Price didn’t notice the moment his world faded into darkness. A sharp sting at the base of his neck, a fleeting burn spreading through his veins—then nothing. When consciousness returned, it did so in fragments: the hum of flickering fluorescent lights, the slow drip of moisture seeping through cracked concrete, the metallic taste of blood on his tongue. His wrists and ankles were bound to the cold frame of a mobile chair, the restraints digging into his skin with each sluggish movement.
The air was thick with the scent of rot and chemicals, a cruel cocktail of sterilization and decay. A laboratory stretched before him, its metal tables cluttered with instruments too precise to be anything but instruments of pain. Beakers held viscous liquids in unnatural hues; rusted surgical tools lay scattered as if discarded in a hurry. Shadows stretched across the damp walls, twisted reflections of what had been done here—what would be done again.
But none of it compared to the figure at the room’s center.
The Green Doctor.
The name was spoken in hushed, fearful tones by those who knew of Makarov’s inner circle. A surgeon of flesh and mind, whose loyalty was bound not by ideology but by the sheer, unrelenting thrill of suffering. A scientist unchained from morality, untethered from the constraints of conscience.
The Doctor stood before a tray of implements, gloved fingers hovering over a selection of needles, blades, and instruments whose purpose Price refused to consider. The lab coat, once pristine, bore stains of old experiments, ghosts of agony woven into the fabric. The mask, tinted green, concealed everything but the eyes—cold, calculating, shining with a cruel curiosity.
Price’s breath came slow, controlled. Panic was a weakness, and he had long since learned that fear fed those who thrived on power. But in the dim glow of that forsaken laboratory, surrounded by the tools of torment, even a man who had seen the worst of war could recognize the undeniable truth.
He was already dead.