Mark may have been dazzled when he first stumbled through the door to Milliways, but he wasn’t completely blind to what was going on around him. He remembered the conversation they had with the strangely nice man who helped Dodger get into bed, and how Dodger’s demeanour completely turned around once she realised where they were. She hadn’t only been here before; she’d clearly spent a significant amount of time here.

Mark also wasn’t so dazzled by Milliways that he lost all of his common sense. Sure, he was hungry, and he’d left his pack with all his gear back in the lifeguard station. But he wasn’t hungry enough to take any magical food from anywhere just yet. Which was just as well, because spotting the bill collectors loitering around the bar could have been trouble.

He had two lines of assumption to run on regarding Dodger. Either bandits had moved into his turf, and she was bait to some sort of trap, or she had somehow managed to get by all this time on her own. She didn’t look very bandit-like, so Mark went with his second guess. It still didn’t make her safe, necessarily, but it made her slightly more safe than the alternative. Finding her slumped down in an infirmary bed with a colouring book and a box of crayons only swayed him further from the bandit assumption.

“Woah, buddy. You stay there,” Dodger warned, holding a green crayon out in front of her like a weapon.

Mark stopped in the doorway and held his hands up to show them empty.

“Yeah, uh. Hi. Didn’t really get introduced back there,” he said.

“Okay,” Dodger said.

It was good enough, as far as introductions went. She slowly put down her crayon, and he put down his hands, though he made no move to walk any further into the infirmary. They watched each other carefully for a few long moments, making sure neither was going to make any sudden moves. Mark was careful to keep his hands away from the machete hanging at his side, but not quite willing to take it off and put it down.

“Thought you should know,” Mark said, finally breaking the tense silence between them. “There’s a couple of guys out here collecting bar tabs. I don’t know if that applies to you or not.”

Dodger’s eyes went wide as her gaze flitted past Mark for the briefest moment. “What? Are you flipping serious?” she asked. The panic in her voice, laced with exhaustion, sounded genuine.

“You owe a lot, then?” he asked.

“Probably, I don’t know. I was here for like, a month!”

Dodger tried to get out of the bed, but as soon as she moved into a position even resembling vertical, she doubled over again with one hand held tight over her stomach. Mark took half a step forward, but stopped once he realised she wasn’t going to fall to the floor. After a few ragged breaths, she slowly sat up again, keeping her gaze lowered to the floor.

“This is bad,” she said.

“They didn’t look like they were actually shaking anybody down,” Mark offered. “It looks like it’s some kind of honour system or something.” He scoffed at that, wondering how far honour was actually going to go.

“Yeah, everyone here’s like. Really weird,” Dodger said. She slowly slumped back down into the bed and rolled over onto her side.

Really weird was a vague descriptor, but Mark had noticed that quality about people here already as well. Weirdly nice. Weirdly trusting. Weirdly generous. Just weird in general. Magical wormholes, Mark knew. He understood those. Magical wormholes wasn’t too much different from the thing that got them to where they were. But people who walked up and just offered you tea, no strings attached? Mark couldn’t help but look for strings anyway.

“Just, you know. Thought you might want to know.” He turned to leave, feeling a little too vulnerable with his back to the door, but was surprised when Dodger called him back.

“Wait, there’s something else,” she said.

“What?” Mark asked, turning so he could easily see through the door in both directions, while still keeping Dodger in his line of sight.

“You’re not, like, planning on staying here, are you?” Dodger asked.

Mark shrugged. He was curious, at the very least. “I don’t know. Dave’s probably wondering where I am.”

It wasn’t unusual for one of them to disappear for a few days, but it usually came with a little notice. And not so soon after rotating through to one of their bases.

“Dave doesn’t know you’re here. He doesn’t even know you’re gone,” Dodger said.

“Right,” Mark said. He did remember something about that being mentioned, while he was busy messing around with everything on the counters. “What do you mean?”

“It’s not just a wormhole. It’s freaky not-really-time-travel as well. Like, the opposite of time travel,” Dodger said, speaking slowly and laboured, while still trying to get everything out quickly. “It’s like, everything just stops. It was weird.”

“Okay,” Mark said, trying to reconcile her tone with what she was actually saying. Her words made it seem like he could stay here as long as he liked, and Dave would never even have to know. But something about her tone seemed to imply the exact opposite.

“I don’t want to stay here,” she said finally.

“Oh! Right. Okay.” It meant he didn’t get to stay here. Not unless he wanted her stuck here and angry with him. And if she’d been staying on her own for any amount of time, she probably wasn’t the sort of person he wanted against him.

“Yeah. I guess let me know, then. When you’re ready to go,” Mark said, pointing out toward the door.

“Yeah,” Dodger said. “I will.”

Mark waited a few seconds longer, to be sure she didn’t have anything else to say, before leaving the infirmary. He was starting to get hungry enough to consider the wrath of the bill collectors finding out he had absolutely nothing of value to trade.