Consciousness returned not as a gentle dawn, but as a club to the head. A wave of nausea rolled through Damien, and the throbbing, percussive agony at the back of his skull was so intense it was a sound, a bass drum beating in time with his frantic heart. He opened his eyes to darkness. Not the clean, silent darkness of his cryo-pod, but a thick, oppressive blackness that smelled of damp earth, stale sweat, human waste, and a deep, underlying scent of despair.
He tried to move, but his limbs were heavy, unresponsive, a dead weight he could barely command. He felt the cold, rough bite of rusted iron around his wrists, ankles, and neck. The chains were heavy, their links thick and crude, and they chafed his raw, burned skin with every slight movement. He managed to push himself into a sitting position, his back scraping against cold, rough-hewn bars that felt like petrified wood. A cell. He was in a cage, a prisoner in a world he did not know.
Slowly, his eyes, enhanced by a science that no longer existed, adjusted to the gloom. A faint, hazy light filtered in from a single opening at the far end of a short corridor, likely a large fire pit in a central chamber. He could hear the low, miserable groans of other prisoners in nearby cells, the steady, maddening drip of water somewhere in the darkness, and the distant, harsh sound of raucous laughter that held no joy, only cruelty.
He was a strategist, an analyst. Even in this broken, agonizing state, his mind began to work, to gather data. He tested the bars. They were thick, deeply set in the packed earth and crumbling concrete. His enhanced strength, diminished as it was by his injuries and exhaustion, was useless against them. He listened to the sounds of the camp, trying to discern patterns, the number of voices, the cadence of their speech. It was chaotic, guttural.
Through the bars, he got his first blurry impressions of the scavenger base. It was not an organized shelter. It was a chaotic, brutal encampment built into the hollowed-out shell of some pre-apocalypse commercial building. He could see a large, open area where the fire pit cast dancing, distorted shadows on the crumbling concrete walls. Ragged survivors, their faces hard and gaunt, moved with the wary, predatory energy of pack animals. They argued over scraps of food, drank from crude clay jugs, and tended to their scavenged, heavily modified firearms. There was no order here, only the raw, ugly hierarchy of strength. He watched the woman with the scarred face—the one who had captured him—move through the camp. Others gave her a wide berth. When she barked an order, they obeyed instantly. She was the alpha. The one he would have to deal with.
He was cargo. An asset to be held until it could be sold or consumed.
Time became a meaningless blur of pain and disorientation. He drifted in and out of consciousness, his enhanced body fighting to repair the damage from his escape and his capture. The laser burn on his side was a line of constant, searing pain. His cracked forearm throbbed with every beat of his heart. The concussion made the world swim and tilt. At some point, a wooden bowl with a foul-smelling, gritty paste was shoved through the bars. He ignored it, the sight and smell turning his stomach. Later, a bucket of brackish water was left, which he drank greedily, the cool liquid a small relief in the sweltering, humid air of the cell.
Finally, the moment of change arrived. He heard the heavy clank of a lock, and his cell door creaked open. The female scavenger leader stood there, silhouetted against the firelight, the pulse-pistol still hanging loosely at her hip. She was flanked by the two men he had fought—the one whose thigh he had pierced, now limping heavily and leaning on a spear, and the one he had thrown, whose face was a swollen, purple mask. Their eyes burned with a vicious, resentful hatred.
"Get it on its feet," the leader commanded, her voice sharp and impatient.
They stormed into the cell, kicking him to rouse him from his stupor. They dragged him out, his chains clanking on the dirt floor. He was too weak from his injuries and the throbbing concussion to offer any meaningful resistance. They hauled him through the main encampment, past the curious, hostile stares of the other scavengers who paused their activities to watch the spectacle. He heard their low, mocking comments, their assessment of his physique, their speculation on the price he would fetch. It was the detached, cruel talk of ranchers discussing livestock.
They took him to a crude washing area at the back of the ruin, a place reeking of stagnant water and lye. A hand-cranked pump was connected to a large, rusted cistern. One of the men began to work the handle, and a powerful jet of cold, brackish water blasted against Damien's body. The shock of it made him gasp, and the impact on his burns and bruises sent a fresh wave of agony through him. They held him in place while the leader, with a coarse, bristled brush, began to roughly scrub the grime, dust, and dried blood from his skin. It was a humiliating, dehumanizing process, his body handled with the same impersonal roughness one would use to clean an animal for slaughter. They were washing the merchandise.
When they were done, he stood shivering in the center of the room, clean but exposed, the full extent of his enhanced physique now on display under the flickering lamplight. The leader circled him, her eyes raking over the dense muscle of his chest and back, the powerful lines of his legs.
"Good," she grunted in satisfaction. "Good muscle. Healthy. But the hair is a mess." She gestured to his long, matted hair, caked with the filth of his journey. "We're not selling some wild beast. Clean it up."
One of the men produced a rusty, sharpened piece of scrap metal—a crude razor. While the limping man and the leader held him down, his head forced against a stone block, the other began to work. There was no artistry to it. He hacked and sawed at the hair on the sides of Damien's head, the rough blade pulling and tearing at the scalp, slicing the skin in several places. It was a brutal, practical act of grooming, the quickest way to make him look less like a wild man and more like a valuable captive. Damien gritted his teeth, a low growl of impotent rage rumbling in his chest, his mind a cold, silent storm of promised retribution.
When he was finished, they shoved him back up. He caught his reflection in a puddle of dirty water on the floor. The sides of his head were crudely shorn to the scalp, leaving only the thick, defiant strip of a mohawk down the middle.
The leader seemed pleased. She dismissed her two subordinates with a curt nod. They gave Damien one last hateful glare before limping away, leaving him alone with her. She circled him again, slower this time. The look in her eye was no longer just that of a merchant assessing her goods. It was something more personal, more possessive, more predatory.
She ran a rough hand over his bicep, her calloused fingers digging into the dense muscle. Her touch was not a caress; it was an assessment and a claim. "Strong," she murmured, a greedy smile touching her lips. "Very strong. A shame to sell something this rare without… verifying the quality of the merchandise first."
She grabbed the chain around his neck and gave it a sharp, commanding tug. She began to lead him away from the main encampment, towards a more private, secluded ruin that served as her personal quarters. The other scavengers watched them go, exchanging knowing, leering smirks. He was no longer just cargo to be sold. He was the leader's spoils.
She pulled him into the darkened doorway of her room, his mind reeling with a new, more intimate kind of horror. The door slammed shut behind them, and the last thing he saw before the darkness consumed him was the predatory gleam in her eyes.