The silence of Ironspire Prison was shattered by a jagged, rasping breath. The body that should have been a corpse jolted, its back arching over the rotting straw. Julian's eyes—now inhabited by the soul of Dr. Alistair Thorne—snapped open, staring into the darkness.
"Where... am I?" he whispered. His voice was cracked, sounding more like the grating of metal than a human tone.
Alistair's mind spun violently. The last thing he remembered was the blinding glare of the surgical lights at St. Jude's Hospital. He had been performing an impossible open-heart surgery. Then, the crushing pain in his own chest. Heart failure brought on by chronic exhaustion. He remembered the long, continuous drone of the flatline from his own cardiac monitor.
"I should be dead," he muttered.
He attempted to move his right hand, but a wave of pure, white-hot agony instantly slammed into his brain.
"Argh!" Alistair groaned, his teeth chattering uncontrollably.
His doctor's instinct immediately took over. He squeezed his eyes shut—not out of fear, but to process the pain clinically. He performed a mental scan as if reading a medical chart.
Diagnosis: Comminuted fracture of the right metacarpals. Third-degree lacerations on the dorsal region due to blunt force trauma or whipping. Mild hypothermia. Severe dehydration.
"This body... is a wreck," Alistair opened his eyes again. He looked at his bruised, swollen hand under the faint moonlight filtering through a narrow slit high in the cell wall. "This isn't my body. Who is this man?"
Suddenly, fragments of foreign memories crashed into his mind like a tidal wave. Julian Vance. Baron Cedric's frame-up. Lady Isabelle's death. The prison torture.
Alistair clutched his head with his functioning left hand. "Julian... you poor bastard. You died in the face of injustice, and somehow, I'm trapped in the ruins of your remains."
He tried to sit up, but the wounds on his back throbbed fiercely. He clawed at the damp stone wall to prop himself up.
"If I don't do something now, sepsis will kill me within hours," Alistair spoke to the darkness. "The ambient temperature is roughly 10 degrees Celsius. High humidity. A perfect breeding ground for pathogenic bacteria."
He scanned the cell. No medical equipment. No anesthesia. No antibiotics. Only filth, stone, and the tattered remnants of Julian's linen clothes.
"You're the best surgeon in your country, Alistair," he encouraged himself in a cold, steady tone. "You've performed battlefield surgeries with cutlery. This is just... a bit messier."
He looked at his right hand. The bones were protruding, tearing through the flesh. If left alone, he would lose the use of his hand forever. To a surgeon, hands were everything.
"I need tools," he said softly.
His sharp eyes swept the cell floor. In a corner lay the shards of a broken wooden bowl—likely belonging to a previous prisoner. He crawled slowly, dragging his limp legs. Near the wooden shards, he found something more useful: a piece of animal bone—perhaps from a rotted meal—that had splintered into a sharp, thin point.
"This will be my scalpel," Alistair picked up the bone. He rubbed the tip against the rough stone wall, sharpening it with rhythmic strokes. Scree. Scree. Scree.
"Madness... I've truly gone mad," a dry laugh escaped his throat. "Performing a fracture reduction in a dungeon with animal bones."
He then tore the stitching from the hem of his filthy linen shirt. The threads were strong enough if twisted together. He had no alcohol, but he noticed a puddle of water dripping from the wall that appeared clearer, having passed through the natural filtration of the limestone.
"Alright, Julian. Hold your breath. This is going to feel like hell."
Alistair positioned his right hand on a flat stone. He took a deep breath, closing his eyes for a moment to visualize the anatomy of his nerves and blood vessels.
"One... two... three!"
CRACK!
With one precise, jerking motion, Alistair repositioned the displaced metacarpal bones. The pain was so excruciating that his vision turned white. He bit his lip until it bled to keep from screaming. Cold sweat poured down his forehead.
"Not... not done yet," he gasped.
Blood flowed from the open wound on his hand. He took the linen thread and the sharpened bone shard. Using his left hand with a dexterity impossible for an ordinary person, he began to do something that would make any doctor shudder.
He pierced his own skin with the sharp bone, using it as an improvised needle.
"Suture... subcutaneous layer first," he whispered, dictating his own medical steps to maintain consciousness. "Prevent arterial bleeding... tie it off here..."
Every puncture was torture. Alistair could feel the bone tip tearing through his sensitive flesh. Without anesthesia, every nerve in his hand screamed in protest to his brain. Yet, his hand remained steady. Alistair's eyes were focused, ice-cold, as if he were dissecting a stranger's patient rather than his own body.
"One stitch... two stitches..."
Blood soaked the straw beneath him, but the heavy bleeding began to subside. He closed the wound with a neat cross-stitch pattern—a pattern only achievable by a surgeon with years of experience.
Outside the cell, the thunder still rumbled occasionally, illuminating Julian's face, which was now set in a mask of insane concentration. Not a single tear fell. There was only the pure will to survive.
"Just a little more..." he muttered, his hands trembling from traumatic shock, yet he refused to stop. "I will not die in this trash heap. Not yet."
Alistair pulled the final knot on the linen thread with his blood-stained hand. He stared at the crude yet precise sutures closing the gaping wound. Using the last of his strength, he leaned his back against the wall, clutching the sharp bone shard stained with his own blood, just as the heavy iron door at the end of the corridor creaked open.
"Time to take out the trash," Silas's deep voice echoed from the distance.