The Reclaimer: Harvest of the Dead
Chapter 2 — The Containment Ward
The first thing I felt was pressure.
The second was air that didn't belong to the world I knew.
Too clean. Too sharp. It stung the back of my throat like chemicals instead of oxygen.
I opened my eyes to a white ceiling lined with vents that hissed in rhythm with my breathing. Straps pinned me to a padded bed. Wires trailed from my arms to a cluster of machines humming softly nearby.
The light above me was steady and cruel—no flicker, no shadow.
I tried to move. The restraints answered with a mechanical click, tightening just enough to remind me that I wasn't going anywhere.
Someone spoke before I could curse. "You're awake."
The voice was calm, clinical—a woman's. She stepped into view, tall, composed, the hem of her white coat catching the artificial light. The Directorate's insignia was stitched neatly on her sleeve: two circles intersecting, the inner one split by a single line. I'd seen it before, stamped on forbidden cargo.
"My name is Dr. Maris Venn," she said. "You were recovered from a restricted rooftop sector twelve hours ago. Retrieval drones detected a resonance spike from your ID chip before you collapsed."
"Resonance spike?" My voice cracked. "I don't remember signing up to be a science project."
"You didn't," she said evenly. "But you are one now."
She moved closer, studying a screen beside the bed. "You've been exposed to raw Residuum energy, Mr. Carter. No one has survived that level of contact in over two centuries."
"Guess I'm lucky," I said, though it didn't sound like luck.
"Or changed."
That word again. Changed. I wasn't sure I liked the sound of it.
"What is this place?" I asked.
"Directorate Containment Ward. Designed for anomaly stabilization."
"Containment. Stabilization." I laughed quietly. "You mean a cage."
She ignored the sarcasm. "The field beneath you keeps the resonance inside your body from destabilizing. Think of it as protection."
"I'd rather think of it as a cage."
Venn didn't argue. "You were unconscious for twelve hours after retrieval. We kept you under suppression to prevent sympathetic energy events."
"Sympathetic what?"
She finally looked at me—really looked. "Your condition resonates with ambient energy. If you panic, it reacts. If it reacts, people die."
That shut me up.
She nodded to the technician by the doorway. "Start the scan."
The man rolled a cart beside me and lifted a slim device. He hesitated before pressing it against my forearm. The scanner emitted a faint whine, and the monitor flashed from green to amber to red.
"Instability increasing," he murmured.
Venn leaned closer, eyes darting between the readings. "Adaptive reaction," she said softly. "It's learning from the field."
"Learning?" I asked. "Like… alive?"
The technician took a cautious step back. "Dr. Venn—"
"Hold steady," she ordered.
The hum under my skin rose. Blue light spidered through my veins, faint but unmistakable. The scanner sparked and went dark.
"Stop!" I shouted. "It's burning—"
Then, as suddenly as it started, the pain faded. My veins still glowed faintly before dimming again.
"Vitals?" Venn asked.
"Elevated, but stable," the tech answered.
She tapped her pen against the tablet. "You said it burned. Describe it."
"It felt like something inside me woke up."
Her expression didn't change, but I could see the flicker of interest behind her eyes. "Did you hear it again?"
"What?"
"The voice," she said. "During retrieval, your bio-monitor logged irregular neural spikes—you were speaking aloud, words consistent with auditory interference. Did you hear it again?"
"You mean the words in my head?" I asked.
"Exactly those."
I hesitated. "Not words this time. Just… pressure. Like I wasn't alone in there."
She studied me a moment longer, then said quietly, "What you're describing resembles Harvester resonance."
The name meant nothing at first. Then memory filled the gap—the old ghost stories whispered by workers in the Slums. People who could draw life out of corpses barehanded. Monsters, the Board said.
"Those are myths," I said.
"So were survivors of raw exposure," she replied.
She turned back to her notes, speaking almost to herself. "Your case changes everything."
"I'm flattered," I muttered.
"You shouldn't be."
Her voice had softened, but not with sympathy—with something else. Fear, maybe. Or respect.
"Where's the fragment?" I asked. "The thing I was holding."
"In containment," she said. "Your drone scan detected it before retrieval. It was still resonating when we recovered you. The symbol etched into it is Directorate origin, pre-Fall era."
"So now you're studying it."
"Of course. It may explain why you're still alive."
"And me?"
"You're being studied too."
She glanced toward the hall as an alert chimed softly over the intercom. A technician leaned in and whispered something about energy readings in another wing.
Venn sighed. "We'll continue after you've rested."
She moved toward the door and paused for a moment, studying me one last time before she left.
The silence pressed in again.
Only the machines kept me company, their low hum joining the rhythm of my heartbeat.
They said I was in a cage for my safety, but it felt more like I'd been buried alive.
Hours passed—or maybe minutes; time had no shape here. Every now and then, a faint flicker of blue ran beneath my skin, tracing lines I didn't recognize as mine.
Then the console beside my bed pinged.
[Unauthorized File Detected — OPERATION: REVENANT]
The words didn't make sense, but my thumb was already hovering over the control.
A holographic image rose from the screen—a steel ring suspended over a pulsing sphere of light. Lines of data spiraled around it.
Mass Resurrection Protocol. Residuum Amplification Field. Source: Classified.
I stared at it until the words blurred together.
They weren't studying me.
They were testing me.
And whatever they were building—it needed what was inside me.
The lights dimmed to simulate night.
Outside the glass wall, the faint orange haze of Greybridge flickered against the clouds.
(End of Chapter 2 — Next: The Interview Room)