White all around them again.

It still felt artificial in the same deeply unsettling way. Walls too smooth to belong to any real interior. Light too clean to come from actual fixtures. Space that felt measured by thought instead of architecture. The door remained exactly where it had always been - white, seamless. Impossible to tell apart from the wall around it unless you already knew it was there.

Void sat on the floor with her back against the wall, one knee raised lazily. "Well," she muttered tiredly. "Proud of yourself?"...

Sandy's car smoothly rolled down the quiet industrial street. The neighborhood looked abandoned to anyone who didn't know better - he liked it that way.

Aura had her face pressed against the windshield like an excited tourist glued to an aquarium.

"Wow," she whispered. "Your friend lives in a fucking villain lair."

Void kept her eyes forward. "It's a workshop."

"Same thing," Aura replied instantly inside her head...

The ripperdoc returned without fanfare. He carried a fresh tablet under one arm and a slim metal case in the other, the polished latches catching the fluorescent light as he set it carefully on the rolling tray beside Void's bed. The monitors responded the moment he stepped close, their displays shifting from passive vitals into deeper diagnostic screens that bloomed across the panels in webs of neurological telemetry while Reyes studied them calmly...

Reyes finished adjusting one of the monitors, the pale glow of the screen reflecting faintly off the brass rings of his telescopic glasses. The machines hummed with quiet satisfaction, like a workshop after a successful repair. He glanced over Void's vitals one last time and gave a small, approving nod. "Vitals stable..." he said calmly while peeling off his gloves, the latex snapping softly. "Motor response intact." His eyes moved between Void and Sandy before he added politely, "I shall leave you for a moment. Please avoid provoking a stress response from the patient."

Sandy gave him a lazy two-finger salute from the chair beside the bed and muttered something about no promises, which earned the faintest hint of a smile from the doctor before he stepped out and closed the door behind him...

Reyes rolled a wheeled tray closer, its surface crowded with sterile instruments, injector rigs, and a compact diagnostic slate that projected faint blue light onto the ceiling.

"Before we begin," he said, "we perform what the corporations like to call a 'pre-installation wellness dialogue'."

Void squinted. "You mean... A medical interview?"

"I mean I ask you uncomfortable questions and you answer them honestly."...