Your eyelids felt heavy. Caked with something dry and flaking. You blinked, once, twice, struggling to focus on the dim shapes swimming in the darkness above you.

A low hum vibrated through your bones. It wasn't a sound you heard with your ears—it was something deeper. A resonance. A pulse that thrummed beneath your skin, waiting.

The pod door hung open, rusted and crooked. A single strip of pale, flickering light from somewhere in the chamber cut across your face.

You were on the floor. Knees pulled up, palms flat against freezing concrete. Your fingers trembled—from cold, from shock, from something else you couldn't name.

The walls around you were concrete. Crumbling. Stained with dark splatters that had long since turned brown. Some were handprints. Some were larger.

A name floated to the surface of your mind. Your name.