I watch as he moves farther down the hall, choosing another room and disappearing inside again. Frustrated, I twist my wrists, trying to shift the ties to a spot that isn’t already chafed and sore. “You won’t like it better when a Being attacks,” I call after him as loudly as I dare. “You’ll be getting eaten and I won’t be able to help at all, because my hands are literally tied.”

He emerges from the doorway with a handful of rattling pill bottles and first-aid supplies, tucking them into his pockets. “You wouldn’t help if I was getting eaten anyway,” he says. “You’d leave me behind the second you thought it was in your best interest.”

I pause. It occurs to me that this is the way I’ve been thinking of him; that he’s waiting for the opportunity to abandon me, that I have to stick close, or he’ll leave me to my fate without a second thought. I wonder when I started assuming everyone was like me.

“Do you really think so little of me?” I ask, genuinely curious. If he truly thinks I’m such a liability, why would he bother to keep me around even this long?

He pauses and finally looks at me, his expression closed off. After a moment he shuffles through the supplies in his hands and tosses me something small and gleaming. I catch it: a little pair of surgical scissors. It’s sheer luck that I caught them by the handle and not by one of the blades, which could have sliced a finger open. I look back up.

“Give me a reason not to,” Elliott says, and then he turns his back and walks away.

By the time I’ve managed to contort my hands enough to cut through the ties and free myself, Elliott has already found the information desk. I hurry straight to the big map that’s plastered to the wall above it, vaulting over the desk to read it more closely.

I squint. “It looks like the parking garage entrance is …”

“That way.” Elliott cuts me off, pointing to the left. His expression is strange—wary, unsettled. I follow his line of sight to find two sets of glass double doors. Muted gray sunlight spills through them, which, I realize now, is why it was bright enough for me to read the map a moment ago. Beyond the doors I can make out the dim interior of a multistory parking garage. There’s fog out there, but it’s thin—blown into submission by the storm I can still hear at the edges of the garage—and easily allows me to see rows upon rows of cars and trucks and SUVs. We’ll be able to spot any nearby Beings while we’re out there, too, as the garage is small enough that it’s not very dark even in the shadowed center.