Void turned her head on the pillow - the one movement she'd been granted - and fixed Rez with the flattest stare she could manage.

"Still don't trust you."

Rez's eyebrows lifted. The LEDs on her cheeks flickered into a brief, bright question mark before settling back into their slow pulse. "Figures..."...

"Can't move. Can't call out. Can't jack in. Fantastic. What else can go wrong?"

The voice behind her answered, as if reading her thoughts - which, Void realized with a fresh spike of unease, she very well might have been. "You're thinking very loudly," she murmured, her breath still warm against the shell of Void's ear. "All that panic. All that static. Very flattering, honestly. Most girls don't get this wound up around me until I've at least bought them a drink."...

Void followed her gaze upwards. The rings expanded and contracted in a rhythm that was, now that she was actually looking at it, unmistakably organic. The intervals weren't mechanical, what's more - they varied slightly each time, like a sleeper whose breathing shifted with the currents of a dream.

"Great," Void muttered, wiping another streak of blood from her upper lip with the back of her hand. "Milspec's got a pulse. That's deeply reassuring."...

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 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...