Chapter 104: Nobody Gets Harvested

The cold-storage warehouse smelled of ammonia, spoiled meat, and industrial copper coolant.

Heavy frost coated the galvanized steel piping along the ceiling, dripping ice water onto the concrete loading bay below.

"Sierra, take out the perimeter spotlights," Leo whispered through his tactical collar as he crouched behind an overturned forklift.

"Already dark, shadow boy," Sierra answered, her Night Spool singing through the humid air like a plucked harp string.

A faint snap echoed above the corrugated roof, and the four halogen floodlights died in a shower of quiet sparks.

"Move on the rear loading dock," Bekka commanded, leading two precinct officers with heavy breaching shields through the shadows.

Leo vaulted onto the concrete catwalk, drawing the Null Razor in a low, two-handed guard.

Two private security guards in Apex exo-suits rounded the corner, their kinetic carbines raised toward the broken lights.

"Did a fuse blow on the main grid?" one guard asked, adjusting his night-vision goggles.

"Stay sharp, the harbor precinct has been sniffing around the highway all morning," the second man warned.

Before either guard could level his weapon, Leo closed the distance in a single, soundless phase-step.

The flat of his blade slammed into the first man’s chest plate, knocking the breath from his lungs and dropping him to the grating.

The second guard swung his rifle around, but Leo caught the hot barrel in his left hand, wrenching the weapon away with localized Umbral force.

"Sleep," Leo muttered, driving the pommel of his blade into the man’s nerve cluster and catching him before he hit the deck.

Below the catwalk, Bekka kicked the reinforced fire doors off their magnetic hinges with a concentrated wind blast.

"Harbor precinct, drop your weapons and get flat on the concrete," Bekka’s voice boomed through the echoing warehouse.

Three technicians in rubber aprons scrambled away from a massive stainless steel centrifuge, raising their hands in sheer panic.

"Do not shoot, we are just hourly contractors," the lead technician shrieked, cowering behind an empty storage drum.

Luna stepped through the breached doorway, the Lotus Spine blazing with brilliant, furious emerald light.

"Step away from those dialysis lines right now," Luna commanded, her voice vibrating with cold clinical wrath.

Leo dropped down from the catwalk, his boots hitting the floor beside a row of twelve glass stasis cylinders.

Inside the frosty glass tubes, twelve young men and women hung suspended in synthetic nutrient gel, their faces sunken and pale.

Thick plastic catheters ran from their femoral arteries and sternum ports, siphoning glowing amber fluids into the central centrifuge.

"They are alive," Luna called out, rushing to the first tank and tearing the arterial clamps away with practiced speed.

"Their hematocrit levels are critically depleted, but their brain activity is stable."

"Leo, help me vent these holding chambers before the negative pressure collapses their lungs."

Leo drove the Null Razor through the hydraulic release valves, his dark blade slicing the steel couplings with clean precision.

The pressurized stasis fluid drained onto the concrete with a heavy sloshing roar as the glass cylinders hissed open.

Bekka and her officers caught the falling patients, wrapping them in thermal emergency blankets and administering saline drips.

Luna knelt beside the first glass tube, shining a soft diagnostic penlight into the dilated eyes of an unconscious young man.

"His name is Martin Keller, second-year apprentice from the eastern clinic," Luna murmured, reading the faded hospital barcode on his wristband.

"Martin, can you hear my voice?" she asked gently, pressing two warm fingers against his carotid artery.

The young man let out a faint, shuddering gasp, his cracked lips moving without sound as his eyelids fluttered open.

"You are safe now, Martin," Luna said softly, her voice carrying the deep, soothing resonance of the Lotus Spine.

"The harbor precinct is here, and nobody is going to drain your marrow ever again."

Tears spilled from the young healer’s eyes, tracing clean lines through the dried nutrient gel on his cheeks.

"I thought... we were going to die in these tubes, doctor," the boy whispered, his voice cracking with sheer relief.

"You are going home, Martin," Luna promised, wrapping a dry wool blanket around his frail shoulders.

Suddenly, a loud chime rang directly inside Leo’s consciousness, washing his vision in glowing violet system runes.

[ High-Capacity Bio-Centrifuge Core Detected ]

[ Unrefined Healer Biomass Contained: Forty-Two Liters ]

[ System Assimilation Available: Absorb for +15,000 EXP & Ether Reservoir Expansion? ]

Leo stared at the pulsating violet core at the heart of the machine, his breath catching in his throat.

’Fifteen thousand experience points would push me halfway to Level 42 before the morning ends.’

’All I have to do is place my palm on the intake valve and let the All-Spark draw the refined energy into my pathways.’

Luna looked up from a shivering young girl on the floor, catching Leo’s hesitant gaze across the machinery.

Her hazel eyes were wide with sudden, agonizing fear, watching his hand hover inches above the glowing intake port.

"Leo," Luna whispered, her voice trembling slightly in the cold air.

"That fluid inside the machine... that is their blood, their talent, and their life."

Leo looked from the glowing purple prompt to the pale, shivering face of the teenager Luna was wrapping in a blanket.

The memory of the clinic in District 9, the dockworkers holding the line, and Cole bleeding on the sandbags flashed through his mind.

’I swore I would never become like the monsters who turned our district into a harvesting pen.’

"Cancel assimilation," Leo commanded with cold, absolute finality.

[ System Notice: Core Assimilation Aborted by Host ]

[ Host Evaluation: Zero System Reward Granted ]

Leo reversed his grip on the Null Razor and brought the heavy blade down in a brutal, cleaving strike across the intake manifold.

The steel shattered with a deafening screech of tearing metal, spraying unrefined chemical coolant harmlessly across the empty floor.

The central centrifuge died with a sputtering groan, its glowing core fracturing into dull, useless shards of dead alloy.

"Nobody gets harvested in this city," Leo said aloud, turning his back on the ruined machine.

"Bodies are not currency, and power bought with stolen blood is worthless."

Luna let out a long, shuddering breath, a brilliant, tearful smile illuminating her face as she secured the girl’s oxygen mask.

"Thank you, Leo," she whispered softly.

Sierra walked over to the main administrative desk, holding up two thick leather-bound ledgers and three encrypted hard drives.

"You might have destroyed their processing machine, but I just found their entire customer registry," Sierra announced with a sharp grin.

"Every clinic, private hospital, and high-society cosmetic salon that bought these doses is written down right here."

"Secure the ledgers, Sierra," Bekka ordered, helping the last rescued apprentice onto an ambulance stretcher.

"We take the patients to Richter’s ward, and we take the evidence straight to the district council."

"What about the municipal funds we recovered from their safe?" Leo asked, looking at the metal lockboxes stacked by the loading dock.

"There are twelve million credits in cash sitting in those lockboxes," Sierra reported, clicking the latch of one container open.

"We do not touch a single credit," Bekka said firmly, adjusting her duty belt.

"The money belonged to District 9, and the residents are going to vote on how every single coin is spent."

"Twelve million credits in unmarked bearer bonds and bearer currency chips," Sierra said, whistling softly as she flipped through the bundles.

"Apex was keeping an entire seasonal operating budget locked inside these fireproof safes."

"That money was extorted from dying precincts and stolen from hospital supply budgets," Leo said, his jaw set in a hard line.

"If we hand it to the municipal government in District 1, their auditors will absorb ninety percent into administrative fees," Bekka noted grimly.

"Then District 1 does not get a single copper cent," Leo answered, turning toward the ambulances waiting outside.

"We deliver every credit to Henderson and the neighborhood committee tomorrow morning."

"Let the dockworkers, the nurses, and the families who lost their homes decide where every credit goes."

Leo nodded, sheathing his blade as the distant sirens of approaching harbor ambulances echoed across the wet highway.

Level forty-one held steady within his core, but his soul felt lighter than it had in days.