The Queen of Hearts

Chapter 10: The Science of Pain

Talia gasped as she was dragged into an enormous white room with overhead lamps so bright they pained her retinas. Before the blindness could subside, she was tossed onto a table on her back and quickly strapped down by her arms and legs. She struggled against them but they were made of a thick metal that would not break and dug into her skin.

Realizing there was nothing she could do, she squinted and allowed her eyes to slowly adjust to the light. The room began to come into focus, and her breath caught in her lungs as she recognized terrifying tools and equipment all around her. Knives, saws, needles, hammers, claws, lasers, monitors, pumps, computers… her head snapped to every corner of the room in terror. In one of those corners, a Vandal in a lab coat tapped away on a screen filled with data she couldn't make out.

"Do not trouble yourself so much," said Talsiks, allowing the guards to exit and stepping into the room. He snagged an oversized, four-armed lab coat from a nearby cart and slipped it on. Then he rolled a cart over to the table and began picking through the tools laid out neatly across it. "We have some tests to perform first."

"You sick bastard!" she spat. "What are you going to do to me?"

"Sick?" he said, setting aside a scalpel and handheld laser. "To you, perhaps it seems that way. But what is the human phrase? To make an omelet, you must break a few eggs? In my case more than a few, but no cost is too great in this war."

She struggled against the restraints to no avail. "You've… done this before?"

He nodded, inspecting a large syringe filled with a mystery liquid. "You guardians have a bad habit of diving blindly into trouble without a plan. You think yourselves invincible with your Light and your Ghosts. Well, I've shown more than a few headstrong lightbearers how wrong they were."

Suddenly, before she had any time to react, he poked the needle into her arm and injected the liquid. Talia yelped and tried to yank herself away, but he had already retracted the needle and placed it aside.

"What was that?!" she growled.

"A paralyzing agent," he said simply, reaching to the lamp above her and dragging it down to better illuminate the table. "We can't have you struggling too much when we perform our tests."

The effects were immediate. She found that she was quickly losing the ability to move her extremities, not that the restraints would let her anyway, but the feeling was terrifying. It was like she was becoming trapped in her own body, only able to move her head.

"Excellent," said Talsiks. "Kusak, we are ready."

The vandal nodded affirmatively and approached the table with gloved claws. It said something in Eliksni, and Talsiks shook his head.

"No need for the preliminary tests," he said. "Retrieve her ghost. We'll be moving straight to ability stressors."

The Vandal bowed lightly and went to carry out the task.

"Reeki?!" Talia exclaimed. "What are you going to do to him?! Leave him alone!"

Talsiks sighed and moved around the table to stand directly over her head. "Your ghost is integral to our tests. You see, until now we have never captured one. The previous guardians I mentioned were either dead or ghostless. There is only so much you can learn from them without the source of their power. Now, thanks to my invention, we have both in prime condition." He smiled at that. "I must admit I am excited to begin."

She tried desperately to pull free of the restraints but her limbs would no longer respond to her, and terror gripped her heart.

Talsiks didn't seem to care, and began to attach pulse monitors to her skin. Then he straightened her arm and injected a needle into one of her veins, extracting blood into a test tube. She felt the sting and wanted to retract her arm but her muscles would not listen. He caught her watching with wide eyes and grinned. "To test against past specimens," he explained, extracting the needle and detaching the vile. "I am curious to see if there are differences in the blood of a fully powered guardian versus the dead or Lightless."

Talia gritted her teeth. This felt so wrong. It wasn't just the fact that she was being treated like a lab rat. It was like this was an offense to the Traveler's gift. He was trying to dissect it; find out how it worked on a biological level. Seeking an answer not even the guardians themselves knew. "You will pay for this hubris," she hissed. "You're playing with forces you don't understand."

"You're right," he said, placing the vile in a machine that began to spin. "We do not understand. But with time and proper experimentation, we will. I will unravel this mystery, and prove that the Great Machine is not so great after all. That it is not a god, but a technology to master and subjugate."

"You're wrong! T-the Vanguard will not allow this to continue!"

"You do not sound very sure of yourself. I often wondered how a guardian could fight and die so many times for a supposed god that never speaks. At first I thought their Light gave them an unspoken connection, but I soon discovered that even guardians cannot hear the Great Machine, and now I understand that even you have doubts. You wield such incredible power, and yet you know not why or how. A fascinating array of circumstances to say the least. But don't worry, I will get to the bottom of it."

"You're mad!"

He let out a brief, guttural laugh at those words. "I have heard that many times before. My peers thought me heretical, insane, even damaged. Nasty rumors that cost me my ascension to Archon. But no matter. They simply lacked the ability to see my vision. I am lucky the House of Kings were not so short sighted. To them I have worth. I shall repay their kindness and deep pockets with results. Ah, and here is your ghost now."

Talia's head jolted up as far as she could move it, and could just make out the Vandal from before entering the room with a cylindrical container made of reinforced glass and metal ends that hummed with energy. Inside, Reeki rattled around, his eye darting every which way in a panic. "Reeki!" Talia shouted. "I'm here buddy! It's going to be okay!"

Reeki's eye fixed on her and glitched. He seemed to be saying something, but she couldn't make it out.

Talsiks took the container from the Vandal. "Thank you Kurak. Prepare for notation, we shall commence our testing at once."

The Vandal nodded and moved to stand next to Talia with a datapad ready in its hands to record their findings.

Talsiks took to the other side of the table and lifted the arm where the energized claw was attached. The device extended and the claws lurched forward, ready to grab. "We shall begin by recording the exact amount of time it takes for a ghost to heal a guardian's wounds. Let's start small." He nodded to Kurak. "A simple incision should do the trick."

The Vandal extended one of its four arms to pick up a scalpel from the nearby cart and cut a perfect line in Talia's upper arm. She gritted her teeth at the pain.

"Good," said Talsiks. He suddenly twisted the top of the container, which deactivated the energized seal and peeled back the glass, then immediately latched onto Reeki with the glowing claw. He struggled against it, but the device kept him contained in the scientist's grasp. "Now," the towering Eliksni continued, "You will heal your guardian. Comply, or you will both die."

"T-t-talia?" said Reeki, unsure what to do.

Talia's eyes watered. "It's okay Reeki," she managed to say. "Just do as he says, and it'll be okay."

His eye glitched, then he bobbed in understanding. His shell spun and he expanded what amount he could within the energized grasp of the claw. The act emitted a burst of light that washed over Talia. The Vandal inspected the area where it had cut her and said something in Eliksni, typing on the datapad.

Talsiks clicked with interest. "Completely healed in an instant? The power of a ghost is even more potent than I thought. Let us do it again to ensure the result can be replicated."

Talia groaned as she was cut again, and Reeki was lifted above her.

"Heal her again, ghost."

Reeki blinked sadly, but did as he was told. Another burst of light washed over her and healed the wound.

"Amazing," said Talsiks. "We must be sure this is the case for all parts of the body. Then we can expand to larger wounds."

Tears began to fall down Talia's face as she realized what horrifying experience was ahead of her. For the next several hours, she endured a relentless torture of science. She was cut all over her body, followed by blunt force wounds and deep lacerations. Reeki healed her every time, and every time she was harmed in a way more painful and brutal than before. Before long she felt her mind beginning to break, and words began to stream involuntarily from her mouth. "Please!" she shouted. "Please stop! You have your answers, please!"

But Talsiks paid her no mind and continued to escalate the experiments, testing not only what kinds of wounds she could heal, but also from what distances. Through this he was able to determine that the further a ghost was from their guardian, the longer it took to heal them. "This is truly groundbreaking," he said as Reeki struggled to heal Talia from across the room. She screamed in agony from a gaping laceration made across her chest, slowly closing up with an aura of Light.

It was becoming too much. She was starting to lose hope. She was starting to wish for death. Dark thoughts began to sink into her. Suddenly a final death didn't seem so bad; an eternal end to this suffering.

A sound pulled her out of that dark place. As her wound healed completely, she heard a familiar whistling noise, echoing faintly from the hall outside the room. The Fallen did not seem to notice. Perhaps she was going mad? She screamed again as the Vandal suddenly cracked one of her bones. She cried out to the world to make it stop. And the whistle answered. She recognized it now, and her mind latched onto the noise like a lifeline. Thank you Redtail, she thought. Thank you.

At last Talsiks paused the tests and set Reeki back in his container. "We have captured some remarkable data. I think it's time to move on to the next experiment." He moved to a wall of tools and picked up an enormous, wicked looking saw, then handed it to Kurak. "I would like to see how the Light handles limb regeneration."

Oh Traveler, Talia thought. She shut her as as tight as she could and focused hard on the whistling sound. I hear you. I hear you, and I thank you. She focused hard and tried to block out everything else. For a moment it seemed to work.

"You may begin," said Talsiks.

Talia began to whistle back. It was difficult, but she managed to get a noise out. Then Kurak took a saw to her arm and the whistle became a scream that lasted long into the night.

Back in their prison, the other guardians were rattled as Talia's screams echoed from deep within the complex. Daydra stood next to Cayde directly behind the energy shield with both of his hands against his mouth. He had arranged them in a way that allowed him to produce a loud, ear-piercing whistle. He had been making the sound for hours, and Cayde was becoming fed up.

"Will you cut that out?!" he shouted.

Daydra paused for a moment. "No. It is helping."

Cayde smashed a fist against the shield and it vibrated, but held in place. "How in the Traveler's Light is that helping? Listen to her! She's being tortured! We have to do something!"

"I am," said Daydra. "The whistling is a code. You may have heard Talia use it before. Hearing it now will help her through this pain… I hope."

Cayde's mechanical brow creased in frustration, but the veteran was right. He seemed to be right about a lot of things, and for some reason that annoyed him. He did remember the whistling though. Talia would do it occasionally in battle. He sighed and placed a hand on Daydra's shoulder. "Do what you can for her. Please."

The veteran nodded, and returned his hands to his mouth. The whistling continued, and Cayde shuffled over to Torres, sliding down against the wall. "Hey buddy, please tell me you're ready to… do your thing."

"I'm sorry, but no," said the Warlock. He sat in a meditative position with hands folded in his lap and eyes closed. "It takes an enormous amount of Light energy to pull this off, and with my ghost so far away it will take a great deal of time to gather the necessary amount. You will have to be patient."

Cayde growled in frustration, but jumped in surprise when Torres placed a hand on his arm. The Warlock opened his eyes and gave the exo an understanding expression. "I will do everything I can to get her back, and get us out of this. I promise."

Cayde nodded. "Thank you Torres. That was surprisingly sympathetic of you."

Torres rolled his eyes. "Yes, I have my moments. Now leave me be, you're not making this go any faster."

"Understood." Cayde got up again and began pacing the room. He glanced at Shiro, who was on the other side of the cell, laying on his back with his knees in the air. To the naked eye he might have seemed to be taking a power nap, but Cayde knew better. None of them could sleep while Talia's constant screaming echoed through the halls. He paused to listen to them again. She was becoming hoarse. Her voice was struggling; desperate.

"Don't worry Starlight, I'm coming," he whispered. He looked to Torres again, where sparks of flame were beginning to dance around the Warlock. "Just hang on a little longer."