RELLAN, a man that survived a torment

They said I was lucky.

Lucky that SetDef found me before the Hollow finished its work. Lucky that the infection hadn’t reached my chest.

I still dream of my hands. Not the real ones — the others. The ones that kept growing after they cut me free. Threads reaching, weaving into the dark. They tug when I sleep. Sometimes I think they’re trying to pull me back.

The doctors say that’s just phantom pain.

They’re careful when they say it. The way people are careful around explosives that look like rocks. One of them, the night nurse with the copper hair, adds neuropathic and shows me a soft lattice hovering over my bed — a wireframe of me, complete with blinking, drifting points where the pain should be. The hologram has a left hand I don’t. The fingers open and close like a slow fish mouth.

“See?” she says. “Residual maps. Your brain still thinks you have—”

“I know what my brain thinks.”

She switches the lattice off and stands at the end of the bed, arms folded under the glow of the ceiling pane. The light here doesn’t hum. That’s the first thing I noticed when I woke up: no hum. The Hollow had a hum like a singing bowl drawn across my spine. The hospital has filters, vents, the distant wheeze of pressure doors, the chirp of a corridor drone, but no note under the note. The silence feels engineered.

The bed raises me a little. My stump dressings refresh on a timer that smells like salt and cold mint. The med bay glass is smart; it fogs if I stare too long at my reflection. I know the policy. No fixation. They want you talking, not counting the places where you end.

“Has SetDef come by?” I ask.

The nurse glances at my chart. “You had a debrief yesterday.”

“Not debrief. The team. The ones who pulled me out.”

She shifts her weight. “They’re still on containment.”

Of course they are. A Phantom Hollow doesn’t fold because a man crawls out of it without feet.

I try to sleep, because sleep is the one place I can negotiate with the tug. I make rules in the dark. No counting seconds. No replaying. No looking for patterns in the white grid lines on the ceiling. It works for a while. Until the door thunks open and a shadow falls across my face.

“Hey,” a voice says, low. “You asked for us.”

She steps into view so the glass can learn her shape and stop fogging. SetDef gray, hazard bands bright around her sleeves. Hair buzzed short. A diagonal scar that’s old enough to forget being red. The patch on her chest reads VOSS.

“I asked for the ones who pulled me out.”

“That’s us,” she said, and set the case on the edge of my bed. “I’m Voss.”

She didn’t offer a hand. I didn’t have one to offer back.

For a moment, neither of us spoke. The med bay’s monitors filled the silence, slow, steady, like a clock pretending to breathe.

“You were in that long?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Time didn’t work right in there.”

“You got that right, most of it is time distortion, you went in ungeared so you felt the full effects of the worst hollow on earth, phantom hollows are not something to play around with”

I looked at her case. “What’s that?”

“Something we found near the fence.” She opened it — inside, sealed in polymer, was part of my jacket sleeve, torn clean through.

“You left it outside the cordon,” she said. “We traced it. Looked like you were being chased.”

“I was.” The words tasted like copper. “They stopped when the ground started to breathe.”

“Ah so you were. Sorry. Still nasty people out there”

“So you cut my arms and legs off?”

“We had to, sadly its the only way still, do you have Exposure insurance at all?” 

I shake my head

“Damn, still your You’re lucky, you know.” She stood, picked up the case.

“They keep saying that.”

“Then believe it.” She paused in the doorway. “We’ve pulled out six this month. You’re the only one still talking.”

The door sealed behind her. I said nothing for a long time.

Until

A doc walked in “sir a person from the paper is here that wanted to interview you”

Recorded Interview — SetDef Debrief, Case File PH-17: “The Phantom Hollow Survivor”

Subject: Rellan, civilian male, age 32
Location: SetDef Medical Facility, Kingsland
Date: REDACTED

INTERVIEWER: Can you tell me what happened that night?

RELLAN:
Yeah.
I didn’t mean to go in. People always say that, but I didn’t. I was running from a bad deal, not from ghosts. Three guys were chasing me through the freight yard — probably meant to rough me up, maybe worse. I don’t remember what they shouted. It’s all muffled now, like it was happening through glass.

The yard lights were flickering out. Could’ve been a power cut, could’ve been the Hollow starting. You don’t notice at first — it just feels like fog, or like the world’s turning inside out real slow. The fence was right there, all the warning triangles and yellow tape, but I wasn’t thinking about warnings. I just saw space to run. So I went through.

That’s what I remember: one step through the gap and the ground felt wrong. It wasn’t soft, but it moved under me. Like standing on a drumskin that was breathing.

The air went quiet. Not silent — quiet. It’s different. Feels like it’s waiting for you to mess up.

INTERVIEWER: What did you see when you were inside?

RELLAN:
Hard to describe. It’s like the world was half-melted, half-stitched. Things had seams that shouldn’t. I looked down and my own footsteps were leaving little black threads behind, like the ground was trying to remember where I’d been.

The men chasing me stopped at the fence. I could still see them, kinda, through the shimmer. One of them lifted his hand and waved — not like a goodbye, more like don’t come back out. Then they were gone. I think they knew.

After that, it got worse. My fingers went cold first. Then they started… working on their own. I didn’t understand it at the time. It wasn’t like a burn or a cut, it was like someone had convinced them to start pulling apart. The skin started splitting into fine strands, black, almost oily.

It didn’t even hurt right away. The Hollow doesn’t start with pain — it starts with permission. Your body just goes along with it.

I tried to pull my jacket over my hand, maybe to hide it, maybe to stop it. The fabric stuck. When I yanked it free, it took something with it — not skin, not blood, just… me. Threads of me. They pulled toward the ground like it was magnetic.

INTERVIEWER: Did you hear anything? Voices, movement?

RELLAN:
Something like that. Not a voice exactly, more like my own thoughts, but with an echo that didn’t belong. It said things I’d say to myself if I wanted to be calm. There’s a better shape for you. Don’t fight it. That kind of thing.

It’s sneaky, how it talks. You don’t hear words, you agree with them before you notice they’re there.

INTERVIEWER: What happened next?

RELLAN:
My legs went. Just like that. Ankles first — I saw the boots unlace themselves. The floor wasn’t a floor anymore; it was reaching. Every step I took, it tried to keep a piece of me.

I couldn’t scream. The air didn’t carry sound. It was like trying to shout underwater.

Then I saw the light — white, hard, wrong for the place. SetDef beams. I didn’t know who they were at first. I thought maybe the Hollow had learned how to shine.

They shouted numbers, distances, things like “Anchor one” and “Cut point.” One of them crouched down in front of me, visor throwing my own face back at me. They asked if I could hear them. I tried to say yes, but the words didn’t come out right.

They said they were going to cut the parts the Hollow wanted. I think that’s what they said.

INTERVIEWER: And they performed the amputation on site?

RELLAN:
Yeah. Not knives — some kind of ring device. I don’t know what it’s called. It clamped down, got hot, and then everything below it just… stopped being mine. There was a smell like metal burning rain.

They worked fast. I heard one of them say “hands fused, ankles half gone.” Then, “Below elbow, below knee.” Calm as reading a grocery list. That’s how they keep from panicking, I guess.

The pain wasn’t clean. It was a deep ache, the kind you feel in your teeth. Then nothing. Then light. Then I blacked out.

INTERVIEWER: When you woke up?

RELLAN:
Med bay.
No arms, no legs.
They said I was lucky. Lucky they got there before the infection reached my chest. Lucky it stopped where it did. I didn’t feel lucky. I still don’t.

I keep dreaming about my hands. Not the real ones — the others. The black ones that kept growing after they cut me free. I can feel them sometimes, like they’re still trying to pull me back.

They tell me it’s phantom pain. Maybe. But sometimes, when the room’s quiet enough, I swear I feel them moving, still trying to finish what the Hollow started.

End of transcript excerpt.

After that interview it was the last person to see me outside of voss dropping in once or twice to see if i was holding up but after a month she even stopped coming not sure what todo anymore at least i can watch tv and listen to radio.