Not a gradual slowing. Not a glide. A stop so sudden his teeth clicked together and his breath punched out of him.

He hung there in the cradle, half folded in the harness, ears ringing so badly the room had no shape to it at first. Warm air touched his face through the torn side of the machine. Not the damp chill of the lower lab. Not rain. Warmth with a plant smell in it, sweet and green and almost unreal.

He swallowed, tasted metal, and forced his head up.

The machine stood in open light.

Its base had gouged a strip through a pale path, scattering dark soil and crushed leaves. Around it spread a garden so carefully alive it looked arranged by a patient hand with too much money and too much time. Broad leaves fanned over beds of low flowers. Trees with silver bark leaned over curved walkways. Water moved somewhere nearby with a soft run over stone. The sky above held that same gold-blue warmth he had seen in the final moments of the plunge, even and cloudless and wrong in its perfection.

No traffic noise. No distant engines. No maintenance drones whining overhead. No city grit on the air. Nothing but the hiss of his cooling machine, the whisper of leaves, and far off, what might have been laughter.