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My chin quivered, but I didn’t cry as my arms were able to swing freely. Coop wasn’t afraid of me, and he wasn’t terrified of whatever power I had. I needed someone to not be frightened of me.

Coop offered the sunglasses once more, and I slipped them into place and almost sighed with relief as the world took on a familiar gray overtone.

“You need a hood if you’re transporting her. She’s dangerous.” The guard held out a piece of fabric, and I withdrew by one large pace.

Coop glanced at me. “No, I don’t think so. I never have before.”

The guard laughed. “And she ain’t never killed anyone before yesterday, neither.” He jabbed a thick finger in my direction.

“Are you going to come with me to Dr. Anderson’s lab, Meira?” Coop asked the question like he needed confirmation in front of the guard, and I nodded, using my finger to keep the sunglasses up on the bridge of my nose I moved.

“I think we’ll be okay.” Coop looked at the guard again. “I’ve got it.”

The guard shook his head. “Well, like I said, you didn’t got it yesterday.” He offered the hood again, but Coop ignored it and stepped around the guard to exit my cell.

“What about the cuffs?” the guard said after him.

“We won’t need them.”

“Magical restraints?” the guard pressed.

“No,” Coop answered, his tone stopping any argument. Maybe Coop hadn’t liberated me, but he treated me differently than anyone else in the place. He made me feel like I could understand what had happened.

I swallowed. And maybe learn how to keep it from happening again.

The guard cursed under his breath.

So I glanced at the guard, and the guard drew his eyebrows down to glare at me. I stared back at him, defiant behind the sunglasses. I wanted to flip him off, but he’d see that, so I just tightened my hands by my sides instead. He’d keep.

Coop came back into the cell and stood beside me, his stance expectant as he waited. He didn’t say a word.

“Hey, it’s your funeral man.” The guard raised his hands in surrender.

“Don’t feel obligated to come,” Coop growled. Then he stiffened as the guard laughed and walked away. Without a word, Coop exited the cell, and I fell into my familiar position at his heels. I stopped outside, though.

“What the…?” I looked up. Everywhere was so industrial. It was like being in a warehouse or some sort of engineering room.

Coop turned and stood beside me as I gazed around, giving me the space to take it all in for a moment.

Huge pipes ran up the walls and across the ceiling, and everywhere consisted of gridded walkways and staircases. I looked over one of the railings edging the walkway, and the building fell away for more floors than I could count.

Patches of rust clung to the metal, and green colored the damp on the walls. Solitary was a neglected place. I seemed to be in the very bowels of the building. Or I would have thought so if I hadn’t just seen it went deeper still.

I shivered, and Coop placed his hand on the small of my back, but the fleeting touch wasn’t aggressive like the guard’s the previous night. It wasn’t to push me forward or make me turn at his unspoken direction. But before I could fully explore how it did feel, his hand was gone, although a sense of protection remained.

At his urging, we resumed walking.

That kind of body language was pretty out of character, but when I glanced at him, his face was completely expressionless, his jaw tense—so tense a muscle worked in his cheek—and his mouth was thin and flat.

He was so hard to read. Locke always had been too, but less so. At least he’d sometimes spoken to me. If nothing else, the short conversations had usually given me a sense of where we stood or the kinds of things he might have been thinking. He’d taken his sunglasses off more often than Coop, too.

Or it had seemed like it.

I could better remember Coop’s eyes, but that was because his gaze had always seemed to bore right through me on the occasions he’d had reason to be without his shades.

“What’s going to happen today?” I spoke at a normal volume and the sound bounced off the walls and metal surrounding us, echoing in the large space. “How will they make me use my powers now?”

“Tests.” He seemed to speak through his closed lips. Maybe even gritted teeth, too. “More tests.”