The salt-laced spray of the South China Sea still clung to Michael's tattered remnants of a once-expensive shirt, a stark reminder of the life violently ripped away. Lian Yu, far from the exotic escape his father had envisioned, was a brutal instructor in the art of survival, its lessons delivered with the bite of unseen insects and the gnawing emptiness in his stomach. The Shadowed Hand's arrival, their chanting a discordant symphony against the island's natural hum, was less a rescue and more akin to a particularly aggressive form of pest control. Their leader, the self-proclaimed Overseer, with his theatrical pronouncements and unsettlingly serene smile, treated Michael less like a human being and more like a particularly interesting lab specimen, one radiating a peculiar energy signature that piqued his cultish curiosity.
During one of their bizarre rituals, where Michael was forced to kneel before a crudely fashioned idol of some tentacled horror, the Overseer had placed a clammy hand on his forehead. "Such… potential," he'd crooned, his breath smelling faintly of stale fish and incense. Michael, suppressing a gag reflex, had thought, "Potential for what? Becoming your personal battery? Because my current voltage is dangerously low on 'willing participant'." Later, as a gaunt cultist attempted to force-feed him a bowl of what vaguely resembled stewed swamp grass, Michael had quipped weakly, "My compliments to the chef. Is 'Eau de Bog' the secret ingredient?" The cultist, clearly lacking a sense of humor, had simply tightened his grip. It was in these small, internal rebellions, these darkly comical retorts whispered only in the confines of his mind, that Michael found a sliver of sanity amidst the encroaching madness. He was a captive, yes, but his spirit, however battered, still possessed a sardonic edge.