Lauren tried to find the place where the anxiety lived. She remembered it as a tight, buzzing knot in the center of her chest—a feeling that usually made her breath come in short, jagged sips. She searched for it, leaning into the silence of her left temple, but the knot had been untied. The memory of the fear remained, a factual record of a feeling, but the feeling itself was gone, replaced by a vast, airy lightness. It was like looking at a photograph of a storm from inside a warm, dry room.

"No," Lauren answered. Her voice sounded smoother now, the edges of her tone rounded off. "It's just... gone."

"Now, stay very still, Lauren. I need to assess the cognitive shift," Martha said, her voice drifting over her like a soft blanket. She leaned in, her eyes searching Lauren’s pupils for a flicker of the old turbulence. "Tell me what you think right now. Not a specific thought, just... the quality of it. What does it feel like to think?"

Lauren tried to reach for a thought, but the process felt like wading through waist-deep water. She found a memory of her bedroom—the blue curtains, the stack of library books—but when she tried to connect it to the feeling of being home, the bridge wasn't there. The images were clear, but the meaning had evaporated. "It feels... thin," Lauren whispered. "Like a piece of paper that's been erased too many times. I can see the words, but they're just... shapes."

"And the procedure itself?" Martha asked, her voice gentle, almost curious. "Looking back at the moment the steel entered, how does that sit with you now? Do you feel a sense of loss? Regret?"

Lauren searched for the word 'regret' in the archive of her mind. She found the definition, but the emotional weight of the word was missing. It was like remembering a song she used to like but forgetting how the melody felt in her chest. "It was... helpful," she replied, her voice devoid of its former tremor. "It felt like a cleaning. Like when the teacher wipes the board so we can start a new lesson. I like the new lesson."