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"Alright," Henry said. "Let's find the rest."

The others weren't far. Just around the corner, three more adventurers sprawled against the walls at regular intervals, like they'd each picked their own spot for a quick break. Like the mage, they'd set up shop – cots out, blankets cozy, the whole shebang. Nothing about the scene suggested panic or flight.

That was somehow worse than finding signs of a struggle. The Seekers hadn't been attacked. At least, not in the common sense. They must've succumbed to the whispers, and that mage must've been able to resist them slightly longer, considering she managed to get to the door before counting sheep. Thank God for their Faraday suits. Of course, a part of Henry believed his SERE training would help him withstand it, but he was perfectly content not testing that out. Ever, preferably.

"Vitals?" Henry asked, though he already knew what Isaac would find.

"Same as the mage. Weak pulse, shallow breathing." Isaac checked each Seeker in turn. "No physical trauma. They're just... unconscious. Depleted. A bit cold, but not hypothermic."

"We oughta get 'em outta here," Ryan said.

"Won't help them much, according to the dossiers," Ron explained. "Things are like ticks. They've already latched onto the Seekers. We gotta figure out how to get rid of them."

Henry let out a slow breath. Yeah, they needed to address the source first. Henry spotted a partially dislodged device mounted on a platform. Tools were laid out nearby, arranged for removal work. "I'm guessing it's this."

He glanced at the symbols etched at the base of the platform. Based on the image of a lightning inside a triangle, it was probably a warning of some sort. "Doc," Henry gestured, "What are we looking at here?"

Dr. Anderson leaned in. "'Unit must remain secured at all times.' So much for that," he sighed, glancing at the half-pried work the Seekers left behind.

"Alright. Let's keep looking. Yen, Hayes, Owens watch over the Seekers."

Henry started with a nearby desk, pulling a drawer underneath. He picked out a random notebook and opened it. The text was all in Baranthurian script, but among the dense paragraphs were occasional diagrams showing simple plots and bar charts.

"Found something." He handed it to Dr. Anderson.

Dr. Anderson flipped through the pages, reading for a few minutes. "The device is called a 'Soul Cage.' The warnings... well, I suppose now we know why they were rather specific about not disturbing the housing. The notebook documents several containment experiments. Testing its effectiveness against different spectral entities."

Perfect. So, they had a broken containment device and four unconscious adventurers who'd clearly done exactly what the warning labels said not to do. Now they just had to figure out how to fix it.

Henry turned his back toward Dr. Anderson. "Snake cam." The warning labels and research gave them a name to work with, but knowing it was called a 'Soul Cage' didn't tell them much about what they were actually dealing with.

The device itself was about the size of a microwave, tilted downward and barely hanging from the mount courtesy of the Seekers' attempts to pry it open. The housing was made of some kind of copper-ish material – probably that orichalcum compound they kept running into. A spiderweb of cracks ran through the viewing panel.

He fed the camera through an opening in the side, checking the feed on his tablet. The interior layout was surprisingly... familiar. Almost like looking inside of a PC, down to the RGB lighting.

Three crystal slots on a baseplate, each one color-coded: red, green, blue. The crystals themselves had fallen loose, scattered inside the housing. The whole setup had a clear flow pattern, like any other piece of engineered equipment. Presumably, it was input – where the 'souls' were introduced, processing, and then output – where they were 'caged.'

"Pretty straightforward," Henry said. He set his bag to the side, reached into his site exploitation kit, and pulled out a small screwdriver – one of the many new additions since encountering the first Baranthurian site. "Let's get this panel off."

The screw heads were chewed up badly, like someone went at them with a dagger when they couldn't find the right driver. Shit, they probably did. Henry couldn't blame the Seekers; trying to remove precision screws with the wrong tools always ended the same way. Must've been frustrating enough to make them switch to prying at the housing instead. That kind of desperate tool improv rarely worked out well, whether it was ancient magic tech or just a stubborn PC case. Tenfold for ancient tech housing ghosts, apparently.

With proper tools, the housing screws came out easily enough. Whatever else anyone could say about Baranthurian engineering, at least it was standardized and practical. Dr. Anderson placed the panel on a table beside them. The crystals lay immediately ahead, ripe for the taking.

Dr. Anderson's intrigued smile seeped through his helmet. "Just like batteries, then?"

"Moment of truth." Henry reached for the first crystal. "Red goes to–"

Something caught him in the shoulder – a chair moving fast enough to spin him halfway around. "Fuck!" He dropped into a crouch as more furniture turned into missiles, cabinets and desks smashing apart against walls. The Lost Seekers groaned, rising slowly. Well, shit. It looked like touching the crystals had pissed off the ghosts. They'd be an issue, but at least they weren't lunging like it was that World War Z movie.

The Seekers moved like they were underwater, but their weapons weren't any less sharp for it. Through the frosted sheen of his faceplate, he caught Ron slamming into the sword guy like a defensive end on fourth and goal – all two hundred odd pounds of him driving straight into the possessed man's center mass. Poor guy couldn't even get his sword out of its sheath before getting pinned down. Another one of the Seekers tried slamming his bow on Ron's mesh to no avail. He, too, was knocked down.

On the other side of the room, Ryan had the mage – one hand locking her knife arm at the wrist, the other controlling her elbow as he eased her to her knees. There was something almost careful in how he worked with her dazed movements instead of powering through them. A quick twist of her arm – just enough – and he had the knife. He immediately drove it deep into a nearby table where nothing could throw it around.

Isaac, apparently, didn't need to do much. He must've tied up his seeker before the whole possession thing kicked off, and now he was moving to tie up the others.

"Try to keep them alive!" Henry called out. "Doc, lift the housing up a bit."

He placed the red crystal in its slot with a click. Then, he got the other two seated in their color coded slots, but nothing happened. The ghosts were still very much active, judging by tornado of items still being tossed around.

"Gotta be fuckin' kidding me..." Henry maneuvered the snake cam, feeding it around the crystals. The image showed the mounting brackets, internal connections loose. Same shit that happened when someone plugged in a USB and got no device recognition. "Shit's loose inside. Doc, my kit."

Dr. Anderson pulled out their tools while Henry removed the crystals again. Even with the tools he wouldn't be able to repair as is. There was only one option left: disassembling it. Of course, there was nothing overly dramatic about that. It was like rebuilding a PC – except most computers didn't try to actively murder the person repairing it.

They got the housing apart, starting working on the internal mounts – Henry on one side, Dr. Anderson on the other side. Each mount was halfway to completely fucked. He had to pull them all loose, get them lined up right, then lock them down.

He just about finished tightening up the first one when something slammed into his back. The impact forced him to the ground. He barely felt it thanks to the layers of armor, but that was hardly a blessing.

The cold hit instantly – liquid nitrogen shooting through his shoulder. The impact must have torn the mesh. And with a Faraday cage, even a small gap was as good as no protection at all.

Reality fractured like a broken mirror. Whatever entered went straight for his mind, flooding him with alien memories and emotions. Despair, rage, an overwhelming feeling of violation as it tried to overwrite who he was.

But Henry knew this game. Different context, same principle. SERE had taught him how to compartmentalize, how to preserve his core self even when everything else was under attack. It taught him how to negotiate and stall – to feed bogus intel and in this case, overwhelm the damn specter with years of bullshit and social media brainrot. The ghost might own his body, but it couldn't just erase him and knock him out like it had the untrained adventurers.

"Doc–" He forced the word out through lips that didn't want to move. "Mounts. Then crystals. Hurry."

His body jerked sideways, trying to lunge at Dr. Anderson. Henry used the suit's bulk to his advantage, letting his shoulder bounce off the wall. The impact was muted through the layers but it did the job, stopping the movement. Then his diaphragm seized up – the ghost trying to lock his breathing down. His lungs burned as they fought against invisible pressure. The pain helped – sharp and real, something to anchor himself with. Waterboarding had taught him that too. Pain wasn't the enemy; lose himself in fighting it and he'd drown faster. Accept it, use it, stay focused on what matters.

The ghost pulled at his limbs like puppet strings and tried to choke him further, but he'd literally experienced worse. It was nothing compared to his throat spasming shut while water filled the sinuses. He'd learned to think through that, to keep his mind clear even when his body was screaming at him to thrash and gasp and give in. This thing might be able to grab his controls, but it couldn't navigate them for shit – all force, no finesse. It was trying everything at once – limbs, breath, even his fingers trying to claw at the suit's seals. Too many targets, not enough focus. He could work with that.

The ghost must've read his mind, because it just slammed more memories into him – centuries of darkness, watching, waiting. Rage at being trapped, twisted satisfaction at draining life from others. SERE had taught him to handle psychological warfare, but this was different. This wasn't just hearing or seeing things – the ghost was forcing him to feel it all, jamming them directly into his head like a bugged out Neural Link.

Henry's right arm reached for a broken chair leg. The ghost wanted a weapon; wanted to stop the repairs. Henry retreated to the mental space they'd built in training – that core of self that stayed solid even when everything else went liquid. His fingers twitched, dropped the makeshift weapon. Yeah, the training helped, but damn. This was really new fucking territory. He could learn to resist outside influence, and, all things considered, he was doing mighty fine in resisting a spectral entity trying to rewire him from the inside. But he did not want to test out just how long he could last for.

"Almost. Done?" Each word was a battle, his mouth trying to bite his tongue.

"One more," Dr. Anderson said. "Then the crystals, then done."

Dr. Anderson's face twisted into something inhuman: skin blackening, eyes burning red. Old trick, wrong context. A bit of a dumb move to use on someone from an era where special effects and movies existed. The real Doc was right where he'd been a minute ago, doing exactly what he should be doing.

Heavy footsteps came up behind him. His mind screamed demons trying to pull him under, but he knew, logically, who they belonged to – Ron and Ryan moving to help. They must've finished with the Seekers. Perfect timing, even if they looked like hell-spawn right now.

Strong hands gripped his arms and his vision filled with twisted, shadowy figures. But if they really existed, why were they just holding his arms and doing nothing else?

Hell, he could even tell who was on which side. Ryan was on his right; gentle, keeping his weight distributed so they wouldn't accidentally damage anyone's mesh. Ron wasn't quite as gentle, but he was thorough.

Then Doc slid the final crystal into place. The foreign rage and centuries of darkness vanished like someone had flipped a switch. Dr. Anderson's face went back to normal, and Henry's body was his own again.

The tied Seekers stopped their sluggish struggling, slumping in their restraints. Still as pale as before, still breathing those same shallow breaths. Getting rid of the ghosts hadn't restored what they'd lost.

Henry rolled his shoulder where the cold had hit. Still felt vulnerable, even though the ghosts were presumably back in their cage now.

"Everyone good?" he asked, pushing himself up with Ron and Ryan steadying him.

"Shit, worry about yourself," Isaac said. He tilted his head toward the doorway. "C'mon, let's step outside."

Henry nodded. He wasn't gonna argue against a check-up. "Y'all handle the adventurers first, Cage later." He stepped outside, following Isaac.

"How's your head feeling?" Isaac pulled out his penlight once they were in the corridor past the containment section. "Thing had you locked up pretty good for a minute there."

"Surprisingly... like normal."

"Huh." Isaac tracked his pupils. "Any lingering pressure? Cravings for ibuprofen?"

"Nah. Just..." Henry paused. What words could he even use? "...Weird. All the emotions are gone, too. Don't know how to explain it. Like getting puppeteered, maybe?"

Isaac sighed as Ron carried one of the Seekers out. "Alright. Think I'll have you do an MRI once we get back. Just in case. And then maybe also talk to the Chaplain about it. Let me know if you feel anything weird, yeah?"

"Copy," Henry said. Behind them, Ron and Ryan had just picked up the last two Seekers. Dr. Anderson had also just finished taking pictures of the Cage and relevant documents. "All done?"

Dr. Anderson closed his Holding Bag and lifted the cage from its mount. "Just about."

"Alright." Henry made his way back to his MRAP, picking up the radio inside. Three of the Seekers were already in their seats, the fourth tagging along with the other MRAP alongside the Cage. "Armstrong, Alpha Actual."

"Alpha Actual, send traffic."

Henry strapped in the mage. "Four civilian casualties, stable but unconscious. Transporting to base medical, plus one Baranthurian artifact. Site's ready for y'all. Doc'll send you details on the ghost box, over."

"Solid copy. Collection team inbound. Return to base, over."

"Roger, out."