She gave in to it, let the darkness claim her once again.
This time when she came around, she had to struggle against a bright light that was a physical pressure within her body, pinning her down. She battled against it, forcing it aside until she was able to twitch muscles, flex fingers and, finally, open her eyes. For a moment she imagined herself back in the Refuge, expected Ondo's worried face to rise above the horizon of her perception, his magnified eyes through his multiglasses regarding her. But of course, that couldn't be.
She was, however, still alive. More than that, she felt unexpectedly energised, the muscles of her body thrilling to the urgent need to act. She felt strong. She'd been fooled by such sensations more than once during her reconstruction – the effects of painkillers and boosters making her feel better than she really was. This was different. She felt like the insides of her body were glowing.
She studied the internal data feeds that her brain flecks gave her conscious mind. She was free from all damage. Tissue impairment from the hypoxia was fully healed. More than that, other minor injuries she'd received, unimportant scrapes and bruises, were also gone. There'd been a disconnect in one of her neuron / neurocarbon crossovers, perceived as a dull ache on one side and as a low-level warning alert on the other, but that was fixed, too, the coupling operating at full efficiency. A minor infection in her right lung, so localized that it hadn't been worth treating, was no longer there. A chipped bone in her left shin, damage incurred aboard the Radiant Dragon during her escape from the Coronade system, was fully knitted back together. It made no sense; some of these were repairs that should have taken weeks, yet her internal clock told her that it was only a single day since her last moments of consciousness upon the dead world. She'd assumed Concordance had found her, captured her, but why would they go to so much trouble to heal her? So that she was better able to withstand the torments to come?
She lay upon a couch in a bare white room, the ambient temperature warm and a soft pillow supporting her neck. The atmosphere was breathable, the balance of oxygen, nitrogen and other gases matching that of Maes Far almost exactly. Was that coincidence? Whatever the reason, it tasted good: pure and clean. She was completely unclothed, without even a sheet to cover her body. She moved her limbs and found to her surprise that she could; she wasn't bound in any way. Unlike the times she'd awoken in the operating theatre of the Refuge during her repair, she wasn't hooked up to any tubes or monitors. There was no machinery in sight, no flashing lights. She pushed herself into a sitting position, trying to make sense of her surroundings. A dull ache throbbed in her head, but it was nothing she couldn't ignore.
A glass of clear liquid had been set upon a low pedestal beside her bed. She considered not drinking it, but if they'd meant to poison her, or harm her in some other way, they'd had plenty of opportunity to do so already. She tasted the fluid and found it was simple water, only a few benign trace elements mixed in. She drank gratefully, the sensation of the cool liquid trickling down inside her pleasantly physical, bringing her back to the real world, making her feel more solid.
She had to find out where she was, what the hell was going on. Her EVA suit hung from a hook against the wall, and the thin undergarments she'd worn underneath were laid out in a wall alcove nearby, cleaned and neatly folded. In fact, there were several identical copies of them; someone had studied them and replicated them exactly. She slipped a set on, and left the suit where it was. There was also, she noted, plumbing: a basin, toilet and shower.
A tall door, fully three times her height, stood in one wall of the room. She expected to find it locked, but it disappeared as she neared, sliding into the floor in a similar manner to the doorway at the Depository.
Warily, she stepped into the passageway outside. Precisely nothing happened: no alarms sounded; no attacks came. The corridor was oddly-proportioned, over-tall like the doorway, and it curved in both directions so that she couldn't see far along it. It also rose and fell, as if the designers couldn't bear to see a single straight line. The surfaces were bare, creamy-white, slightly warm to the touch, and there was the faintest hum of machinery or circuitry as Selene put her fingertips to them.
Everything was spotlessly clean, not even dust discernible to her augmented perceptions. There was nothing out of place or superfluous or even decorative; it was like she was inside a ship or a building that had been assembled there and then, moments before her awakening. She preferred a minimalist approach to decor herself, and often spent happy hours on the Refuge setting objects and furniture in her rooms into perfect order. No doubt it was a healing thing, as she'd never been so fastidious back on Maes Far. By arranging the things around her to be just as she wanted, she was reasserting control over her own life. This, however, was on a different level, with no embellishment anywhere. If it was a vessel, it was one constructed purely for function. The question that ran around in circles in her mind was, what function?
She padded forwards, straining to pick up any clue about where she was, what was going on. The sound of someone breathing came to her from the passageway up ahead: low and gentle, someone at rest rather than waiting to ambush her. Creeping around a corner and
