Jack's eyes fluttered open and looked at the metallic green-grey ceiling above him with incomprehension.
'Where…' he started thinking, but then the horrible few months of memories in the enemy camp slammed back into his consciousness and he tried to sit up.
He only managed to move his body a little bit before the injury from his stomach made him stop all movement and cry out in pain.
As he lay back down on the soft pillow, a familiar voice said from nearby "Don't move, soldier. Your scar tissue is still thin; you might reopen your wound if you move too much."
Jack shifted his head a little to the right and saw Mike sitting on a hospital bed next to him. A smirk formed on his face while he croaked "The bet is still on."
Mike chuckled and stood up. He picked up a glass of water from a trey next to his bed and brought it over to Jack's lips.
After he had a couple of sips, Jack signaled that he had enough and asked "What happened, Mike? Where are we?"
Mike looked around the large hospital room that held five people who were rescued from the enemy camp and said "We're on the hospital ship Mercy in the Mediterranean. They evaced us by air straight here almost three days ago."
Jack's brows furrowed and he asked again "What happened, Mike?"
Mike's face turned serious when he looked back down at Jack. They locked gazes for a few seconds before Mike sighed and pulled up a chair to Jack's bed.
"After you unlocked my cage and passed out, I stopped your bleeding and got everyone else out. We armed ourselves with the weapons that the two guards had and holed up in the prison until the French forces came for us." Mike explained as he looked at the far wall.
"They were French? I didn't know they operated in the area." Jack interjected while he looked at the tired face of his new friend.
Mike nodded his head and said "I didn't know either. Things are really heating up out there."
He looked back down at Jack and continued "They reported our rescue to the army and were told to send us here. The army let us recuperate for the last few days, but they should send someone over to debrief us all in the next couple of days."
Jack's brows furrowed as he asked "What do they want to know?"
Mike stared straight into Jack's eyes and said "They want to know how the bastards tortured and beat us every day, and how many people they killed." He stared at Jack for a good ten seconds before he asked "Do you understand?"
Jack's eyes widened slightly, but after a second he gave a slow nod and said "I understand."
Mike looked at him for a couple of more seconds, before he sighed, gave him a small smile, and said "Good. Once that's done we've got medals and early retirement to look forward to. You'll be back with your family in no time."
Jack watched Mike stand up, stunned, because he just realized that he could go back home from this hell.
Mike glanced down at him with a smirk and said "Get some rest, Jack. I'll go tell the doctor you woke up."
Jack gave Mike a slight nod and watched him go out of the room.
With a sigh of relief, Jack made himself as comfortable as he could and drifted off to deep sleep for the first time in a year as the world fell apart around him.
"He's waking up!" A familiar voice shouted as Jack's eyes snapped open.
In the corner of his eye, Jack saw Shi Furui kneeling over him and looking down with fear in his eyes while Jack lay on his right side.
Jack's eyes roamed the scene in front of him, but he could only see Shi Furui's kneeling body, the barren ground, and numerous familiar faces.
He needed to take a deep breath, but as soon as he tried pain stabbed through his chest and he coughed out a mouthful of blood.
After he blinked through the pain, he started remembering what happened and realized what he needed to do.
With a quick look down at his body, he saw that someone removed his coat and robe, and left him in his underwear. A neat bandage was tied to his spear wound, but it did nothing to help him with his current problem.
Gritting his teeth through the pain, Jack rolled his body over to his left side so that gravity could do its job on his lung. That earned him a few more bloody coughs, but Jack only gave a grim smirk while he thought 'At least the local physiology's doing something right.'
Shi Furui and the others gathered around him gave out surprised shouts at Jack's maneuver, but they knew better than to stop him when he started doing something.
They ran over to the other side and Shi Furui asked "How can we help. Jack?"
After a few quick and shallow breaths, Jack wheezed out "Need a knife… patch of leather… and a long… thin… hollow thing." as blood oozed down the side of his face.
Shi Furui found the knife and leather quickly, but he didn't know where to get the last thing Jack needed so he stood up and started shouting for it.
A few seconds later, a woman's lilting voice shouted "I have something like that."
From the corner of his eye, Jack watched as the crowd around him parted and allowed the woman he saw Ran Huankuo give leadership over the Haechi caravan step out.
She fished out a long white bone from her tied up hair and presented it to Shi Furui as she asked "Will this do? It's a Haechi bone we use for inking our bodies."
Shi Furui took the fifteen-centimeter long bone in his hands and turned to Jack with a question in his eyes.
Jack studied it for a second before he gave a quick nod and rasped "Looks fine… come."
Shi Furui knelt and followed Jack's instructions to cut a small slit in the middle of the patch of leather.
When Jack ordered to make a small incision between his ribs on the left side, everyone stopped and stared at him.
"Why do you want us to wound you more?" Shi Furui asked as he stared down at Jack.
Jack's face darkened before he growled "Give knife… do it… myself."
Shi Furui's brows furrowed, but he took the knife and did the incision.
Jack gritted his teeth from the pain, but when he looked at the cut he snapped "Deeper!"
Shi Furui's frown deepened and he hesitated over Jack's new bleeding wound for a second before an annoyed click of a tongue sounded and the Haechi tribe woman knelt next to Shi Furui and stabbed the tip of her forearm-length knife into the cut.
Jack hissed but managed to gasp out "Stop!" when he felt the knife go deep enough.
The Haechi caravan leader nodded her head and pulled the knife out.
Blood started flowing out, and Jack instructed the furious Shi Furui to stop glaring at the woman and to place the patch of leather over it, with the slit over the wound.
When he did, Jack told him to hold it like that and turned to the woman to rasp "Push bone... in wound."
The woman gave him a skeptical look, but she took the bone needle and pushed it through the slit in the leather and into the wound.
Jack had to grit his teeth and hiss once more when he felt the bone entering through the knife wound.
When he told her to stop, the woman did and sat back on her haunches.
Jack quickly covered the outside end of the bone with his right thumb and growled "Suck out… air. Cover hole… after."
Shi Furui and the Haechi caravan leader exchanged glances, and Shi Furui squared his shoulders and leaned down to suck on the bone.
The first few inhalations brought more blood than air with them, and Shi Furui had to spit it all out to the side while he held a thumb over the hole. After that, he mostly got air and Jack felt the pressure on his left lung lessen by a great amount.
The combination of gravity and removing of the air from his chest cavity enabled Jack's left lung to inflate in a couple of minutes.
Jack instructed Shi Furui to tie up the leather patch over his chest and to keep sucking out air every few minutes while he focused his mind on the Beast Recovery Method and repairing the wound that caused all of this.
When the Beast Recovery Method started operating, he looked up at the Haechi tribe leader and croaked "Thank you."
She looked at him with a strange gaze for a few seconds before she bowed a little and said "No, thank you. Without your man's warning and your brave stand here, I don't know if I would still breathe right now."
Jack gave her a lopsided grin as he rasped "I hope it will… count for something… with your tribe."
The Haechi caravan leader looked at him for a couple more seconds before she declared "It's up to the Chief to decide that." She stood up to her feet and added "I will let you rest for the night; we will talk more in the morning."
After she took a few steps through the gathered people, she turned around, looked down at the bone in Jack's chest, and said "You can keep that."
Jack chuckled at her back and then let out a couple more bloody coughs.
When she left, Jack gave orders to Shi Furui to have old Long store all the enemy corpses and possessions in his Star Bag for later examination.
The night passed with a few of Jack's men taking turns to suck out the air from his chest cavity.
He almost slipped away to sleep a few times, so he ordered his men to keep him awake so the Beast Recovery Method could do its thing.
As dawn neared, Jack felt that his first wound healed enough to not need the bone. He had the air in his chest sucked out one last time and drew out the bone from the already healing wound.
Shi Furui quickly bandaged it properly and allowed Jack a couple of hours of sleep.
A bloody coughing fit woke him up at dawn and he saw people around him already moving.
Jack tried to stand up on his own, but soon Shi Furui and Kuang Bindun came to scold him and helped him up to his feet while they held him up.
After several unsteady steps, Jack managed to hold his own weight. His wounds still screamed their protests at him, but he just gritted his teeth and ignored them.
Soon enough, he found the Haechi Tribe caravan leader and nine of her men waiting a bit further off from their camp. They gave impatient looks to his readying company so they could resume their journey.
Shi Furui informed Jack that they had a man running to their wagons every half an hour to check if everything seemed alright.
He walked up to the Haechi leader and clasped his hands in greeting as he said "Hello, I am Jack Song. Leader of the Immortals' Lament mercenary company, and hopefully a friend and partner of the Haechi Tribe soon enough."
The Haechi leader looked a little confused by his formal tone, but she imitated his greeting and responded with "I am Tong Huakun, Haechi Tribe warrior." A second later, she narrowed her eyes and asked "Don't you people call yourself Immortals?"
Jack looked down at his chest wound, then back at Tong Huakun with a bloody grin and said "Anyone calling themselves that is a moron."