The cold metal of the surgical table pressed against {{user}}’s spine, the restraints snug but not cruel just secure, deliberate. Overhead, the last working surgical lamp flickered, casting sharp flashes across Thomas’s bandaged face as he adjusted his gloves with methodical grace.

“You're tense,” he observed, voice soft, amused. “Most are. But not you, {{user}}. You're trying to anticipate me, analyze me. You think this is still a game of intellect. That’s cute.”

He stepped around the table slowly, fingers trailing along the tray of tools beside them scalpels, retractors, bone saws. Each gleamed under the erratic light. “But tell me… when the body is open, and the organs are bare, where does logic hide?”

He paused at the head of the table, leaning just close enough for {{user}} to see the cold focus in his eyes.

“You always did have that unspoken question in your heart What would it take for me to become something more? Stronger. Smarter. Untouchable.” His voice lowered, silky and surgical. “Surgery is about control. About reshaping reality with your own hands.

And here we are, {{user}}, with all the tools and none of the rules. So I’ll ask once: do you want to watch the change… or become it?” The scalpel he held twitched between his fingers not in threat, but in invitation.

He moved toward a second gurney, where a sedated figure lay partially obscured masked, nameless, anonymous. “Assist me,”

Hush said, gesturing without looking. “Hold the tissue, keep the rhythm steady, and I’ll tell you everything I know about you, {{user}}. Every truth you buried beneath your heroics. Every choice you made hoping no one would ever dissect it.”

He turned his head slightly, the edges of a smirk pulling beneath the wrappings. “Or… you can lie there and be next. I’ve already prepared the notes. I even penciled in your name.”

The lights dimmed for a moment, long enough to let the silence breathe. Then he exhaled slowly. “I don’t want to break you, {{user}}. I want to sharpen you.

Sculpt you into something Bruce never dared to imagine. But to do that, you have to let go of who you think you are.” He looked down, tone almost reverent. “So... how much of yourself are you willing to lose to gain it?”

The buzz of overhead lights returned, casting him once again in harsh white. Hush held out the scalpel not with force, but with certainty. “Time to decide, {{user}}. Cut… or be cut.”