The world assumes shades of gray, then shape and texture, blurry at first, and then sound, voices, footsteps, clattering equipment, and then scents, a scent like smoke, like burnt fabric. Machiko realizes she must be alive when she feels the stinging in the vicinity of her eyebrows and the dull ache working throughout her chest and back. It seems good that she is alive. She marvels at the number of times she has come near to death in just the last several days, five days, since the assassin's initial attacks. Now here she is again.