### Chapter 12
She woke, without realizing she had slept.
There was no snap, no lurch, no disorientation sharp enough to qualify as panic. Just awareness returning to her body the way a system came back online after a graceful shutdown.
Ceiling.
Bed.
The low, steady hum of the ship.
She stayed still for a few breaths, letting sensation stack before thought. Weight pressing into her back. Fabric beneath her hands. Gravity doing exactly what it had been doing when she lay down.
Her breathing was even. Her heart rate unremarkable. No residual adrenaline, no tremor of aftershock. Whatever she'd needed last night, she'd gotten enough of it.
She rolled her head slightly to one side and opened her eyes fully.
The room was unchanged.
Same panels. Same muted light. Same deliberate neutrality. The ceiling hadn't crept closer. The walls hadn't dissolved back into suggestion. The ship hadn't decided to prove a point while she slept.
She exhaled, slow and controlled.
"Okay," she murmured.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat upright. The floor was where it should be, friction and resistance consistent with memory. She planted her feet, flexed her toes inside her shoes.
Orientation complete.
Her gaze drifted, unavoidably, to the wall where the window had been.
It hadn't reasserted itself overnight. No stars waiting to ambush her first conscious moment. Just a wall. Matte. Unassuming.
She watched it for a long second.
Then she stood.
This time, she didn't wait for the window to appear on its own. She stepped closer and lifted her hand, hovering it near the surface where transparency had resolved before. She didn't touch yet. Just oriented. Just let her nervous system know what she was about to do.
Her fingers brushed the wall.
The surface warmed slightly beneath her touch, responsive without being eager. A subtle shift rippled outward from the point of contact, and then the wall thinned.
Space unfolded.
Not all at once. Not violently. Just… there.
Stars, again. Everywhere. Depth layered on depth, light traveling distances too large for her intuition to handle cleanly. No horizon. No reference point. Just vastness pressing gently but insistently at her senses.
Her breath caught.
She counted silently as she stared.
One.
Two.
Three.
The feeling built quickly this time. Not surprise, not awe exactly, but the weight of scale settling in her chest like a held breath she hadn't agreed to take.
Ten seconds.
Twenty.
Her stomach rolled as her brain tried to reconcile motion without movement. Her inner ear protested the absence of an up or down it could trust.
Thirty.
The stars didn't blink. Didn't soften. Didn't pull back when she started to feel small inside them.
Forty.
Her pulse picked up. Not panic yet. Just the edge of it, the place where curiosity tipped toward overwhelm.
Fifty.
She didn't push for sixty.
Her hand moved decisively, fingers pressing the control surface she'd already mapped in her mind. The wall thickened, stars retreating without drama, without protest.
Solid again.
The room returned to human scale.
She stood there for a moment, hand still against the wall, breathing through the aftershocks. Not shaking. Not dizzy. Just… recalibrating.
"Not today," she said quietly.
Her knees bent, and she leaned forward slightly, resting her forehead against the wall for a few seconds. Cool. Stable. Real.
She straightened.
"That was better," she told herself. "Progress is still progress."
She turned away from the wall before it could tempt her again.
Now that she was fully awake, the room looked different. Not new - but available. Less like a holding space, more like something meant to be used.
She began to walk.
Slowly. Deliberately.
She traced the perimeter first, eyes cataloging seams and panels, places where access points were suggested rather than advertised. She knelt once, then twice, fingers brushing the edges of a panel near the floor.
No loose components. No obvious fasteners. Everything nested cleanly, built to be adjusted but not by accident.
She stood again and moved toward the table.
The surface was smooth, warm to the touch, but not reflective. It didn't mirror her face back at her, and she appreciated that. No need to see herself right now.
The chair slid when she nudged it with her knee, weight balanced, center of gravity predictable. She sat, then stood again, testing angles.
Her gaze kept returning to the center of the room.
There was nothing there at first glance. Just open space, uninterrupted floor.
Which, of course, meant that something *important* was hiding there.
She stepped into the middle and turned slowly, eyes scanning for symmetry breaks, pattern inconsistencies. The lighting shifted subtly as she moved, responding to her presence in a way that felt less like surveillance and more like calibration.
"Okay," she said softly. "Where are you hiding it?"
She crouched and placed her palm flat against the floor.
The response was immediate.
A circle resolved beneath her hand, faint at first, then sharpening into definition. Lines of light traced outward, forming a pattern that wasn't decorative so much as _legible_. A language of options waiting to be acknowledged.
She smiled, just a little.
She rose to her feet as the panel lifted slightly from the floor, angling itself upward until it was readable from a standing position. Not a screen, exactly. More like a surface that could become one if she asked it to.
The surface finished resolving beneath her gaze.
Symbols arranged themselves across it - clean, elegant, utterly alien. No letters. No numbers. No recognizable iconography she could anchor to language.
She frowned slightly.
"I don't know what any of this says," she murmured.
And then - she did.
Not in words.
In weight.
Her attention drifted to one cluster near the edge of the panel. As her focus brushed it, her chest tightened reflexively, throat constricting just enough to spark a flash of unease.
Air.
Not atmosphere composition in an abstract sense - breath. The fragile, taken-for-granted rhythm of oxygen moving in and out of her body. The memory of holding her breath too long underwater as a child. Of coughing once, violently, when something went down the wrong way.
Her hand pulled back without conscious decision.
She didn't need to know what the symbol looked like to understand the consequence of adjusting it. The meaning landed fully formed, somatic and insistent.
Her gaze slid away, seeking safer ground.
Another symbol drew her in - this one nearer the center. As soon as she focused on it, the room seemed to _reorient_ around her, her sense of up and down humming faintly, like a plucked string.
Gravity.
Not as a variable in an equation, but as a memory.
The moon.
The footage she'd watched as a kid - grainy black and white, the careful bounce of bodies learning new rules. The way astronauts moved like they were half-remembering how to walk, every step an experiment.
A quiet thrill stirred in her chest.
Not fear this time. Curiosity. Possibility.
She smiled despite herself.
Her attention drifted onward.
A third symbol waited, less prominent, tucked into a cluster she might have missed if she weren't looking deliberately. When she noticed it, a different sensation rose up - pressure behind the eyes, the faint ache of overstimulation.
Light.
Not brightness alone, but _quality_. The difference between fluorescent glare and late afternoon sun. The relief of dimming a room after a migraine started to crest. The instinctive flinch of being woken by overhead lights too early in the morning.
She winced slightly.
"That one's… sensitive," she said under her breath.
The panel did not react.
Good.
Another cluster tugged at her attention - this one quieter, heavier. When she focused on it, the low hum of the ship became more noticeable, not louder, but _present_. The awareness of vibration through bone. The way buildings spoke through their foundations during storms or earthquakes.
Structural resonance.
Movement.
Not danger, exactly - but consequence. Changes here would ripple outward, not just within her room.
Her shoulders squared instinctively.
She started to back away from it mentally, respect settling in alongside restraint, only to realize that it felt just out of reach, anyway.
Security. Good.
She stepped back from the panel and exhaled slowly.
None of the symbols meant anything to her in the way language was supposed to mean things. She couldn't read them. Couldn't label them. Couldn't even describe them later if asked.
But their intent was unmistakable.
The meanings weren't being translated into words.
They were being translated into experience.
She looked back down at the panel, at the alien script that wasn't script at all, and felt something steady click into place.
"Okay," she said quietly. "I see how this works."
Not control through instruction.
Control through understanding.
That was… dangerous.
And useful.
And something she would need to handle very carefully.