Zoe was on Level Four, because the current repair works were happening on other floors. She didn't know where Forge was, probably hidden away somewhere doing the same thing she was. She'd plugged her communicator into the panel of some locked quarters, but she wasn't trying to open them so much as trying to get into the system. Some more. As if today might yield better results.

Not for the first time since she had woken up, she wondered if she should not try and plug herself directly into the system. But still fear held her back. It had been difficult enough not to get overwhelmed when she'd plugged into a small shuttle's navigation system. Something of the size of the station, with firewalls good enough to keep her out this long? She wasn't sure that she wanted to know what might happen to her.

But she was getting nowhere, and growing hungry. For meals, she preferred the company of others, and walked out of the hallway and towards the nearest elevator, meaning to get to the Level One kitchen, where people were always coming and going. With no assurance that every monster was actually dead, she still carried her sword, sheathed, clipped to the belt she wore with her miniskirt.

Zoe is aching all over. Her pride has long since stopped taking hits whenever Logan kicked her ass, but her body doesn't appreciate it any more, and she is getting so tired of the little extra something he puts into it, since Tombstone.

So after she takes a shower and slips into one of her usual, almost-too-short dresses, she spends three minutes getting decent alcohol out of the replicator before she heads over to Sharon's quarters. "It's Zoe, open up," she calls out from the other side of the door, and when Sharon does, Zoe walks in and sets the bottle down on the table.

"I'm so tired of Logan's patronizing attitude and I got decent alcohol out of the replicator," she states, watching her friend expectantly. "You got any plans?" Beside 'getting drunk and bitching about men with Zoe', obviously.

"Are you sure we're ready?" Zoe asked, wringing her hands together before she realized she was doing it, and stopped.

"We're ready," her father assured her, nodding, as her mother came and put her hands on her shoulders.

"We're ready, Zoe," she echoed, looking into her eyes. "We've triple-checked everything. This is it."

Zoe nodded slowly, and took a deep breath. "Okay." A small, slightly tight smile. "Let's get it done."

It was only normal, she told herself as her parents derezzed to get things ready in the real world, for her to feel slightly anxious. People got cold feet about getting married, of course she would get cold feet about being born again. If something went wrong, she might be deleted and lost forever. Double up or nothing.

She looked around the room of her old home, walked to the window and looked out at the lake. The water was real now, as real as it could get in V-World. She had programmed everything here better than her father could have, but now it was time to enter the real world.

"We're ready for you, Zo," her father's voice sounded in the otherwise empty house.

She clenched her fist, programming the sun to rise. A dawn seemed appropriate, right then, and she watched the first rays come over the horizon. "I'm ready," she answered, and for an instant, there was nothing.

There was nothing, and then she took a loud, gasping breath, oxygen forcing its way into brand new lungs, and she sat up, panting, before she scrambled in panic when she found herself on a cot, clothed, and very dry, three things that should not have happened. Her back hit the wall, and that was when she noticed the other person in the room. The other person she had never seen before, and she could only stare at him now, not even sure whether her vocal chords would work properly.