Scarlett wakes to light that does not belong to any season.
It is not the sharp white of hospitals she remembers from her first life, nor the dim, flickering glow of emergency systems. This light is softer, diffused through panels designed to calm rather than interrogate. It presses gently against her eyelids, asking rather than demanding.
For a moment, she does not open her eyes.
She listens.
There is a hum beneath the quiet—a low, constant frequency that reminds her too much of the core. Her muscles tense instinctively, heart rate spiking before her mind can intervene.
Not a system, she tells herself. Not a machine.
Just power.
She inhales carefully. The air smells clean. Sterile, but not cold. There is a faint trace of something else beneath it—cedar, maybe, or antiseptic trying
