"I should've said everything that I never told you. Is it too late for us now?"
Fate and destiny are things seen often as interchangeable. Webster's dictionary states that fate means: the will or principle or determining cause by which things in gen...
The next time Tony woke up, he was lying on a cot in a room in the cave with walls lined with electronics. He wore a nasal cannula now and the bandages and jacket had been placed back on him fully but he still looked like someone who was being humiliated through a state of undress.
He started awake, breathing heavily, and looked around. He gagged slightly, and his hand went up to the tube.
Tony began pulling on it, and it came sliding out. And out. And out. And out. He grunted in pain as the end came up, and ripped the surgical tape off the bridge of his nose.
Then Tony turned his head and saw a cup of water on a table by his bed. His hand clenched and unclenched before he managed to stretch his arm out toward the cup, but he only succeeded in knocking it to the floor. He coughed.
Some feet away, a slender, elderly man was shaving in front of a small mirror, humming peacefully. Tony seemed to notice him.
Tony attempted to roll over, but something stopped him. An electrical cord coming out of his chest was attached to something, and it wasn't long enough to allow him much movement.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," the man said in front of the mirror. He had a quiet, scholarly look and manner.
Tony rolled back over to look at the thing he was hooked up to and he saw for the first time what it was. A car battery.
Tony tugged at the cord in alarm, gave a cry of pain, and discovered its other end was buried underneath the bandages. He began tearing them away frantically, only to find what the other end of the cord was attached to: a round rusty metal disc just larger than a man's palm was sitting in his chest right over his heart, held in place with five large screws.
Tony lay back, gasping, his eyes wide with panic.
Tony sat on the floor of what seemed to be a dark cave, the man who'd cautioned him earlier, Yinsen, appeared to be cooking at a small fire.
"What the hell did you do to me?" Tony croaked out.
Yinsen looked up. "What I did?" he said. "What I did was to save your life."
"By sticking a big dirty magnet in him and hooking him up to a car battery without fucking anesthesia?" A female voice muttered.
"I removed all the shrapnel I could, but there's a lot left. And it's headed into your atrial septum. Here, want to see?" Yinsen finished.
Yinsen held up a small glass milk bottle with the lid screwed on tight, and Tony, who had been looking at the rust-covered electromagnet, looked up. "I have a souvenir!" Yinsen said, and he tossed Tony the little bottle. "Take a look."
Tony caught the container and looked inside. There, indeed, were little fragments of shrapnel.
"I've seen many wounds like that in my village," Yinsen explained. "We call them the Walking Dead, because it takes about a week for the barbs to reach the vital organs."
"What is this?" Tony asked, gesturing to the metal circle, the cords.
"That," said Yinsen. "is an electromagnet hooked up to a car battery. And it's keeping the shrapnel from entering your heart." He smiled.
Tony zipped up the sweater without a word, and caught sight of a small surveillance camera nearly invisible against the dark rock on which it sat.
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