Chapter 6: The Harvest

Chapter 6: The Harvest

The return was a physical violation. One moment Ethan was a disembodied point of view in a collapsing, impossible reality; the next, he was slammed back into the confines of his own skull with the force of a car crash. The psychic echo of Clara’s scream still ricocheted through his mind, interwoven with the entity’s final, chilling promise: You are next.

He gasped, a ragged, desperate intake of air that burned his lungs. The world swam back into focus: the cold leather of the restraints biting into his wrists and ankles, the hard surface of the Loom beneath him, the low, predatory hum of the machine vibrating through his bones. He was back in the blood-red laboratory, pinned and helpless.

A new sound sliced through the humming. A frantic, high-pitched beeping, sharp and insistent. It was an alarm, a sound of critical error, and it was coming from the other side of the machine. Clara’s side.

Ethan strained against his restraints, twisting his neck to see. The helmet above Clara’s head was retracting, its metallic arm folding away. As it cleared her face, the thick straps holding her down hissed and snapped open. For a second, her body remained limp, a discarded doll on the sacrificial altar of the Loom. Then, with a slow, boneless movement, she slumped sideways and tumbled off the bed, hitting the cold tile floor with a sickeningly soft thud.

Ethan’s heart hammered against his ribs. “Clara!” he choked out. He expected the Guides to rush to her side, to perform first aid, to stop the piercing alarm. But no one came.

Clara stirred on the floor. She pushed herself up, first onto her hands and knees, her back to him. Her body trembled violently, racked with spasms that seemed too powerful for her small frame. And then she screamed.

It was not the psychic shriek from the Nexus. This was a physical, guttural sound torn from the depths of her lungs—a sound of such profound agony and madness that it scraped the air raw. It wasn't a human scream of pain or fear; it was the shriek of an animal caught in a trap, a sound of pure, mindless torment.

Her hands flew to her head, fingers tangling in her dark hair, pulling at the roots. Then, with a sudden, jerky movement, she brought them to her face.

“No…” Ethan whispered, his eyes wide with horror, unable to look away.

Her fingernails, sharp and desperate, scraped across her own cheek, leaving four white trails that quickly welled with red. It wasn't an act of self-harm. It was a frantic, desperate attempt to excavate. As if she were trying to claw off a mask that had been glued to her skin. She dug her nails into the flesh of her forehead, her cheeks, her chin, tearing at herself with a frenzied, inhuman determination. The wet, tearing sound echoed in the sterile laboratory, a grotesque counterpoint to the clinical beeping of the alarm.

The main laboratory door slid open. Dr. Finch strode in, his long coat swishing behind him. He was flanked by the two identical Leos, the ones who had dragged Ethan here. But they carried no medical kit, displayed no alarm. Their faces, stripped of their smiles, were blankly impassive. Finch’s face, however, was anything but. It was illuminated by a terrifying, ecstatic light—the rapturous expression of a prophet witnessing a miracle.

“Incredible,” Finch breathed, his voice a low, reverent whisper. He walked slowly, circling Clara’s writhing form as if she were a priceless, volatile work of art. The Leos remained by the door, one of them holding a data slate, his thumb gliding across the screen, recording.

“The initial cognitive integration… the trauma of the merger…” Finch narrated, his voice trembling with academic fervor. “It’s more visceral than the simulations predicted. The host consciousness is fighting the graft, trying to reject the primary interface—the face. A symbolic shedding of the old identity. Magnificent!”

He was a spectator at a tiger mauling, marveling at the predator’s technique. The sight of his ecstatic detachment was a final, brutal confirmation. There was no cure here. There was no therapy. There was only the Harvest.

Clara’s screams subsided into ragged, wet gasps. Her frantic clawing slowed. The two Leos glided forward on silent feet, their movements perfectly synchronized. They took her by the arms, their grips firm and efficient, and hauled her to her feet.

She hung limply between them, her head lolling on her chest. Her face, what Ethan could see of it, was a raw, bloody ruin, a horrific canvas of torn flesh.

“The rejection is subsiding,” Finch noted, stepping closer and peering at her with the intense curiosity of a jeweler inspecting a flawed diamond. “The new consciousness is asserting control. Full integration is imminent.”

As if on command, Clara’s head lifted. She went unnaturally still, the last tremor leaving her body. And then, she turned her head and looked directly at Ethan.

Time seemed to freeze. The beeping alarm, the hum of the Loom, his own frantic heartbeat—it all faded into a roaring silence. He stared into her ruined face, and a wave of terror so pure and profound it felt like dying washed over him.

It wasn't the blood. It wasn't the mangled skin.

It was her eyes.

Her eyes, which had been a warm, human brown in the lab and sharp with lucid fear in the Nexus, were no longer human. They glowed with a piercing, luminous, and utterly alien blue light. It was the same cold, digital blue as the eyes of the Guides. A color that felt manufactured, a light that shone from within, powered by something that had clawed its way into her skull from that black, whispering void.

The entity was looking at him. Through her.

The vessel had been delivered.

The sight broke him. The psychic promise—You are next—slammed into him with the force of a physical blow. The image of those glowing blue eyes in that destroyed face burned itself onto his soul. This was his future. This was the 'cure' they had in store for him. To have his mind hollowed out and his body turned into a puppet for a thing from beyond the stars, a thing that would peer out at the world through his own eyes.

A black vortex opened up at the edges of his vision. The world began to spin, the blood-red walls of the lab and the triumphant face of Dr. Finch dissolving into a nauseating swirl. The restraints holding him to the Loom felt miles away. His own body felt like a distant, failing machine.

He was still strapped down, a helpless witness, the next offering on the altar. The terror was too vast, the reality too monstrous for his mind to contain. With a final, silent scream that had no air to carry it, Ethan Hayes fled into the only escape he had left. The darkness consumed him, and he knew nothing more.