307 The Past and Future (2/2)
He turned and left.
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Metals clashed in the heavy darkness. It sounded like cold surgical knives and forceps hitting each other.
”No need to stop the blood,” said a hoarse and strange accent. ”Start changing all the blood now. Match it with the patient’s blood type. Give me blade number three.”
”The heartbeat’s almost gone. Do the cardiac injection. If there’s no effect, use a music score to control the heart. We only need half an hour.”
”Where are the spare organs? Change it if it gets rejected. I won’t believe it if none of the five work.”
”Is the brain under anesthesia? Idiot! Why didn’t you say so earlier? Give him another shot!”
Darkness and dizziness fell again. He closed his eyes.
After who knows how long, he opened his eyes again. Everywhere hurt and his body seemed to be shattered. There was a respirator over his face and layers of tubes connecting his body to the alchemy machine maintaining his life. It was strange…
In disarray, he suddenly thought that he was just like the man he had once called ‘father’ right now.
”Open your eyes and look here.” A man that smelled of antiseptics looked at him. The old man’s head was wrapped with an Indian turban that was so old one could not tell its original look.
”What number?” The Indian pulled his eyes open and held up some fingers.
”Five,” he said scratchily.
The old Indian man nodded in satisfaction and let go. He vaguely heard voices beside the bed.
”As you wished, the surgery is over. He’s still alive and will live for a long time. If he’s careful, he can live for at least sixty years.”
”Very good, Ghandagar,” a young man said. ”You’ve fulfilled your promise to me.”
”Just as we had agreed on, I used all my knowledge to complete this surgery. No one will know. I’ll cooperate and have my memory wiped as well. This will have never happened but I hope you’ll remember your promise to me.”
The youth smiled. ”Ghandagar Rahul, I promise, under the name of the Vengeful Spirit, that you can live peacefully in downtown for the rest of your life. I’ll protect your son as well. The mistakes that the imperial physicians of the chief made will no longer have anything to do with you.”
”Ganesa will bless you, kind sir.”
”I hope,” the young man said lightly. ”You can go now. I have something to say to him.”
Footsteps sounded. The old Indian left politely and closed the door.
The man on the patient’s bed opened his eyes. His breathing was turbid and his voice was weak and unclear. ”I’m still alive?”
”Yes.” The white-haired youth dragged a chair over and sat beside the bed. ”Thankfully, it was easy to find a corpse to replace you that night in Avalon. You should thank Lola. If not for her illusions, you wouldn’t’ve been able to live so long and pull through the surgery.”
”Surgery…” The patient breathed with wet sounds. It seemed to be a sigh. ”What did the surgery do?”
”Some good things,” the young man answered. No matter if it’s the family’s restrictions, the flesh mutated by dark musicians, demonized organs. I helped you get rid of all everything. Everything that isn’t human was purified by the moonlight and you got a new face too.
”I also put something into your heart. If you try to have anything to do with natural catastrophes again, no one’ll be able to help you.”
”My sound of heart is so messy now. Did I fall from the Resonance level?”
”Yeah but you can probably get back up with your abilities. But…” Here, the young man sighed heavily. ”One vertebra was too tainted so we could only cut it out. You might never be able to stand up again.”
”…Being alive is better than anything.”
”Yeah, being alive is great.” The young man pulled something from his pocket and placed it beside the bed. It was a stack of identification cards and a notebook filled with cramped font. ”This is your new identity. I made it for someone else but she’s busy studying now and probably doesn’t have time to play, so you can use it.”
The cards were laid out before him. They seemed old but were flawless. The picture was his current appearance; there were no flaws in the mark and signature either.
”You graduated from the Imperial Anglo Medical College and became a medic. Later, you were sent to the Northumberland Fifth Corps in India. The Bahata War erupted. Your group was sent to Bahata to fight the followers of the natural catastrophe. You were sent back after getting injured in the second year. All your comrades were killed so don’t worry, no one will recognize you.”
The man stared at the profile picture on the card. After a while, he asked quietly, ”So this is me from now on?”
”From now on, you no longer have anything to do with the past. Embrace your new life.” The young man glanced at him and uttered quietly, ”Mr. John Z. Watson.”