Finally, he shook his head. “No. Well, she only saw you briefly in the dark during a very traumatic situation. Even the most discerning eyes might mistake you for something special.” There was the briefest flicker of the old Eli’s biting tone before his voice got even more frantic than before. “I rushed over here to dissuade her from acting on such a nonsensical idea. But he has her, and he’ll kill her if I didn’t do what he says, and I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I can’t let that happen, not again, I couldn’t—”

The whine and creak of a door opening echoed from down the dark hallway. Eli fell silent, pulling his knees close to his chest again and seeming to shrink in on himself. Cooper heard footsteps and the erratic rumble of flimsy wheels on cement slowly approaching.

Ryan Basque appeared pushing a four-foot-long metal cart covered by a light blue sheet, same as had been draped over Neil. There were also shapes under this one—what looked like bottles and jars as opposed to a second body, thank god.

“Wakey wakey!” he called, clapping his hands. “Oh, good, everyone’s up. I was a little worried I’d used too high a dose. That’s the first time I’ve administered through aerosol, you know.”

“You,” Cooper said, mind spinning.

“Oh yes, me,” Ryan agreed, and pulled the sheet off. The bottom of the cart was just sliding metal doors that looked like storage, but the top level was full of what looked like veterinary supplies. Various brown plastic bottles, large syringes, shiny, sharp instruments.

“It was too much,” Cooper said, hastily trying to pull it together and come up with any reason to get Ryan to open the cage. “My partner’s very sick. You don’t want him to die like this—otherwise, why keep us here?”

“Oh, he’s not dying,” Ryan said cheerfully, fiddling with one of the syringes and bottles. “He’s just human.”

Cooper’s heart clenched painfully, and behind him, he felt Park jerk, as if he’d tried to leap up and hadn’t even made it off the ground.

Ryan had stopped futzing to watch them intently. “Or as close as their kind can get, anyway,” he added. He held up the syringe in his hand and waved it. “You’ve heard of paralytics targeting one system of the body or another. This one specifically attacks the wolf system. Just completely zones in on every cell with those particular protein markers and beats the living crud out of them.” He laughed. “I got to admit this is the first time I’ve seen it work like this, though. So totally cool.”

“This is what you used on James Finnigan and Arthur Crane,” Cooper realized. “This is what made them...stuck.”