That was when Cooper realized he might be drugged. He tried to move his other foot, but his legs felt too far apart to get any leverage one way or another, and he just sat down instead.

A pair of pants was walking toward him. Cooper looked up, and above the pants he saw an enormous bug’s head with bulging dark eyes and a stumpy proboscis, before the fog sank right through his corneas and into his mind, and the blackness took over.

Chapter Twelve

When Cooper woke up, his shoulders and back ached, and his fingers were numb.

“Mmm,” he mumbled, rolling his stiff neck. Whatever his head was resting on moved with him, and he realized he was sitting upright, leaning against something.

“Cooper?” Park asked. “Are you awake?”

“Mmm,” he said, deciding Park could interpret that how he wished and Cooper could still claim plausible deniability in case he changed his mind and went back to sleep.

He felt horrible. Like being a teenager again and waking up after twelve hours of painful, unconscious growing—feeling all at the same time like he’d slept too little, too much and like he wasn’t waking up in his own body at all but rather some heavy, tender thing.

“Cooper, I need you to wake up.” Park spoke again, and the pain in his voice forced Cooper to reach deep within himself and focus. Park needed him.

He opened his eyes, and the first thing he saw was Eli.

Eli, sitting on the cement floor of a cage, head tilted back against the fencing, watching him. Expressionless. Not like when Park was hiding his emotions, but like he’d...given up.

Cooper tried to move and immediately felt pain in his wrists, like they were bound by something. That finally snapped him the rest of the way into his senses.

He was sitting upright on the floor as well, his ass fully numb against the cold cement, which somehow just made the small of his back feel like it had taken over Atlas’s job and had absolutely lied on the résumé. He was leaning up against Park’s warm, solid much sturdier-seeming back, which was almost nice except for the fact that their wrists seemed to be cuffed together between them. They felt thicker than handcuffs. Heavier. Some kind of animal restraints, he’d guess, based on the whole zoo thing.

Cooper looked around as best he could and realized Eli wasn’t the only one in a cage. He and Park were in the one the bear had once occupied, Eli on the other side of the fence with the howdy door between them.

“We’re still in the same building,” Park said. “I think it’s been about four hours.”

“When did you wake up?” Cooper asked, eyeing Eli, who just stared back, unsmiling.

Park paused. “Only a couple of minutes ago.”