The hallway felt like it stretched for miles this time around, yet Void took it slow, not because she had to anymore, but because rushing felt wrong. With every floor she descended, the apartment above her felt further away, like it was already receding into memory instead of just being three levels up.

Naturally, she didn't like the feeling at all...

Two weeks was long enough for the body to lie convincingly.

Void had learned that the hard way over the months: how flesh closed ranks, how pain dulled just enough to pass as permission. Her ribs no longer flared white-hot when she breathed in too deep. The bruises that once painted her torso in violent purples and oil-slick blues had faded into those sickly yellow-green shades that made people think "oh, you're better now." Even the headaches had spaced themselves out, arriving less like a hammer and more like a reminder tapped against the inside of her skull.

She didn't trust a second of it...

Void's body yanked her back into consciousness reminding her rest is something they both have a different opinion on. Her ribs felt wired with barbed tension, every bruise radiating with an ugly, low-frequency ache that pulsed beneath her skin. The room was dark except for the faint spill of a desk lamp, gilding the room in a soft amber haze. She instinctively hissed a breath between her teeth. Her fingers twitched first - then the pain followed like a delayed apology...

The first hit landed like a car crash.

The whole damn door shuddered in its frame, metal ringing out sharp enough that Luxy instinctively grabbed Jules's arm. The second strike came before either of them breathed, a bone-deep WHAM that rattled the dishes in the sink.

Jules whispered, barely a hiss, "That's a... Sledgehammer?!"...

"Ah shit. Didn't know dead cybernetics could hurt this much."

The kitchen light was one of those shitty cold-white LEDs someone bought on discount, flickering in a way that made the whole place feel like you were standing inside an overworked fridge. Luxy sat at the table with her wrecked cyberarm propped on a dish towel, the MIKE casing split open by overheating, the inner capacitor housing warped from the microwave discharge she'd forced through it. She looked like hell. Bruised, pale. And her eyes? Red - from more than just exhaustion...