Morning inside the Capital arrived without sunrise.
There was no true dawn here, no slow spread of natural light across the horizon, no warmth creeping through clouds from a real sun. Instead, the artificial sky beyond the transparent upper sections shifted gradually from deep night into a carefully designed pale morning, the false stars fading one by one while soft golden light spread across the inner atmosphere of the floating city. Even that transition had clearly been engineered for beauty, because by the time the light reached the residential dome where the chosen participants were staying, the entire place already felt brighter, cleaner, and strangely calm.
Tansy woke first.
For a few seconds she simply stared upward at the ceiling, as if reminding herself where she was. The room still felt too comfortable to belong to reality. The bed was soft, the air held perfect temperature, and the silence inside the Capital had a strange quality to it—controlled, almost expensive.
