[b]#Finished[/b] After the SIVA Crisis, I resumed my usual research. Well, "usual" might not be the right word for experiments on captured Hive worms, and my methods were growing more extreme beyond the approval of Ikora Rey. Even without City support, my notoriety as a published researcher garnered me the support of many warlock scholars of the library. With their glimmer and donated instruments, I traveled to Phobos with six worms captured from the Dreadnaught in my possession. There, there was no sign of the City's influence, and I was free of any oversight. The research station was an abandoned Cabal base. My ghost transmated me to the dark barren surface along with my stacked jars of worms. I looked past the great imposing base and stared at the black sky and the sea of stars that shined within it. "Beautiful, isn't it?" my ghost said. "Yes. There are terrors hiding in that beauty though," I answered her. "Well, you have no problems finding terrors in Sol," she said, and I approximated a smiled with my exo face. In front of the base, I was greeted by four reprogrammed Reef-bought frames, and their royal purple was repainted black. Two of of them were carrying repurposed Cabal projection rifles. "Welcome back," one of them says. The unarmed frames each grabbed three jars to carry. "So polite," my ghost says. Joined with the frames, I walked up the ramp leading to the base door, and it unfolds open. I entered and walked through the padded halls until reaching a large round room. In its center was a large table which projected an orange hologram of the base, and around it stood a man and a woman. "Hey, I'm liking that Hive armor, especially those spikes of green light." the woman said. She was a pale blue Awoken warlock with a pastel purple mohawk, and she called herself Cirqe. She wore geometric robes along with various pieces of armor obtained from her conquests, and the black and pink shader united the disparate pieces into a cohesive look. "Thank you." I lifted the deathsinger helmet from my head and placed it on the table. "Looks like it would smell though," she said, and I laughed. "Hey Kage." The man waved. He was a hunter calling himself Daystar, and his face was hidden behind an old mask decorated with bandages obtained from the Trials of Osiris. His armor was a sleek white and red mix, and he was especially proud of his cloak which glowed in red chroma light. "It's good to see you guys. Where's Bistro and Yumi?" I said, and the frames stood behind me while still holding the jars of worms suspended in green fluid. "I think they're in the Crucible on Mercury. Last I heard, they were somewhere in Caloris Basin," She said. "Alright, is everything ready?" I asked "About that . . . I captured the subjects, but I don't know about this. Should we really be doing this?" he said. "Damn it." I sighed. "I've seen the visions of what might happen; Savathûn, might attack at any moment. We know there have been overlaps with Oryx's court and Savathûn's who could have told her the Traveler is in Sol. Balwûr was the daughter of Savathûn, and the runes inscribed on that Taken sword we got after beating Malok suggested Savathûn knew of Oryx's defeat here. We need to understand the Hive and how the worms connect them to the Darkness before they attack again." "Typical FWC cultist, ranting on about visions," she said in a playful tone which only annoyed me. "I didn't see the vision on the Device, I saw it when I was practicing thanatonautics," I said. "Relax, I'm just messing with you." She then turned to Daystar. "And Daystar, you knew what you were getting into with us. You can't chicken out now." "Fine, alright." Daystar lifted his hands from the table and walked to the right into a hallway. Me, Cirqe, and the frames followed him. The lights flickered as we approach a door on the left. "We should have a ghost fix the wiring later," she said. We entered the room after the door opened, and inside, I saw three naked Cabal soldiers lying against metal tables and held by thick cuffs around their fatty arms and legs. Over their mouths were breathing masks connected to tubes leading back to large metal cylinders of gas at the room's edge. "I got our test subjects," Daystar said. "Are they . . . alive?" I asked. "Yeah, just unconscious. We're about to commit war crimes on POWs, but it seems less bad if they don't have to be awake for it," she said. I turn to the frames. "Put them down here." The frames place the jars on a clear table before exiting. "Daystar, will you do the honors?" I asked. He pulled out his hunter knife and cut a long vertical incision deep into the belly of the far-left Cabal. Oily black blood oozed from the cut, and beneath the layers of blubber was a complex mess of foreign organs. I unsealed a jar, and I slid both hands into the viscous green fluid to pull out a wriggling worm. I placed it within the opened Cabal, and my ghost sealed the wound shut with a beam of white Light. "Is that it?" Cirqe asked as I wiped the green slime on my metal fingers against Daystar's cloak. "What the hell dude!" He pulls away. "Yup, that's it. We keep him under observation to see how long it takes to be changed, but the other worms are for dissection, worship, or just backups. When we found the Books of Sorrow inscribed in the fragments, It mentioned a Vex being able to alter reality through worship of worms. We need to figure out what technically constitutes worship, and to test it in both the physical world as well as a Hive throne world." "Yay science," Cirqe said. "Okay, but why have the frames bring all six worms here if you only needed one to test on the Cabal," Daystar asked. "Well, obviously because . . . damn, you're right. Yeah, I have no idea why I did that. I'll get the frames back in here." I exited the room, and as I walked through the padded halls, I suddenly felt weak. My knees buckled and I fell on my face and fainted. I woke up under the flickering light of the hall feeling drained somehow, and as my optical sensors calibrated, I saw my ghost lying as still as death on the floor. "Ghost?" I grabbed her into my hands as I tried to wake her. I suddenly heard the breaking of glass and the whir of a fusion rifle coming from the experimentation room. I slid my ghost in a pocket in my robes, I stumbled back to the room find Daystar laying face down in broken glass and the green fluid of the jar. I saw the metal table which held the vivisected Cabal empty with the metal cuffs broken. The naked Cabal soldier was standing with his back to me, and he held Cirqe against the wall by her throat as she kicked her legs in vain. On the ground next to her was Daystar's FWC-issued fusion rifle, and I figured she must have grabbed it from him after he was knocked down in the attack. I was unarmed; my ghost didn't transmat my weapons from the ship, so I tried to use my Light instead. I lifted my hands to focus my Void Light, but I felt nothing, and no axion bolts manifested. "Damn it," I whispered, and the Cabal turned to face me. His beady eyes were bright green like those of Hive, and he flung Cirqe in me with a bark-like grunt. The force of the impact knocked me down. I rolled her off me, and I got back up in time to witness the Cabal rip his breathing mask off, and he grabbed on to a tank of gases and repeatedly smashed it into the face of an unconscious Cabal until black oil sprayed everywhere. "What—" she said between coughs. "What is he doing?" "He is . . . practicing the sword logic. Just like the Hive, he gets stronger with every kill." "We have to stop him before he gets any stronger." She struggled to get back to her feet. "I'll distract him. You get that fusion rifle." I picked up the knife from Daystar's body, and I approached the kill-hungry Cabal as he smashes the skull of another of his brethren. "Hey! You ugly space rhino sack of garbage," I said. He turned to face me, and he grabbed a breathing tube attached to a tank, and he swung it in the air before narrowly missing my face. He whipped the tank back and forth as I ran to evade. I jumped in the air and flung the knife, but instead of his head, it struck a pipe of spongy material which released a cloud of steam against him. Cirqe got out from behind a flipped table and ran to the weapon. The enraged Cabal charged at me with killing intent. I had not felt fear like this in years, and I was paralyzed. Just as its fist was about to crash into my skull, he evaporated into a burst of violet energy. I then saw Cirqe holding the smoking fusion rifle. "It's over," she said. "Thank you," I said as I checked Daystar neck for a pulse. "He's still alive." "What happened . . . to my Light?" Daystar asked as he sat up. "Mine's gone too. Maybe it's the worms. This doesn't make any sense; they've never done this before," I replied. "It must be something else." "One way to be sure." She started blasting the worm jars with fusion rifle bursts until there was nothing left. "Still nothing." I hold out my hand in vain as I try to channel Light. "We need to go to the City. Someone might be able to help," Daystar said. "Alright, and it can't be any worse than here," I said while looking at the mess of broken equipment, Cabal corpses, and black oil staining the walls. "Don't jinx it," Cirqe said.