wasn't anything new to him, since it happened far too often in his missions involving anything that would spell death. Even if he was suspended from the ceiling, he remained silent to it all.

"Tch, not even my first Guardian I captured and already you're close to the verge of breaking." In the darkness of the cell, the Sunbreaker could see the shape of another Titan, but corrupted by the Taken parasite. As to his knowledge, none of the Guardians from the Tower and beyond have been reported MIA since the start of the Taken War. "I thought you were tougher when you were on your own after killing the Echo. And what do I find? A Thrall of a Guardian." He stomped on the remains of the Duskrender helmet, shattering it like it was glass instead of plasteel and other materials.

The Sunbreaker painfully moved his head to look at his captor in the eye, the blood dripping out of the side of his lip. "Says the Titan…who used a cheap…move in capturing me." He spat out the blood in his mouth at the Titan under Oryx's command. Another punch, this time right in the chest. The blow felt more of a Fallen Skiff falling right on top of him rather than a Taken Guardian's version of a melee.

"Do you realize how many bones I've already broken in your body?"

He wasn't kidding on that part. If one were to closely look at Spectre, they would see some of his bones already sticking out of his protective armor, yet he's still alive and breathing. Even worse, his breathing was both rapid and irregular and it felt like every time he took a breath, it was rattled like there were pieces in his lungs. He didn't want to risk any form of collapsed lungs, but he had to survive as well. "I doubt…you broke any…thing."

Just before Spectre's captor could deliver another punch, the door leading to the cell began to creak open, much like a million stones grinding against metal. And as soon as the door opened, the entire atmosphere of the cell dropped to the darkest it can go. From the dim light, Spectre saw the shape of an all too familiar form.

The Taken King approached his hanging prisoner, snarling like most Hive. His Taken influence flowed across his body like many popped out veins, disgusting yet terrifying at the same time. Spectre's torturer knelt down on one knee like a knight, head bowed in respect. Oryx was mere feet away from Spectre, the two of them making eye contact. In an instant, the Taken King grabbed Spectre by the neck, his giant paw-like hand just as easily suffocating him.

"You…" even if Oryx was at his peak in intimidation, Spectre was not as easily intimidated by the Hive. Not even their king. "You are the one who killed my son."

"So…what? There's a…number of Guardians…involved in Crota's…death."

Enraged, the Taken King increased his grip on the Titan, cutting off more of his breathing as he inched closer and snarled. "Do not lie to me, Warrior of the Light. I know it was you. His blood is all over you."

"Crota…deserved…it. Killed off…too many…of our own."

"A sacrifice worthy for our crusade. And a covenant that I shall finish." The Taken Knight released his grip from the Titan's neck, letting the amount of air he suffered return.

"You sicken me. Is that all you're really…after? Avenging your dead…son?"

"You are not worthy to be in my presence, but you shall suffer for the death of Crota. One by one, I will Take everything from you. Your friends, your family, your comrades, and your beloved Traveler. And my Right Hand shall start by Taking your Light." Oryx turned around and started to leave his prisoner's cell, but not before turning his head in the direction of the Right Hand, who was already at his feet and head still bowed. "Make sure he suffers greatly, my servant."

"As you wish, my king."

Spectre's breathing slowed to short breaths, his eyesight going from perfectly clear to blurry within a matter of time. In the haze of his vision, he saw the shape that was the Taken King leave the cell, the doors screaming shut until a heavy thud signified his absence. His sight then focused on the Right Hand, whom had already brandished Spectre's confiscated knife. All it took was to spin the knife like a pro and stab Spectre right in the side. The hung Sunbreaker weakly cried out in pain and his head slumped.

"You know, if it were up to me, I could have made you one of us. Maybe even become Oryx's Left Hand. But no. You had to interfere with my king's plans and eliminate his Echo." Another stab, this time in the calf. Spectre cried out louder than the one in his side. "And for my king, I will deliver judgement to those who defy him," the Right Hand dug the knife deeper in the shin, savoring every wincing moment of the Titan suffering from his own knife. "Back where I come from, we have a method of keeping the prisoner sane until their death. And you want to know how it goes?"

"Do I look like…I give a damn?"

"Wrong answer," the Right Hand punched Spectre in the stomach, then plunged the knife in his chest. The stab kept the Sunbreaker alive, but it added more to his pain. "We count down from one thousand by seven."

"Go…to…hell." Spectre howled weakly as the Taken Guardian dug the knife a little deeper, then cupping one side of his helmet to hear an answer.

"Go on. Start counting down. It would be a shame to have you broken by the time you reach the halfway point."

"Nine hundred…ninety-three… Nine hundred…eighty…six…"

And just as Spectre reached nine hundred and seventy-nine, the real torture began. He began to drift in and out of consciousness as the Right Hand continued. Every wound he took made his cries of pain into raspy counterparts of what it should be.

In the dark corners of his head, he was praying for someone from the Tower to rescue him. He didn't care whether or not it was one of many Fireteams, his fireteam, the many disciples under the Ancient Vanguard or the entire legion of Guardians from all across the Solar System. He didn't want death this early.

Please… Help me… Some…one…