A pill pressed into one hand, and a cup of something cold in the other. The pill burns on my tongue, turns acidic when I add water. Fire brews in my stomach, follows my spine and floods my skull. Part of me recognises it; it’s called PyroDyne, and it’ll get a corpse moving again. Give it two, and it’ll become a corpse again.

“Can you stand?”

I find myself nodding, but I don’t think enough about the answer to know. There are footsteps up ahead; someone treading as lightly as they can in a heavy pair of boots. Fingers close around my shoulders and haul me upright. A familiar shadow moves behind them, helping my legs free of the covers and pushing slippers onto my feet. I watch them work, but I can’t see enough to make sense of it. Even if I could, I don’t feel like I’d understand much of what I was looking at. The half-dark is full of static, like I’m pushing through fog with my low-light on.

Another figure moves somewhere further out. I can hear their steps, and see a little of what they’re doing. If I had to guess, I’d say that they were working the hatch to my cell—

My cell?

The thought feels out of place.

There’s a metallic clunk, and a muffled curse when the hinges squeak. The shape in the doorway lights up, silhouetted for a second as they glance around the corner. “All clear,” he says.

I frown at him. Is that Folau?

“Come on,” he says, edging back from the light.

I have enough time to recognise him, but not enough to understand. I watch him move, but my eyes are working on their own. I’m still trying to make sense of my cloudy thoughts, and I don’t think I’m getting all that far.

“Where am I?” I ask.

The room is quiet.

Then: “Don’t you remember?”

I try to focus on the source of the voice, but it’s more difficult than it should be. My face hurts when I move my eyes; I turn my head, but the motion makes it swim. It feels like I have to move every muscle one by one, aiming manually. Almost everything is numb and puffy. Some of me is burning, and a lot of me is cold. Some of me doesn’t respond at all.

A few seconds more, and I find something shaped like Hail.

“Rook?” she asks. She holds my face in her palms, rolls it over in the light. “Rook? Can you hear me?” She waits for a response, but I don’t have the answer yet. “Do you remember where you are?”

I suppose I do, now that she’s asking, but it takes me longer than I want to admit. There were a few heartbeats there where I wasn’t sure at all.