Angel of Pain

[Trinity Talon]

Trinity was dragged to 'The Artist''s room, it was a bare metal room, the floor was almost freezing cold and there were neatly arranged drawers lining the wall. In the center of the room was a set of shackles in the air and a set on the floor with a drain underneath. It was antiseptically clean and it truly did frighten her.

From a small office off the side, with smoked out glass windows, the scent of cigar smoke and coffee was noticeable over the smell of antiseptic cleaner. The troopers secured her wrists and ankles and left her alone in the room until the door finally opened and the man they called 'The Artist' came out. He was and older gentleman, white hair, skinny, had a white face mask and gloves on over his black uniform.

"Ah, Colonel Talon... I was wondering if Dominus would be sending you to me." He said as he walked around her. "When I am through with you... my artistry will be evident and you will be a nice, compliant prisoner or slave. Once upon a time, people paid me a great sum of money to have my work done to them. Of course, back then, I used local numbing agents."

Trinity remained silent and just stared at him as he spoke. He reached into a drawer and pulled out a rubber bite gag and secured it to her head.

"There, that will keep you from biting your tongue off. Don't look so upset... the pain will last but the beauty will never fade." he laughed and opened a drawer and pulled out a couple of tools. "You see, the process I use, strips the outer layer of skin, exposing the sensitive, fleshy part, then... I pretty much carve the design into your flesh. It's quite painful and you will try to beg through the gag to do anything to make me stop. There are four steps I CAN do but I do not have to. We can stop at step two." he walked around her and hummed. "You have a lovely body Colonel, although your back impresses me the most. So many little scars and wounds, presumably you took strikes intended for others. Like some... angel of mercy. Ah... now I am getting an idea for my design. Angel wings!"

She closed her eyes as he picked up the tool that basically planed off the first layer of skin, it was more painful than she realized, only seconds in and she was screaming through the gag, tears were welling in her eyes and she was trying her hardest to fight the restraints.

"Now now... you mustn't move too much..." he picked up the remote and locked her in place. "There... that's better." he continued on the micro plane turning pale white skin into bright pink, it was surprisingly bloodless, the process had a very very fine laser plane that didn't open blood vessels. But even the air would hit the sensitive nerve endings, sending wave after wave of pain through her body, pain she couldn't even fight against.

After nearly five minutes, he had finished her back, stopping just above her buttocks and just under her neckline. The idea was to break her, but still keep the results able to be hidden under normal clothing. For as far as anyone else knew, she was going to be sold, but she had to be broken down first and the artwork he'd do on her would simply enhance her appeal. Unlike a tattoo or even ritual scarring, this would never be able to be removed or hidden, not without entirely removing skin down to the muscle layer.

Trinity was wishing he would just kill her, the pain was so intense and he wasn't doing anything to help in her comfort. Dominus walked in as the artist was changing out tools.

"Lord Dominus... here for the art?" he said with a grin.

"Just to do this..." Dominus said as he slipped a pair of glasses on Trinity and tapped a control on a padd. "Colonel... you will learn to be compliant and obey your new masters. The Ajem'dasis. It will be by their largess that you live or die."

The Artist began the painful (for her) task of carefully and delicately carving into her flesh, the intricate pattern that he had in mind. Each feather was detailed. If it wasn't being etched into her flesh, it would almost be considered beautiful, but each stroke sent new waves of pain through her body, the visuals going through the glasses added to it.

"I'll leave you to your task Artist. Just think Colonel... you may take great pride in those wings. I am sure your mother will enjoy a matching set someday..." Dominus chuckled as he left the Artist's 'studio'.

Nearly two hours later --

Trinity had to be revived four times by the time he was done, faint blood trickles still oozed from the scars on her back and she was incredibly weak and pale when the troopers moved her back to the holding room with Tereska and the Empress.

"What did they do to you?" Teri said in shock when she saw Trinity.

"Whatever... pleased... them." She said weakly as she sagged against the chains. "Useless to resist." Trinity closed her eyes and passed out again.

[Angel Ryder]

TAS Kitea - Bridge -

Admiral Angelica Ryder was sitting in her ready room, going over the movements of Dominus forces and trying to arrange for any of the other visitors to the funeral for his grandfather met with minimal hassle. Although her thoughts kept going to her daughter from the future. Suddenly she had an intense feeling of pain in her back, her entire back was burning. It was a curious sensation, as if from nowhere it came. Grimacing and gritting her teeth she walked to the small cabinet that had her med kit and pulled out a hypospray and pressed it to her back. The pain went down, but she could still feel it.

"Must be that new detergent..." Angel muttered to herself as she pulled off her jacket and secured the door. Stripping out of the uniform and pulling on a new uniform blouse, she looked at her back in the reflective surface of her window. It was red and inflamed but certainly nothing that simply a chemical reaction would have done. "Weird..."

Walking out onto the bridge as she zipped up her jacket she saw her father sitting in her chair.

"That IS my chair old man." Angel said with a smirk. "You got your own."

"It's so small. How is this comfortable?" Nick mused as he stood up.

"Well Nathan and I are pretty short." Angel replied and gave him a hug. "So what brings you here?"

"Father can't have coffee with his daughter?" Nick said and put his hand on her back and then pulled back when she winced. "You okay?"

"Yes... no... I don't know." Angel said as she took him into the conference room. "This is weird, I was thinking about Trinity... hoping she was okay and then... " she pulled up the back of her uniform shirt. "I have this all over my back."

Nick raised an eyebrow and hovered his hand over it. "It's... sympathetic pain." he closed his eyes. "You two have always been linked, just like you and I." he could sense intense pain through the Iljuna. "I think she's being tortured."

"We need to find her... can we like... trace her through that?" Angel said feeling more nervous than before. "Those bastards aren't going to hurt my daughter more than they already did..." she clenched her fists. "Where could they be?"

"I got a call... mom's alternate. Sandoval's alternate wants an Erebus class. That's why I'm here. We're going to use the Athena, but I need your help..." Nick said and crossed his arms. "Maybe I can get through to her, find Dominus... and Trinity."

[Becky Sandoval]

"I like having my lunch here," a voice said as the conference room doors parted to reveal Becky and her mother. "I like the solitude..." her voice trailed off. "Mr. President.... Captain.... I'm sorry to interrupt. "We'll just be going. "

[Angel Ryder]

"Oh it's fine." Angel said as she looked at her XO and her mother. "Always nice seeing you Elaine."

"You can just call me Nick... seriously, we're like family. Although... I am glad you're here. Saves me a trip." Nick crossed his arms. "Need a Becca to tell me I'm insane for even considering giving an Ajem'dasis that looks like your future self a powerful ship."

"Not unless you've got a plan to essentially keep it under control." Angel said and tapped her chin with her fingernail. "Obviously they'll know if we Trojan Horse it, either with actual troops or holographics, they're probably even expecting that we'd try something. It has to be something much more subtle, something even a genius like you couldn't find." she said as she looked at Becky.

[Becky Sandoval]

"Elaine?" The mother said with an amused grin, "No one has called me by my middle name since I was 16 sneaking home after a party... of course mom also included my first and last names." Rachel had the soft Irish lilt of a second generation American. Her parents had of course moved from Ireland to New Mexico so her father could work a the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Becky glanced at her mother, then back to Nick and sighed, "You know us as well as anyone. Look, there's a reason she wants that ship, and she chose an older one that isn't classified, or particularly advanced. She's not greedy, and knows that you would never sign off on the Kitea, the Huntington, or even a Choctaw class. She has to also know you will have a way to track it. Let me ask this. Is one Erebus class a particular threat to the Alliance?"

[Angel Ryder]

"Quite a bit so actually." Angel replied. "Erebus class ships formed the heavy back bone of our Fleet during the war, major battles, there was at least one Erebus involved." she smiled slightly. "You designed a tough ship, for as many times as we rebuilt them, they still held their ground. Of course, you know that if we give her Athena, Cece is going to rip us both new ones. Granted she's already stated she's not returning to the Fleet, her work with the President is too important to her now, but... there's a reason you picked that bird isn't there?"

"Cece outfitted her with some of her own designs, things that aren't in any database or schematic, things only she told me she was installing because she used some of my equipment to do it. Hell I don't even know the full specs of what she put in, but... even someone who knew that bird inside and out, wouldn't find it easily. I nearly blew my hands off when I was helping get her warp engines rebuilt and she had some special 'extra dash speed' intermix system that wasn't on any spec sheet." Nick replied. "But Athena is one of the few of our Erebus that aren't on active combat detail and just assigned to planetary defense."

"Which I control." Angel cleared her throat. "I'll sign off on it, as long as I know that eventually we can reclaim it. Or blow it up and end someone's threat once and for all."

"But again... to answer your previous question Becky... yeah it could be, but it isn't by itself. Now if she had the resources to reverse engineer some of its systems and duplicate the design... then we could be in trouble. Of course, Dominus is impatient and this Bellatrix... she seems far more patient, but I'm not going to sacrifice our people over a starship, even one as capable as an Erebus class. If we can get Teri and Trinity back... and she knows how to pull my strings. But... we need to keep them from wanting to invade us, at least until we're more ready."

"I want my daughter back and I want whoever's torturing her so badly that I'm feeling it to suffer just as bad." Angel said coldly. "You don't screw with my kid."

[Becky Sandoval]

"And, I'll do what I can to help you with that," Becky added. "Torture? How do you know? Neverminde, I don't want to know."

[Angel Ryder]

"Oh... it's... " Angel said as she lifted the back of her shirt. "Kinda obvious. Never experienced anything like this before, not since I've been trying to tap into the Iljuna a bit more, need every tactical edge I can get... "

[Becky Sandoval]

"Fascinating," Becky said examining the scar.

[Angel Ryder]

"I've had sympathetic pain with her before, but not on this level. Ever since she came to this reality, the two of us just really bonded and I knew when she was in a lot of pain, after she lost Ethan on Vulcan, I could feel her depression, but I never thought too much of it, but I've never had it manifest physically... whoever is doing this... it's the most excruciating pain she's ever felt in her life." Angel said with a wince. "Maybe worse than childbirth, I've been feeling achy like this for almost an hour now... and it's still throbbing."