The beeping sound reached her in repeating patterns followed by long hissing releases that echoed through the chamber like the breathing of an ancient creature coming back to life.
Ashe opened her eyes.
She immediately perceived light coming from somewhere above her. The ceiling was indeed not whole anymore as some sections of it had collapsed at some point in time. Through the broken gaps, beams of sunlight fell downward and within them, Ashe saw something moving.
At first, her vision could not separate it from the light itself, but as she tried to focus, it became more distinct.
A butterfly.
It seemed made out of the light itself, spreading particles around as it hovered in front of her. She looked at it as if it was the most familiar thing in the world.
But then, as her focus deepened, the hallucination, or whatever it was, began to break apart and the butterfly soon disappeared.
Instead, the chamber took its place.
She realized she was standing upright, held in that position by a transparent enclosure surrounding her. It was filled with a bluish fluid that held her body in suspension, clear enough to let her see beyond it.
Around the pod, flowers grew from the flooded floor and from cracks along the chamber's walls, gathering around the base of the structure in clusters so thick that they nearly covered one another. Some had climbed onto the pod itself.
Suddenly, the surface in front of the enclosure clicked, and the door opened on its own. The fluid rushed out immediately and Ashe's body followed with it, no longer supported by anything.
Air rushed into her lungs, and she coughed violently, unable to control that first breath. When her breathing began to settle, she looked at her own reflection in the water and noticed how pale she was. She had long white hair that clung damply to her shoulders and back, and a grey bodysuit covered her from neck to ankle.
As she took a few steps away from the pod, she felt a pull at her back. She turned and realized she was not free from it at all. Numerous conduits still connected her to the pod, extending from the rear of her bodysuit and back into it. She reached back to remove them, but her arm did not bend far enough. She then tried again, but when she did, a shock traveled through her entire body at once.
She did not understand what it was, only that it was violent. Her head began to buzz, and the chamber seemed to tilt, losing its proportions. Through the noise, she could hear voices layered over one another, but she couldn't distinguish a single word being said.
Then a second wave came.
It was stronger than the first, and by then she had no energy left to resist it. Her vision flashed and blurred, and for a moment she could have sworn ash was falling from above.
But that was of course impossible. She knew she was inside a chamber. Nothing was burning, so there was nothing that should have been shedding ash. And yet grey particles drifted down around her, soft and silent, making the moment feel even more unreal.
She tried to move forward but her foot slipped in the shallow water and she fell to the ground. One by one, some of the conduits detached from her suit with hissing sounds and pulled back toward the pod.
She stayed there for a while, breathing unevenly, waiting for the room to hold still.
When the buzzing in her head began to fade, she pushed herself up again, enough to look around. She had no idea where she was. She then searched her mind, perhaps because pain and confusion often force a person into their thoughts when nothing outside makes sense. But there was nothing.
She did not know who she was. She did not know what this place was. She did not know how she had gotten there, why she had been inside the pod, or even for how long.
The absence of answers should have frightened her more than it actually did. But even fear required context, and she had none.