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I frowned, trying my best to remember details with a mind that felt pureed.

“I... think it was already poured?”

He nodded, leaning forward to lift my eyelid with a gloved finger. I fought the urge to shrink from the bright little penlight, even though it was far blunter than the needle he’d just drawn blood with.

“The dizziness could well have been from the knock you took to your head, but we can’t rule out the drink as a possible vector.”

I nodded, though the way he’d said it implied he was thinking out loud rather than expecting conversation.

Jefferson stood in the doorway, arms folded across his broad chest and glowering with a barely-hidden fury.

“They drugged it?”

The medic glanced back over his shoulder at the question.

“They certainly could have. Would be easier than an injection and it can work just as fast.” He turned my arms again, frowning at the bare skin. “I don’t see any evidence of punctures. That’s good news.”

I grunted frustration. “Nothing about this sounds like good news.”

His expression was hard. “If it happened, better in a glass than in a needle. No telling where that might’ve been used before.”

I bit my lip, unable to hold his eye.

Jefferson sighed. “Appreciate the house call, Doc.”

It was a polite dismissal, but a dismissal nonetheless. Jefferson waited until we had the room to ourselves - his bedroom, some distant voice pointed out to me, only I had no memory whatsoever of sleeping in it - before pushing the door closed and sitting on the edge of the bed.

I rubbed the spot where the medic had drawn blood, feeling self-conscious and small.

“So what do you remember?”

I winced at the question, unable to hear it as anything other than an accusation. An opportunity to retread the risks I’d taken, and the dangers I’d stumbled into, and the cavalcade of terrible decisions that’d culminated in sitting in my team captain’s bed with a black hole where so much of the previous night should be.

“I fucked up,” I said, softly. A confession standing in for details I couldn’t begin to supply.

When I risked a glance up it was to find him staring at me.

“How did you know?” I swallowed. “Where I was, I mean?”

“You’re a terrible liar.” Jefferson shook his head, rueful. “You tell Clay you’ll be with Adam, and you tell Adam you’ll be at training, and you think those two don’t talk to each other?”

It’d been a huge mistake to introduce them to each other, I’d thought before. Only maybe my first instincts hadn’t been so dire.

“And they called you?”

“Adam did. And guessed where you’d be, and then insisted on coming along.”

A sudden memory, nebulous and soft-edged, of Adam’s worried face looming over me. Of him calling out to Jefferson, moments before the senior gathered me up in his arms.

“They’re gonna be so pissed at me.”

“They’re worried about you,” Jefferson corrected. “And maybe with good reason, lil bro, when you do impulsive shit like that.”

I nodded, slowly, because it was the only thing I could really do. Trying to stave off the flood of self-pity, and almost thankful for the simmering headache that was currently doing a better job of monopolizing my skull.

“Is he here? Adam, I mean.”

Jefferson shook his head. “I sent him back to your dorm. He was not a fan of the idea.” The faintest hint of a smile. “It’s funny, I guess I got used to people being intimidated by me. But that roommate of yours, he takes no shit from anyone.”