EMMA
The world didn't return in a rush of light; it seeped back in as a series of cold, clinical sensations. The smell of sterile plastic. The hum of a high-end air filtration system. The distant, rhythmic thud-hiss of the hydraulic rams—slower now, but still tethered to the pulse thrumming in my throat.
I opened my eyes and didn't see limestone. I saw a ceiling of polished white glass.
I tried to sit up, but my body felt like it had been poured into a mold of setting concrete. The sedative Julian had laced into the "spring" was still a heavy, sweet sludge in my nervous system. I was lying on a medical bed in what looked like a high-tech observation suite, tucked somewhere deep within the Chateâu’s reinforced sub-levels.
"Ah, the Architect returns to the world of the living," a voice s
