I was back in my cell, which had somehow rolled onto its side, making everything distorted and strange. I blinked slowly, trying to still the pounding in my head, and realized the room hadn’t changed: I, however, had fallen out of my chair. That was just great. A solid knock against the floor was exactly what I needed to make me feel better.

Oh, wait, no. That wasn’t true at all. I tried to sit up, and groaned as my head began throbbing so hard my eyes refused to focus. Slumping back to the floor, I considered my admittedly limited options.

I could stay where I was. That was the easiest, safest short-term option. Sure, I was missing a daunting amount of blood, and with my luck I had probably given myself a concussion, but at least I couldn’t fall down again. My current exsanguinated state probably wasn’t going to get any better. I was the only alien these people had. How were they going to give me a transfusion?

I could crawl to the bed. That was tempting, but fraught. The room had never seemed so large, and the pounding in my head was severe enough that I wasn’t sure I could move without vomiting. Then I’d be crawling through a puddle of my own sick—although throwing up might summon the scientists, who would doubtless love such a valuable biological sample. If only I had faith that they’d help me to the bed. Which they wouldn’t. They’d stand around making notes on my progress until they decided it was time to draw more blood, and I’d have no way to stop them.

Passing out again wasn’t so much tempting as it was inevitable: I was on the floor, I was dizzy and in pain, and the forest waited on the other side of unconsciousness. I wasn’t sure yet what I thought of Tahlia, but she was only the second of my own kind that I’d ever met, and talking to her seemed like a good use of time that I couldn’t use any other way. I needed to start making new friends if I was about to start losing old ones.

Friends like Mandy.

Mandy was here, and Mandy was defenseless, and yeah, she was smart and quick on her feet and she looked the part, but she didn’t have any training, and whatever ID she was using to infiltrate the facility couldn’t possibly stand up to serious scrutiny. If one of the scientists ran her credentials for some reason, they’d catch on to her deception. They’d catch her, and then NASA would have a hostage against my good behavior.