I stood naked in the small glass room, steam curling thick and heavy around me. The thermometer on the wall beeped at steady intervals, each tone cutting through the hiss of hot mist. Heat pressed into every pore, working through layers of plain dust, dried sweat, and old blood that had settled into my skin over the past week.
I looked down at my arms. Shoulders. The places where Vince Vale had snapped bones, where infected nails had torn flesh, where the sand had ground me raw. All of it gone. Skin smooth and unmarked. Whatever had happened in Eleanor's tent had done something the system never managed on its own.
"Done," a female voice announced from outside the glass.
I wrapped the white robe around myself, the fabric soft and slightly stiff from sterilization. I stepped out into the cooler air of the quarantine wing.
