“Um. Like, maybe I can stay connected in case she does something, but then after you’re in there and safe, I can disconnect? She might get upset again.”

He felt a bit nervous at the idea, and it took him a few moments to square away the feeling.

“Can you endure until I’m back? I’d like the backup.”

“Okay,” Darlene said.

“Thank you,” he said.

He couldn’t drop the feeling that he had stepped away from a life-or-death battle just minutes ago. Just the act of walking away from this, returning to the hallway, he had to consciously put in effort to relax.

He made his way to the side room.

There was a window by the door, and he peered through to look at the little girl. She was at the doorknob, which they had pulled apart, flipped around, and reconnected, so the lock was on the outside. Her expression was frustrated.

Softly, he laid his hand on the knob, and he could feel the rattling.

He flipped it to ‘unlocked’, saw her freeze, turned the knob, and pushed his way inside, feeling a bit of trepidation as he grabbed her shoulder and walked her backwards, away from the door, before he closed it behind him.

She pulled free and retreated to the back of the room, where there was a cot.

“Awake already,” he observed.

She shrugged and smiled, taking a seat on the cot.

He checked the doorknob. There was a thin strip of metal, like a shaving, that was slipped in between the knob and the door. He pulled it out.

He glanced around the room, then reasserted his darkness, pressing it out in every direction, then clearing everything that wasn’t the walls or ceiling. The lights flickered as his power reached into gaps between white wall panels and between the wall and the doorframe, licking at wires.

What had been white walls, floor, and ceiling became black smoke, heavy and slow moving. He left apertures for the lights.

“How long was I asleep?” she asked, looking up.

“Not long.” Not long enough to sleep through all of this.

“I need to go. I have too much to do,” she answered, but she pulled her feet up onto the cot, retreating a bit further.

He held up the metal shaving he’d taken from her. “Let’s talk about this first. How?”

She went still for a moment, then leaned to one side, fishing in a pocket. She pulled out a metal tab that could have been from a can of food. “There are a bunch of these around. Connecting furniture to stuff. Holding the cot together. I used one to scrape off a bit of metal from the shelf.”

He held out his hand.