The training room on level four was empty at this hour, which was exactly why Noah used it.
He sat cross-legged in the center of the rubber floor with his eyes closed and his hands resting flat on his knees. For the first five minutes, he didn't try to do anything except breathe. He let the station's ambient noise flatten out into a single, predictable texture—the low, oily thrum of the life-support scrubbers, the distant, metallic click of boots from the night shift moving along the primary corridors, the faint vibration of the structural struts holding this entire tin can together against the vacuum outside. He didn't fight the noise. He just let it become the background until it wasn't an interruption anymore.
Then, he went looking for the white chi.
