Summer's room was quiet except for the soft rhythm of lo-fi beats echoing from the massive flat screen on the wall—an endless loop of synth haze and pixel rain paired with a calming cityscape. The kind of thing meant to soothe stress, or at least pretend to.
Summer lay across her bed, half-buried in plush covers that dulled the sound of her shifting now and then.
The shutters were shut tight, the curtains drawn, and the only illumination came from the faint glow of ambient strip-lights tracing the room's corners in sterile white-blue, giving the space a low-lit, futuristic feel.
It looked less like a teenager's bedroom and more like the interior of a first-class pod on some interstellar shuttle.
She wore a black vest that clung to her body like a second skin—its center printed with a cartoon skull wearing a pink ribbon.
