23: Genesis

Jonah wakes strapped to a table under a ceiling of green lights pulsing slow as a resting heart, held by restraints with a fitted gentleness that frightens him more than cruelty would. A file of machines takes station around him like ushers. And a tall, spare, perfectly still man introduces himself with a name Jonah has never heard — and then reaches up, almost fondly, to the hinge of a familiar face, and shows him what the kindest night of his journey was actually made of.