2.

We were back treading the hallways by halfway through fourth period. I opted to hide out in the ladies' room for twenty minutes rather than try to explain to Mr Edde why I'd missed more than half of his lesson. It would be Mission Impossible without a hall pass to help.

I would have been useless even if granted entrance; there were too many questions and half-formed plans running through my head.

Hi and Shelton were going to blag it back into class. After all, cover stories were Hi's speciality, and they hadn't skipped as many of their lessons last week. I waved them goodbye before turning in.

Picking a cubicle at random in the pink-painted room, I locked myself in and sat down on the toilet seat. Ignored the irony that I had been driven to being one of 'those girls' hiding from a whole host of boys. I dropped my head into my hands and pushed my fingers into the edges of my hair instead, trying to still my whirling mind.

Dangerous things first.

The whole Chance package… nope, it could wait, would have to wait. School was not a place where I wanted to get caught working out how to resolve the Claybourne bombshell, or research these Candela researchers. I could plan my arguments for the boys on Hugo this afternoon.

Not that I was even fully registering everything Chance had said yet. I was in lockdown mode, and would ignore until I had to face up.

Then another dangerous development: what was I going to do about Ben? That moment in the car had been… intense.

More like intensely excruciating. Hi and Shelton had almost certainly picked up. I couldn't let this become awkward. But that action plan also definitely shouldn't be worked out at school. One for later, at home.

Then most immediate – if least dangerous – boy-related problem. He of the fences. Jason was quite possibly suffering severe whiplash from my bipolar behaviour towards him last week, but hopefully would put it down to stress over the Zodiac kidnappings. Based on past experience, it was likely he wouldn't even remember last week.

I might have to explain my absence from English, though. Feeling ill? That worked. Just another lame excuse in a long line of them.

The thing was, Jason would eat it up, no moodiness or demands for other excuses. Possibly almost too gullible, but I had missed – was missing – the complications-free friendship with Jason. And I would appreciate the buffer against the rest of Bolton's snob body with Ella off. I wasn't so weak that I needed protection, but it might be nice not to have to fight tooth and nail next to the other two for once.

I could catch Jason outside of English, make my apologies, grab the work. We has separate assigned seats in chem; ever since Hannah had been sent down and the police checked our involvement with the school, the science faculty had taken it upon themselves to separate Jason and I. Perhaps they were worried any students joining us in group work would also go psycho on us.

The bell rang. I stood, emerged, slung my bag over a shoulder. Hannah seemed to be popping up everywhere today.

I headed to the hall and met my class trooping out. The Tripod were a few people away, and, impossibly, they were splitting up, Courtney and Maddy blowing kisses to Ashley like they wouldn't meet til the other side of a life sentence. Ugh.

Jason emerged from behind Ashley, however, bumping her designer mini-bag that might've paid for another peasant's Bolton education. She turned; I anticipated a fight, or at least an ocular stabbing.

Instead, she smiled, grabbing Jason's arm and pouting as he made to move off. They talked for a moment before he could pull away – nicely, of course – and Ashley sent eyelash-fluttering looks behind her as she went. That whole group was ridiculous.

I aimed for Jason. He grinned upon spotting me, pushing through the crowd with more vigour than before. He caught my elbow and I smiled guiltily.

"Hey stranger," he said, loud over the surrounding racket. "You okay? You missed a great quiz. And the assigned end-of-year mini-projects. How will you possibly know what's going on in class now?"

"Sorry Jase. I felt really sick," I pulled a face. "Guess it's all leftovers from last week."

We fell into step, moving towards the labs as the crowds thinned. "You better now? Ella could benefit from your company if you're too ill to enjoy mine and I'm not allowed you."

I grinned properly this time. "Yeah, all good. And I'm sorry about my weird behaviour over the last week. You've been amazing to put up with me, seriously."

"Anytime, Brennan. Plus you're gonna have to repay the favours sometime, right?" I laughed, almost colliding with Shelton as he lunged forwards out of nowhere. Then it was sidestepping Hi as he barrelled forwards, apparently trying to collar Shelton. I didn't make it, and ended up almost knocking into Jason.

Fortunately Bolton's lacrosse captain was nippy enough to avoid our dopey dominoes and steadied me instead. I smiled in thanks before heading towards my assigned seat at the back, almost missing a step as I thought over Jason's last comment. Frickity frick. I really did owe him one, didn't I? If I wanted to stay friends, anyway – which I did, whatever insinuations of inverse snobbery the others (okay, Ben) might give. Plus I could probably guess what form my debt repayment would take.

I would probably enjoy hanging out with Jason for more than thirty seconds between classes if it weren't for the numerous problems facing us right now. And the passive aggression when I asked for a lift. If only there were another way to get to Jason that wouldn't involve weeks of glares if my usual chauffeur even agreed. Who did I know that even liked Jason and owned wheels?

Wait.

I sat up straighter, struck by an unexpected answer. A blonde, bimbo answer.

"Brennan!"

I jerked, caught sight of Ms. Smart pointing her dreaded ruler at me from the front of the class. "Since you've been pondering the Avogadro Constant so deeply, would you care to share your opinion on the answer?"

"Er…" I had nothing. "Would you mind repeating the question, Ma'am?"

If she wasn't giving me an A on every paper I handed her, the response would've been a detention slip. As it was, Ms. Smart merely gave me a flattened look and repeated the question. "What is the number of particles per mole of any given substance?"

"Six point oh two times ten to the twenty-three."

"Units?"

"Moles to the negative one." Answers I did know. Some of the very few.

Ms. Smart nodded, satisfied, continued teaching. I resolved to pay full attention. I couldn't afford to miss school when I was here on top of when I was chasing Chance.

After school, I caught up to Hi outside Bolton's stone Simba. He was pulling off his inside-out jacket as slow as humanly possible, failing to interrupt the lecture from Headmaster Paugh.

God. He really was stalking us today.

I spotted Shelton hiding out behind the King of the Pridelands, beckoning me over, and swerved to join him before Paugh caught me too. Hi caught sight of me and sent a stink eye my way while nodding along to Paugh, but I wasn't about to defend his odd blazer habits.

"Why does he even bother?" Shelton chortled. "Paugh looks so pissed."

I poked my head under the stone mane to check, quickly withdrawing. "All the drama must be going to his head. Soon every day will be a new instalment of Keeping Up With Stolowitski."

"Don't give him any ideas."

Hi finally slid his blazer on the right way and was released with a last warning and glare for added measure. He nodded contritely before bowing as Shelton had once instructed us, then hurried away as the headmaster swelled like a foot. One that had lost a battle with a scorpion.

Hi grabbed us by the elbows and hustled us towards the dock. Shelton and I could barely keep our snickers muffled.

"You two can laugh all you want," Hi said loftily, "but the oppressed always become the masters eventually. One day, Paugh!" He shook his fist at the lions as we crossed the road.

"You sure your jacket is definitely the reason he pulled you over?" Shelton asked. "Not that it wasn't funny as hell – and don't tell my mother you're using her cultural heritage behaviours to irritate the school – but Paugh's always just carried on walking before."

That hadn't occurred to me. "Stalker Paugh strikes again. He ask you about this morning?"

Hi shook his head. "Doesn't mean he wasn't trying intimidation tactics though. Not that he can win on that one. I won't be silenced!" There was a dramatic thump of the chest. I rolled my eyes.

"There's more pressing matters than Paugh."

"But what could be more important than Potentially Pervy Paugh's oppression of my right to wear – okay, fine." Hi had clearly seen the look on my face.

Shelton glanced about nervously as we paused at a crossing. "Now really a good time, Tory?"

"Doesn't have to be loud enough for the street to hear. Although if we do happen to get a random flare-seizure at any point along here, I'm sure we'll be drawing a lot more attention to ourselves."

"Alright, alright. Do we have to do this without Ben?"

"I just want to work out all the things going wrong with us."

"Feels like a trip to the doctor's." Hi managed to duck the stinger I sent his way. "Huh. I'm getting better at that."

"Practice makes perfect," Shelton told him.

"Nearly all my flares in the last week have knocked me flat. I'm getting weird mental connections from Chance. There's some other weird mental connection stuff going on without a proper pattern yet. At least we're able to join minds again, and know why it went wrong last time."

"Wait, how?" I looked up from the pavement to Hi. He wasn't joking.

"Didn't Ben tell you?" I hadn't thought he'd keep things from the pack. We didn't do that.

Okay, we tried not to do that. I mostly failed.

The other two shook their heads. "Oh – he said he though he'd been blocking us out on some level. Blocking me out. So we couldn't join minds again until he let the unity happen."

"So you don't automatically have access to our heads anymore?"

"I never did," I reminded Shelton.

"Felt like it," Hi muttered. "Teenage psychics. Not so cool when you're the one who's being invaded."

"Other problems include trusting Chance, the strange eyes at my almost-kidnapping, Chance's scientists, and why this Susan person managed to escape the disease."

"We can't find out about the scientists with only first names to go on." Shelton had a point. "And we already covered that last one. Lunch. That time we found nada useful information."

True. There were mostly just lists of symptoms. Even if we had found some incredible nugget of research on how to cure the virus, we wouldn't have been able to put theory into practice. Not unless we had a pharmaceutical company on our side. Like, for example, the drug giant Candela.

Everything leads back to Chance. So how could I convince them to trust him?

"Fine." I dismissed the topic for now. "We can talk with Ben on iFollow."

The boys looked relieved. Moved on to talking about Mystique from X-men.

I didn't listen. There was enough going on in my head to sort out as it was.

A/N: sorry it's a little filler-y, I accidentally made the first draft rather long and when rewriting made it even longer, so the events have been split into two chapters. Sorry! But I do have quite a few prewrittens at the moment, so in this oasis of post-exam pre-school return on Monday, I am writing as much as possible, and updates will be good! Thanks so much for all the wonderful reviews you guys, it makes me so happy to read them all. (Viralsisamazing – "Simba" as in, the stone lion they were hiding behind ;) )

Next chapter will be good, though: jealousy, crust competitions, and Hi's guilt crisps.