[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/NISMglX.png[/img][/center][center][h2][color=#b9dde9]Laurey Karlin[/color][/h2][/center]The door to Realist’s Cell ground open to the whir of powerful motors. 

Inside was lit only by the electric fire thrown from the cell terminals, harsh and blue. A frame of black metal and thick arteries of wire, red as blood, bathed in the light. With the hue and angular nature of the AI core, it wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch to imagine it as a chunk of ice in Judecca, crushing a sinner inside. Certainly the silence helped.

Laurey let out the breath she didn’t realise she’d been holding.

“It’s something, isn’t it?” Laurey jumped as Jan spoke from beside her, but nodded. Her cold sweats and the deep craving inside her seemed so far away in its presence.

Crossing to the consoles, Laurey near tiptoed, trying to break the silence as little as possible (it seemed safer that way). 

“I’ll need some privacy when I worked,” she said as she came to the eye-watering screens. 

“Can’t do, I’m afraid. Security issues and all that.”

“Of course,” she nodded, then drew a deep breath. In some ways what she was about to do was akin to undressing in front of Jan; it laid a part of her bare, part she wanted to keep away from others. 

Her finger blossomed and the facets found their places. 

“Be quiet then.”

The world fell away into the cold light of tumbling stars.

It was also on J-Heim Beta that Laurey had plunged into an ice lake. Supposedly the adrenaline rush it brought on had health benefits, but it only froze Laurey and made her sniffle for a week afterwards. What she remembered from that experience, what was burned into her primate brain, was the way the cold had driven all the air from her lungs, like she was at once falling and had been struck by an ice-wrapped truck.

Now she felt it again. Now it was worse, not just an icy pool but an ocean, her mind drowning, and the red eye of the leviathan fell upon her.