The first thing that returned to me wasn't sight, but the heavy, bitter taste of chemical sediment coating the back of my tongue.
My eyelids felt weighted down, stubborn and completely unresponsive, as if they had been fused shut while I was unconscious. When I finally forced them open, the world was a chaotic blur of spinning shadows and cold, weeping concrete.
A sharp, rhythmic agony pulsed directly behind my temples—a deep, localized throbbing that made my stomach churn with instant nausea.
As a surgeon, my mind automatically tried to override the rising panic by cataloging my clinical symptoms. A severely dry, parched esophagus. Sluggish pupillary response to light. A heavy, leaden numbness dragging down my limbs, making it feel as though my motor cortex had been entirely severed from my central nervous system. It was the exact diagnostic blueprint of a high-grade, weaponized military neuro-sedative.
