And through the sedative I felt, for the first time, not just tiredness but wrongness — a low, humming alarm I couldn’t yet explain.

I got up.

It took everything I had.

The room tilted and swam, and I kept a hand flat against the cool mahogany paneling and moved along the wall like a much older woman, out of the suite and down the passage toward the mid-level stairs.

Halfway there my strength simply ran out, the way water runs out of a cupped hand, and I sank down against the cold brass railing and sat there on the carpeted step, gasping, waiting for the walls to hold still.

That was when I heard it.