The door was even farther away than the bed had seemed when I was in the chair. What’s more, I knew it was locked, and even if I’d known how to pick a lock, I didn’t have anything to pick a lock with. This was hopeless. I was helpless.

I took a step toward the door. It felt like falling, like I was pitching forward until my leg reconnected with the floor and caught me. I stopped for a moment, taking a deep breath and bracing myself to do it again. And again. And again. After four steps, I was exhausted, my head hurt even worse than it had before, but I was almost to the door. One more step. One more chance to fall.

I didn’t fall. My hands struck the door, palms out and open to catch me, and I stopped, simply blinking at the wood in front of me. I was here. I had no idea what to do next.

“Oh, what the hell,” I muttered, and tried the knob.

It turned without resistance. I took a stumbling step back, not letting go, and the door came with me, swinging smoothly on its hinges. On the other side was a plain white hall, unornamented, and occupied only by a slim, black-haired woman in nursing scrubs.

Mandy stared at me for a moment, the lockpicks she’d used to make this miracle possible still held in front of her. Slowly, she lowered them, blinking. I blinked back.

“Uh,” I said. “Hi. Have you been feeding my cat?”

“Your cat is an asshole,” she said, voice shaking. Shoving the lockpicks into her pocket, she lunged forward and pulled me into an embrace. I smelled the sweet apple shampoo she always carried with her on trips, and the hot, anxious animal smell of her sweat.

Wait. Sweat? She was wearing deodorant—I could smell that, too, more clearly than anything except for the shampoo. How could I smell her sweating?

And why did it smell so good?

“He wouldn’t eat for like, a week, and he peed in Lucas’s shoes,” she said, pushing me out to arm’s length and looking me frankly up and down. “I think he’s going to leave hairballs in your bed every night for the rest of your life. What the hell do you think you’re doing, getting arrested by NASA instead of coming home?”

Arrested by … My eyes widened, and I tried to pull away from her. “What are you doing here? You can’t be here, it’s not safe.”

“Why, because the people who think shooting another satellite into orbit is super fancy might come to check on me? Please.” Mandy rolled her eyes. “They don’t even have cameras on this hallway.”

“They have cameras on my room.”

“Which are currently showing a nice loop of you passed out on the floor, drooling. Nice touch, by the way.”