[Elena]

I clawed my way back to consciousness through layers of chemical fog that clung to the inside of my skull like wet cotton.

The first thing I registered was the silence. Not the managed quiet of the climate system's white noise. Not the subliminal hum of ventilation fans. This was absence. A vacuum so total that the only sound in the world was blood rushing through my own carotid artery, absurdly loud against the stillness.

The glass partitions had gone fully opaque--solid matte black. No ambient light bled through. No seams glowed.

The suite had been reduced to its bones: four walls, a titanium ceiling, and darkness pressing in from every direction with the patient weight of deep water.

I didn't sit up immediately.

Eyelids at half-mast. Breathing shallow. Body deliberately limp.

I let my senses sweep outward while my muscles stayed slack--cataloging inputs, testing the environment, running a systems check the way a pilot runs diagnostics after a forced landing.

My mouth tasted like copper and old lavender. The residual ether sat in my muscles like sand--gritty heaviness in my forearms, a dull ache behind my eyes, a slight lag between impulse and contraction.

Recoverable. But I was slower than yesterday, and he knew it.

I shifted fractionally. The coverlet was pulled neatly over my shoulders, tucked with geometric precision no unconscious body could have arranged. Fold line parallel to my collarbones. Silk edge aligned with the mattress seam.

Someone had carried me across the room, laid me down, and arranged the blanket with the careful attention of a man dressing a wound.

The thought sent cold electricity through my abdomen. Not fear exactly--but the visceral recognition of vulnerability.

While I'd been under, stripped of every defense, he had been in this room.

His hands had touched my skin. His breath had been close enough to feel.

I pressed my fingers to the collar of the linen shift. The RFID patch was still there, its faint electromagnetic pulse ticking against my fingertip. Unchanged. He hadn't tampered with it, hadn't added a secondary device. Either the existing tracking was sufficient, or he wanted me to believe nothing had changed.

The air was thinner. Each breath required fractionally greater effort, the oxygen throttled down just enough to keep muscles slightly starved, thoughts slightly blunted. Temperature had dropped at least ten degrees. Gooseflesh covered my bare arms. When I exhaled, the faintest wisp of vapor curled from my lips before dissolving.

He was running a degradation protocol. Cold, thin air, chemical sleep, caloric restriction--each thread in a net designed to erode stamina and narrow cognitive bandwidth. Not enough to cause injury. Just enough to make the cage feel heavier with each passing hour.

I sat up slowly. The coverlet fell to my waist. Joints protested. Knees stiff. Hip flexors tight. The small muscles along my spine firing in the wrong sequence.

"Awake in the dark, are we?"

The voice didn't come from the hidden speakers.

It came from inside the room.

I turned toward the sound. My eyes had adjusted enough to register shapes--the hard edge of the mattress, the smooth plane of the nearest wall. But the voice had originated from the foot of the bed, from a space that should have been empty.